A Serious Man Hard to Watch

It wasn't that it was boring, but there wasn't a single character who I would like to know or be around.  They were all seriously annoying in one way or another.  Was it a good movie?  My first reaction is no, but I'm willing to pull back and consider that there was more; that I just didn't get it.

[I don't think what I write here will give anything away, but if you're planning to see the movie and want to go in with fresh eyes, stop now.]

As we talked about it over dinner afterwards, some basic themes emerged.  Perhaps the key  theme is the basic theme of this blog - What Do I Know?  What can I know?  How certain can I be?  A sub theme is about how one can find truth - science and spirituality (religion) are the main contenders.  Or maybe nothing means anything. 

For example, we have the physicist giving his students truth in a wall covering formula that none of them understand - and it's not an accident that what the Professor Larry Gopnik is proving is the uncertainty principle.  The discussion with Clive, a student who has failed the physics exam and requests a passing grade or to take it over because he didn't know there would be math on the test, also reflects the theme of how do we know what's truth.  The student says the math is hard, but he understands the dead cat (Schrödinger's Cat):

LARRY (SURPRISED) You understand the dead cat? 19 CLIVE nods gravely. But... you... you can't really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. That's the real thing; the stories I give you in class are just illustrative; they're like, fables, say, to help give you a picture. An imperfect model. I mean-even I don't understand the dead cat. The math is how it really works. CLIVE shakes his head, dubious.[script from IMSDB]

But while Larry 'knows' the reality through math, it doesn't seem to translate into truths about his career or his family.   He seeks other truths from three rabbis, who tell him stories.  But when it comes to stories, Larry is just as clueless as his students are about his formulas. 

The truth theme begins the movie in the opening Yiddish tale in a Polish shtetl near Lublin, as a man comes home to tell his wife he was helped by someone she knows.  Not possible says the wife, he's dead.  So when he shows up at the house the man and wife debate if he is truly Traitle Groshkover or if he is a dybbuk. 

We transform from shtetl life into a 1967 Hebrew school class through an earpiece (they weren't called earbuds back then.)  The wife has stabbed the dybbuk (or was it Traitle Groshkover?) with an ice pick. The dybbuk or mortally wounded Traitle stands up and walks out.  From the script again:

WIFE
Nonsense, Velvel...
She walks to the door...
Blessed is the Lord. Good riddance to evil and shuts it against
the wind.

BLACK
A drumbeat thumps in the black.
Music blares: the Jefferson Airplane. Grace Slick's voice enters:
When the truth is found to be lies
And all the hope inside you dies
Don't you want somebody to love. . .


An image fades in slowly, but even up full it is dim: some kind
of round, dull white shape
with a small black pinhole center. This white half-globe is a
plug set in a flesh-toned
field. The flesh tone glows translucently, backlit. We are drifting
toward the white plug
and, as we do so, the music grows louder still.

AN EARPIECE

A pull back-a reverse on the preceding push in-from the cheap
white plastic earpiece
of a transistor radio. The Jefferson Airplane continues over
the cut but becomes
extremely compressed. The pull back reveals that the earpiece
is lodged in someone's
ear and trails a white cord.

We drift down the cord to find the radio at its other end. As
we do so we hear, live in the
room, many voices speaking a foreign language in unison.

[An aside:  I don't recall white ear pieces back then.  I'm pretty sure they were all black.  And this was a transistor radio, not an iPod or even a Walkman, where it would make sense that the rabbi would later hear the same song that Danny was listening to.  Perhaps the white cords were to fool us into believing that it had Danny's songs saved instead of being a radio that would play different songs.  This is not a big deal, artistic license and all.  Just a note.]

Throughout the movie, all the things Larry knows - his marriage, his brother, his job - turn out to be not what he thought they were.  

Grace Slick's words come back near the movie's end, on the lips of the elderly rabbi:

When the truth is found to be lies
And all the hope inside you dies


Another important theme - "I haven't done anything" - comes over the phone from Dick Dutton of the Columbia Record Club.  I'd forgotten about record clubs.  The ads in magazines and in the mail offered you a bunch of free records (the kind you play music on), but the catch is that you have to then buy one each month for X months, and then they keep coming UNLESS you tell them to stop.  That scheme has migrated even more effectively to the internet.  

