The Death of the Journalist

-- or at least the journalist columnist.


Since the rise of blogging -- and, particularly, the rise of its respectability, so that we get serious scholars and experts willing to blog -- I've become more aware of the paucity of interesting and insightful, or even correct, thinking in official newspaper columns. Here's two recent examples.

Screenwriter Craig Mazin took apart an article criticizing residual payments for screenwriters by columnist Brooks Barnes of the New York Times in his blog. While there are certainly a lot
ways to compensate writers for their work, and there's no reason not to discuss them, the column was simply poorly researched (essentially echoing bullshit studio press releases about how hard they have it, the kind of press releases that say ludicrous things like My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn't turn a profit) and thinking that would've made me groan if I saw it in an undergrad philosophy paper. Obviously, I might be a little biased here, so I'll leave it at that.


Yesterday Slate posted an article regarding the draft, essentially arguing that an all-volunteer army is incapable of maintaining the manpower levels required for extended overseas operations -- thus we either need to institute a draft or (I take it what the author's really trying to get at) get out of Iraq. The problem I habve with this article is that it's filled with the same kind of generic, uninformative and uninteresting pap that so much of mainstream journalism is.

Compare to Freakonomics author Steven Levitt's recent column, now being hosted at the New York Times. This article is full of interesting insights and new ways of looking at the problem, not merely a rehash of ideas that were tired decades ago. I thought this quote from the article was particularly nice:

A draft is essentially a large, very concentrated tax on those who are drafted.

Because it points to a core part of the issue: what the draft does is allow us to not pay our soldiers market value for their labor and the risks they take. If we keep to the all-volunteer army we have to raise salaries, benefits, and moderate the sacrifices our soldiers make. But if we institute a draft, we not only get a bunch of cheap soldiers, but we also can keep the price of our volunteer soldiers lower, since we can simply replace them with what amounts to slave labor.

When I was in the service I got about 15-16 thousand a year after four years (or something close to that). Not terrible and the benefits are nice, but the sacrifices are immense too. Little to no control over where you're stationed and a lot of restrictions on your personal life. I felt that the U.S. Army, and probably other branches, was relying almost wholly on patriotism to get and keep enlisted soldiers. After all, almost all of the guys that you'd most like to keep would easily be able to get out and go into law enforcement, which is compensated much better and lets you live where you want to live.

And that was in peacetime! I can only imagine that this is even more the case now when we've got our troops trying to enforce the peace in a country much better armed and more volatile than L.A., but getting nowhere near the pay of an L.A. cop.

A volunteer army forces us to pay soldiers what they feel is sufficient compensation -- and that puts the tax on us, instead of the guys we're sending in harm's way.

Woohoo!

Jaru left on Saturday morning instead of Friday morning so we managed to catch The Simpsons Friday night.

The first thirty minutes of the film was like the D-Day of comedy -- it reminded me of the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan but just replace action with laughter.

After that it got more into plotted comedy instead of rapid-fire random jokes, but I think that's usually necessary for a 90 minute or so film.

Why South Park is better than The Simpsons

The Simpsons Movie is coming out this week and that gives me hope -- hope that it'll finally get back into syndication 2 to 4 episodes per day on various channels like it used to back in Jersey.

After moving to Florida we were dropped to having The Simpsons in syndication on only one channel, and that maybe once per day. As of right now the only Simpsons is what comes on Sunday night -- this despite there being 19 years of Simpsons available, five years of which where we haven't even seen any new episodes.

That's why South Park is better than The Simpsons. I can watch 2 or more episodes of South Park every night.

Moreover, this points to a problem endemic to network TV. If I miss an episode of Lost I've missed it, whereas if I miss an episode of John from Cincinnati I can catch it late on the Pacific Coast feed, or a couple other times during the week. That means that I simply don't watch Lost or Heroes or Battlestar Galactica, and instead studiously avoid all mentions of the programs until they come out on DVD a year later.

Anyway, despite the movie coming out this week, I'll have to wait until late August to see it since part of being married is that you go to see The Simpsons together and Jaru flies to Taiwan this Friday.

Our Own Countess Bathory

I noticed that after our cat eats her dry cat food she immediately starts licking herself all over -- i.e. taking a bath.

And I'm thinking that here she has crunchy little bits of IAMS stuck to her tongue and is now working all that kibble into her fur. Who knows, perhaps that's how the hairball care part works.

