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Aside from answering e-mails, it was a work-free weekend…and my LAST work-free weekend until at least November. Eek!
Saturday was my husband's 30th birthday! I have ZERO pictures to show for it, but we had a spectacular time! We spent the day shopping, then we went to WINK restaurant (holy goodness!) with friends, and to the Regina Spektor and Tom Petty concert, and then to the W for drinks. We discovered that 30 is NOT the new 20 when we woke up on Sunday morning feeling a little less than stellar!
On Sunday my son had a friend's birthday party to attend at jumpstreet–which is the coolest place ever! Wall-to-wall trampolines of all types for all ages. How.cool.is.THAT?!
My little frog. What a cutie.
That about wraps it up! I'm back to work full force with a to-do list a mile long! Happy Monday everyone!


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Lattice Mirrored Bedside White
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The Lattice Collection features a painted white finish beautifully melded with the glamour and formality of mirror panels. Marry with vintage chandelier lighting.
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- Bedside is made from fir wood with a painted white finish
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subset: commoncrawl


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I think the main telling point of a crafty or creative person is an utter inability to let well enough alone. This is why places like IKEA are so popular to crafty types. You can buy a cheap pine box of some kind or a table made of sheet metal and do amazing things to it, making it a one of kind piece. Easy peasy. I was able to hit my local IKEA for the first time in awhile and purchased, among other only semi-necessary things, a long mirror, because I am tired of trying to see my whole self in the various windows and bits of mirror I have hanging about. Lying in bed yesterday evening, I was staring at the mirror, looking at its plain piney plain-ness (it's still hanging crooked, dammit) and thinking "Oi, I have got to do something with that mirror, considering the increasing kickassery of the rest of my room." (I will not apologise for my internal wordiness, either, and yes, that is how I talk to myself. 🙂 )
As I lay there, ideas swirling about, I got a visit from a very special muse. This is the same angel that whispers the very best character stats she can into the ears of eager little gamers sitting in a basement somewhere, the muse that tells that cosplayer exactly what leather bustier will make her bosoms the very perkiest. I was visited by the Dork Muse.
Here's how it all went down, and you be the judge. Nerdiest project ever?
Added some detail in the form of moulding corners on the bottom and washers of different sizes and textures for an old little carved, steam-punk, really-don't-want-it-plain-and-lame look:
Painted the whole frame, including over the details, to give it first a base of bronze, and then two different shades of gold, to look sorta like old, gilded wood:
Here's where it gets geeky. Harry Potter fans will see where this is going right away. (Those that do not, here is what I was going for. Not the same thing at all, but my own version: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Mirror_of_Erised):
The word is made from some large cardboard letters, used primarily for scrapbooking and paper crafts. (A close look at the second "E" will reveal that, only having a singular E, I had to improvise with an F and a part of an L ruthlessly removed with a craft blade.) I glued them down onto a random board I had lying about-a lesson NEVER to throw out scrap wood! Next I needed to make the letters blend seamlessly with the board backing, almost carved or sculpted. You all know by now, I am a) pretty cheap and b) (say it with me, kids) lazy. I wanted something easy to spread, manipulate, and shape. Most would suggest a gel medium, but I had already gone to Home Depot for the moulding and washers and my feet hurt. I wasn't going to the craft store for gel medium when I had perfectly good plaster of paris at home. The kiddie craft supplies, as stated in an earlier post, are often the best. Smearing that one was fun. I just brushed it over and around the letters, shaping a little beveled edge with my paintbrush, and added a scrollwork topper:
The plaque was painted in the same base shade and gold glazes, the letters first being drybrushed (generously) in black to make them stand out:
The topper piece was wood glued to the mirror and the whole shebang stuck on the wall:
So that was my nerdiest project to date. The &*%$ thing still isn't hanging straight.


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It's my nameday, school is out, and my wife and I are whizzing through the air in an amazing flying machine that but 110 years ago, was an unimaginable fantasy. (When this post comes out, we'll be on our way to Dubai, en-route to Bangkok.)
My second book, In Defense of Flogging, is all-but done. It's been a slog. Last night I added 500 words on the subject of private prisons (when I noticed rather late in the process that I somehow failed to even mention the subject). Those 500 words took 10 hours. That's less than a word a minute. Which is, unfortunately, par for the course. For the past few months, I feel like I've done nothing else, because, basically, I haven't.
The good news is you can already pre-order a copy of In Defense of Flogging on Amazon (which is actually a bit disconcerting to the author, to see your book for sale before you're done writing it--maybe I should have bought a copy to see how it turns out...). And I doubt the price is going to be much lower than super-cheap price of $13.60 they're currently hawking it for.
As to vacation, I have two book reviews to write. But I'm healthy, I'm alive, I can't complain. Bangkok, in case you're wondering, is a city crazy about food. We will do our best to eat as much as possible, but even then we will barely scratch the surface of all the possibilities.
And though, as interesting as it is, I doubt I'll be making a return to the Corrections Museum.
I have a few "Then and Now" posts lined up as fillers while I'm gone. I'm not certain if I'll be posting much else until the end of the month.
Be good. Stay safe. Happy New Year!
January 6, 2011
2 comments:
- MisguidedPotential said...
Have a great vacation! I just wanted to let you know that I received your book, "Cop in the Hood" for Christmas and finished it. Really great stuff and powerfully argued to show how destructive and pointless it is to police drugs the way we do. I also started to read "Brooklyn Bounce" which is really great but unfortunately I left it at work by accident and someone stole it...perhaps a compliment to the author! :(
- January 8, 2011 at 10:58 AM
can't wait for the new book Moskos! Hopefully it will come out in time to use for my Summer Deviant Behavior course!
Rachel @ UCF, Sociology
- January 11, 2011 at 9:08 PM
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Onyx Restaurant Budapest
Onyx Restaurant is one of the very few Michelin star restaurants in Budapest, Hungary, and one of the few non-smoking restaurants. Despite the 1 Michelin star, business lunches are in fact at an affordable price, the weekly special is a 3-course menu for 7,990 HUF (approx. 25 Euros), which sounds OK for money, right?
Especially if you read in guest reviews that "I opted for the six-courses of the Hungarian Evolution menu with sommelier recommended wines, and will savour the memory of an exquisitely creative menu and outstanding presentations for time to come…", "If you are a foodie and in Budapest this is a must! " or "I will bring all my friends to discover this gem, really worth the trip to Budapest." (more reviews on Tripadvisor travel site: Onyx Restauramt Reviews)
Onyx, the white gloved gourmet restaurant was the second culinary establishment in Hungary which was given a Michelin star (the first being Costes Restaurant in Raday street, Budapest). Before the well deserved star fell in its lap, Onyx started to grab other prestigious national awards like the Number 3 rank in Hungary in the Hungarian Best Restaurant Guide for 2010, which is a remarkable restaurant career taking into consideration that the restaurant only opened in 2007.
Portions at Onyx Restaurant
As for the sizes of portions, tourist reviews vary, but most found them good size, while few were complaining about tiny portions. One of the guests remarked " In my opinion, you need to have many courses to truly appreciate the quality of this restaurant." And another TripAdvisor reviewer wrote "If you're from Texas and looking for a big steak, this probably isn't the place for you. "
Prices at Onyx Restaurant
Although lunch menus are definitely cheap for a Michelin starred restaurant (7,990 HUF for a 3-course menu), a la carte meals are not so inexpensive, ranging between 6,500 and 12,500 HUF. There are 2 kinds of tasting menus (taking 2-4 hours to go through them) priced at 27,900 and 30,900 HUF. And let's not forget about the 15% service fee added to the bill automatically.
Is Onyx Restaurant truly Michelin?
The answer is a definite 'yes', foodie tourist reviews support the rating of the restaurant too: "We have dined in a number of Michelin starred restaurants in the UK, including the Fat Duck, La Manoir aux season and La Gavroche. I would have to say that the food in Onyx is easily up to the standard of all of them with the possible exception of the Fat Duck."
Cuisine of Onyx Restaurant
The cuisine is Hungarian reinterpreted with modern twists and elements, "effortlessly bridging the traditional flavors of the country with contemporary international culinary techniques." (New York Times – Travel). Or to quote the Via Michelin diner guide " Traditional Hungarian and European flavours to fore but with interesting modern twists and some unusual combinations.". Nevertheless, there are several international meals as well. "Visitors to Onyx's swish dining room can expect a startlingly original gastronomic experience: goose liver with cacao bean sautéed medallion; terrine with Tokay jelly; lobster-filled ravioli with salmon caviar; sweet pea cannelloni with curry and ginger-raspberry salad; duck leg with foie gras on coffee sauce and purple cabbage jam. It sounds strange, but it works." (Devanshi Mody in the Telegraph travel section).
"The city earned its second one-star restaurant with Onyx, a high-end establishment where white-gloved servers present dishes like rabbit served with balsamic marinated mushroom salad and black root puree; free range chicken sausage with duck liver, sour cabbage sauce, scrambled egg and candied bacon." (The Independent on Onyx). The specialties of Onyx Restaurant are Goat's cheese ravioli, baked tomato and basil oil. Fillet, knuckle and leg of veal with celery purée. Somlo sponge cake ('Somloi galuska').
There is an extensive wine card featuring mainly Hungarian wines. "I was especially delighted by the wide variety of remarkable local wines available by the glass." (Stephen Reiss PhD, author of WineEducation.com). Onyx has a wine collection of approx. 130 varieties of the best Hungarian vintages, plus some selected French and Italian wines.
Interior and Decor of Onyx Restaurant, Budapest
Onyx Restaurant has a trendy neo-baroque interior, which is romantic and sumptuous enough for couples who wish to splurge a bit, and sober enough for relaxed business lunches.
Old and new is wittily combined (by Zoltan Varro), like the Venetian chandelier and the 'vibrant paintings' of the 21st century, the flat screen TVs on the wall. Here's how a tourist described it "Inside, the restaurant is luxurious and the tables are well spaced with seating for about 30-40 in the main room and further in a second room. The decor was a little bit of a mix of old and new with high ceilings with gold leaf and a chandelier then hung from the ceiling a modern polished wood square rack filled with spot lights. The back of the room was filled with wine racks and serving areas, the entrance to the kitchens being shielded by what I can only describe as a gold coloured mattress, upended and bent into a semi-circle. " Finally, Deadly Bunny Chubby Penguin tasting blog points out "The restaurant may look small in the first place but it should hold up to 50 customers comfortably, giving it has large table for more than 10 people within the restaurant."
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 12 pm – 2:30 pm, Tue – Sat 6.30 pm – 11 pm (closed on Sunday and Monday, and some days in the summer, in 2013 the summer holiday is from July 29 to August 20)
Phone: +36-30-508-0622
Location of Onyx Restaurant & nearby Attractions
The luxurious Onyx restaurant is located in the very heart of the city, in a pedestrian only zone: it fits well among the nearby five-star hotels in Budapest (like the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace, the Sofitel Hotel Chain Bridge, the Hotel Marriott and the Hotel InterContinental Budapest). Onyx Restaurant is located in a nice central square called Vorosmarty ter, close to the river Danube, the Chain Bridge, the legendary confectionary of Cafe Gerbeaud (founded by a globetrotter Swiss in 1858), and last but not least Vaci utca shopping street (with very nice 19th century buildings, and a couple of Art Nouveau buildings in Budapest too). See Onyx Restaurant on Budapest Tourist Map:
Vorosmarty square was named after a Hungarian poet, Mihaly Vorosmarty whose statue made of Carrara marble is in the middle of the square. There are many cultural events on the square all year round, most importantly the Budapest Christmas Market, the Book Fair, and the opening ceremony of the Budapest Spring Festival promenades.
Address: Vorosmarty square 7-8. Budapest H-1051 (entrance from the Harmincad Street)
Getting there: by metro on the yellow line (M1) getting off at Vorosmarty ter metro station, or by tram number 2, which goes along the river Danube. Vorosmarty square is about a 5 minute walk from Deak square or Ferenciek tere (bus number 7), so it is very easily accessible.
Website: www.onyxrestaurant.hu
Table reservation form: Onyx Restaurant Table Reservation: max 6 people for a la carte meals, over 6 people parties can choose from the fixed menus. Regarding online reservations, they only accept same day reservations until 11:30 am for lunch, and until 5:30 pm for dinner (well, that's on the official website, yet a tourist on TripAdvisor wrote in his review in July 2011 that "I booked the table a couple of weeks beforehand using the website which also gives menus and other information. They rang me on my mobile on the afternoon of the booking and all went smoothly.". Note for late arrivals: tables are held for half an hour.
Special lunch offer at Onyx Restaurant Budapest (tables need to be reserved, dress code is business casual): you may choose from 3 appetizers, 4 main courses, and 3 desserts.
Miscellaneous info about Onyx Restaurant Budapest
- Dress code at Onyx Restaurant Budapest: semi-formal for dinners, business casual for lunches
- 2 tasting menus / degustation menus: 4 courses + 3 wines chosen by the sommelier or 7 courses + 5 wines chosen by the sommelier
- There is a vegetarian menu – changing with the seasons to offer fresh produces
- No pets are allowed
- Not child friendly ("In our experience, young children are not capable of enjoying a culinary journey that may last 3 – 4 hours. If possible, please arrange for child-minding")
- Dinners are aimed to take you on a gastronomic journey, so they may last 2-4 hours
- 15% service fee is added
- Closed on Sundays, Mondays, during the second week in January, and for 3 weeks in August (recreation and professional courses)
- Special dinners are offered on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day
About the Chef of Onyx Restaurant
What they focus on is 'continuous renewal, creativity and innovation', according to Szabina Szullo, the Hungarian chef whose work with his lifetime partner and sous chef Tamas Szell have been awarded by the Michelin guide editor with 1 star on March 16, 2011. Szabina's mum is a cook too. She started her chef career in Hotel Kempinski, the five star hotel in the city centre of Budapest where French, German, Austrian chefs were rotating.
In 2013 January, Tamas Szell was competing in the prestigious chef competition called Bocuse d'Or – apparently the Oscar Award contest for Chefs. He and his team received the 10th placement, the Hungarian team was thus the 7th best in Europe out of the 24 teams competing. The Hungarian chef team included Lajos Biro from Bock Bistro, Adam Garai, the cook in Onyx Restaurant and Zoltan Hamvas (Gerbaud Gastronomy)


