Last night's talk by Lawrence Lessig was pretty phenomenal. He gave a very effective presentation on the influence of money in politics, basically contending that its most pernicious effect is the obliteration of trust--the people's trust in their government.
You can view the presentation here.
And if you want to join the movement to change congress, you can learn more here.
FYI, Lessig is also the founder of Creative Commons.
31 October 2008
Jeffrey Sachs at the Chicago Humanities Festival
First of all, my hat is off to anyone who can talk coherently for 45 extemporaneous minutes. No podium, no notes, no overheads. An amazing feat.
I really didn't know what to expect from Jeffrey Sachs; I was vaguely aware of him as someone who had "converted" from being a more free-market capitalism guy to a sustainable development guy.
There was no evidence of the free-market capitalism guy at last night's lecture. He spent the first 20 minutes or so of his talk trying to put the current financial crisis in context. He reminded us of the collapse of the Asian bubble in the late 1990s, the subsequent dot.com bubble, and the most recent real estate bubble. All interconnected--nothing about them should have been unpredictable.
From there, he segued into bubbles that he deemed more critical--the climate bubble, the population bubble, and the water scarcity bubble. When these burst, he pointed out, we won't just be looking at a recession.
He made a good case for pumping up our aid to impoverished parts of the world and taking a larger role in helping solve apparently intractable problems. He made connections between climate change, water scarcity, population explosion, and the situation in Darfur. He connected human encroachment on wildlife with the rise in diseases that cross from animals to people (including AIDS and SARS).
And all along the way he pointed to Tuesday's election as the first step to get real traction on these issues. He called Barack Obama "incredibly smart," which is something, coming from a guy who's clearly pretty darned smart himself.
Well, we are all hopeful. But of course the real work starts after Tuesday.
I really didn't know what to expect from Jeffrey Sachs; I was vaguely aware of him as someone who had "converted" from being a more free-market capitalism guy to a sustainable development guy.
There was no evidence of the free-market capitalism guy at last night's lecture. He spent the first 20 minutes or so of his talk trying to put the current financial crisis in context. He reminded us of the collapse of the Asian bubble in the late 1990s, the subsequent dot.com bubble, and the most recent real estate bubble. All interconnected--nothing about them should have been unpredictable.
From there, he segued into bubbles that he deemed more critical--the climate bubble, the population bubble, and the water scarcity bubble. When these burst, he pointed out, we won't just be looking at a recession.
He made a good case for pumping up our aid to impoverished parts of the world and taking a larger role in helping solve apparently intractable problems. He made connections between climate change, water scarcity, population explosion, and the situation in Darfur. He connected human encroachment on wildlife with the rise in diseases that cross from animals to people (including AIDS and SARS).
And all along the way he pointed to Tuesday's election as the first step to get real traction on these issues. He called Barack Obama "incredibly smart," which is something, coming from a guy who's clearly pretty darned smart himself.
Well, we are all hopeful. But of course the real work starts after Tuesday.
Lisa Randall at the Chicago Humanities Festival
Lisa Randall is a rare specimen: a renowned cosmologist who happens to be female. We listened to her give a talk the other night based on her 2005 book Warped Passages, about the possibility of "hidden" dimensions in space-time.
Randall explained that the investigations into additional dimensions are triggered by the desire to make quantum theory consistent with relativity theory. The existence of higher dimensions may explain apparent inconsistencies. One thing that was striking is how the mathematics drives the investigation. For example, "there is nothing in the mathematics that rules out the existence of other dimensions." It reminds me of another talk we went to--last year, I think--where the scientist talked about how there is nothing in the math of physics to explain why we can go forward in time but not backward.
So the work is to a considerable extent mathematical rather than physical (though this is physics). But there's nothing particularly new about that--Einstein used mathematics, too, and it was a long time before his theories could be proved empirically.
Randall claimed that the theories about higher dimensions may well be proved (or disproved) by experiments at the new CERN hadron collider in Switzerland, starting next year.
