Saturday Entertainment: Gorn To Be Wild

About the last thing I figured I'd be doing here is embedding a video of a commercial, but there's a good reason for this one. It's a video game commercial that features William Shatner in a parody from one of the more famous (or infamous, depending on your artistic sensibilities) scenes in the original Star Trek series. If you don't recognize it, and who could blame you, check out the Wired article a friend steered me to where I first saw it:

Sadly, this was one of those episodes where the story was more than the special effects and costume budgets of the time could plausibly portray. The original fight scene was hilarious by modern day standards, though at the time I suspect it was about the best they could do. After all, they were trying to have a personal combat between Kirk and a creature far stronger than he was that lasted more than five seconds and didn't end with Kirk a puddle of goo on the ground. Quite the dramatic quandary.

The story of that episode, "Arena", at least as it was presented in the James Blish adaptation that I remember vividly to this day, was one that impressed me by its ambitions. The idea that Kirk, as a military commander, would spare an enemy when he had the chance to have them destroyed, and preferred trying to negotiate with them when they'd savagely attacked a Federation outpost was a thought nearly as foreign to most Americans back then as it seems to be today. Gene Roddenberry, who was a World War II veteran, perhaps understood the implications of both war and negotiation better than most people in this day of professional expeditionary forces. When a President is applauded for not negotiating with a country that isn't actually harming us but is doing something we don't approve of, as George W. Bush was with Iran, then I think maybe there are a few people who ought to watch the end of that episode and think about what real courage in the face of an enemy is. Often in war, being humane is the toughest thing to do.

Afterword: Believe it or not, Mythbusters looked into the plausibility of the "Gorn cannon" from "Arena".

Punctuated Political Equilibrium

Caption: Stephen Jay Gould. I'm not sure that he wanted his work applied to the sphere of politics, but it could be.

Image credit: Kathy Chapman/Wikimedia

Too bad Stephen Jay Gould didn't manage to live long enough to see this:

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson reversed his opposition to gay marriage on Thursday, joining a swell of moderate Democrats to do so recently as public support for gay marriage has grown.

Bill Nelson reverses opposition to gay marriage

Which, when you add it to the recent conversions of Republican Senators Rob Portman and Mark Kirk (IL), and Democratic Senators Tom Carper (DE), Bob Casey (PA), and Kay Hagan (NC), looks like there's a whole lot of evolution going on regarding this issue.

Back in the 1980s, Dr. Gould had proposed that evolution happens mostly in spurts, when something in the ecosystem changes. That idea was known as punctuated equilibrium. Many other biologists, Richard Dawkins being one of the more prominent, felt that this wasn't true, that evolution is just something that mostly happens gradually.

At least in the case of political ecosystems, it looks like Gould was right. Folks sure are evolving quickly, now that the ecosystem has changed.

Bizarre Headline Of The Day

Irony can be both cruel and painful sometimes:

NRA instructor Eugene Kenny would have joined his fellow gun-rights supporters at the state Capitol Wednesday—if he hadn’t accidentally shot himself in the foot.

...

Kenny, a 49-year-old licensed National Rifle Association instructor who leads training classes in pistol and rifle use, delivered his arguments in the front foyer of the two-family Edgewood Avenue house where he rents an upstairs apartment in the Edgewood neighborhood.

Despite Mishaps, NRA Instructor Blasts Bills

I sometimes wonder if anyone on Eugene Kenny's side of this debate even has a sense of irony. The guy is a living reminder of how dangerous firearms are to the people who own them. Yes, I'm sure none of the provisions of the law he was arguing against would have spared him that round through his foot, but when people fight this hard to be able to keep dangerous things in their houses with no more restrictions, it does make you wonder just what, if anything, is on their minds.

(h/t Joshua Holland.)

Isolation And What Follows

Here's an example of why I was interested that Chris Hayes now has his own prime time show on MSNBC:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In it, Hayes interviews Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and three people you've probably never heard of about how the sequestration is affecting Americans who don't live in DC. In addition to the extraordinary step of interviewing people who have some local knowledge of how it's affecting them, he also got some intelligent commentary out of Ezra Klein.

What struck me most about this conversation is mostly contained in the second segment, where Hayes mentions that one of the things Congress is complaining about is that the White House has cut back on tours. Of all the things we don't need. Then, one of his guests, Heather McGhee, stated what is probably obvious to most of us who don't live or work in the vicinity of DC:

"The issue behind this is the donor class in Washington, and that little goody [the White House tours] is what goes to donors."

And later:

Hayes: "Is there a point where the effects of austerity go from being invisible to being visible, where the folks in DC wake up?"

McGhee: "It becoming visible to people out in communities is one thing. It becoming visible, beyond White House tours, to the people who are decision makers is a completely different thing. What more visibility do you need than 20 million people who are un- or underemployed?"

[Those are my attempts at transcription, by the way, not MSNBC's.]

It really is, as she concluded, a democracy question, as in how much longer can our country go on when the needs of its citizens are so clearly beyond the attention span of the people who run it? At Corrente, Lambert Strether refers to DC as Versailles, the isolated and largely dysfunctional seat of the French government at the time of the revolution. That isolation has been a subject of discussion here a time or two, as well.

And no, I don't know the answer to my question. I hope that when change happens it won't be of the sort that obviated Versailles, but at this point I'm not optimistic. Too many people need to learn too many things for that to happen.