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Diving, measuring, plotting: we've been at Issyk Kul for more than a month and it's time to get out of camp! You'll never understand a phenomenon like this magnificent high-altitude lake on the Silk Road by staying in just one place for the whole time, so we packed our bags and headed out on a four-day tour around the tenth-largest lake in the world to see sites that stretched from the Stone Age to the 21st century.
Our first stop was the eastern town of Kuturga, where we stayed at a small house on the lake close to the settlement of Chigu, the ancient royal court of the nomadic and powerful Wusun. We planned to dive Chigu, but the steady stream of thunderstorms over the course of two days put a knot in our plans.
The most important aspect of our trip around the lake was to get a better understanding of what was happening at our site. For instance, we happened upon a modern "brick factory" where residents were extracting clay and mixing it with straw to fashion the sun-baked bricks that are familiar to any archaeologist working in Central Asia.
We also visited the site of an ancient Nestorian Christian monastery along the Silk Road believed to be the burial site of St. Matthew, who died along the shore of the lake on his way to India.
Unlike the verdant landscape of the north coast of Issyk Kul, the southern side of the lake is arid and, in some parts, amazingly reminiscent of the American Southwest. Submerged sites along the southern coast include a city allegedly built by soldiers of Alexander the Great.
We were also incredibly fortunate to be joined by Maxim Menshikov, an archaeologist who often works with Vassily and is currently excavating sites ahead of the 2014 winter Olympic Games in Sochi in the Russian Caucasus Mountains. He has great experience in excavating settlements in the region and is helping us understand the building construction we're encountering under water. In addition, Viktor Lyagushkin, a leading underwater photographer for National Geographic Russia, and his partner Bogdana Vashchenko met up with us to go diving around the lake.
Following several days of bad weather we were ready for a dive, so we stopped by the submerged settlement of Toru Aigir (ancient Sikul) and were introduced to its remarkable 2000+-year-old underwater remains by Anatoly Kolesnikov, who has been studying the site for 10 years.
It was a fascinating, whirlwind trip that involved everything from trekking high Alpine meadows to diving millennia-old sites, but now it's time to get back to work at our own site. Maxim and Anatoly have dove in (pun intended) with both feet, and are busy helping to measure and map the enormous amount of construction features that we're finding.
We'll be posting another update soon, but in the meantime have you watched our recent Google+ Hangout?


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We invite you to join our nationwide partnership of rural water and wastewater professionals. Support our grassroots efforts to ensure that Americans continue to have safe drinking water and a clean environment.
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- WaterPro Online Community – offers significant networking and professional advancement opportunities for NRWA members. The WaterPro OLC will allow you to network with utility personnel, access training on new technology and regulations, discuss utility-specific topics with your peers, and even manage your membership online.
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- NRWA Membership lapel pin, certificate and wallet card
- Support funding for water and wastewater utilities – NRWA is a leading advocate for infrastructure funding, resulting in billions of dollars of funding
- Timely information on the impact your support is having throughout the water industry
Join NRWA Today
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To sign up for an individual membership for only $49 a year go to http://www.waterprocommunity.org/


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We would like to thank our supporters for their in-kind donations, their monetary gifts, and their positive presence in our mission. Please support these Supporters of the Trust. Take a look at the discounts and promotions they offer to fellow donors to CVCT.
Please shop from these businesses, choose their services, and acknowledge their philanthropy.
Anderson Children's Foundation
The Anderson Children's Foundation was established by Irene Anderson in 1970 in memory of her late husband Guy Anderson. Based on her life-long love of children and a passion to further their causes and meet their needs she established Anderson Children's Foundation.
CVSPIN helps hundreds of non-profits in the valley through their facilitation of the annual Tour de Palm Springs. We are honored to be supported by them as well.
We would like to thank Goldenvoice for their generosity over the years in serving Indio and all of the Coachella Valley. Their support of programming has been a great gift.
HITS Thermal
HITS Thermal is going into its eighth year at the "new" HITS Desert Horse Park, and after an action packed season in 2012, show organizers listened to rider feedback and considered a few big changes for the 2013 season.
Indio Sunrise Rotary
We would like to thank the Indio Sunrise Rotary for their generous donations. Please visit the Rotary and support their efforts. They meet every Tuesday morning at 7:30 am at Heritage Palms Country Club in Indio.
Regional Access Project Foundation
The RAP Foundation serves all of the Coachella Valley and has been a major supporter of CVCT's Cocina Feliz Healthy Cooking program. Their monetary gifts are aiding the East Valley with not only meal service but health education as well.
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo has supported the Kids Club, which is one of CVCT's flagship programs serving the youth at the Fred Young Labor Center. Their funding has made a critical difference in the lives of these kids!


