This Sentence Could Be Better

This sentence would be much better if I came to the end of three trilogies-- which is entirely in the realm of possibility, because the boys and I just watched The Matrix and I've never seen The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, but I don't want to ruin the original movie and I've heard the sequels are nothing special, and so I may never complete that one; I did race to the end of two detective sagas, though, and both are well worth it: the final book in Adrian Mckinty's Troubles Trilogy (In the Morning I'll Be Gone) is the best one of the series -- IRA plots, a locked room murder, multiple intelligence agencies, and plenty of atmosphere . . . and the season three finale of the British TV series Sherlock (His Last Vow) is also worth the ride, enough twists and turns in the plot to make you queasy and -- like the Mckinty novel -- some wild violence, which seems even more so because of the intelligent build-up . . . summer is coming to a close so enjoy this stuff while you still can.

Remember Going to the Movies in 1999?

The year is 1999.

The competition for moviegoers' attention is fierce; this is making M. Night Shyamalan extremely anxious. He's confident he has something special with The Sixth Sense, but he's nervous that the film will be overshadowed by the super-hyped Blair Witch Project.

Then, in one of the many compelling anecdotes in Brian Rafferty's Best Movie Year Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, there is the moment when Shymalan knew his film was going to be huge. The writer/director said he was watching a pick-up basketball game and a player threw a wildly inaccurate pass that flew out of bounds. A pass intended for no one. Another player, unaware that Shymalan was watching, said to the guy who threw the lousy pass: "You see dead people or something?"

The Sixth Sense exceeded expectations, had a 9-month run and made a boatload of money. The phrase "I see dead people" went viral.

For people who came of age in the 1990s, Best Movie Year Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen is a reminder of just how important film was back then. People worshipped Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith and Paul Thomas Anderson. Movies tackled big ideas. Indie films battled studio giants. Stars did it all. People went to the movies to be disturbed and challenged.

This book was a walk down memory lane for me, and it's a great resource for younger cinemaphiles.

Here are a few of the movies discussed in the book, vaguely in order of how much I like them:

1. Being John Malkovich
2. The Matrix
3. Fight Club
4. Rushmore
5. Election
6. Three Kings
7. The Limey
8. The Sixth Sense
9. Office Space
10. Run Lola Run
11. The Blair Witch Project
12. Magnolia
13. American Movie
14. eXistenZ
15. Boys Don't Cry
16. The Insider
17. American Beauty
18. The Virgin Suicides
19. Galaxy Quest
20. The Iron Giant
21. Cruel Intentions
22. American Pie
23. 10 Things I Hate About You
24. Eyes Wide Shut
25. The Phantom Menace

Many more films are mentioned (not all from 1999). The book really captures the mood as we prepared to head into a new millennium.

There a few good movies I saw back then that are NOT mentioned in the book. 1999 was a bountiful year in film. The Straight Story and Bringing Out The Dead and Princess Mononoke and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

It's absurd that one year could produce so many significant moments in an art form. Soon after, movies went into decline, and we entered the age of Platinum TV, but maybe someday soon things will change. Maybe once this quarantine is over, we'll want to go to the movies to think again. We'll tire of the same big-budget superhero retreads and gross-out comedies, and want meatier fare.

Until then, while you are stuck at home, there are worse things you could do then return to a few of these films. Happy viewing.