It is exceedingly hard to imagine higher spatial dimensions, though Randall tried her darnedest to help us do so. She explained that it is much easier to imagine them mathematically than visually. After her talk, I wondered if the whole question of what higher dimensions would look like is meaningless--as the cosmologist Rocky Kolb once said my question--what existed before the universe?--was meaningless after one of his lectures. We can't picture higher dimensions anymore than a point can picture a line. I wondered if the best way to think about dimensions is as projections. For example, you can look at a point as the one-dimensional projection of a line; a square is the two-dimensional projection of a cube; so a cube would be a three-dimensional projection of a four-dimensional object.
Which means there are hidden worlds we can't perceive directly. But that's not new, is it? The microscopic world--was largely hidden from us for most of human history, and even now some of what we know about this world is due to inference rather than direct observation. You could say something similar about the astronomical world.
Anyway, it was all very interesting and thought provoking. One of these days I'll try reading Randall's book, which I bought in 2005 but haven't gotten to yet.
Randall explained that the investigations into additional dimensions are triggered by the desire to make quantum theory consistent with relativity theory. The existence of higher dimensions may explain apparent inconsistencies. One thing that was striking is how the mathematics drives the investigation. For example, "there is nothing in the mathematics that rules out the existence of other dimensions." It reminds me of another talk we went to--last year, I think--where the scientist talked about how there is nothing in the math of physics to explain why we can go forward in time but not backward.
So the work is to a considerable extent mathematical rather than physical (though this is physics). But there's nothing particularly new about that--Einstein used mathematics, too, and it was a long time before his theories could be proved empirically.
Randall claimed that the theories about higher dimensions may well be proved (or disproved) by experiments at the new CERN hadron collider in Switzerland, starting next year.
It is exceedingly hard to imagine higher spatial dimensions, though Randall tried her darnedest to help us do so. She explained that it is much easier to imagine them mathematically than visually. After her talk, I wondered if the whole question of what higher dimensions would look like is meaningless--as the cosmologist Rocky Kolb once said my question--what existed before the universe?--was meaningless after one of his lectures. We can't picture higher dimensions anymore than a point can picture a line. I wondered if the best way to think about dimensions is as projections. For example, you can look at a point as the one-dimensional projection of a line; a square is the two-dimensional projection of a cube; so a cube would be a three-dimensional projection of a four-dimensional object.
Which means there are hidden worlds we can't perceive directly. But that's not new, is it? The microscopic world--was largely hidden from us for most of human history, and even now some of what we know about this world is due to inference rather than direct observation. You could say something similar about the astronomical world.
Anyway, it was all very interesting and thought provoking. One of these days I'll try reading Randall's book, which I bought in 2005 but haven't gotten to yet.
25 October 2008
The Garden
Victor and I went to see this movie last night--the first screening on our 2008 Chicago International Film Festival schedule.
A group of Latinos in South Central LA spent more than a decade tending a 14-acre community garden, until a backroom deal involving a member of the City Council threatened their eviction. While this pretty much is a classic good guys/bad guys story, the movie also manages to convey a lot of the complexities of personality and politics that have been involved. We're not that familiar with LA politics, but we had thought highly of its mayor. The movie made us wonder about him. It also made us wonder how many stories like this take place in the background of Chicago politics. The movie reminds us that we urgently need a different kind of politics.
One of the fun things about seeing movies at the Chicago Film Festival is sometimes the directors, or other key players show up. In this case, director Scott Hamilton Kennedy took questions after the screening. He was wearing a tee shirt with Barack Obama's face on it. It's wonderful to see people who are doing such great things in the flesh.
On the ballot provided by the film festival, we both gave The Garden our highest rating.
A group of Latinos in South Central LA spent more than a decade tending a 14-acre community garden, until a backroom deal involving a member of the City Council threatened their eviction. While this pretty much is a classic good guys/bad guys story, the movie also manages to convey a lot of the complexities of personality and politics that have been involved. We're not that familiar with LA politics, but we had thought highly of its mayor. The movie made us wonder about him. It also made us wonder how many stories like this take place in the background of Chicago politics. The movie reminds us that we urgently need a different kind of politics.
One of the fun things about seeing movies at the Chicago Film Festival is sometimes the directors, or other key players show up. In this case, director Scott Hamilton Kennedy took questions after the screening. He was wearing a tee shirt with Barack Obama's face on it. It's wonderful to see people who are doing such great things in the flesh.