VOICE Okay, well, you received your twelve introductory albums and you have been receiving the monthly main selection for four months now- LARRY "The monthly main selection?" Is that a record? I didn't ask for any records. VOICE To receive the monthly main selection you do nothing. LARRY That's right! I haven't done anything! [emphasis added] VOICE Yes, that's why you receive the monthly main selection.

Through much of the movie, Larry doesn't do anything.  His wife wants a divorce and tells him to see a lawyer.  He does nothing. Finally, when it's too late, he sees the lawyer.  Clive (the failing grad student) leaves an envelope full of money, but Larry doesn't do anything - doesn't report the money or the student, doesn't change the grade, just lets things slide until the very end.  He's up for tenure, but he hasn't published any articles.  His tenure committee chair, Arlen Finkle stops by to see if there is anything Larry wants to add to his tenure file:

Arlen Finkle Well. Anything. Published work. Anything else you've done outside of the institution. Any work that we might not be aware of. LARRY I haven't done anything. [emphasis added] Arlen Finkle Uh-huh. LARRY I haven't published.


Is fate vs. free will another theme here?  Maybe, but I'm not sure.  There's a number of mentions of Hashem.   Though mostly these don't really imply fate.  Rabbi Scott does say, about all the things happening to Larry:

You have to see these things as expressions of God's will.
You don't have to like it, of course.

Or is this the curse of the Dybbuk stabbed by some foremother of Larry in the shtetl?  

I'm sure there's lots more than this.   There are the obvious similarities to Job for example.  But is this bringing together of diverse references what it takes to make a good movie?  Or is this cinematic trivial pursuit in dark heavy tones disguised by first rate technical work and acting?  Why is this world so relentlessly joyless?  While Larry, who can't seem to do anything, is painfully helpless, the other characters each have their own distastefulness.  There's his wife who's leaving him.   There's his failing student.  The rabbis who can't or won't help Larry.  His weird brother who is oblivious to anyone else's needs.  His daughter who's always nagging.  His son who's an unlovable 12 year old pot head.  Or are these people this way because Larry 'doesn't do anything'?  Or are we seeing them through Larry's eyes? 

The world they depicted is not a world I know.  Not a world I would want to live in.  Most writers and film makers write about their own worlds.  What sort of depressing childhood did the Coen brothers have to lead them to the series of films they've offered?  They aren't simply eccentric, they're dark, morose, violent.  They highlight the worst features of human beings.  There are dark films that show people living difficult lives that I've thought were terrific.  But they reflect a truth about humans, and insight into humanity, that I just don't see in this movie.  While the Coen brothers may work with the most classic of human themes, I don't see that they bring any enlightenment.  Using Shakespeare's themes, doesn't make one a bard.  I just don't think they have the wisdom to make profound films.  They're still children playing at grownup.  They can make films like Professor Gropnik can write formulas.  Their technical skill is impressive, but their understanding of humanity is not nearly as developed.  This was not my cup of tea.  

OK, that's my take.  Now I can go look at what others have said.

Jerry Traverse at Rolling Stone begins:

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, are getting personal. They shot their new film in suburban Minnesota, where they grew up as sons of Jewish academics. But if you're expecting something warm and fuzzy, circa 1967, you don't know the Coens, and A Serious Man is no country for you. This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell.

A.O. Scott writing at the New York Times seems to have liked it (It's a NYTimes Critic's Choice.)  Here's a snippet of his review:

. . .So a question put before the congregation by “A Serious Man” is whether it makes the case for atheism or looks at the world from a divine point of view. Are the Coens mocking God, playing God or taking his side in a rigged cosmic game? What’s the difference?
The philosophical conundrums in “A Serious Man” can be posed only in jest — or, at least, in the cultural tradition of Ashkenazic Judaism that stretches from the shtetls of Poland to the comedy clubs of the Catskills, that is how they tend to be posed. But a deep anxiety lurks beneath the jokes, and though “A Serious Man” is written and structured like a farce, it is shot (by Roger Deakins), scored (by Carter Burwell) and edited (by the Coens’ pseudonymous golem Roderick Jaynes) like a horror movie.