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In a Compass episode on ABC TV last year, Mary, like many in her small community, is bitterly opposed to Tasmania's first detention centre opening nearby ('Mary and Mohammad'). There are fears of Muslims and riots, of children no longer being able to play in the front yard, of asylum seekers getting support while locals miss out. One man even says to the camera,
'They should sink one or two boats; that would stop them coming.'
Does he know what he's saying? Does he mean Australia deliberately drowning children and their parents at sea? When her knitting club makes beanies for the asylum seekers and plans to visit the detention centre to present them, Mary only comes along because she's curious to see what it's like inside. She returns from the visit smiling, delighted – the asylum seekers were so courteous and hospitable, they bought their visitors tea and biscuits using their limited credit points, they were interested in her photos and overjoyed with the beanies. She visits again and over time gets to know Mohammad. Continue reading "Mary and Mohammad" »


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Carmen, your real estate consultant for North Lake Tahoe, shares her passion with the community by providing monthly guided hikes, and snowshoe trips, through our beautiful backyard of endless trail systems Join us September 17th, 2016 at 9:00 AM to hike Loch Continue Reading
Archives for August 2016
World Cup at Squaw Valley
Carmen Carr your local realtor is excited to see the World Cup will be back in Squaw Valley March 9th-12th 2017. "For the first time since 1969, World Cup ski racing returns to the slopes of Lake Tahoe's Squaw Valley. Olympic champions like Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsay Vonn Continue Reading
NEW LISTING – 925 Carnelian Circle – Carnelian Bay
Carmen Carr, you local real estate agent has a great new listing that will not last long. A wonderful Lake Tahoe getaway. Spacious open kitchen, dining and living room. One bedroom and bath on main level. Bedroom and bath upstairs PLUS a spacious loft. Nice and bright Continue Reading
Chronological Explanation of What Drive's Mortgage Rates
Chronological Explanation of What Drive's Mortgage Rates "Since 2009, consumers have been hearing; mortgage rates are at all-time lows, and that it's prudent to assume rates will be going up soon. And yet, here we are ~7 years later, and mortgage rates Continue Reading
Trails & Vistas Art Hikes
Carmen Carr your local real estate agent shares her love and passion with the community by providing a monthly guided hike in the Truckee-North Lake Tahoe area. Carmen Carr wanted to share this amazing opportunity to join Trails & Vistas on two Art Hikes. There are two Continue Reading


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Don't Worry Be Happy Earrings
Don't Worry :( Be Happy :)
These earrings are made out of sterling silver. The text and faces are hand stamped into the metal. They offer a lot movement when worn. The text is small and subtle.
From the top of the earwire to the very bottom of the earrings they are just shy of 2" in total length.
Please visit my fine print for information on shipping.


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Choral Music for the Soul: Duruflé Requiem
The Duruflé Requiem has firmly obtained its place in the choral canon after that of Gabriel Fauré, which was performed as part of this series last season. The composer based his work on the Gregorian chants for the Mass of the Dead. It is truly a quintessential reflection of early 20th century Parisian liturgical musical culture. The St. John's 40-voice choir of children and adults joins forces with Hartford's favorite organist, Larry Allen, along with trumpet and timpani, in this sublime performance, on Saturday, March 23 at 3pm.
The concert is free admission, suggested donation $20. A reception follows in the church hall.


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Add a modern look to one of the most important rooms in your home with this stationary sofa. This piece features a tufted back, wide track arms and simple wood legs. Perfect for your trendy urban home, this sofa is comfortable and stylish.
The 6950 Contemporary Stationary Sofa with Tufted Back by United Furniture Industries at Find Your Furniture in the area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
Create a home you are proud of with contemporary pieces from this collection. Back pillows feature simple tufting for a pretty detail. Wide track arms with slight curves in addition to the overall shape give pieces from this collection an updated look. Pair a sofa and love seat together to create a space in your home that is comfortable and stylish while creating a room where you can spend quality time with friends or family.
The 6950 collection is a great option if you are looking for Contemporary furniture in the area.
These images are representative of this group as a whole and may differ from this item.
This item has been tagged as: Sofa, Couch, Couches, Backless Sofas, Conversation Sofas, Conversational Sofas, Theater Seating, Theatre Seating, Home Theater Furniture, Angled Sofa, Davenport, Stationary Sofa, Stationary Couch, Home Theater Seating, Upholstered Sofa, Upholstered Furniture, Sofa Couch, Living Room Furniture, Furniture, Seating
Nothing on this page may be copied or reproduced without explicit permission.


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Session 2 (the therapist)
She thought she knew what had started her life by the bottle. If she moved back she would go to that moment when the man she devoted herself to had confessed to having an affair. He'd broken her heart and said he loved the other woman. She had kept a straight face and asked for a divorce only to cry herself to sleep after he'd left. That tragic death he received was an insult to her. He'd gotten away with breaking her heart and made her look like the villain.
She was a model human. A beautiful woman with an outstanding career and a perfect family. She had two children who were exemplary in everything they did and her favourite part was her man. The man she had fallen in love with ,crowning her success with the enviable highschool romance story. Her ambition drove her to be the best and she knew nothing less. Everything changed when he broke her heart. It was a failure she couldn't deal with.
Have you ever thought of what a pianist would sound like playing from the bottom of the sea? That is the only analogy that gets close to her experience. The pianist will put in all the right keys and then when she starts dropping in the sea she will loose her calm and make a few frantic moves. The audience will still be moved but few will notice the change. Soon. In an attempt to save the piece she will go wild and the result is turning completely off key. At this point the audience is aware but the pianist is not finally the pianist is tone deaf and that's when she realises she is lost but at this point she's at the bottom of the sea.
She believed in things going her way and not making any mistakes. That's how she got into drinking bottles of vodka alone on her bathroom floor. The liqour comforted her. That scotch made her feel like she had courage to do it alone as she always had. So she drank and for a while she was the widow who had overcome tragedy and become an amazing mom and career woman. Then slowly she slacked and the root of all her problems came up and she knew she was lost.
You see her addiction is the equivalent of a plague to the soul. She craved for perfection. The biggest problem is; perfect doesn't exist.


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AUSTIN -- Texas' new method for grading teachers violates state law because it relies too much on student test scores, according to a new lawsuit filed Wednesday against Education Commissioner Mike Morath.
"Commissioner Morath's appraisal system clearly violates state law because he doesn't have the authority to substitute a confusing, test-based statistical formula for the work teachers and students actually do in their classrooms," Noel Candelaria, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, said in a statement accompanying the group's lawsuit. "Teachers are not robots, and their performance should be evaluated by an easily understood, transparent system that helps them perfect their job performance."
The lawsuit was filed in state district court in Travis County.
The new teacher evaluation method, called the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, or T-TESS, goes into effect July 1 but won't impact teacher scores until next school year. Everything from teacher pay to hiring and firing decisions will be made based on an educator's T-TESS scores.
T-TESS requires school districts to base at lease 20 percent of an educator's grade on "student growth" data like standardized test scores. While using T-TESS isn't mandatory -- districts can develop their own method -- most end up adopting the state-sanctioned grading system to ensure they comply with state and federal standards.
The teachers association said T-TESS violates a state law that "clearly requires a teacher appraisal system adopted by the commissioner to be based on 'observable, job-related behavior.'" Morath's predecessor, Michael Williams, also supported the teacher grading method but made clear in his fight with the federal government over related requirements under No Child Left Behind that the commissioner does not have the authority to force districts to adopt any one specific method.
Texas' reliance on high-stakes, standardized tests have become less and less popular in Texas in recent years, as teachers and parents complain it forces them to focus on test prep over truly educating kids.
The lawsuit was filed just weeks after
the standardized testing forms of more than 14,000 kids, most of whom are special education students.
"The technical issues experienced today during the online administration of STAAR are simply unacceptable," Morath said March 29. "Such issues undermine the hard work of our teachers and students. Kids in the classroom should never suffer from mistakes made by adults."
During his time as a trustee in Dallas ISD, Morath championed the district's reliance on student test data and other so-called value-added measures. Texas Education Agency representatives said Wednesday they could not comment on the lawsuit because they had not yet seen it.