On the ballot provided by the film festival, we both gave The Garden our highest rating.
14 October 2008
Threepenny Opera
We caught this Hypocrites production on the day it closed. We were impressed with the tremendous energy, creativity, and talent on display. The Hypocrites made Threepenny Opera their own while remaining fundamentally true to the original.
This was our first Hypocrites show, but it won’t be the last.
This was our first Hypocrites show, but it won’t be the last.
The Chicago Humanities Festival in Hyde Park
Saturday we went down to Hyde Park for a special program of Chicago Humanities Festival. Usually the festival starts at the end of October and runs through the first couple weeks of November, but this year they scheduled this early taste in Hyde Park. So Victor and I rode our bikes to the Belmont Red Line stop and took the train (with bikes) down to Garfield.
We got up early to try and catch a bird watching group that meets Saturday mornings at 8 in Jackson Park, but the trip ended up taking too long, and we missed the group. But—wow—Jackson Park was beautiful, especially the Japanese Garden. We’re determined to go back.
The first event we attended was in Mandel Hall, a beautiful venue that looks like it used to be a chapel. The speaker, Gary Becker, is a Nobel-Prize winning economist, but his talk wasn’t so great. His thesis was basically that actions to resolve fears have unintended consequences, including the generation of new fears.
Duh.
His theme was involved the importance of education in ameliorating the impact of unexpected consequences (fears). The most interesting data he presented was on the contribution of higher education to higher quality of life in various respects. But the main thesis was simple-minded at best.
Presumably his academic work is more interesting. I can only imagine he believed he had to dumb the stuff down for a general audience.
Next, we entered the Smart Museum of Art for the first time. Looks like a great space. In a classroom there, we listened to Deidre Chetham and Orville Schell, who discussed the new dam on the Yangtze River. Chetham talked about the impact of displacement on families who had lived in the areas that are now submerged. Schell focused more on the bigness of the projects that China is engaging in.
Our third and final event was a performance by the Silk Road Theatre Project of a new verse play by Yusef Komunyakaa, an adaptation of the ancient epic Gilgamesh. I’m afraid Victor fell asleep, but I really enjoyed it. I thought the performers were pretty wonderful.
After this we took a quick tour through at the Hyde Park Art Center, and then had a beautiful ride home. But long. We usually don’t ride more than 5 miles or so. The ride home was about 10 miles.
I was awfully tired the next day.
We got up early to try and catch a bird watching group that meets Saturday mornings at 8 in Jackson Park, but the trip ended up taking too long, and we missed the group. But—wow—Jackson Park was beautiful, especially the Japanese Garden. We’re determined to go back.
The first event we attended was in Mandel Hall, a beautiful venue that looks like it used to be a chapel. The speaker, Gary Becker, is a Nobel-Prize winning economist, but his talk wasn’t so great. His thesis was basically that actions to resolve fears have unintended consequences, including the generation of new fears.
Duh.
His theme was involved the importance of education in ameliorating the impact of unexpected consequences (fears). The most interesting data he presented was on the contribution of higher education to higher quality of life in various respects. But the main thesis was simple-minded at best.
Presumably his academic work is more interesting. I can only imagine he believed he had to dumb the stuff down for a general audience.
Next, we entered the Smart Museum of Art for the first time. Looks like a great space. In a classroom there, we listened to Deidre Chetham and Orville Schell, who discussed the new dam on the Yangtze River. Chetham talked about the impact of displacement on families who had lived in the areas that are now submerged. Schell focused more on the bigness of the projects that China is engaging in.
Our third and final event was a performance by the Silk Road Theatre Project of a new verse play by Yusef Komunyakaa, an adaptation of the ancient epic Gilgamesh. I’m afraid Victor fell asleep, but I really enjoyed it. I thought the performers were pretty wonderful.
After this we took a quick tour through at the Hyde Park Art Center, and then had a beautiful ride home. But long. We usually don’t ride more than 5 miles or so. The ride home was about 10 miles.
I was awfully tired the next day.