I wouldn't go as far as Goatdog, who truly didn't like it:

A Serious Man is a truly despicable film, and I I [sic] ordinarily count myself among the Coen brothers' fans and/or defenders. So I was astonished that with this film, in one fell stroke, they had me believing that everything their detractors say might just be right: they may be talented yet juvenile creeps, the cinematic equivalent of a 13-year-old supreme being who delights in putting his little Job through unbearable torment, only to reward him with a painful death. In 90 minutes, they shook my faith in twenty years of films. Suddenly the Coens are the Federico Fellinis of burning ants to death with a magnifying glass.

 Michael W. Phillips Jr.'s (Goatboy) "talented yet juvenile" says much more clearly what I think is wrong with this film.

Brain Occupied Elsewhere, Mac Video Capture, Serious Man Alert

I guess I should be posting something today, but I'm mentally engaged with other projects. I've got a manuscript I'm reviewing for a journal. It's the second time round and I was the only negative reviewer the first time.  They have tried to address issues I raised, and it is much better, but I still have problems and I'm trying to figure out

1. whether it's worth pursuing further or is their key issue really a non-issue and 
2. if it could lead to something useful, how do I articulate my problems and make constructive suggestions?

Having been the recipient of plenty of reviewers comments on my own papers, I know what it feels like to get negative comments.  Negative doesn't mean abusive.  It means that the reviewer doesn't think it's ready for publication.  And for negative comments I feel an extra obligation to give lots of reasons and examples, but it's never an easy process.  So I'm struggling with how to express my reservations in as constructive a way as possible.   That's probably about all I can say on that.

Then I got notice recently that a proposal I submitted for a paper at a conference in May was accepted. So now I have to work on that. I probably will be able to share some of that process, but since I have a co-author, it gets a little more tricky.

We got a call back about an apartment in Juneau - that would make moot the ethics issues. The price and location are right and a friend down there has promised to take a look.

I went to the dermatologist this morning to check on some spots.  That's a cost of growing up near the beach in Southern California.  Nothing alarming. 


Snow Leopard Tip

Here's a gizmodo page that tells you what's new in Snow Leopard. The function I found most interesting is the ability in the new Quicktime to do VIDEO CAPTURE. From my initial experiment, you record the whole screen, so I can use this to record video, but I get everything else on the screen as well, including curser movements.  But there wasn't any audio.  I'll check it out a bit more, but even so, it's a potentially useful function and comes included in Snow Leopard.

In the new Quick Time Player, in FILE, there's an option for 'new screen recording.'  Play around from there.


And a last note:  A Serious Man is at Bear Tooth tonigh 5:30 and 8pm.  A friend in the Chicago area has assigned me that so we can discuss it.  I'm not a fan of the Coen brothers love of blood, but the violence in this movie is apparently all mental.   

Plowing Snow Berms? 2 - Maybe Not

This is what my parking space looked like after the plow went by several times.  They did use the snow guard to keep most of the snow out of the space.  Not too much spilled.

It only took about five minutes to get rid of the snow and clear my space.

Using the new snow shovel. The old one was just like this one, except it had a black synthetic material as a blade. In the last big storm, it pulled out of the little screws (what are those called, they aren't really screws). All but one of the holes failed and this black strip was loose as I shoveled. Costco took it back with no question and the new version has a metal strip instead.

Our neighbor said he thought they had trucks to clear the berms in the neighborhood, so I left the car in the driveway and went for my run.  Here's the midday sun, getting a little higher on the southern horizon.

And here it is lighting up the trees and casting a very long shadow of the photographer.

While I was running - an abbreviated run (less so in time than distance) - it didn't appear that the other neighborhoods had had their berms cleared.  Here's the berm at the corner as I came back from the run.  My car is still in the driveway and the one you can see on the street is our neighbor, just past our place.  That car caught fire last week so they can't move it right now.  It was idling outside.  We weren't home when it happened otherwise you'd have seen the fire trucks here. :)

We're headed to Out North to see Santaland Diaries.

Plowing the Berms, Maybe

I was doing my stretches and getting ready to go out and run - I've been terribly derelict, but it's been around 30 the last few days and I have no excuses not to get out - when I heard the snow plows.  So I stopped, got some outdoor clothes on and moved the van into the driveway. 