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Detourette's Syndrome
When I am not writing, I often think about my reasons (read: excuses) for not writing. The seriousness of work and the pettiness of life–and vice versa–have displaced my creative habits. The fact that I chose to start this piece with an admitted cliché about writing underlines the point.
Even when I am ostensibly writing, it's easy to question the vague status and worthiness of creative ambition. How have we spent our time? How does time continue to slip through our fingers even as we put that rapidly disappearing commodity under a microscope of self-reflection and admonish ourselves to do better with that only finite resource? Is it better to have spent a life gathering satisfaction and enjoyment or creating something distinct from oneself? To me, these feel like ethical, existential questions, not just idle abstractions.
Distractions both fleeting and life-encompassing appear in the rear-view mirror and as detours beckoning in the distance. One hears the conventional wisdom that you'd be a sucker to leave the highway and take the turn into a tourist trap meant to separate fools from their money. Yet somehow you wonder whether you're on the right road or if the detour will lead you where you've been meant to go all along. There is no map to consult.
The biggest question of all now appears: whether the detours are keeping you away from the road of life or are they life itself?
To put what I'm pondering more directly, are all of the games, videos, memes, TV shows, movies, and even books just distractions from a more creative or productive life? Is a domestically satisfying life a distraction from a creatively satisfying one? Is there a point where one needs to say, "Ok, I've learned and consumed enough; now, it's time to create something"?
None of these questions imply any value judgment on what constitutes worthy creative activity. Maybe you get all of your creative rocks off in the process of earning a living. There are certainly those mythic and noble beasts who do, and there's a reason one of the most quintessential pieces of job-related advice is to "do what you love." The problem usually lies in either an information gap regarding the kind of work a given career actually entails (e.g., being a lawyer isn't all dramatic cross-examination, frequent televisual dramatizations notwithstanding). However, most people view their problems as stemming from a wage gap (i.e., doing what you love doesn't pay for all the other stuff you think you need/want). But the latter view assumes you can satisfy all of your basic, human, and existential desires through wages in general. That returns us to the question of whether the "distractions" are really just life itself.
If the human experience is any indication, the most common answer to this conundrum has been that existential needs may be satisfied by a rich family and/or social life, sprinkled with a dash of hobby and infrequent travel. To say that one is satisfying their genetically-ingrained creative impulses by literally creating life is unassailable. But what of the life of the mind, separate from the life of the body? Doesn't it have needs to pass itself on to future generations?
So we are caught between two poles: the life of bodily pleasure, comfort, security, and genetic influence competing and the life of the creative, productive, and intellectual influence on more than just what we can immediately reach.
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Never have I understood that quotation better.
I'm not certain that existentialism offers an answer to this question other than to say that there isn't a dichotomy at all if you properly understand yourself and your values. But then, Nietzsche would have said that the free spirit is the one who creates his own values. Maybe the question is further reducible: "know thyself," "the unexamined life is not worth living," etc.
But I also think that our modern context bears significantly and differently on the issue of distraction. Maybe it's just my personal experience, but I wonder whether we are approaching something of a "distraction singularity." Specifically, we seem to have so much stimulation available to us at all times and so much good content being produced all the time that our in-the-moment decisions of how to maximize our time may be sliding towards consumption rather than creation. If there were a million content producers at the excellence level of William Shakespeare constantly producing YouTube videos that were functionally free to consume and accessible enough to appreciate for what they were, would we have the ability to hold back? Thus, the Distraction Singularity connotes that distraction and fulfillment become one and the same. In economic terms, the supply curve has shifted so far out that the demand is perhaps only limited by our need to subsist. But then again, is there a plausible future where simply consuming free or near-free entertainment combined with an acceptance of the lowest social safety net for subsistence purposes is preferable to some?
Ok, maybe the Infinite Jest hypothesis is a slight stretch (for now), but doesn't that description of the direction of history ring true, even if the diminishing returns of the distraction-demand curve keep us from running off the cliff? Am I just an old man (30) complaining about these damn kids with their cell phones and their YouTubes?
It is probably unfair to accuse this generation of behaving any differently from any other one; if anything, millennials manage the flood of stimuli admirably considering the shift in the supply. Any alternative to embracing the profusion of distractions would be to demand artificial ignorance of the levels of supply and demand in favor of some non-market based determination of how to make oneself happy. Such prescriptivism is directly opposed to self-determination. And all this just reinforces the Founders' wisdom that freedom and democracy take work. But we have so much TV to catch up on.
It is nonetheless fair to say that these distraction dynamics are providing people with more reason to avoid ever having to engage in civic duties or maintenance of the body politic. That's the rational ignorance hypothesis, and it's existed since long before the Internet. I am not arguing that there is an evil conspiracy setting these dynamics in motion, but maybe the Distraction Singularity has the unintended consequence of facilitating oligarchic influence by creating competing outlets for the attention of the people. Those people, in turn, neglect of their full rights of participation as citizens of a democracy. Of course, maybe the great majority of people have always wanted ignorance and bliss, and now the really good blinders are within reach. Who is to say whether the people are the winners or losers in that fight?
Grand Babushka Hotel
In case you haven't seen it, Wes Anderson's newest movie is a Wes Anderson movie. Which is to say that it has so many hallmark, camera-winking elements of a Wes Anderson movie that Grand Budapest Hotel is almost a parody of a Wes Anderson movie. You can certainly play a brisk game of Wes Anderson Bingo while watching.
Specifically, Grand Budapest Hotel exhibits many of what are now trademark-Andersonian actors, quirks and nods. Indeed, Anderson's oeuvre grows like a snowball, picking up bits and pieces (i.e., actors and themes) as the movies themselves accumulate. Of course, Anderson's filmography is most obviously and notoriously replete with his signature cinematographic style: everything obsessively centered, designed, and stylized.
The camera pans are steady. The set pieces are just that, often more evocative of a staged play than a film. The style is too-often described with the word "twee" by folks seeking an appropriate context with which to use the buzzword, like people who call assign the label "hipster" to anything created outside of the mainstream. A "dollhouse" aesthetic rings more true to me. And that term also seems to strike closer to the heart of the matter.
Then there's the cast of familiar faces. Andersonia started with Bottle Rocket at its core, with Owen and/or Luke Wilson recurring in just about every Anderson project. Then, Rushmore added the recurring appearances of Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, along with a slew of bit parts (e.g., Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel, Kumar Pallana, Waris Ahluwalia, et al.) that pepper themselves throughout each Anderson outing, practically a part of the crew. The Royal Tenenbaums brought Anjelica Houston into the fold. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou added Michael Gambon, Jeff Goldblum, and the consistently creepy Willem Dafoe. The Darjeeling Limited saw Adrien Brody work his way into the Andersoniverse, and Moonrise Kingdom brought Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton (along with Bob "I-know-him-but-I-don't-know-where-from" Balaban) onto the call sheet. Add all the aforementioned together with a new star lead (as per the custom), and you get The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Anderson's themes also recur more consistently than cocaine in a Scorcese movie. Every single Anderson film, even including Anderson's adaptation of The Fantastic Mr. Fox, can be construed as an exploration of children behaving like adults and adults behaving like children. From Max Fischer's rivalry with Herman Blume to Ari and Uzi's corrective upbringing by Royal Tenenbaum to Steve Zissou's conflict with the real world to the Darjeeling brothers seeking forced enlightenment (contra their mother absconding from their lives entirely) to the obviously too-adult affair of Sam and Suzy in Moonrise Kingdom. The Grand Budapest Hotel is no exception. In fact, it is perhaps the capstone of Wes Anderson's previous layers of construction and foundation.
It would be frivolous to claim that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a culmination for Anderson simply because it incorporates these elements of a Wes Anderson movie, even though it does in spades. Even the nonchalance and even unsubtlety with which these elements are almost shoe-horned into the movie can be fairly described as Andersonian. However, the nested storytelling/framing devices that bracket the core narrative of The Grand Budapest Hotel suggest that there is something significant to the recursive cacophony.
To break it down into its matryoshka-esque storytelling layers, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a (1) film that opens on (2) a present-day girl reading a book called The Grand Budapest Hotel written by "The Author," who is (3) by portrayed by Tom Wilkinson who explains to the camera how (4) his younger self, played by Jude Law, traveled to the aging Grand Budapest in 1968, only to meet and dine with Zero Moustafa, played by F. Murray Abraham, who in turn relates (5) the story of Gustave H. and the Grand Budapest in the years between World Wars (not to mention (6) the expositional asides by Gustave H. to Zero in explaining his relationships with the various guests of the Grand Budapest), which is the heart of this narrative turducken.
