Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 12
June 11, 2015
Quick Note on ‘Jurassic Park’ and Feminism
Over at the Federalist, Mollie Hemingway has a great essay on the liberal freak-out over femininity in Jurassic World and MH points out that the character arc of Bryce Dallas Howard in World mirrors that of Alan Grant in Park: An obsessive careerist who’s resistant to children is broken down and comes to appreciate the value of family life.
Just one note: In the book, Grant’s character is very different. The Grant of the novel is a widower who loves children and regrets not having had them before his wife died. In the movie, Ellie Saddler is his paramour, but in the book, she’s his grad student protege and she’s engaged to a medical doctor back on the mainland who’s her own age. Grant thinks of her more like a kid sister whose happiness and success he’s personally invested in. And in the book, Grant is great with kids. He’s the only adult in the story who knows how to talk to them and relate to them.
I mention this because it’s just one more example of how brilliant the Jurassic Park screenplay is, deviating from the novel where needed, so that it creates tension and character arcs that wouldn’t have been as interesting on the page, but which enrich the adaptation.
Stiles on FIFA
Galley Bro Andrew Stiles is writing for Acculturated now, too. And it is awesome. His first piece is a review of United Passions, the FIFA movie:
Of all the criminal misdeeds alleged to have occurred on Blatter’s watch, there is perhaps no greater testament to FIFA’s institutional depravity than the existence of this film.
I’ll dispense with the standard “SPOILERS!” disclaimer, because who cares? You’re not going to see United Passions in theaters. Are you? Please don’t. Imagine watching an actual soccer game on replay when you already know it’s going to end in a 0-0 tie, with considerable extra time added on for all the “injuries.” Download it illegally if you must. FIFA’s lawyers are preoccupied at the moment.
June 10, 2015
About Those Transgender Numbers
I’ve mentioned before that the number pushed by trans activists is that 0.3 percent of the population is transgendered. This seems high–incredibly high–because it would mean that there’s one trans person for every five homosexuals in America, and I’m not sure that comports with anyone’s anecdotal experience.
But Steve Sailer points out a piece in the New York Times which tries to hang a real number on the trans population by using Census data for 2010, looking at the raw numbers of people who’d changed their name from one seeming-gender to another (89,667 people) and from one sex to another (21,833).
As Sailer points out, by those metrics, the trans number is somewhere between 0.007 percent and 0.029 percent of the population. What this suggests is that whatever the real number is, it’s so tiny that it will be difficult to pinpoint with any precision. It’s just too small.
Also, that it is insane that the American media has push the transgender narrative the way they have over the last couple of years. Here are some comparative numbers:
The Census estimates that there are 324,000 Wiccans in America, as of 2008). Back in 2001, the American Religious Identification Survey found that there were 22,000 Americans who practices Santeria; 33,000 who identified as “Druids”; 55,000 Scientologists; and 84,000 members of the Baha’i faith. This is the order of magnitude we’re talking about with transgenderism.
But when’s the last time you saw any of these groups having their cause pressed on the front page of the New York Times?
June 9, 2015
Jurassic Park = Awesome
Two things:
(1) I have a piece over at Acculturated about the greatness of Jurassic Park. The nub of the argument is that the dinosaurs are actually the good guys.
(1.a) I kid. It’s the Enlightenment that’s the bad guy.
(2) This piece is really just a pile on to Ari Schulman’s great New Atlantis piece of a few years back.
(3) You remember the first draft of the the Jurassic World script had dinosaur commandos in it, right? Because that’s clearly what’s going on in the trailer with Starlord and his raptor-like dino buddies.
June 8, 2015
Schism Watch
The Francis Effect gets better every week! Here’s Michael Brendan Dougherty with the latest roundup:
Recently Vatican officials held a conference on climate change. The invited speakers included economist Jeffrey Sachs and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. The former has been a noted opponent of the church on a number of issues, and even promotes abortion as a “low-risk” intervention to reduce fertility, as part of an effort to reduce the global population. When Catholic and pro-life journalists sent questions to Archbishop Sánchez Sorondo, one of the conference’s organizers, he responded with a breathtaking glibness that reads like a mid-2000s contribution to DailyKos.
When asked simple questions by pro-lifers about the wisdom of the church offering those men a platform, Sorondo said, “The Tea Party and all those whose income derives from oil have criticized us.” He castigated the questioner by saying that Sachs and Moon “don’t even mention abortion or population control. They speak of access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.” What does this Vatican official think is meant by “reproductive rights”?
But Sorondo’s nasty, conspiratorial response was outdone by Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Her response to pro-lifers accused the questioner of being a defective Catholic who must only be concerned with human dignity between conception and birth, a clichéd rhetorical attack that should be beneath a woman of her station, let alone a representative of the Vatican. She also accused the critics of being in the pocket of energy industry lobbyists. Does no one else find this unseemly? Her high-handedness and open partisanship were astounding: “I am appointed by the pope and responsible directly to him. I’m afraid that leaves you and your cohort out in the cold.”
About Serena
If you wanted to have an argument about the greatest women’s player of all time, there are really only three names: Margaret Court, Steffi Graf, and Serena Williams.
But is Serena were to win the Grand Slam this year, would that end the argument? I don’t think so, as of right now, but I’m willing to be convinced.
Monty Python is *really* problematic on Trans issues
I know everyone like to think of Monty Python as the beau ideal of sophisticated humor, but I’d totally forgotten about this bit from Life of Brian, which presages the current moment of transphobia:
As Santino would say: Can you even? I hope apologies are forth coming. This isn’t humor. It’s hate.
June 3, 2015
The Hottest Take on Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner
Comes from . . . Hot Air?
Empowerment through adversity proved a winning ticket here; and while I can’t pretend to understand what she went through, I do believe God gives you only what you can handle. That common ground, to me – and probably many other conservatives – is more important than the clothes (or lack thereof) someone has on their back.
With the momentum from this announcement and affiliation, Catilyn inadvertently gave the Republican Party something it desperately needs more of – “street cred,” simply put, an understanding sense of humanity.
If the party overall was to warm up to these “differences” and use them as a broader tool to crush problems (not people) that really matter – like insurmountable national and student debt, ever-increasing national security threats and domestic encroachments on Constitutional liberties – Democrats would stand no chance.
This is Jezebel-level analysis. Ugh.
June 2, 2015
Transgender News Tip
Watch the Wikipedia page for the 400 meter sprint over the coming days. The page was recently edited to add the following line about the world record time for women:
The current women’s world record is held by Marita Koch, with a time of 47.60 seconds. However Caitlyn Jenner is the fastest woman’s performer of all time, running a time of 47.51 in 1976 while competing under the name Bruce Jenner.
After this line was added, the page went through a flurry of revisions before the line was stricken and moved over to the Talk section, where the following comment now resides:
Caitlyn Jenner ran a 47.51 at the 1976 Olympics, a best of all time for women in the event. At the time, she went by the name Bruce. I feel it would be extremely transphobic to erase her identity and belittle her accomplishments by failing to mention this time. Although the IAAF has not, and likely will not, ratify Caitlyn’s time as a world record, it deserves mention here as an all-time woman’s best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.235.91.193 (talk) 15:40, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
This is an obvious point of conflict. If Bruce Jenner was always a woman, even when he was a man, then wasn’t he competing in the wrong category at the Olympics? If not, why not? Should he be allowed to keep his medals? If so, why?
Some enterprising reporter ought to call up Glenn Kessler and some of the other “fact checkers” and ask them if it is true that Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner is–as a factual matter–a woman and, if she is, ask them to fact-check the date on which she became a woman.
Their answers would be deeply revealing.