So, here's the second sweep after I moved the van.  You can see some pavement between the front wheel and the mailbox that I did have a cleared spot for my car.  To the left is a two foot high, four foot wide berm.  The question is whether they are just coming by a couple of times to scrape a little more off the street, or are they going to actually clear the berms?  And are they going to leave my parking space, or push the berm into my space?  So far it looks like they are trying to leave my space. 

Now I have to finish the stretches and go run.  It's nice out.

Reading Brooks' Bests and Reexamining What We Know

How do people know what happened?  Even things they've seen themselves.  How does what other people say affect what they 'know?'   We really don't know that much about these things.  Kevin L. Leahy, an attorney who has defended corporations against asbestos personal injury claims writes about the memory of witnesses:

Cognition specialists discuss memory as a process that has three primary stages: (1) encoding; (2) consolidation and storage; and (3) retrieval. (Id.) Each step involves biological efforts within our brains to ensure that an eyewitness account is accurately retained. (May 2003 issue of HarrisMartin’s COLUMNS-Asbestos.)

He goes on to say that unlike artists or story tellers, who can fill in the details after the fact, and not necessarily accurately,

eyewitnesses have no license to stray from their understanding of past events during trial. Our system expressly demands that witnesses “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Once the bailiff and judge forbid conscious manipulation of testimony, however, the remaining instructions are generally silent about the accuracy of the witness’ recall.

So, you might ask, where is this coming from and where is it going?  David Brooks, in the Friday, Dec. 25, 2009 NY Times gives out his Sidney Awards to the best magazine essays  of 2009.

One of his choices is a lengthy story about Todd Willingham, an unemployed auto mechanic, who was put to death in Texas for killing his three daughters by burning his house down.  All the expert witness arson evidence pointed to Willingham.  And so did the eyewitness evidence.  But a friend who came to know Willingham when he was on death row, decided to  recheck the evidence.  And what she found suggested that  some of the details the eyewitnesses gave, was revised later on, after they were exposed to what the 'experts' thought.  From the New Yorker artcle,  "Trial by Fire"   by David Grann:

The witnesses’ testimony also grew more damning after authorities had concluded, in the beginning of January, 1992, that Willingham was likely guilty of murder. In Diane Barbee’s initial statement to authorities, she had portrayed Willingham as “hysterical,” and described the front of the house exploding. But on January 4th, after arson investigators began suspecting Willingham of murder, Barbee suggested that he could have gone back inside to rescue his children, for at the outset she had seen only “smoke coming from out of the front of the house”—smoke that was not “real thick.”

An even starker shift occurred with Father Monaghan’s testimony. In his first statement, he had depicted Willingham as a devastated father who had to be repeatedly restrained from risking his life. Yet, as investigators were preparing to arrest Willingham, he concluded that Willingham had been too emotional (“He seemed to have the type of distress that a woman who had given birth would have upon seeing her children die”); and he expressed a “gut feeling” that Willingham had “something to do with the setting of the fire.”

Dozens of studies have shown that witnesses’ memories of events often change when they are supplied with new contextual information. Itiel Dror, a cognitive psychologist who has done extensive research on eyewitness and expert testimony in criminal investigations, told me, “The mind is not a passive machine. Once you believe in something—once you expect something—it changes the way you perceive information and the way your memory recalls it.”

Certainly anyone who is married knows that spouses can remember something that just happened very differently, and both are sure they are right.  And as Democrats and Republicans and everyone in-between or beyond makes claims about health and other policies, I  wonder what causes people to be so sure about things they can't possibly know too much about.  If eyewitnesses have trouble remembering what they saw in the past, how can we possibly know for certain things that haven't yet happened (the effects of carbon on the environment, the impact of health reform, etc.)  I'm not saying we can't make educated guesses based on the facts we do know.  I'm really referring to the people who are absolutely certain, who have no doubts, who can't see any possibility that perhaps their opponents may actually be right.

[Update, Saturday afternoon:  The New Yorker Fire article is 17 pages long and I'd only read part of it when I first posted.  The real issue in this article about knowing is that the arson experts based their findings on myth.  They didn't know:

In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”[emphases added]]

And, as I remind readers now and then, this blog is fundamentally about examining what I know.  

Anyway, Brooks' recommendations are worth a look.  Besides Grann's reexam of the arson evidence,  Brooks has several more suggestions.  He mentioned, but because it was published in the New York Times (where he himself writes) did not include it,  David Rohde's  series on being a Taliban captive that I pointed out in October.