But then, the use of a storyteller as a framing devices is another Anderson trope. Rushmore opens with curtains drawn to reveal the set of this play masquerading as a movie; The Royal Tenenbaums is portrayed as a children's book narrated by Alec Baldwin; The Life Acquatic with Steve Zissou is titled, framed and shot like one of the titular characters adventure movies, down to the daring rescue and discovery of extraordinary marine life; and Moonrise Kingdom is practically reported by a historian/narrator, as though for a History Channel special on the most interesting story of the small island's history.
With all of these storytelling layers, the potential for unreliable narrators compounds. The audience considers whether a narrator is lying or embellishing their slice of the story. And the stories are almost always stories created by the person with the most childlike point of view in Anderson's films. Arguably, Anderson employs this perspective to reinforce the point that it is capacity for wonder and enthusiasm that makes a good story. Those qualities that make the child a sympathetic protagonist are their immunity to irony or ironic detachment. Their enthusiasm makes them fun and engaging.
So even if the unreliable narrators caused us to conclude that the plot of The Grand Budapest Hotel was made up (even within the universe of the film), the audience must also consider in what other way would anyone have access to the glorious and delightful history of a landmark like the Grand Budapest? The audience's present-day perspective views the hotel as a monument in ruins, without the animated liveliness that serves as a complement and counterpart to Gustave's brilliant efficiency. Anderson seems to say that only the authentic power of storytelling (in its myriad traditions: film, book, radio, dinner conversation, etc.) can preserve such larger-than-life memories with a genuineness, even if the audience must accept the risk that some of the stories are simply tall tales.
The cute, childlike, and even Wes Anderson-y set pieces and artifice to remind us that "this is a story, don't take it too seriously." The fact that the stories come from precocious children seem a clever way to disarm the hip detachment that is the hallmark of adulthood that would normally dismiss an exaggerated fable out of hand before enjoying what it has to offer. Maybe that is for the best. Maybe the defense mechanism has served its purpose. After all, how else do you get a hipster to admit something is just grand?
Rival Video
By now, it is probably no news to you that President Obama was on an episode of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Not only did "President Barack Hussein Obamacare" (as Scott Aukerman [Between Two Ferns' director]'s character "Scott Aukerman" calls him on his podcast, Comedy Bang! Bang!) plug the Affordable Care Act and Healthcare.gov, but he also played along and adopted the tone of the show with some impressively casual adeptness. More than just a sense of humor, Obama displayed a sense of savvy and understanding of the way certain segments of society now communicate.
Specifically, this spot is simply the latest example of Obama embracing democratic means of communication. The Internet has empowered otherwise disenfranchised and atomized voices by providing a focal point through which they can find one another and unite. Sometimes these groups are people without enough at stake in the establishment to wade through the "muck" of daily news reporting. Newly minted 18-year-olds and working-class voters have enough daily travails that they rationally disengage from politics because the potential benefit of learning the nuances of deliberately complicated policy questions is minimal.
However, those same people don't have to feel like their time is wasted if they are engaged in their own preferred manner, e.g., through a viral video, the new dominant medium of cultural exchange. Or maybe on a late night television show. Or maybe with memes, e.g.,
What makes Obama's appearance even more sensible is that this particular policy issue, enrollment in an insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, requires participation from the most politically disenfranchised people in America. These younger segments of society needed a reason to get informed, let alone to get enrolled, and if Obama's semi-humorous appearance in a five-minute video did that, then that is an effective use of the bully pulpit. He certainly wouldn't have reached the same audience on Meet the Press. Indeed, Healthcare.gov got a 40% bump in daily traffic after the stunt (with millions of views over the next several days), leaving Obama with the last laugh.
By the same token, this isn't Funny Or Die's first foray into the realm of the overtly political. They've actually had some pretty good sketch/ad hybrids for a while now. And people seem to forget that President Obama likes being funny in a relatable way (e.g., Correspondents' Dinners, his appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Leno, etc.). So, while Obama's appearance on Between Two Ferns was unexpected, it wasn't exactly a surprise. It was the next logical step for reaching the portion of the electorate that matters for the Affordable Care Act.
The fact that some are decrying this particular advertisement (which is what it was, let's face it) says less about the video itself and more about the reactionary dynamics that are now well-established in the old media. Fox News would say the sky is green if it scored points with folks predisposed to disliking Obama. And all the moreso given that the Affordable Care Act (or if saying Obama's name is enough to make your blood curdle, read: Obamacare) is the subject matter. But these shrieks are incoherent in an evolving democracy. The electorate needs to be informed and educated, regardless of the medium. To hold politics itself above the hoi polloi is to limit the access of the political process to those with vested interests or to those with the luxury of time to spend learning about politics.
And Obama is hardly the first president to appear on a new medium to communicate his position.
Just as Kennedy beat Nixon through his legendarily telegenic debate appearance, Obama has simply been making effective use of new media that aren't going anywhere.
It's too soon for us to judge whether Obama's fondness for non-traditional media is an anomaly; complaining that Obama spends more time on internet video than his predecessors is a little like complaining that Calvin Coolidge spent more time on radio addresses than Warren Harding.
But the one thing that is missing from the national discussion of Obama's "new" media approach is how safe this move was for Obama. Obama's true media revolution came during his presidential campaigns, the recent NSA scandal notwithstanding. His campaign used hyper-local and hyper-specific data about voters collected from the online surveillance apparatus to make decisions like which celebrities to invite to which events, and when and how often to hit up voters up for fundraising dollars without sounding desperate.
So Obama went on a well-established web series with a household celebrity name (that might be difficult for Fox News commentators to pronounce) who happens to be just slightly edgy and can function like a punching bag for a president on the offensive. Not much of a risk. On the contrary, Between Two Ferns was the right platform for Obama to reach out to include the 50% of eligible voters who stay at home every election. The alternative, digging heels into political point-scoring, would have resulted in the same outcome: Democrats cheer, Republicans boo, and America stuck between the two.
A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing
Critics have described The Wolf of Wall Street as Casino meets GoodFellas but without the violence (if you decline to classify visceral drug and sex abuse as self-inflicted violence). In the long tradition of Scorsese's villain-as-protagonist movies, The Wolf of Wall Street depicts hunger for power, money, drugs, and sex as zeitgeist more than as a character flaw. The movie seems to presume that you desire the same things as Jordan Belfort. Belfort, as narrator, asks who wouldn't want to be rich and powerful, vacuuming up mounds of cocaine and other drugs with impunity? Never mind that such success requires outright contempt for the countless dopey would-be life-savings investors from middle America that you victimize in order to make your nut. This is America! No, this is Wall Street! Not only is such behavior rewarded, it is required just to stay afloat.
While the comparisons to Scorsese's other crimelord movies are apt, the movie reminded me more of Inglorious Basterds (and if you read my review of that film, you know where I'm going with this). Both movies are told from the point of view of monsters that the audience is urged (not "intended") to sympathize with, and not just because they are the focal point of the film. Audiences like larger-than-life rascals having fun. Especially when those rascals win. In both Inglorious Basterds and The Wolf of Wall Street, the audience attaches itself to the gleeful (there is no other word) abandon of anything resembling morals. In Inglorious Basterds, the protagonist Americans' amorality (scalping, torture, refusal to abide by the rules of war) is purportedly justified because they seek to inflict fear and revenge on a greater immorality. In Wolf of Wall Street, beating Wall Street at its own game, only with more ridiculously outsized and outlandish excesses. We are reminded that Belfort's conquests are justified because this is Wall Street, the heart of darkness itself. The degree of competition–in and of itself, we are led to believe–justifies Belfort's explicitly criminal behavior. The spoils of victory allures our appetite for power even as "what it takes" should make our guts churn.
Curiously, critics have divided on whether or not the movie succeeds based on the question of whether Scorsese is too in love with Belfort and the metaphor of excess. They compare Scorsese's own cocaine addiction to Belfort's money addiction (yes, money is the chief drug in Wolf), and find a through-line of "excess" in Scorsese's antihero movies. But with its nonstop depravity, some thought that Wolf was too fully celebrating the excess, overwhelming and smothering the audience with lewdness and lude-ness, rather than counterbalancing it with some measure of moral distance and critique. They are annoyed that the only clear sign of rebuke comes when Belfort finally puts himself and his family in physical danger, rather than when he is fleecing thousands of amateur investors out of their retirement savings.
These critics may have been frustrated that they didn't get their money's worth of catharsis by painting Belfort as enough of a villain. Or they may be anticipating the inevitable misinterpretation of the film's thesis by audiences who idolize antiheroes in the vein of Scarface or the Godfather because they only read the surface level of the narrative. E.g., Wall Street bankers themselves, emitting hoots and cheers as Belfort treats his clients with open contempt or covertly warns his partner that he was wearing a wire.