29 September 2008
Goodbye, Chicago Tribune
Today, I called to cancel our subscription to the Sunday Chicago Tribune. I wrote this letter (submitted online) to explain why:
My husband and I moved to Chicago about four years ago, and shortly afterward began our subscription to the Chicago Tribune. Only Sundays, because we frankly haven’t time to read the newspaper daily. Like many people, we spend so many hours working during the week, most of our news comes from the radio and internet.
Sundays are different, however, and we’ve enjoyed dedicating our Sunday morning hours to reading the Sunday Tribune and the New York Times. It is with regret that we choose to stop including the Chicago Tribune in this ritual. We cannot continue to support a newspaper that publishes intellectually dishonest editorials.
A number of recent editorials have disturbed us, but the latest, “Scapegoating Markets,” was the last straw.
The headline is ironic. While the editorial argues against scapegoating capitalism as the cause of the current financial crisis, instead, attempts to “increase homeownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent” are scapegoated.
The editorial claims that if deregulation were the problem, “it would be the commercial banks, not the investment banks, that were in trouble,” ignoring the failures of Indy Mac and Washington Mutual, and the shaky status of Wachovia. “The demise of Glass-Steagall turns out to be a boon,” the editorial adds, noting that its absence enabled Bank of America to purchase Merrill Lynch.
The editorial ignores the fact that if the regulations eliminated in the past 20 or so years had still been in place, Merrill Lynch might not have required rescue.
Instead, the editorial blames the current crisis on “an attack on underwriting standards [that] was undertaken by virtually every branch of government.”
Which “underwriting standards” are we talking about? Standards that facilitated discrimination against whole classes of borrowers, including single women and minorities? Redlining of neighborhoods? Certainly U.S. courts and the legislative branch have been instrumental in attempts to eliminate such “standards,” and I hope we are all proud of this.
But where the government has urged relaxation of fiscal lending standards, such relaxation was backed and promoted first by lending industry lobbyists, like—for example—Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager and former president of Homeownership Alliance, a lobbying firm funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Which were (until recently) private corporations, by the way, not “mixed” public-private enterprises as your editorial suggests.)
We thought a lot about whether it’s appropriate to cancel our subscription to a newspaper because of its editorials. They’re just a reflection of opinion, after all, and we wouldn’t cancel a subscription because of a disagreement with a columnist. We think that unsigned editorials are different, though, because they represent the opinion of the newspaper as an institution, and we find we can’t continue to support an institution that demonstrates such low standards. If we want to read editorial fueled by ideology instead of facts, we can find lots of that online. From a newspaper, we expect measured and reality-based news and commentary.
We understand that your newspaper is launching a redesign tomorrow: more pictures, less words.
Good luck with that.
Sincerely,
Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe
In the past couple years, Victor and I have become big fans of the House Theatre, which is noted for its creative presentations of fairly simple stories and its terrifically high energy. At the Chopin Theatre, the House is now performing an earlier work, Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe. While this science fiction tale is perhaps less substantial than runaway success The Sparrow or even The Magnificents (which got less enthusiastic notices, but which we enjoyed very much) both in script and in execution, it remains an appealing story, performed by a talented cast.
Recommended, especially if you can pick up discounted tickets via Goldstar or HotTix.
Recommended, especially if you can pick up discounted tickets via Goldstar or HotTix.
26 September 2008
Promoting Science
The other night, I attended a presentation sponsored by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology, which seeks to promote more (and accurate) understanding of science and technology. The speaker was Alan Leshner, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and he talked about science challenges for the new millennium.
These mainly involve the disconnect between a large swath of American opinion and the goals and conclusions of science. Where science conflicts with what Leshner called "core values," Americans tend to just look the other way. So we have a remarkable proportion of citizens who don't accept that humans developed from a simian ancestor, or that the earth is billions of years old. A remarkable proportion of Americans simply don't trust scientists, and look at scientific conclusions as opinions they can take or leave.
Leshner proposed that to deal with this problem, scientists need to do a better job of communicating with the public rather than to the public.
This response seems rather facile. A preposition change is not sufficient. I think the problem needs to be dealt with by dramatizing why these scientific conclusions matter. I am not entirely sure how to do this, but I think it's crucial. For example, millions of Americans are able to reject Darwin's theory of evolution (particularly as it pertains to human beings) because ultimately they feel it doesn't make any difference what they think about it.
