Little Victories

Success! Thanks to deft office politicking and expert wrangling I have persuaded the department to scrap my 9am Tuesday tutorials.  This saves me from having to explain immediate annuities to twenty unwashed sex-crazed 20 year-olds before climbing Cardiac Hill (so named for the chances of coronary problems whilst struggling to the top) to tell seventy more unwashed sex-crazed 20-year olds the best way to calculate my odds of dying in the next year.  Maths problems and hill-climbing?  Throw in a Rubik's Cube and it's an episode of the fucking Krypton Factor.

Anyway.  That's all I have to say today.

The King's Speech

 
This is an understated but engaging film in which a lot of exceptionally talented people do very little for the entire run time, and you don't mind.  Rush is fabulous, Firth's at his best, and Bonham Carter manages to remind us all how talented (and beautiful) she is when not being forced into ludicrous shapes by her husband. 

Only Timothy Spall struck a bit of a bum note with his portrayal of Churchill.  Having said that, though, I'm struggling to think of a particularly good portrayal of the man.  Is he just inimitable?  Or has his imitations become their own entity.  In other words, how many actors play Churchill, and how many of them play the best impression of Churchill they've previously seen?

I was also amused by the fact that (according to my sources) the film played a German composition during the titular speech (though presumably the film's name has two meanings, which I like) in which "Bertie" justifies the war.  Furthermore, I'm not sure about how well the overall theme of understanding across the class divide - and the idea that the divide itself is easily negotiated - fit in with the finale's idea that King George VI needed to give a good speech otherwise all the commoners would flee in panic and Hitler would be shopping in Harrods by tea time the next day.

That's a minor niggle, though.  Overall the film plays around very smartly with the ideas of duty and deference.  In particular, it pulls off the fairly difficult juggling act of making us understand and relate to Edward VIII's need for freedom, without side-stepping the issue that considering the situation, his abdication was a monumentally selfish move (Guy Pearce does very well at eliciting both audience sympathy and frustration).   On the one hand, it's true that wealth and power don't guarantee either happiness or freedom.  On the other, he's had one of the most opulent, privileged lifestyles in the entire world for forty-one years under an implicit understanding that he reneges upon the instant it becomes inconvenient.

Anyway.  Little to see, a great deal to think about.  Makes for a nice change.

Friday Muppet Satire

I've been watching a lot of Seinfeld since my parents bought me the first two seasons for Christmas.  Who knew I could just watch this instead, and save myself a lot of time?

The Stupidity Of Evil, Or The Evilness Of Stupidity?

It seems to me that a lot of time is spent arguing about whether Republicans, and indeed politicians in general, are actively aware of it when they lie, or are simply so spectacularly uniformed they don't know that what they're saying is obviously untrue (this is known amongst less polite observers as the "Stupid/Evil Meter").

This isn't something that I think about all that much. Whenever the topic comes up, I'm always reminded of the scene in Iain Bank's Complicity where one character (who I can't name for fear of spoiling the book) argues there is no functional difference between deliberate acts that damage others and those damaging events that occur without intent, but only because those who are responsible for preventing them failed to perform their duties with any diligence.

That's not to say failure can be equated to active mendacity.  I think there's a strong case to be made that wilful neglect can be, though.  Which brings us back to politics.  If a politician advocates pointless or destructive policies because they have failed to consider or investigate its potential ramifications, then they are no less culpable than those that actively hide the truth.

Anyway, this all came back when I started reading about the 112th Congress, and how the Republicans want to run it.

[House] [m]embers offering bills for new programs will have to explain how they will pay for them, not by raising new revenues but by finding other ways to cut costs. Each bill introduced will also have to cite the specific constitutional authority for its contents.

A big exception will be the bill to repeal the health care law that House Republicans plan to bring up next week... Republicans [won't] have to abide by their own new rules that compel them to offset the cost of new bills that add to the deficit; the health care repeal and tax cuts are not subject to this new rule.  

The heath care bit is just the standard gob-smacking hypocrisy we've come to expect from the GOP, obviously, but it's the tax cut part that got me thinking about Complicity.  Aside from a small but vocal minority who are convinced that the War of Independence was fought over taxes and therefore all taxes are bad (a position no less stupid than me arguing our victory in WWII means Germany should become part of Poland), I thought the standard Republican rhetoric is that tax cuts automatically increase revenue, because everyone gets richer and can spend more.