His other choices include:

1. Atul Gawande’s piece, “The Cost Conundrum,” in The New Yorker, was the most influential essay of 2009, and
   
   
2. David Goldhill’s “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in The Atlantic, explained why the U.S. needs fundamental health reform.
   
   
3. Jonathan Rauch’s delightful essay, “Fasten Your Seat Belts — It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Flight,” in The National Journal. Rauch described what the airline industry would look like if it worked the way the health care industry works.
   
   
4. Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard['s] . . . piece, “A Rake’s Progress” was a sympathetic and gripping profile of Marion Barry, the former Washington, D.C., mayor, crack-smoker and recent girlfriend-stalker.
   
   
5. S. Frederick Starr’s “Rediscovering Central Asia,” in The Wilson Quarterly, is an eye-opening look at what once was. A thousand years ago, those mountains [around Afghanistan] were the intellectual center of the world. Central Asians invented trigonometry, used crystallization as a means of purification, estimated the Earth’s diameter with astonishing precision and anticipated Darwin’s theory of evolution.

(While I've added numbers, I've kept Brooks' own descriptions above)  All the articles challenge our notions of what we know, if you are looking with that in mind.

Atul Gawande does a case study to see if looking at the most expensive town in the US can give him new insights.

The question we’re now frantically grappling with is how this came to be, and what can be done about it. McAllen, Texas, the most expensive town in the most expensive country for health care in the world, seemed a good place to look for some answers.

 Goldhill's article on his dad's hospital caused death immediately made me rethink the level of risk of different activities just by how he placed statistics side-by-side:

My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.

Jonathan Rauch’s article, gives us another way to 'know' the health care system.  He imagines booking an airline ticket as though the airlines were run like health care.  It causes us to 'know' the issues differently than before.

May I have your flight-insurance information, please?"
"Millennium Travel Care, group number 068832, ID number RS-3390041B."
"I'm sorry, sir, we're not in Millennium Travel Care's provider network."
"You're listed on their website. It says you accept Millennium."
"We did until last week. If you like, you can pay out of pocket for your ticket."
"How much would that be?"
"Yes, sir, I'll be happy to get that price for you. That would be $17,885.70."
"What? For a flight to Chicago? Does anyone actually pay that?"
"I'm sorry, sir, I wouldn't know. I can tell you that different clients and insurers pay different rates. For individuals, the rate is $17,885.70."
"Oh."

[Update Jan. 8, 2009:  Phil Munger put up this video of a version of the Rausch airline/health piece on Progressive Alaska.]


I'm having some trouble seeing a different way of knowing in the Matt Labash article.  It's a rip roaring article that reminds me of Tom Wolfe.  Brooks calls it sympathetic, I'd say it's more like damning with very occasional faint praise.

Barry is by now transported himself. He gets up and joins the mosh pit of ululators, swinging his arms like a child readying himself for the standing broad-jump at a school track meet. When asked afterward what part of the sermon spoke to him most, he says, "All of it," then starts throwing some Bible himself. "It says, 'Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world,' " Barry says, adding his own interpretation: "Greater than devils, and evil-doers, and haters .  .  . Barry critics."
It's a tad ironic that while all but Emperor-for-Life in Ward 8, Barry didn't make his bones as mayor by standing up for "the last, the least, and the lost," as he has spent the post-Vista half of his career rebranding himself in these parts. While his signature summer-jobs program for youth insured that you can swing a cat in a local black neighborhood and hit five adults for whom Barry provided their first gig, his primary accomplishment was riding '80s-era real-estate-boom market forces.
Barry threw the city open to development the likes of which D.C. hadn't seen before. He was so proactive that old staffers tell how, early in his mayoral tenure, he used to have weekly brainstorming brown-bag lunches with architects and developers and would fast-track formerly glacial construction-approval processes with Post-it notes saying "Good idea, do it!" When he assumed office in 1979, whole quadrants of the city were ghost towns, and there were streets untouched since they were torched in the '68 riots.