Twitter Message Of The Day

Harry Shearer summarizes our national priorities in 140 characters or fewer:

Twitter message by Harry Shearer, April 2, 2013

I've remarked a time or two just how bizarre and self-contradictory our spending priorities have been. Still, I think the point about solar is particularly telling. It's by no means certain, but it seems to me that if we had continued on with conservation and alternative energy in the 1980s, instead of deciding that the best course was to engage in continual war in the Middle East in the name of keeping our oil options open, we probably wouldn't have had an Al Qaeda problem or the last four wars to deal with. Or is it five? I lose track sometimes.

Quote Of The Day

Usually, quotes of the day here at Slobber And Spittle are statements that I agree with to some degree. I'm sad to say, this isn't one of them. Today's QOTD comes from attorney Wylie Stecklow, who represented two women who were abused by then New York Police Department Captain Christopher McCormack, who has since been promoted to Deputy Inspector:

Lawyer Wylie Stecklow, who represented Corbin and another arrested protester, Robin Wilson, called McCormack’s subsequent promotion “a prime example of failing upward,” which he said “happens too often with the NYPD.”

McCormack is expected to testify at the stop-and-frisk trial in Manhattan federal court about allegations that he was secretly recorded telling a Bronx cop to stop “black males” between 14 and 21 to fight crime in the Mott Haven section.

‘Taped’ cop cost city 78G

I don't think of this as failing upwards. That term, to me, implies that the individual failed to achieve the goals set out for him, but was promoted anyway. It's pretty clear, given the cases Mr. Wylie refers to, including this one, that McCormack did exactly what was expected of him, and was promoted for it. In none of those cases has anyone received more than a mild penalty. In that case, the one I linked to, the police officer in question had a long history of that sort of behavior.

It's hard to see this as anything other than employees fulfilling their responsibilities to the satisfaction of their bosses.

Google Is Watching

This is what greeted me when I tried to log into this blog from a remote location:

Creepy. I suppose I should be reassured that Google is making sure that I am who I say I am, and that my blogging job hasn't been taken over by a spam bot, but it isn't. It's also pretty clear that Google records where I log in from, and keeps that information at least a couple of weeks.

In a world where it's hard to avoid surveillance no matter where you are or what you're doing, this is not at all reassuring. I'm sure I'm just old fashioned, but moments like this give me an overwhelming urge to "anonymize".

Smileworthy Events

Things haven't been too fun lately, for a lot of us. I'm not going to try to explain why. If you don't feel that way, you should count yourself very lucky.

Still, I've seen a couple of things today that ought to induce a smile or two. The first is at Naked Capitalism. Go to today's links, and scroll down the the "antidote de jour". If that doesn't bring a smile to your face, then I suspect you've had a really bad day, and I'm sorry.

The second is a bit more subtle, and this blurb explains it:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As I mentioned somewhat obliquely recently, MSNBC has done its best to be the "other" Fox News, a place where one could reliably be told how great the Democrats were and how awful the Other Guys are. It's the place where they hired "news anchor" Al Sharpton, who had announced that he wouldn't criticize President Obama. I don't care how good a President is, there will be times when he (or she) deserves criticism. I would make no such vow regarding anyone I supported for President, because, as we saw even with Jill Stein, my favored candidate last time, there is no reason to think that any candidate will do everything the way I'd want him to. If you're not willing to criticize, you're not a journalist. You're a propagandist.

MSNBC is also the network that fired Phil Donahue for telling a truth that the Democrats were uncomfortable admitting back in 2002 - that the basis for our war with Iraq was bogus.

All of which tells me that it's amazing Chris Hayes got this chance. He's a rare thing in television news - someone who loves the intellectual challenge of discussing an issue beyond the conventional view of party politics. Since the departure of Dylan Ratigan, he seems to be the only reporter there who is willing to discuss topics, and points of view, that MSNBC's advertisers might be uncomfortable with. In short, the guy's a journalist, and a good one. That's so rare in television news these days that even thoughtful conservatives ought to find his show interesting.

I don't get cable television, but I'll try to tune in somehow. Meanwhile, if you have cable, I recommend you give it a look.

I Get E-mails

This is precious. I received this e-mail at the account I use for this blog. I probably have used it a time or two to communicate with Democratic politicians for one reason or another, but I wouldn't join a list of supporters using this identity. Plus, as I've explained before, I never do financial transactions using this identity. Yet, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent me several e-mails like this recently:

No, my name is not "Abfxvrhxdue". We can confirm that much. It makes you wonder how many others on their "supporters" list are similarly fictional.

Sunday Photo

If it weren't Sunday, I suppose I'd have called this "Shooting the Moon". Today was a busy day, which is often how things work out for me. I shot this photo toward the end of the day, because the sky was unusually clear for this time of year, and the Moon was almost full:

Image credit: Photo taken and processed by Cujo359

I enhanced the contrast of the raw photo a bit, which makes the sky look blacker than it actually was (it was early evening, so there was still a bit of sunlight).

Something I'm noticing in these pictures is how different the Moon's features look depending how full it is. For instance, compare it to this photo that I took on March 18:

See how the craters are most visible near the terminator in this photo? In the new one above, they're most visible near the "edge" of the Moon. That's not really surprising. In the first photo, the Sun is almost directly overhead of the craters near the middle of the Moon, so they don't cast as much shadow.

Of course, some of this is due to the limitations of the camera - how much light it needs to see in order to provide a good contrast, etc. Plus, there's probably some performance issue with the photographer, too.

I suppose if I take enough photos, we'll be able to see all the craters on the near side.

As always, click on the picture to enlarge. Hope yours was a good Sunday.