Obviously, that's not true, and so obviously not true it's mathematically provable.  But that's frequently the argument used regardless.

I mention that because the GOP's deliberate choice to exempt tax cuts from their new rules rather implies that they themselves don't have any faith that the cuts are self-paying, or at least have no faith that there's any way to demonstrate it to anyone's satisfaction.  Admittedly, that only holds if the phrase "raising new revenues" refers to new methods for acquiring money, rather than changing the system so the current methods raise more money, but that seems to be the contextual interpretation (feel free to let me know if you disagree).

In other words, it looks like House Republicans have moved from the dial from "Stupid" to "Evil" at the legal level.

Well, they have on the payment issue, anyway.  The "constitutional authority" bit is merely stupid; just one more attempt to treat the Constitution as a simply-written rules manual rather than a complicated mass of differing principles and ideas.  I suppose it's nice to see that the GOP are so intent on following it so religiously, though.

Oh, wait.

King’s measure would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending automatic citizenship for anyone born in the country...  

Though others have called for changing the 14^th Amendment, King said that ending birthright citizenship through statute makes sense because it’s easier to do.

It would be even easier for Senator King to just declare his law has been passed and fuck off to Bermuda.  The problem is that's not how laws work.  The Amendment itself, by the way, says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."  I know the Senate is not the House, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for Boehner's mob to object.

The 112th Congress has been in existence for less than four days.

(h/t to LGM for the links).

P.S. I do have to give the Republicans credit for this, though.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone get out of a campaign promise (with a specific number attached, no less) by claiming it was "a hypothetical" before.  I've seen McArdle do it, obviously, because she's a talentless petulant hack.  First time for an entire political party, though.

A Tale Of Cocktails #8

Poinsettia Holiday

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Ingredients

5 oz champagne
1/2 oz Triple Sec

Dash cranberry juice

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Taste: 6        

Look: 5

Cost: 7
Name: 7
Prep: 8

Alcohol: 3

Overall: 6

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Preparation: Pour in triple sec, then champagne, then cranberry juice into a champagne flute.  Stir.

General Comments: I don't really understand what the name is about.  On the other hand, I do like holidays, so that's something.

Basically, this is fizzy rose wine.  Which is fine, because fizzy rose wine is delicious. The only hints that aught is amiss is an increase of sweetness, and an aftertaste of orange, both of which are entirely welcome. In other words, there's nothing specific that one can criticise this cocktail.  It's just a bit... boring, frankly.

The Holy Cause

Apparently there's this thing called "copyright" which means Zazzle took down my oh-so-hilarious Magneto t-shirt (at least, I assume it was copyright; it might just have been "taste").  In order to make amends with Nemain, who put together the shirt in the first place, I offered an alternative.

This new design is now available for purchase.  I think we can all agree that when it comes to leopards, no given species can be endangered enough...

The Spanish Main And Associated Health Risks

Scene: SpaceSquid is inspecting his new allergy medication.

SS: I like that this stuff has an active ingredient called "acrivastine".  Sounds like something a pirate would use.
Si: Acrivastine?
SS: AcriVAAAASTine!
Si: What would a pirate even be allergic to? They were some pretty tough cookies.
SS: Pieces of eight?
Si: Oh, the humanity!
J-Dawg: Forced to don latex gloves whilst fondling their booty.
Si: Unable to bite the coins to test their authenticity without risking death.
SS: "Yaah!  I be in anaphylactic shock!  'Tis gold true an' pure!"
J-Dawg: It's probably a bit too early for epi pens, too.
SS: Epi cutlasses?
J-Dawg: Ouch!
SS: "Yaargh!  My heart be pierced but me sinuses be clear!"
Sam: Surely parrots would be a more plausible culprit.
SS: Can you get hypoallergenic parrots?
Sam: In 18th century Tortuga?  Good luck.
Si: They'd have to come pre-plucked.
SS: Maybe that's what all the beards were about.  To hide their parrot's shame.
Si: And then it turns out the parrots are allergic to beard hair.
SS: Man, being a pirate was hard.