It's not so much about knowing something differently as adding more data to what we know. Though at one point we do see Barry having an insight about his behavior:

Both Barry and Linda talk freely about how much he cared for Effi, which prompts me to ask how he could put her through what he did: the infidelity, the public humiliation. Linda covers for him: "He's not doing it out of disrespect, or less love for the person he's committed to at that time."
Barry takes this in, meditatively chewing on a pineapple slice. "I haven't thought about it much," he confesses. "First of all, I love people. Attractive women. They're all attractive to me if they're female." We laugh.
"No, really," he insists:

But I guess part of what happens in life is you are what you see. Growing up without a natural father, I didn't see these one-on-one relationships. I'm just thinking about it for the first time, quite frankly. I mean I've thought about it, but not in this depth. .  .  . I think there ought to be fidelity between a man and a woman. .  .  . But you are what you see. And when I was growing up, I didn't see men who were one-woman men. So I guess it sort of got caught in my personality. I'm not rationalizing it. It is what it is. [Emphasis added]

S. Frederick Star's "Rediscovering Central Asia" gives us a number of ways to rearrange what we 'know.'  Most obvious is filling in the gaping holes in our knowledge about that part of the world where our military is most visibly engaged.  Many of us think about it as a backward land of ignorant people.  That isn't true today, and Star tells us that it certainly wasn't true in the past.

It is one thing to draw a circle on the map, but quite another to explain why this region, call it Greater Central Asia, should have produced such a cultural flowering. Booming cities provided the setting for cultural life. A traveling Arab marveled at what he called the “land of a thousand cities” in what is now Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The ruins of mighty Balkh, once the capital of this region, still spread for miles and miles across the plain west of modern Mazar–­i-­Sharif in Afghanistan. In its heyday Balkh was larger than Paris, Rome, Beijing, or Delhi. Like all the great regional centers, it had running water, baths, and majestic palaces—and solidly built homes of sun-dried brick for non-palace dwellers.

It was also richer, thanks to continental trade. Merchants from Balkh and other Central Asian commercial centers journeyed to the Middle East, Europe, China, and deep into India. Traders from those lands brought goods to the sprawling commercial entrepôts in Greater Central Asia. Since slavery thrived throughout the Muslim world and beyond, the bazaars also included large slave markets. Gold, silver, and bronze currency from these thriving hubs of commerce traveled all the way to Gotland in Sweden and to Korea and Sri ­Lanka.

And for most US citizens who think of their country as the world's cultural leader today, it's sobering to remember the fate of such leaders of the past.   There's an opportunity for a little rearranging of our mental maps in this article, if one is open to that sort of activity.

Leahy - you remember him, the asbestos lawyer mentioned at the beginning of this post - used three cognitive steps to frame his discussion of eyewitnesses' ability to accurately report what they had seen in the past.  We shouldn't just be adding facts to reinforce our old stored beliefs.  We should be rearranging everything know and then to see whether that affords us a more effective view of the world. 


David Brooks recommends people forgo watching "It's a Wonderful Life" once again and read these articles instead.  (He has still more recommendations coming Tuesday.)  And given that in today's world, you don't have to go to the library or bookstore to read these, I'd nudge you to give at least a couple a look.  And remind yourself how much you can actually expand what you know with a couple of hours of reading good stuff. 

Swedish Tea Ring and Beautiful Cat

We went to friends for a Christmas morning breakfast.  The waffles were good, but the homemade Swedish Tea Ring was superb.  A family recipe she makes once a year.

Last night our host had dogs, a whole sled team worth. But this morning it was cats. I'm much more a cat person. I like an animal that doesn't need me, that's got a life of its own, and whose attention I have to deserve.

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This sign I saw on Latouche today seemed appropriate for Christmas Eve.  I also got a letter from Wat Alaska Yanna Vararam - a Thai/Lao Buddhist Temple in town.  It looks ahead to the new year

. . .heartedly blessing you and your family be free from all kinds of suffering, physical and mental suffering.  May you all be free from animosity.  May you all be free from the external disturbance and internal disturbance.  May the peace and pure happiness arise in your mind and leading your mind to the right way, the right way of being, right conduct in action, right conduct in thought and right conduct in speech.

So, I get good vibes this Christmas Eve from the bicycle folks (I assume that's from them) and from the Buddhists.  But as I was almost home after dropping someone off at the airport - Mt. Susitna bathed in setting sunlight was also sending blessings - I was jarred by Senator Mitch Mcconnel's belligerence on the radio news just before the vote on health care reform.   Here's a link ("this fight isn't over"):

I guarantee you, the people who vote for this bill are going to get an earful when they finally get home for the first time since Thanksgiving.  They know there is widespread opposition to this monstrosity.  And I want to assure you Mr. President.  This fight isn’t over.  In fact, this fight is long from over.  My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law.  That’s the clear will of the American people and we will continue to fight on their behalf.