Taking the Purple Pill: Trying to Step Outside the Moral Matrix

This sentence is going to be a random, stream-of-consciousness mess, but I think (for once) my form fits my function: lately, I have been trying my damndest to understand the polarization between liberals and the conservatives in our country, and how this is shaping the current economic policy and the election platforms . . . I've been doing my homework and listening to conservative talk radio-- some Rush Limbaugh and plenty of Mark Levin, and in between the overblown rhetoric, the ranting about Hillary "Rotten" Clinton . . . how she is a felon and a serial liar and the devil incarnate, the disgust with poor people and immigrants, the lack of empathy for people of color, the absolute hatred for the government and its programs and the possibility that our liberties might be curtailed (guns!), the fear of socialism and any redistribution of wealth, the paranoia that taxation and public works projects will just allow the government to get its dirty hands on our money, and like the mafia, take its cut-- as a public school teacher, it's hard to listen to this-- but in between all this vitriol, there is a kernel of an idea that these conservative blowhards are trying to espouse . . . that the government should be smaller and taxes should be lower and regulations should be less and that the best way to produce wealth is an unfettered free market-- and while is think this is true in a limited sense, for certain goods and products, I also think a free market is expensive and volatile with certain things, especially things that we wish to flow: electricity, water, health care, infrastructure . . . we just want these things to be reliable so that other things can work on top of them, and I also think there's a question of externalities, which the conservatives rarely mention . . . but underneath all the hatred there is something to talk about, and I find it interesting that the conservatives don't agree with all Trump has to say, especially on jobs and government infrastructure spending and protectionism and minimum wage . . . meanwhile, the liberals want a revolution-- free college, free healthcare, higher living wages, alternative energy, restrictions on corporations, control of externalities, and equal treatment for all people: rich, poor, immigrant, native, white, black, gay, transgender, and don't mind some redistribution of wealth to encourage this, and I've been listening to the ultra-liberal and fairly funny Citizen Radio to get a bead on some real radical left wing logic and emotions, and while I have more in common with those ideas, they can be really annoying and idealistic and insular and obnoxious as well . . . and it doesn't seem like any of these candidates or their followers are going to do what Jonathan Haidt suggests in his TED talk and "step outside the moral matrix" and actually look at what some smart people have figured out, which is that it's a combination of free markets and regulations that make economies work, and no one knows the exact balance . . . read some Ha-joon Chang to understand "kicking away the ladder," which is how many developed countries arrived at economic stability and wealth through complex and strategic protectionism, tariffs, regulation of foreign investment, regulation on imports and exports, and subsidies-- but then once these these nations (and he uses America, Britain, and his home country of North Korea as his prime examples) have reached a position of economic power, they use institutions such as the WTO and the IMF, treaties, embargoes, copyright law, and tariffs to force impoverished nations into adopting extreme free market policies despite the fact that these countries are not ready to compete in a free market . . . in other words, there's no magic bullet for an economy and it takes a mixture of ideology to understand this, which is what Jonathan Haidt's TED talk is about, his research shows that while there is some consensus between liberals and conservative on fairness/reciprocity and harm/care as valid moral concerns, conservatives tend to be much less open to experience and thus much more concerned with three moral traits that liberals don't interest liberals: purity/sanctity . . . so the strict interpretation of the Constitution . . . in-group/loyalty . . . so "real" Americans and patriotism and military jingoism and Ronald Reagan as God . . . and authority/respect . . . so law and order and belief in the police and a more traditional patriarchy and Christmas and religion and all that . . . and Haidt points out to the mainly liberal crowd (he polled them, and it's a typical TED talk audience: open to progress, science, and new ideas and almost entirely liberal) that BOTH of these mentalities are required to create a great society . . . there needs to be some revolution and progress, but order is also delicate and hard to maintain and actually requires the three moral traits that liberals tend to ignore . . . now Trump throws a bit of a monkey wrench in this because he doesn't seem to be concerned with some typical conservative values-- purity and respect for authority-- and so his economic and policy plans might be something entirely new (and unpalatable in some respects to the "true" conservative) while Clinton certainly can be more jingoistic about the military and more loyal to her group (the Democrats) than a typical rebellious, progress-minded liberal might like and while I know that these two sides are never going to love each other, or even see eye-to-eye . . . conservatives work on a five-channel moral system while liberals work on two-channels, so conservatives will always be annoying to liberals because they care passionately about more stuff and seem angry, and liberals will always seem to be amoral libertine radicals because they don't care about enough things, but we are going to have to embrace the fact that what makes America great is diversity, and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Ronald Reagan are part of that diversity, and those conservative views-- which I often find hateful and ranting and humorless-- are important, just as important as the stereotypical diversity most liberals embrace: multi-cultural, multi-gender, pan-religious, multi-ethnic diversity . . . diversity that appeals to people who are open to all kinds of experience, the diversity that leads to a wide-variety of good restaurants, many of them quite cheap . . . such as the new Tacoria in New Brunswick . . . and that's what this is all about, right?