We do not live in a society where truth/reality is valued for its own sake. Our public discourse is riddled with lies and spin, and we pretty much have to decide what we think before we decide who we're going to listen to. People are treating scientific conclusions the same way. After all, there are so many scientific conclusions, and they frequently contradict each other: coffee is good for you; coffee is bad for you. In a society where we're overloaded with information, we largely ignore stuff we don't see a way to use or doesn't fit with our world view.
Scientists (and their communicators and policymakers) need to figure out how to make critical scientific conclusions relevant to Americans. Maybe it's by reminding us of why the practice of science is important. What happens when you don't do science properly? How do problems get solved if you pick and choose the conclusions you like best? As some scientists like to joke (with regard to creationists who call evolution "just a theory"), gravity is just a theory--how would you like to jump out that window?
Maybe what we need is an ad campaign that warns us of the consequences of bad science and of ignoring scientific conclusions. People hear about the rewards all the time; they're all around us. The rewards of science are so ubiquitous that we almost feel they're natural occurences. So let's focus on what happens when we don't teach kids to be good scientists, and when our decision makers and policy makers are science ignoramuses (ignorami?).
Our society in recent years has come perilously close to valorizing ignorance (see Idiocracy).
Let's change that.
These mainly involve the disconnect between a large swath of American opinion and the goals and conclusions of science. Where science conflicts with what Leshner called "core values," Americans tend to just look the other way. So we have a remarkable proportion of citizens who don't accept that humans developed from a simian ancestor, or that the earth is billions of years old. A remarkable proportion of Americans simply don't trust scientists, and look at scientific conclusions as opinions they can take or leave.
Leshner proposed that to deal with this problem, scientists need to do a better job of communicating with the public rather than to the public.
This response seems rather facile. A preposition change is not sufficient. I think the problem needs to be dealt with by dramatizing why these scientific conclusions matter. I am not entirely sure how to do this, but I think it's crucial. For example, millions of Americans are able to reject Darwin's theory of evolution (particularly as it pertains to human beings) because ultimately they feel it doesn't make any difference what they think about it.
We do not live in a society where truth/reality is valued for its own sake. Our public discourse is riddled with lies and spin, and we pretty much have to decide what we think before we decide who we're going to listen to. People are treating scientific conclusions the same way. After all, there are so many scientific conclusions, and they frequently contradict each other: coffee is good for you; coffee is bad for you. In a society where we're overloaded with information, we largely ignore stuff we don't see a way to use or doesn't fit with our world view.
Scientists (and their communicators and policymakers) need to figure out how to make critical scientific conclusions relevant to Americans. Maybe it's by reminding us of why the practice of science is important. What happens when you don't do science properly? How do problems get solved if you pick and choose the conclusions you like best? As some scientists like to joke (with regard to creationists who call evolution "just a theory"), gravity is just a theory--how would you like to jump out that window?
Maybe what we need is an ad campaign that warns us of the consequences of bad science and of ignoring scientific conclusions. People hear about the rewards all the time; they're all around us. The rewards of science are so ubiquitous that we almost feel they're natural occurences. So let's focus on what happens when we don't teach kids to be good scientists, and when our decision makers and policy makers are science ignoramuses (ignorami?).
Our society in recent years has come perilously close to valorizing ignorance (see Idiocracy).
Let's change that.
25 September 2008
Robin Robertson and Simon Armitage
Went to see these two British poets the other night at Loyola University's downtown Rubloff Auditorium (as distinct from Northwestern University's downtown Rubloff Building--Thorne Auditorium--and the Art Institute of Chicago's Rubloff Auditorium--all, no doubt, the result of donations by Arthur Rubloff of the real estate firm) in an event presented by the Poetry Foundation.
Victor has read Simon Armitage's recent translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so Robin Robertson was the real surprise to me. Firstly, he has a wonderfully sonorous reading voice--I could listen to him forever. Secondly, his poems are chock full of gorgeous sounds. Only a few were not entirely convincing or took an easy way to closure. I was delighted to discover this fine poet.