DiCaprio has compared Belfort's story to Caligula's, and that undoubtedly rings true. The difference to a modern audience is that, whereas Caligula's dalliances and excesses appear patently repugnant and amoral, Belfort's addiction to money hits a little closer to home. Belfort resembles a few too many people who society has put on a pedestal. These "masters of the universe" seem to act with a little too much impunity these days, and Belfort's story isn't exactly reassuring. But to conclude that Scorsese himself is too in love with Belfort and his excesses to maintain the necessary critical distance seems to miss the point.
If we give Scorsese even a shred of credit (though maybe not for his editing skills), Wolf of Wall Street starts to look more like Conrad's Heart of Darkness than GoodFellas or anything else; the interesting question lies in whether our morals are coherent in the first place. Like Conrad's Kurtz, Belfort is a "prodigy" and a "genius" at producing previously untold profits, though something seems rotten to anyone who takes a second to consider his operation. Of course, getting so far ahead with such speed in a purely competitive system should raise a red flag for anyone who's taken Economics 101. Profits are supposed to approach zero in a market where competitors are able to act on equal footing (i.e., within the same legal confines). Both Wolf of Wall Street and Heart of Darkness (are the titles symmetric?) postulate the thesis that money itself is amoral, and the first person to apply that amorality to the means of production will be rewarded. The Dutch colonialist investors in Heart of Darkness praise Kurtz for his ingenuity, turning a blind eye to the fact that Kurtz has deified himself in order to obtain unquestioning obedience and the willingness to perpetuate atrocities for his productivity gains. And the money-hungry audience of Wolf of Wall Street is put in a position to turn a blind eye to the poor saps who lost their shirts to the likes of Belfort because look at how rich he got. Returns to criminality are much greater than they are to legal behavior, and the audience fetishizes the end result far more than any consideration of the means. Those who live in late-stage capitalism have seen too many depravities to care about means anymore. We're down to "get rich or die tryin'."
In this light, the lack of moral anchors in Wolf of Wall Street is the disease, not a symptom of weak film-making. Affluenza has taken root in America, after all. The fact that Belfort's victims are out of sight, out of mind is consistent with the capitalist zeitgeist on the subject. The wealth of Wall Street is equated with the health of the economy, never mind whether that health is sometimes derived from cannibalizing and subjugating everyone else. The only important consideration is that America remains on top, and that anyone can vault themselves into the upper echelons (even if they have to do some jail time as penance). The moral anchors are left behind to say that aspirational working-class citizens have duped themselves into preferring a society that serves the most powerful.
Jonathan Haidt, one of the preeminent analysts of socio-political psychology, attributes this split political personality to different appeals to divergent moral considerations.
Despite being in the wake of a financial crisis that – if the duping theorists were correct – should have buried the cultural issues and pulled most voters to the left, we are finding in America and many European nations a stronger shift to the right. When people fear the collapse of their society, they want order and national greatness, not a more nurturing government.
In short, people don't want to cry for the losers, they want to cheer on the winners. And when the only real "hero" of Wolf of Wall Street is Special Agent Denham, the unimpeachable FBI agent who is rewarded with a subway ride home as Belfort survives the pathetic legal fallout that ensues, it's no surprise that the audience–and the zeitgeist in general–views Belfort with greater admiration. As one reviewer put it:
"Wolf" starts with a Fellini-like party on the floor of Belfort's firm, then freeze-frames on Belfort tossing a dwarf at a huge velcro target, literally and figuratively abusing the Little Guy. The traders get away with their abuse because most people don't see themselves as little guys, but as little guys who might some day become the big guy doing the tossing. "Socialism never took root in America," John Steinbeck wrote, "because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
In Haidt's framework, we care more about a convenient victory narrative than the sanctity of the legal system or the attenuated harm to unsophisticated investors because we Americans want to be in the position of victory some day. The same rationale explains why Americans approved of the Bush tax cuts. Indeed, aspirational cognitive dissonance is not only a product of our time. It seems to be inherent in the (Western) psyche. Shakespeare described exactly the same situation in Julius Caesar (and the larger quotation is illuminating):
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Indeed, Scorsese seems to say, the fault is not in the stars of Wall Street. How could they act any other way? The fault lies in ourselves for failing to apprehend that Caesars will run amok if we let ourselves continue to act as subservient underlings. We have only just created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a teething puppy charged with reining in just one facet of Wall Street's abuses. And if Wall Street gets its way, it will remain a toothless pup for a long time. Even the FBI has rebranded itself to concentrate on national security, rather than law enforcement generally. Special Agent Denham is Scorsese's Brutus with a butter knife, and we are left to wonder aloud why Wall Street executives have been let off the hook for fraud prosecutions in the wake of the financial crisis.
To my eye, Scorsese seems to have smuggled a morality tale about turning a blind eye into the theater, forcing us to bear witness. If we see Romulus raised by wolves instead of Julius Caesar, the fault, dear Reader, is not our films, but in ourselves. "The horror! The horror!"
Blockbuster Revelations
Re-watching Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón's true masterpiece, during the government shutdown may not have been a good idea. Or maybe it was the best idea.
Relative to Children of Men, Gravity is a child's tale. Gravity is a story about everything that could go wrong in a place that is principally known for its tight structure, protocols, and goals. Gravity's dramatic tension arises from the juxtaposition of unplanned accidents and random contingencies against a need for careful planning. The stakes of Gravity are small, but potent. We relate to Gravity because we too feel like we would be similarly ill-equipped to deal with the rules of a callously indifferent universe if we were literally severed from a lifeline.
Children of Men, by contrast, explores what happens when one fundamental thing goes wrong and how the effects of that one disaster emanate outward into the rest of society. The stakes are about as large as can be, and the film lands no fewer emotional gut-punches for its sprawling focus. But unlike Gravity, where the audience implicitly understands that Bullock's goals are to get somewhere safe, Children of Men's audience (supposedly) does not come into the film with a grasp on any preconceived end goal for what society should aspire to a few generations into the future. Society and government do not have pre-written teleological ends; the only stated mission of a liberal polity is to allow people to pursue their own ends of happiness, and maybe provide the environment or the means to achieve said happiness.
Through the narrative arc of Children of Men, the audience is put in the position of watching what it would feel like to tug at the loose thread in the corner and see what lies behind the woven veneer of so-called society. That we accept the Britain portrayed in the film's opening scenes as a plausible hypothetical only to find that it is just the top layer of a much deeper dysfunction is unsettling and frightening, especially in this moment of history. It shows us just how capable we are of self-deception.
For me, Children of Men makes a good case for being the best the apocalypse genre has to offer specifically because of the authentic feel of the unfurling societal and governmental decay. The fact that the world feels intuitively realistic, but then reveals itself to be even more horrifyingly realistic than previously considered serves to root out and confirm some of our deepest fears and anxieties. The references to riots and revolt in other countries and spreading chaos touch deep-seated nerves. That the chaos inevitably proves to be much closer to home than originally thought makes the film feel apocryphal. That we recognize our own susceptibility to the kinds of thinking that leads the film down its path is what makes Children of Men terrifying.
Of course, it is these kinds of nightmares that Hobbes was considering when he postulated that a governmental leviathan would be necessary to allay all of the fears that humanity is capable of imagining. We know that humans are fallible. And we know that we live in an age where near-infinite harm could result from some human–all too human–mistakes. So when we are presented with a scenario where everything is at stake, we recognize in ourselves a tendency to reach for a security blanket, whether that blanket manifests itself as an information-addicted National Security Agency or an full-on totalitarian/military state. And as with many nightmares, there is a tendency to equivocate the end of American values with end-times or actual, biblical apocalypse. However, more than anything else, it is probably more of a reflection of American exceptionalism and self-centeredness that Americans cannot imagine the world going on without America.
It's tempting to date this kind of eschatological thinking to 9/11. After all, when did the public utterly lose any ability to calculate the probability or impact of worst-case scenarios? When the actors on the world's stage were the rational, predictable actors that characterized the Cold War, we at least could know where we stand relative to our enemies. Even if the doomsday machines themselves were terrifying, we could calculate and counteract what would set them off. There was a logic to mutually assured destruction because it was tied to concrete, worldly values. Now that the fingers on the innumerable and untraceable buttons have morphed into hands attached to people willing to give their lives to achieve other-worldly ends, we feel as though we can no longer trust in rationality to win the day.
So when presented with a powerfully direct and immediate example of just how wrong things can and will go (i.e., 9/11), the American leviathan rears its head. And consequently, in what might be termed the "Wikileaks Era" of American history, we find ourselves having to deal with a seemingly unending barrage of revelations (they're always "revelations," aren't they?) about the extent of government militarization, surveillance, data mining, overreach, and impunity. Values as fundamental to the American founders as freedom from intrusive searches and seizures have been exchanged for marginal increases in security, and even those improvements are of questionable (if any) utility.