Let's Get Political, Political . . . Let Me Hear Your Party Talk

Since the topic has generated some interesting commentary, here are some final thoughts on Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion:

1) while there are more than two kinds of people, our political system breaks us down that way-- unfortunately, there should be room for libertarians (who give even less of a shit about things than liberals do, but really care about liberty/oppression and have even less empathy than conservatives)

2) you can tell someone's political beliefs by the kind of dog breed they prefer: gentle and independent versus loyal, protective and wary of strangers;

3) Haidt admits that liberals go too far sometimes in their reflexive anti-business stance, and they could endorse the wonders of the free market to solve problems-- he makes a great analogy with food and the silliness of having food insurance, instead of knowing the prices for items and shopping around and buying what works, versus health insurance, where we have no clue what anything costs and so want to be insured for everything-- he brings up the case of lasix, which went on the free market and the price adjusted accordingly  . . . we've gone so far in the care/harm department with health care that the spending is utterly bonkers;

4) on the other hand, regulation can also have benefits-- the regulation of leaded gasoline in the late 70's and early 80's, despite Ronald Reagan's attempt to cripple the EPA and its ability to make that change (sound familiar, Scott Pruitt, bringer of asthma and global warming) was ill-founded . . . as are Trump's trade tariffs (it's Smoot-Hawley all over again . . . Smoot-Hawley! anyone? Bueller?)

5) the tug of war between these two groups is significant and important-- the debate between those that are primarily concerned with care/harm and making the world fair and free for as many people as possible-- and those that are concerned with groups and loyalty and liberty and authority and sanctity, as well as the former principles . . . and that's the most important thing that many liberals need to understand, that conservatives es still care about care/harm and fairness, just in slightly different ways;

6) Haidt's final advice is that if you want to truly understand another perspective, follow the sacredness-- I've had conservatives tell me that I don't actually care about endangered species and the environment, because they can't believe that someone would be sincere about that-- and I have trouble truly believing that people are sincere about religion or truly care if gay people get married . . . but we have to try to see why people believe these things, which all make sense in the context of what is sacred . . . and we have to remember that though there are more than two types of people, "once people join a political team, they get ensnared in its moral matrix" and follow the grand narrative of that party . . . but liberals are conservatives are yin and yang and both necessary for the health of a political system;

7) he ends by saying that libertarians and conservatives certainly provide a valuable counterweight to "liberal reform movements" but he sees two liberal points which are profoundly important to the health of society:

"governments can and should restrain corporate superorganisms"

and

"some big problems CAN be solved by regulation"

and I think these are the two points that we need to all come together about, we are rapidly destroying our environment and our resources, and we are rapidly being consumed by larger and larger corporate entities, which have captured the government, making all this tug-of-war and debating utterly useless, if the people no longer have any say in what happens to our country.

Traffic Cone = Cinema

Heraclitus warned us that "the only constant is change." For many years, the American school system eluded this inevitability, but not this year. EVERYTHING has changed. No textbooks. A new tablet device. We're wireless. And Bluetooth. We've adopted a new learning management system. Canvas instead of Google classroom. OneDrive instead of Google drive. OneNote instead of something else. And there's the looming threat that the winds of change will soon to remove our desktop computers.

Also, I still have stuff on Evernote.

Yesterday, I couldn't even figure out how to play a DVD. Every year, in Honors Philosophy, we read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and then we watch the first thirty minutes of The Matrix. Because it's the best visual representation of Plato's allegory.

But yesterday, I couldn't get the DVD to play. Apparently, Windows has removed this function from its Media Player. People stream now. Have you heard of Netflix? Amazon?

Coincidentally, both of these are blocked at our school. Even if you've purchased the movie on Amazon. So I freaked out a bit (in front of the children) and then I downloaded a bunch of weird free DVD players (and probably infected my desktop with some weird viruses . . . now whenever I use the search bar, it sends me through Yahoo! instead of Google).