But it occurred to me that this is evolved behavior, and thus developed long before cats could eat food in convenient kibble form -- that is, they evolved to do this back when they ate live rats, birds, and baby bunnies. And what they'd be bathing in then is the blood of their devoured prey.

Rutgers Philosophy Flashbacks

Now that we're living high in Virginia we've got TV again -- including HBO.

Which means I can watch Flight of the Conchords -- a show about a pair of musicians from New Zealand who have a much harder time distinguishing e's from i's than Gary and perform music which I'm not quite sure would qualify as danmusic or not. BTW, HBO has the first epsiode available on the web via its site -- listen carefully for the Australia name check towards the last third.

Then, 90 minutes later, catch a show about surfing.

The Allegory of the Cave: 2007

via Wonkette -- a commenter responds to CNN pointing out that Ron Paul's strong showing in online polls doesn't seem to be borne out in scientific, real-world polls:

It is only “some kind of joke” if you watch the national media and get your information there. The only real truth is online. Get a clue. --Posted By Michael, Knoxville TN : June 7, 2007 2:15 pm

Virginia Update

We arrived in Lexington VA just under two weeks ago, and have been getting ourselves arranged. There's this 10-15 year long period of one's life where it seems you move once per year--and grow to loathe it. Eventually your hatred of moving exceeds your hatred of wherever you're currently located, and that makes it your home.

The photo was taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's the most American national park since it is entirely designed around a highway. It's a gorgeous drive, but they've actually got quite a few gorgeous drives around here that don't even need national park level protection.

The theater in town has three screens. So please don't taunt me with the array of films you've seen recently. We just got Delta Farce in this week...

I've got a new advertising slogan: "In the stix? Go NetFlix!"

In addition to the moving, I've been busy for happier reasons too. I've received two screenwriting assignments. They'll both be low budget direct-to-DVD things, but, in addition to getting paid, one of them looks highly likely to go into production at the end of August or in September. Appropriately enough, my first produced film will be a family film, rated G or PG. For this I'm working off the director's outline--so that makes it a little less work and helps, since I've not worked in the genre. This director is also taking one of my others scripts around to try and get it made.

The other assignment is more in my mode, but less certain that it'll get produced.

And I've got to do some re-writes on a recent screenplay--so this'll keep me busy for the summer.

But Does it Have a Cup Holder?

UK newspapers are better than American newspapers:

The World's Fastest Loo

Truth in Labelling

We'll be rolling out for Virginia in a couple of weeks and one thing I look forward to is being close enough to the Atlantic that cod will be a pretty standard fish again.

Living here you get a lot of catfish and some tilapia. The tilapia isn't bad, but the catfish can often have an odor one can taste.

In fact, Jaru informed me that in Taiwan the word for catfish means garbage fish -- and that she was a little surprised that we actually eat the garbage fish here in the States. Frankly, I'm a little surprised too.

Garbage fish is not the only highly accurately named food the Chinese have.

A while back I asked Jaru what the Mandarin word for MSG was, figuring that it was a staple of Chinese food and that they likely haven't been using the chemical term for untold centuries.

Before I continue, I'd like to mention one little anecdote: Jaru came back from eating at a restaurant and she was feeling a little ill -- like her blood pressure was amped. She suspected the restaurant was using MSG. She suspected this because the food tasted too good.

Which brings me back to the Chinese name for MSG -- The Essence (Chi/Soul) of Flavor.

Step 23 -- Spreading the word

via Bruce Cordell's blog:

1. go to http://www.google.com
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type New York in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type London in the second box (the "to" box) & hit "get
directions" on the same line
6. scroll down to step #23

Here's a direct link to the instructions if you're too lazy to type.

Why 2007 is better than 1907

I don't need to wear sock suspenders.

Mandatory Confessions

After the recent business with the British Sailors, it seemed to me that a good way to undercut this sort of strategy and help protect your troops in the field would be to simply have a standing, and very public, order that captured troops must agree to sign any confessions and make any statements that their captors require.

By making it official, it stops being about whether or not your soldiers are tough enough to resist, or even whether they were coerced into finally revealing the secret truth, and instead just about them following standard policy.

When a captured soldier is put on TV, the Prime Minister or President can come out and say that they're doing their job -- and that if they'd been ordered to admit to killing Kennedy and making blood sacrifices to Satan, they'd say that too -- because the purpose of the general directive is to get the valuable government property of these soldiers back home.