That these news stories are always characterized as dramatic "revelations" rather than "predictable outcomes"–indeed, the exact kind of outcomes that Hobbes anticipated–makes me feel like we're living in a society at the precipice. America's self-deception runs so deep that these developments felt like the worst conspiracy theories borne out as true when they were first revealed. But in retrospect, didn't we know that these consequence we now live with were predestined by the new normal set in the wake of the PATRIOT ACT and the rise of the surveillance state? Didn't we know that we would react this way? Of course, but we didn't think we'd have to actually get up the political willpower to actually do something.
Instead, we allow the inertia to continue to propel us along the same track. Instead of repealing the laws authorizing the surveillance state, we double down on them. Instead of welcoming whistleblowers with outstretched arms as a means of marshaling public opinion against our institutions in need of correction, we despair because we think that it would be a futile exercise.
That policy inertia is unlikely to change anytime soon in an environment where the political capital is spent dealing with non-real issues that increasingly resemble the hyperbolic and ridiculous puppet shows that are always described in 1984 or Farenheit 451 or Brave New World. When the government can be shut down as part of a sideshow tactic by a cult that desires the apocalypse, i.e., the Tea Party, any hopes of any legitimate discussion about uncomfortable choices are already lost. This millennium's ostrich approach to politics created this cult of apocalypse out of a false premise that the world might stay the same.
What the understandably beleaguered citizens of this new modern order want is a pristine variety of America that feels like the one they grew up in. They want truths that ring without any timbre of doubt. They want root-and-branch reform – to the days of the American Revolution. And they want all of this as a pre-packaged ideology, preferably aligned with re-written American history, and reiterated as a theater of comfort and nostalgia. They want their presidents white and their budget balanced now. That balancing it now would tip the whole world into a second depression sounds like elite cant to them; that America is, as a matter of fact, a coffee-colored country – and stronger for it – does not remove their desire for it not to be so; indeed it intensifies their futile effort to stop immigration reform. And given the apocalyptic nature of their view of what is going on, it is only natural that they would seek a totalist, radical, revolutionary halt to all of it, even if it creates economic chaos, even if it destroys millions of jobs, even though it keeps millions in immigration limbo, even if it means an unprecedented default on the debt.
Apparently suicidal tactics and theocracy are not exclusive to our enemies.
Like the twist in any good movie, we find in ourselves something we despise in others. A movie's protagonist usually grows from this realization; now the onus is on us to do the same. There may even be some reaction and growth from a world-wearier and savvier public. But corrective measures we take will mean very little if we don't grow a little more accustomed to checking for loose threads to see where they follow. Or is that starting to sound too much like a movie?
Nose Cut, Face Spited
Politicians in democracies like to make glossy statements like "the will of the people" or "the people have spoken" or even that they "represent the people." If any such statements have been true in the last few months, then the shutdown may be read as "the people" declaring themselves unfit to govern.
Claiming to know "the will of the people" is a political tradition that dates back to well before Rousseau's argument that the will of the people is the only legitimate basis of government. It's a matter of rhetoric. It's also a total red herring for anything beyond technical philosophical questions about basic governance, and even then it might depend on who you ask.
While one might think we could all agree that any tenable definition of "the will of the people" includes support for certain things like the rule of law and individual rights of political participation and self-determination, it's nearly impossible to speak about what "the people" want when it comes to subjects about which there exists even an atom's worth of room for disagreement. "The people" can and do disagree on fundamental political questions like the size, scope, duties, and worthiness of government in general. Some of "the people" don't even want there to be a government at all, let alone one that has sufficient resources and wherewithal to do the things that other parts of "the people" want government to do.
Of course, the question of what "the people" wants government to do manifests itself at every level of law: social contract, the Constitution, and federal and local statutes. Each step involves a level of filtration, division, and distance. There will always be disagreement, but what disagreement does that result in? A government or no government? Can there be a law that applies to everyone, even if that law is simply that the rule of law is supreme?
One idealistic baseline is that natural rights should not be abridged at all by giving a government the power to enforce laws for which one does not individually consent. This position seems to require that the governed provide explicit consent at least to the baseline constitutional law that enables the rest of the laws. Otherwise, the eventual threat of force that is the backstop of government authority is essentially tyrannical. That's why this school of thought often sounds like it's arguing a debate that was settled with Hobbes and Locke. (Note that I did not use the words "libertarian," "objectivist," or "anarchist." This will be relevant later.)
Another school of thought is necessarily more pragmatic. It acknowledges that we can never actually garner 100% participation in any social contract. After all, there are new generations that cannot meaningfully consent until they reach the age of majority, and there are always those who will be holdouts for personal (possibly system-gaming) reasons. Instead, consent of the governed has historically been presumed on behalf of a just system, more or less as a philosophical shortcut.
That consent is presumed via constitutional law. We have a constitution that we histrionically enshrine in order to inculcate the appearance and actual willingness of consent. Children are taught from a young age that the Constitution is basically infallible, that the founders were enlightened demigods amongst men, and that anyone who denigrates the constitution is probably an anti-patriotic saboteur or worse. From this starting point, Americans start with respect for the system created by these founders, and differences of opinion subsequently arise in the interpretation of how to carry out that particular vision. Those differences are the subject matter of statutory law and modern politics, whether manifested in questions about what laws are "necessary and proper" to the functioning of the republic or questions about how and whether to enact new laws in light of the Constitution, its premises, and the country's history.
Of course, as heretical as it may seem, the founders and the Constitution were not, and are not, infallible. The founders turned a blind eye to slavery in the name of political expedience, and the Three-Fifths Compromise wasn't exactly the Constitution's finest exposition of democracy, let alone basic human rights. And as any reader who has enjoyed alcoholic beverage will already know, even 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures can get things wrong.
So it is no surprise that America has rather limited institutional mechanisms available to change the laws that underlie all of the other ones. After all, what kind of political system would be sustainable if fundamental revisionism could happen with every election, let alone every occasion for a legislative vote? Apparently, it's the kind that has to fight a war to end slavery, to suffer a depression to allow the federal government to intervene in the economy, and to witness the rise of Jim Crow and race riots to begin to guarantee some of the most basic civil rights.
But that doesn't mean that the attempt to form a more perfect union is worthless or foolhardy. It simply means that the project of self-governance is difficult. And universal consensus even more so.
Indeed, sometimes we find ourselves in severe disagreement with the results of the political process. Less than five percent of the United States approves of the job that Congress is doing right now. Obama's approval rating is at historic lows. And yet, I think most Americans–with the possible exceptions of the Tea Party and anarchists–still want a form of government where the basic rule of (constitutionally enacted) law controls. That's the social contract we've signed onto, impliedly or otherwise.
So when legislation becomes gridlocked, and partisans are unwilling to change their minds or compromise, and holding the government hostage becomes the apparent tactic, that hurts Americans at their core. It does and should strike most Americans as a perverse tactic when the goal is simply to modify existing law. Indeed, shutting down government is impounding the Executive Branch's ability to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed." The shutdown gambit seeks to change the rules of the game: "even though we agree by social contract to follow the laws that are duly enacted, we decided that we don't like this one, and aren't going to let you follow it either." It would be like defunding a military during wartime or refusing to allow a peaceful transition of power when your party doesn't win an election. When the motivations of those who would shut down the government seem cynical or bought off, maybe the fault is not in the fight but in the weapons being brought to the table.
Refusing to fund the enforcement of the laws whenever legislative disagreements happen is not consistent with America's social contract. It is, however, a plausible route to bring to the public's consciousness the contradictions festering in the American polity, and make them question the validity of the legislature's role in the social contract in the first place. Maybe it is "We the people" who have some constitutional questions to answer.
Single Player
Quick shout out to Vermont, one of the most politically interesting places in the nation right now. They are a great reminder that federalism was baked into our political system so that the states could act where the federal government wasn't explicitly empowered to intervene.
Since the federal government isn't getting the job done when it comes to providing legitimate public health care, now Vermont is planning to provide its own public option to its citizens.
In such a setting, Vermont's plan looks more and more like an anomaly. It combines universal coverage with new cost controls in an effort to move away from a system in which the more procedures doctors and hospitals perform, the more they get paid, to one in which providers have a set budget to care for a set number of patients.
The result will be healthcare that's "a right and not a privilege," Gov. Peter Shumlin said.
And when people can't agree on what a basic right looks like, it makes sense to let them vote with their feet.