Then the tech guy came and showed me that there WAS a player on my computer. The VLN player. The symbol is a traffic cone. It didn't open automatically when I put a disk in, so I didn't know it was there. And when the tech guy scrolled down through my apps and showed me the traffic cone, I wondered: why is orange traffic cone synonymous with playing a DVD? But then he started telling me about all the changes in my future-- they were taking my desktop, my DVD player, my big monitor, and my hardwired internet . . . and so I shouldn't even get used to the VLN player.

"They're not making your job any easier," he said, "and they're not making my job any easier either."

And why is the VLN Player logo a traffic cone? There's an enigmatic explanation on Wikipedia, but it adds more to the mystery than it resolves it: "The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association."

If anyone can make sense of that, please leave the explanation in the comments.

Somewhere Between The Matrix and Inception I Learn How To Communicate With Women

Twelve years ago, my future wife and I went to the movies to see The Matrix, and during the film my future wife expressed her confusion with the plot, and so I whispered a long-winded explanation to her: beginning with Plato's cave, mentioning Tron and Lawnmower Man, citing William Gibson, and finally explaining how this ancient theme of living in a world of created shadows was being used by the Wachowski brothers . . . and I don't think this explanation helped her enjoy the film and, looking back, I'm sure she thought I was an annoying wind-bag, but she still married me, and--get this-- I have IMPROVED myself; last weekend we started watching Inception and because I had the flu, my wife had been minding the boys all day, so she was exhausted, and after about an hour of watching, she started falling asleep and she called the movie "stupid" and "full of itself," and I had been paying very close attention and I could have explained exactly what was happening, but instead of attempting a long-winded explanation,  I AGREED with her, because she was right-- the film is full of itself, and she just wanted some validation of her emotions-- and the next day, while our kids were at the movies with my parents-- she let me explain the plot to her and we sat down and watched the rest of the movie together and had a great discussion about it afterward . . . and so, slowly  but surely, I am learning how to communicate with women.

Why Don't People Aske Me About This More Often?

Yesterday, when the teacher I share a wall with asked me to come in and say a few words about the singularity, this made me increibly happy . . . because no one EVER asks me to say a few words on the singularity and if there's one thing in the world that I like to say a few words about, it's the singularity . . . the singularity and Moore's Law and the possibility of intelligent machines in our near future and Ray Kurzweil and the possibility of downloading one's self into a virtual universe and the odd paradox that we are most likely living in a virtual universe because if the computer exists then in some real universe the singularity has already been achieved and everyone has a tiny populated Matrix-like simulated universe on their desk-top-- and what are the chances that you were in that original universe where the original computer was invented?-- there's a much better chance that you are a virtual person inhabiting a Matrix-like virtual universe in one of the billions of model universe nested within the one and original universe, but does my wife ever ask me to say a few words about this?-- never, nor do my co-workers or my friends or my children . . . so this was a very exciting day for me.

Counterweight Conspiracies

Counterweight is the first book by anonymous Korean author Djuma translated into English-- I won't bother trying to explain the plot, but there's a space elevator; a giant corporation run by AI that has depleted the resources on a once impoverished island in order to build the space-elevator; a number of characters that may or may not be who they claim-- and most of these characters are under various amounts of influence, subconscious and conscious, from their respective Worms-- the brain implants that broker and network AI and organic neural activity . . . anyway, wheels-within-wheels, abundant conspiracies, and a different feel than the most typical American sci-fi trope . . . the lone rebel fighting the dystopian oppression: Katniss Everdeen against the Capitol, Neo vs. the Matrix, Montag fighting the book-burning-firemen . . . this has a different feel-- everyone is in on the conspiracy, everyone works for the company, or some other company (Green Fairy) and no one is a lone wolf, they are all aware that they are fighting the system from within, not without.

Thanksgiving in Space

This morning, my wife insisted I taste her mashed turnips. She always makes a batch on Thanksgiving, in honor of her mom. So-- for fear of offending the dead-- I couldn't refuse to take a bite.