Senator, when does American good sportsmanship kick in? You lost this vote 60% to 39%. That's a landslide in most elections. (And that missing vote was from your Kentucky Republican colleague Sen. Bunning.) It's not a perfect bill I agree. But much of that is due to unrelenting refusal to cooperate in any way by Republicans.

Senator, on this Christmas Eve, I guess the best  I can do is pass on the Buddhist blessings to you:

May you all be free from animosity.  May you all be free from the external disturbance and internal disturbance.  May the peace and pure happiness arise in your mind and leading your mind to the right way, the right way of being, right conduct in action, right conduct in thought and right conduct in speech.

[While looking up McConnel's words I did find some interesting trivia.  McConnel was born in 1942.  His first wife, Sherrill Redmon, is now the Director of the Women's History Archives at Smith College which was founded in 1942. His current wife, Elaine Chao, was born in Taiwan, and is the former director of the Peace Corps and former Secretary of Labor. He has three daughters from his first marriage.]

The White Canary in the Inlet?

Mayor Sullivan is concerned that about the Cook Inlet beluga whale getting an endangered species designation.  From Don Hunter's Wednesday Anchorage Daily News article:

"Virtually every department in the city and every business in the region has a stake in this," Sullivan said, citing potential restrictions on discharges from Anchorage's water and sewer utility, noise limits at Stevens International Airport, air quality issues, oil and gas development, expansion at the Port of Anchorage and a proposed Knik Arm bridge.

"All those things come into effect with this beluga designation," Sullivan said. "Every one of those projects could be in jeopardy, and we cannot allow that to happen."

Let's see now:  sewage dumped into the inlet could be a problem, the noise at the airport could be a problem, oil and gas development, port expansion, and the Knik Arm bridge, just to name a few.

If all these things cause serious harm to the belugas, what are they doing to the people of Anchorage.  We may not be dying off quite yet, but if sewage and oil contaminated salmon and hooligan could be harming the belugas, what might they be doing to humans who also eat them?   How might the airport noise be affecting the hypertension levels of people living in Anchorage?  How is our cancer rate affected by the oil and gas development that is threatening the belugas?  It's true, we aren't swimming in the sewage and oil and gas that is contaminating the inlet and salmon makes up a much bigger proportion of the beluga diet than even the most avid human salmon killer.

But we also know that the collective human garbage is threatening the whole planet.  Instead of a mayor who's vision is to continue doing what we have always done, I'd like to see a mayor who recognizes that we can't go on the way we have been.  Who's looking for people with imagination to start us working on the economy of the 21st, not the 19th and 20th Centuries. 

The mayor did support the Anchorage International Film Festival.   I doubt that that he saw the documentary Tapped which examines the bottled water industry and what it is endangering people's inherent rights to water and how the bottles are among the worst international contaminents.  Or if he saw A Sea Change, which explores the acidification of the world's oceans and how this threatens the food chain.  Or if he saw My Toxic Baby which is a mother's exploration of the chemicals in the foods and other products marketed for her baby.

 I know. From the mayor's point of view, these are simply alarmist left wing propaganda.  But when I got to Anchorage in 1977, the conservative Anchorage Times was railing against the environmentalist who they saw as holding up the building of the pipeline.  But all they did was make sure that there were environmental protections set in place.  Protections that didn't stop the Exxon Valdez from spoiling Prince William Sound.  And that aren't stopping BP from having spill after spill on the North Slope this year.  But today's oil company ads recognize the importance of protecting the environment and BP even changed its logo to be green and gave BP a new meaning - beyond petroleum. 

Those pesky liberals also made a big deal about smoking and now smoking and lung cancer rates as well as other smoking related illnesses are down. 

But all these issues were strongly fought by those who wanted the status quo to remain.  Just as Mayor Sullivan's answer to environmental degradation is to call for full speed ahead.  And 30 years from now when the beluga is gone, people will tell their children  how,  like the canary in the coal mine, the beluga was a warning that human health was also in jeopardy.

