Ted Rabinowitz's Blog, page 26

Some Tired Thoughts on a Beloved President

John F. Kennedy died before I was born. He was president for three years. His presidency included one profound win (the Cuban Missile Crisis), one inspiring side show (the Space Race) one disaster (the Bay of Pigs, which arguably precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis) and the start of US involvement in Vietnam. And now I'm tired.

Tired of the relentless coverage of every aspect of the Kennedy family. Tired of the annual chewing and re-chewing of his life and times. Tired of the Kennedy veneration; tired of the Kennedy hatred. Tired of the assumption that this was in some way the most important event of the 20th century. Tired of the conspiracy theories. Tired of the leering docudramas about JFK and Marilyn Monroe, JFK and Marlene Dietrich, "Camelot," Bobby, Jack, Jackie, Teddy, Ted, the Kennedy curse, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam. It's done. If there was a conspiracy, good luck, you've had 50 years to prove it and it hasn't happened yet. The women he slept with are now dust. His policies have all played out in full, in some cases well, in others poorly.

Mr. & Mrs. Baby Boomer, please let him go.

Mentat Morning Mantra

It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of the bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stain, the stain becomes a turn-off.
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.



Frank Herbert, fellow coffee drinker.

My brother just told me that-

-my blog sounds like I'm an old man muttering "Get off my lawn, you kids!"

I'm at peace with that.

Grrr.

AoS - It Is Finished

Well, gang - I've finished watching the "The Hub," the most recent episode of Agents of Shield. So I've seen five episodes. And unfortunately, I think that's about it. The problems haven't been fixed.  

If it had been anyone else's name on the show, I would probably have given it a pass from the start. But because it was Joss Whedon, I stuck with it. And now I'm a little disappointed. Ah, well. It can't all be Buffy, I guess.

Prank Abercrombie & Fitch? Hell, Yes

If you're reading this blog, the odds are better than 50% that at some point in your childhood, you were the one on the outside looking in - nerd, dork, geek, loner, chubster, etc. etc. If that's the case, then Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't want you wearing their clothes. The company has made some amazingly condescending statements, and one fellow got fed up with it.

Watch his response here, and consider it for yourself.

Franz Boas, Badass

Franz Boas is kind of a hero. He's "the father of American anthropology," even though he was born and raised in Germany. When he began studying, the field was filled with grandiose, unscientific theories that mostly promoted the idea that European Man was the pinnacle of human evolution. Boas demanded an empirical approach, free of value judgments promoting one culture over another, and fought his entire life against racism - especially the "scientific racism" that helped promote Nazism. He pioneered research techniques like extended residence with subjects and developing social connections with them, including learning their languages. If you've ever visited the Hall of the Northwest Coast Indians at the American Museum of Natural History, you've seen his work - a series of exhibits devoted to those tribes, without any implication there is a progression from them to a "more evolved" White Man.

He was also kind of a badass, who endured nightmare conditions in Greenland, trekked to the Pacific Northwest to hang with the Kwakiutl, and openly opposed Fascism and Nazism until his death at 84, in 1942.

In nerd F/SF terms, he embodies the kind of empirical, detail-based attitude we should have when portraying alien cultures. But my affection is based on this photo of a serious Berlin-trained scholar working to get a museum exhibit on initiation dances just right.

Excellent Travel Posters

What can I say?

http://www.apillustration.co.uk/shop/fantastic-travel-destinations/

Interstellar trade, Paul Krugman, Caleb Scharf

There's a hoary old trope in space opera - the great galactic merchant family. Their treasure ships sail from world to world, laden with water, oxygen, precious ores and gems. It's a setting that's always bugged me. Let's face it, if you want water, you'll find it in your own star system a thousand times more cheaply than important across light years from somewhere else. Ditto for gold, gems, rare earths, uranium, plutonium, thorium, platinum, etc. etc. etc.

So what would be worth transporting? And how would that be affected by different transport technologies? Well, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and astronomer Caleb Scharf have both considered this very SF problem. Check them out.

http://www.standupeconomist.com/pdf/misc/interstellar.pdf
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2013/10/28/krugmans-theory-of-interstellar-trade/

Back from surgery

So, if you were wondering about the hiatus, I had a teeny tiny operation. But I'm back (as in flat on my) and you may anticipate some more posts relatively soon…assuming that you want them.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pt. 3 "Relationships"

[SPOILER - ish.] So…the plots have tightened up. And the team member who betrays the others - well, we saw it coming, but it still made sense, and it had a nice "real world" ambiguity. The team's reactions to the traitor in their midst was also nicely low-key.

But the things that have bugged me since the beginning - the choice of team members, the lack of depth in their characters, the lack of intra-team interaction between characters like Ward, Fitz and Simmons - none of these have really been addressed.

Now let's do something really, really unfair: Let's compare Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As in Buffy, you have a team of young pretties, accompanied by a middle-aged "mommy" and "daddy": May and Coulson in AoS, Giles and Joyce in BtVS. In AoS it's more about tech than magic; and the regulars are less likely to have special powers. There are a lot of other differences - Coulson's team has a much-more nuanced mission than Buffy and the Scoobies (hide the secrets vs. kill the evil); the contrast between the mundane and the horrible that formed such a huge part of BtVS isn't there; AoS is not a show about teen-agers growing up (what it IS about I'm not sure yet, and I suspect the Whedonites aren't either); and so on.

But there's a huge technical difference between the two, something overlooked that - considering how sharp Whedon usually is about these things - really surprised me. It's this:

The AoS regulars don't have real relationships with one another. BtVS started off with a double love triangle: Xander loved Buffy; Willow loved Xander; Buffy loved Angel; Angel couldn't love Buffy. Giles struggled to assert his authority over Buffy; Buffy rebelled. Buffy struggled to keep her second life secret from Joyce; Joyce used obliviousness to deal with a truth that was too much to handle. Each main character had a unique relationship with every other main character. Does AoS have anything remotely comparable?

Characters are defined by relationships; without constant relationships, the characters are flat at best. What kind of relationships do Fitz and Simmons have with the others? For that matter, what are they to each other? (And no looking at the online bios; that's cheating.) Besides teaching Skye, what kind of relationship does Ward have with her? Or what does May think of Fitz/Simmons? Big blanks to all of those questions. Maybe, after the last episode, you could sort of make a point about Skye looking for a home, and finding it in the heart of the organization that took her parents away…maybe. But that's a pretty late reveal, and nothing else has really dealt with character at all.

So…

Sigh.