I told her that I found the turnips bland and mushy, two food characteristics that don't sit well with me. My wife was shocked. She thought they were tasty and delicious. But she also likes mashed potatoes, and I think that removing the skin and then smooshing a potato to mush (with some milk! yuck!) is sinful.

Mashed turnips taste and look the kind of food you'd eat if you were voyaging to Mars, to start a new colony. The kind of food they might give you a dollop of in the big house. The kind of food you'd eat if you'd broken free from The Matrix and were riding around on with the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar.

So apparently Catherine would fare better than me in space. And in jail. And as an American colonist in the 1600's. I'm thankful for many things, but Thanksgiving food isn't one of them.

This post is not a pipe . . . nor is it a spoon

This season, my U-13 travel soccer team made the leap from 9 v 9 on a small grass field to 11 v 11 on an enormous full-sized high school turf field-- the space is vast and incomprehensible for the pre-pubescent 11 and 12 year olds of which my squad is comprised, goals will be few and far between, and most attacks will peter out forty yards from the endline, so this year's mantra for my midfield is straight from The Matrix: there is no forward and there is no backwards, only open space and open players (our only hope is to possess the ball, bring it all the way back to the keeper, out to the sides, up the field a bit, then back again . . . until the other team collapses from exhaustion . . . then, if we've got anything left, we'll finally move forward).

Reading on the OBFT?

I was able to polish off a book and a play on the Outer Banks Fishing Trip XVI: As You Like It by Shakespeare and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, and despite the obvious differences-- As You Like It is a comedy and a light one (despite banishment, lions and wrestling) with plenty of funny banter, cross dressing, and trans-gender courting and The Three Stigmata is a precursor to The Matrix and Vanilla Sky and eXistenz, only trippier, with more religion and drugs and transcendence-- but they both have one thing in common, whether you're tripping in an eternal hallucination on Chew-Z or hanging out in the forest of Arden, you're doing it to escape the passage of time, the reality of your body and the status to which you are constrained-- and who doesn't want that once in a while?

Respect the Speck

Hockey is hard enough to watch on TV, but if there's a black speck on the TV-- or several black specks on a couple of TVs-- then things can get really confusing . . . sometimes you're following the puck, sometimes you're following the speck, and sometimes-- like that magical moment on The Office when the DVD logo hits the corner-- the black speck intersects with the actual puck and reality breaks down into an inception of the matrix.

Like Finches, Only Wackier and With Guns

The This American Life podcast  "Good Guys" is a mixed bag, but the last story (Act 4) takes a turn into strange territory -- an anonymous soldier sent producer Sarah Koenig a number of recordings he made while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and he describes a group of men who joined the army not for love and country and patriotism, but instead to be able to experience the thrill of killing another human being . . . and while on some level this is disturbing, on another it makes me wonder if humans are just becoming more specialized, the way the finches did on the Galapagos Islands: now you can make your way in this world as a political pundit, a math nerd, an architect, a musician, a professional athlete, and as a killer . . . you can exploit your artistry, anger, rhetorical powers, mathematical skills,  good looks, ruthlessness, business sense, good will towards all humans, or any number of oddball human traits to earn money and gain fame and favor, so it makes sense that the killing niche will find its experts as well, and they aren't necessarily going to be doing it for the "right" reasons . . . in fact, if they are doing it for the "wrong" reasons, then they might be better at it (but also immoral) just like these guys were really good at making money . . . and if the niche exists, just as it would in an evolutionary matrix, something is going to move into it and exploit it, and you really can't blame people or animals or weeds or finches or whatever, if they do.

Glasshouse

If I were a free person in the 27th century cosmic war crime prison of Glasshouse, the Charles Stross sci-fi mindbender I just finished, I'd probably use a T Gate assembler to back myself up, then create a duplicate version of myself, have my duplicate write this sentence while my other self took a stroll on the beach, then merge the two neural nets into one version of me that contained both sets of memories . . . but before any of that, you have to solve Curious Yellow and the polity; a good fast read, as long as you don't get bogged down in the technical jargon; an exponentially advanced and precocious baby of The Matrix and Inception.