Should we shut down and Anchorage and have everyone move back to where they came from?  No.  But before we spend money on bridge to Matsu, let's put people to work building a sewage plant that actually cleans our sewage before it goes into the inlet.  Let's look at the impact of noise pollution on humans too.  And let's get Costco and the other big box stores to recycle the plastic and other packaging that can't be recycled in Anchorage and ship it back where it came from.  Let's look for jobs cleaning the environment, developing products that are environmentally friendly, business practices that are sustainable.   Be a visionary, Dan.  Bring Anchorage to a better future.  Don't simply prolong a past that plundered our natural beauty for a quick buck and keeps pushing more garbage and noise into our community.  Learn why economists call these things externalities and list them as one of the failures of the free market.

Ahab let his white whale drive him crazy.  Mayor Sullivan will you handle your white whale better?  Let's hope so. 

Finally Out to Cross Country Ski

Don Chan came up to Anchorage to work as hospitality coordinator for the Anchorage International Film Festival.  All the film makers I know were more than pleased with how well he looked after them.

(Learning to turn around.)

  He worked so hard he never really got a chance to see much of Anchorage except the routes between the venues and places where people were staying.

 

I'd invited him to go cross country skiing earlier this week when everything was so covered in ice and snow, but the temperature was near 0˚F (-17˚C).  But it's warmed up (about 30˚F/-1˚C) and I offered to take him out this morning.  I decided to not even look at my computer this morning before I left.  I got to the B&B he's staying at and rang the bell.  No one around.  I walked to the back, but everything was locked and dark inside. 

Just before deciding to leave (he wasn't answering his cell either) I heard someone say she'd be down.  She let me in and I ended up waking him up.  Turns out he'd sent me an email this morning canceling because he'd been up all night working on the Palm Springs Film Festival.  But he said, "Well I'm up now so let's go."

It was his first time on cross country skis and he did fine.  We did about two miles on the beautiful - and mostly flat - Campbell Airstrip trails.  Then I dropped him off downtown on the way to a lunch meeting.  

 

This government vehicle was parked at the trailhead with its motor on when we arrived.  An hour or so later, the motor was still running.  We didn't see anyone around.  There may have been some logical explanation.  It was plugged into the solar panel on the pole, so given the distinct lack of sun, perhaps it was charging something up.  What do I know?

Just Got Polled about Oil Companies - Is There an Obligation to Tell Them The Truth?

I just got off the phone with pollster asking me questions about oil companies in Alaska.  He said he worked for an outfit called PSA Marketing and Research.  All he would tell me was that it was located in the United States.  He did say he was hired to call people in Alaska, so I'm assuming he wasn't in Alaska.  It's not clear to me who was paying for the survey.  An obvious choice was the oil companies.  At one point he asked whether I agreed or disagreed with statements about BP.   These statements were taken right out of their PR book.  "Do you agree that BP provides jobs for generations of Alaskans" for example.  (He asked my birth month saying that would determine which company I'd be asked about.  It would be interesting to know if others really did get other companies or that was a ruse to hide that this was coming from BP.  I know, I'm so suspicious.)

Anyway, I'd assume this was an oil industry survey except for how the surveyor reacted.  Well, he said he didn't know who was paying for it and that the last person he'd talked to had also told him about BP's recent oil spill.  Come to think of it, that's two people in a row who were asked about BP.  In any case, when I mentioned the recent spill, the previous spill, and the possibility of criminal prosecution, he responded, "Gee, that's terrible."  I had to smile and replied, "You're not supposed to say things like that, you're supposed to be neutral."  That's when he told me, well, the last guy said something similar. 

So, whoever is doing this poll, the people they hired, or at least the guy who called me, is not very professional at all. 

I just checked.  There's a PSA Interviewing Denver that's a market research company.

My outlook on polls is that no one is obligated to tell the truth in a poll.  I really don't think the normal ethical standards for truthfulness apply here.  They are taking up my time, making money off the information they get from me, and they won't even tell me who they are or who's paying for the poll.  What obligation is there for me to tell the truth here?  For all I know, they will use my information to figure out how to manipulate public opinion.  I could be wrong here - about the obligation to be honest to pollsters - so if someone thinks I do have such an obligation, let me hear your reasoning.