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Dr. Reuven Firestone Presents Paper at Conference on "Rethinking Jihad" at Center for the Advanced Study of the Arab World of the University of Edinburgh
Dr. Reuven Firestone was invited to give a paper at an international conference this week in Edinburgh, Scotland at the prestigious Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World of the University of Edinburgh. The title of the conference is "Rethinking Jihad" and his paper is entitled "Divine Authority and Territorial Entitlement in Judaism and Islam, A Study of Two Interpretive Traditions." For an abstract of his paper, please
click here
Upcoming Events at HUC-JIR
HUC-JIR in Jerusalem - Your Home for the High Holy Days in Israel
September 18 at 6 pm -
Rosh Hashanah Services, followed by home-cooked dinner, hosted by members of the HUC-JIR community.
September 27 at 5 pm -
Kol Nidre
September 28 at 3 pm -
Yom Kippur Minhah, Yizkor, and Neilah; Break Fast following Neilah
Next Week on Campus
You are invited to attend student services, sermons, recitals, and more!
September 8h at 10:50am Stephanie Clark is leading Shacharit services
September 9th at 10:50am Ariel Boxman is leading Shacharit services.
September 10th at 10:50am Michael Loving is leading Shacharit services and Nicole Roberts is serving as Ba'al Korei.
Los Angeles:
September 10th at 11:25am the Shlichai Tzibbur are Lindy Davidson & Cantor Kent,
Dan Medwin is Reading Torah, Miriam Terlinchamp is delivering the D'var Torah, and the Gabbai is Jordi Schuster.
New York:
On September 9th at 10:45am, Tracy Fishbein and Julia Rubin-Cadrain will be presenting Rosh Hashanah Eve highlights and Rosh Hashanah Morning highlights.
Dedication of New Garden at HUC-JIR/Los Angeles on Sept. 9 at 10 am
Last semester, members of the student body worked to pull up approximately 200 feet worth of sod just outside the patio of the LA campus building and planted vegetable seedlings. Students have attended a meeting of a newly forming coalition in Los Angeles of Jewish organizations committed to growing their own food, sharing that food and understanding the values and texts in our tradition relevant to this process.
HUC-JIR in the News
A Rabbi Whose God Is a Loving and Long-Suffering Mother - The New York Times
Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, a member of the HUC-JIR faculty in NY, is profiled in "Experience Necessary." Her favorite part of being a rabbi: "Delivering a good sermon. A rabbi has the right to put issues on the congregation's agenda, but has to earn that right by attending to the issues that members of the congregation place on the agenda." The accomplishment of which she is most proud: "I played a significant role in the change toward gay rabbis. I saw how long that process took. In '85, I submitted a resolution to the Central Conference of American Rabbis to open doors to gay men and lesbians. It was not changed till 1990."
Search For Meaning Leading Back To School- The Jewish Week
Rabbi Aaron Panken, vice-president for strategic initiatives and dean of admissions at HUC-JIR, saw jumps in admissions this year, with applications to the rabbinical school increasing 20 percent from last year, while the education program saw 200 percent growth. The Ph.D. program secured funding for five students. "The general kind of economic malaise in North America writ large has led to people considering graduate school as a safe haven and going into professions that may be less focused on monetary reward," said Rabbi Panken. "When Wall Street is going well, people may be swayed [to make money]. Now that that incentive has waned people recognize this is something they may have wanted to do anyway, so they go in our direction instead." He said he's observed similar increases in applications during difficult times throughout his 13-year tenure at HUC. "After 9/11 [we saw] an uptick of people interested, [similar to the] uptick during the Vietnam War," Rabbi Panken said. "With an economic downturn we see a return to core values, ethics, spirituality and things that make life worth living."
Rabbi Meets the Road -- Clarion Ledger
30-year-old Marshall Klaven is embracing in his new role as director of rabbinic services for Jackson's Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. An institute study conducted in fall 2007 revealed 39 percent of the 344 Jewish congregations in the South's 13-state region do not have a full-time rabbi. Only two of Mississippi's 15 congregations do. Klaven is the institute's third circuit-riding rabbi who will bring spiritual leadership to these communities.
Alumni News
Rabbi Robin Nafshi Heads People-Centered Animal Sanctuary
"Most of our pets at Seer Farms are here because their owners have lost homes to foreclosure or eviction," said Rabbi Robin Nafshi, president of the organization. "Economic hardship and the resulting loss of secure housing created a pet care crisis that leaves people with few options to protect their animals. Traditional shelters are becoming overwhelmed and in desperation, some people are resulting to abandonment of their pets. Part of my role is to provide support to families as they drop off their animals."
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Wild Rose Brewery Rare Belgian Style Pale Ale (2016) Belgian Pale Ale at 5.5% ABV (C$6.99 at Willow Park Wine & Spirits, 650 ml, bottle date 15-Jan-2016, reviewed 24-Feb-2016)
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Week 2 is here and there are a lot of things for us pretend football players to pay attention to. I'll go through a few here and then hook you up with some prime links and maybe give you a puppy (I won't give you a puppy).
While I have you here I'd like to give some shout outs to our writers at Razzball. They are doing some awesome work and their stuff often gets buried pretty quickly on the site. Clint Chugg, Joseph Buccellato, Mark Lee, Tim Brodeur, Josh Vitale, Jonathan Gilpin, Matt Jones, Trevor Gallo and Jeff Brubach have all contributed some bad ass work of late and I can't thank them enough. You should scroll down and see what they had to say this week and if their names have a little hyperlinkage up above you should click and follow them on the Twitter.
Do you want to take me on in FanDuel? Well, do ya!? Ok, ok, here's the link if you do.
Make sure you aren't starting any dudes who aren't playing by checking out our Week 2 Injury Report.
Ok, enough of that. Here is some fake football schtuff:
Cam Newton: Really, if he doesn't completely fall apart against the multiple disguised blitzes of Dom Capers lead by Fabio, then his stock rises considerably. I'm on the fence right now with him. His upside is great, but I'm worried about his inconsistency. If he can pull out a halfway decent game against Green Bay he should be pretty safe to use as your sole backup.
James Starks/Ryan Grant: Week 1 was all Starks as far as amount of time on the field and productivity and I don't think that is going to change, hence my high ranking this week, but this week should help shore up the idea that Grant is more of a handcuff than a committee member.
Saints Receivers: I'm a big Lance Moore fan this year, but he got off to a slow halt with his groin injury. Let's hope this week it's not a growing injury (I am so funny). If he starts and plays the whole game we should have a little clarity on that situation. I believe if everyone is healthy (fat if) Meachem, Moore and Graham will be the guys to own there. We'll see if that is how it plays out today.
Antonio Brown/Emmanuel Sanders: Brown saw the bulk of the targets last week, but Sanders made the most of the few he received. My horse in this race right now is Sanders, but if Brown gets close to 9 targets again and Sanders gets 3, well, I'll have to change my thinking.
Donald Jones/David Nelson: Jones was on the field last week a lot more than Nelson, 63 plays to 35. I'm interested in the Bills offensive progress this week. They were on point last week and under Chan Gailey have the opportunity to carry some fantasy points, but I'd like to see some consistency and hopefully for a #2 receiver to step up.
Percy Harvin: The 39 yards put up by Donovan McNabb last week was just depressing. And for some reason Percy Harvin didn't see the field on running plays. Yes, he may not need to be out there for them to run, but they seem to be telegraphing their plays, but anyway. I'm hoping to see a lot more targets for their best receiver this week. I'll start getting a little worried if he doesn't.
Shonn Greene: He didn't show much against the Cowboys, but also wasn't in the best of positions to succeed. This week the Jags offense won't be able to do nearly as much as the Cowboys so the Jets should be close or in the lead for much of the game. That should give Greene more opportunities to run. If he gets the opportunities and does nothing with them then it's time to start biting your nails. Or someone elses so you don't mess up yours.
Earl Bennett/Johnny Knox: They aren't in direct competition, but with Roy Williams most likely out it will be interesting to see how they are used since Williams should be demoted at some point for being old. Devin Hester is still on the field way too much as well, but thems the breaks. Knox and Bennett are the only two I think can have fantasy relevance and I'm hoping they start to dominate the targets.
Jared Cook: I'm not sure how much we'll get out of this game if the Baltimore defense dominates, but if the Titans can get something going I hope they try harder to get Cook involved. Him and Britt are easily their best receivers and should be targeted 1st and 2nd, let's see if that happens. If not I'll have to start waning on my Cook love. And burn my I'm cooking with Cook BBQ apron.
Dwayne Bowe: The Chiefs offense without Weis coordinating them has been pretty offensive. Bowe isn't going to do what he did last season, but he's still a good receiver. Can Cassel get him the ball? I think they'll be behind to the Lions high powered offense and will need to throw it quite a bit. If Bowe can't piece together a good game in that scenario then we might have a problem.
Indianapolis Offense: I have no faith in the Manningless Colts, but I'm not willing to drop them all quite yet. We need to see what kind of value we have here first. Last week they were just beat all the hell up by the Texans and I don't think we learned much, except what we already knew, that they sucked without Peyton. Collins didn't have much time to learn the offense or even play in the preseason, so maybe against the Browns we can get a better picture of how they are going to look here on out.
Kevin Ogletree: It's looking more likely that Dez Bryant won't play (stay tuned, he's a game time decision) and Ogletree might get the start. I've always thought Ogletree had some ability and it will be interesting to see how he plays. That's all I have to say about that.
Willis McGahee: I really didn't like what I saw out of McGahee week 1, but he will get the chance to be the guy in week 2 with Knowshon Moreno most likely out. The Bengals defense isn't horrid, but if you are the #1 running back, getting all of the work, you better be able to put up at least flex startable fantasy numbers.
Patriots Tight Ends: Herkowski put up huge numbers in Miami, but how valuable will they both be from week to week? The Chargers pass defense is tough, but they consistently are beat by tight ends. It's going to be hard to keep both out of the top ten tight end rankings each week until something changes. We'll see if anything changes this week.
Owen Daniels: The Texans ran the ball a whole lot and Andre Johnson saw most of the few passing targets. The Dolphins should put up more of a fight than the Colts and Kevin Walter is out so we should see much more from Daniels. If not, there is something wrong in Whoville.
Jacquizz Rodgers: The backup position behind Michael Turner is pretty fluid right now. Jason Snelling had 2 runs and 6 targets and was on the field for 36 plays. Rodgers was at 2, 5, 22. Plus, Jacuzzi had 2 red zone looks to Snelly's zero. If Rodgers' numbers rise and Snelling's fall in this game, I think that may be the direction they are going.
Lance Kendricks: I'm hoping his week 1 drops were rookie jitters and I believe they were. He has shown good hands in the past and that isn't just going to go away. He is set up to have a very nice rookie season if he can get his head screwed on right.
Hot Links:
As usual, Evan Silva's Week 2 matchup article over at Rotoworld is a must read every week.
Our old Yahoo pal Andy Behrens takes a look at week 1 in his article Five up, five down: A plea for patience, a call for panic. Read it and leave a comment that has nothing to do with football.
This young up and coming writer has a detailed Targets and Touches article that you should read.
The Cold Hard Football Facts take a look at today's slate of games.
I heard an interview with Patton Oswalt the other day where he said he watches Gale Sayers highlights to help him write. Yeah, he writes comedy. That's how good Gale Sayers is.
This is old, but very much worth the read. Malcolm Gladwell, author and darn good thinker, is interviewed by ESPN and you'll get smarter just by clicking here.
The NY Times Fifth Down Blog takes a look at the Week 2 Matchups.
For all you Dynasty leaguers out there you should take a look at Chris Wesseling's column Dynasty Hot Sheet.
FanDuel is putting out some great stuff and the winner of our The Next Great Fantasy Football Writer Josh Vitale is doing his thang over there as well! Check him out!
Pro Football Weekly has a look at the Ten Most Intriguing Players in week 2.
Our friends over at Sharapova's Thigh take a look at week 2 for fantasy. Check it and don't, if you can help it, wreck it.
Carl does some stuff below.


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