Dave Gets Extra About Extra!

I'm often amused by the slang words high school kids sprinkle into their lexicon; I enjoy hearing them use "swag" and "lit" and "salty" and "ratchet" in context, but I rarely use these words myself (except for comedic effect) because there's nothing sadder than an old man trying to be hip to the young folks . . . however, despite my general dictum on avoiding the vernacular of the youth, I have adopted one new term because it works so well in so many spots, and it doesn't sound particularly absurd when I say it: recently, when kids want to say something is melodramatic, they use the word "extra," as in Keanu Reeves is so extra when he fights Agent Smith in The Matrix or just because you failed the physics test doesn't mean you have to get all extra about it . . . I'm hoping this one sticks around, it's especially useful for Shakespeare, where folks like Hamlet and Iago and Don John get extra about all kinds of things.

Glasshouse

If I were a free person in the 27th century cosmic war crime prison of Glasshouse, the Charles Stross sci-fi mindbender I just finished, I'd probably use a T Gate assembler to back myself up, then create a duplicate version of myself, have my duplicate write this sentence while my other self took a stroll on the beach, then merge the two neural nets into one version of me that contained both sets of memories . . . but before any of that, you have to solve Curious Yellow and the polity; a good fast read, as long as you don't get bogged down in the technical jargon; an exponentially advanced and precocious baby of The Matrix and Inception.

Like a Sea Urchin in Your Urethra

In The Matrix, just before Morpheus sends Neo down the rabbit-hole, he commends him for his awareness: "you know something . . . what you know you can't explain, but you can feel it . . . you don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad" and his words are both ominous and elegant, a perfect set-up for the bombshell soon to come, but I recently learned from an anonymous source that the Wachowski Brothers ran through a number of alternatives before they arrived at the "splinter in your mind" simile . . . here they are:

1) like a cinderblock in your anus;

2) like a sea urchin in your urethra;

3) like a Khan worm in your ear;

4) like a polyp in TR's nostril;

5) like a hedgehog in your armpit;

6) like a caltrop between your butt cheeks;

7) like a booger in your mustache;

8) like the early-morning gound in your eye;

9) like a donkey in your bathtub;

10) like a splinter in your pinky-toe, right under the nail, and you can't get it out-- even with a pin that you sterilized with rubbing alcohol . . . it is this feeling that has brought you to me . . . do you know what I'm talking about?

I Go Out On A Limb . . . A Nerdy Limb

I know it's controversial, but I told my students anyway because I'm that kind of guy-- if I have an opinion, I speak it and let the chips fall where they may: my definition of science fiction is when the setting-- whether it's based on technology, set in the future, or simply a logical alternative to our own history-- is the main character of the novel or movie-- so that excludes and Star Wars and Godzilla, but does include Soylent Green and The Matrix.

Educating the Youth With Facial Hair

We've been watching The Matrix in senior English class, and half-way through, I realized that if I shaved my facial hair into a goatee/mohawk then I'd look a bit like Cypher (at least in the facial hair department) and so I gave it my best shot (it's a bit crooked) and then on Monday I came into class with my new look, and I instructed my students to take out a sheet of paper for a quiz and then I said: "Question #1" and pointed to my face and asked them to"connect my face with what we've been doing in class," and about a third of the students answered correctly (and while it was well worth the laugh, the only problem is that I don't have a good exit strategy from this look, and so I've been wearing this ridiculous goatee/mohawk for a couple of days now . . . I even attended a wake with it . . . no one said anything).

Hey Internet! Write This Novel!

Here's a terrible idea for a novel: 

the internet becomes so large and complex that it attains consciousness and starts writing e-mails to people, because that is the only way it can connect with reality-- it has no senses, just an awareness through its content that there is an outside world (like the reverse of The Matrix . . . or maybe a science-fiction version of Pinocchio) but, honestly, I'm not going to write it, and so I'm just throwing the idea out there . . . perhaps the internet will read it and then decide to self-reflexively write it-- so listen up, Internet, if you write a big-budget movie, I want some compensation!