Simon Armitage who is--at least by appearance--a good deal younger than Robertson, also delivered a good performance, but I liked him more for his manner--the patter between poems--than the work itself. A couple of poems--especially the first one he read, about a sperm whale--were knockouts, but on the whole I wasn't so impressed. I still look forward to reading Gawain, which Victor liked very much, but I wasn't wowed enough to buy another Armitage book.
On the other hand, I bought Robertson's translation of Euripedes' Medea without hesitation, and plan to get to it just as soon as I finish (or abandon) Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
Victor has read Simon Armitage's recent translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so Robin Robertson was the real surprise to me. Firstly, he has a wonderfully sonorous reading voice--I could listen to him forever. Secondly, his poems are chock full of gorgeous sounds. Only a few were not entirely convincing or took an easy way to closure. I was delighted to discover this fine poet.
Simon Armitage who is--at least by appearance--a good deal younger than Robertson, also delivered a good performance, but I liked him more for his manner--the patter between poems--than the work itself. A couple of poems--especially the first one he read, about a sperm whale--were knockouts, but on the whole I wasn't so impressed. I still look forward to reading Gawain, which Victor liked very much, but I wasn't wowed enough to buy another Armitage book.
On the other hand, I bought Robertson's translation of Euripedes' Medea without hesitation, and plan to get to it just as soon as I finish (or abandon) Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
13 August 2008
The Dark Side
This book by Jane Mayer is a cogent account of our government's post-9/11 embrace of torture as an interrogation technique. The purpose is not to document the kinds of torture that have been applied (though there is some of that), but rather to trace the genesis of decisions and policies that led to it. The story of the past seven years is cast as a struggle between the rule of law and the belief that the president is the law (i.e., if the president does it/wants it/orders it, it can't be illegal). The result is a chilling picture of an administration sorely unprepared to govern in a time of crisis, unwilling to tolerate sound advice that runs counter to its assumptions, and a president utterly insulated from dissent and bad news.
While there is nothing new about the broad outlines of this account, Mayer manages to make the details gripping. The book is upsetting and enraging, but at the same time hard to put down--rather like watching a car crash.
Highly recommended.
While there is nothing new about the broad outlines of this account, Mayer manages to make the details gripping. The book is upsetting and enraging, but at the same time hard to put down--rather like watching a car crash.
Highly recommended.
The Keep
This novel by Jennifer Egan was a good read--stayed up to finish it. A strange, gothic sort of story. You keep thinking you know how things are going to go, but you don't. At the beginning I expected it to be just creepy, but finally it was almost anti-creepy.
Look forward to reading more of Egan's stuff.
Look forward to reading more of Egan's stuff.
07 August 2008
Then We Came to the End
This book by Joshua Ferris made a big splash when it came out last year, and it's easy to see why. A tour-de-force written in the first-person-plural, it's remarkable in that it sustains the tone and humor of satire for the length of an entire novel.
Well, that's not entirely accurate. There's a diversion about halfway through in which the "we" voice takes a break. Still, the feat is remarkable.
Beyond stylistic interest, the book is highly readable, with plenty of sharp and entertaining observations about how we behave at work. It's sort of like the TV show The Office, but in text, so it necessarily has some more emotional depth.
But, frankly, not a whole lot more. This is a book that's fun to read, but doesn't have a lot of staying power.
Well written, well done, but not much to it.
Well, that's not entirely accurate. There's a diversion about halfway through in which the "we" voice takes a break. Still, the feat is remarkable.
Beyond stylistic interest, the book is highly readable, with plenty of sharp and entertaining observations about how we behave at work. It's sort of like the TV show The Office, but in text, so it necessarily has some more emotional depth.
But, frankly, not a whole lot more. This is a book that's fun to read, but doesn't have a lot of staying power.
Well written, well done, but not much to it.
Easy Rawlins/Walter Mosley
I don't remember anymore how I got turned on to Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins detective novels. I remember that Bill Clinton was president but I learned of his famous remark about Mosley being one of his favorite writers after I'd started reading the books. I remember lending them and giving them as presents to friends and to my brother, to combat his belief that my taste only runs to the highfalutin'.
When I find a writer I like, I tend to collect and devour everything I can by him, and when I found Devil in a Blue Dress, I did the same. I think there were about four novels out at the time, and I ate them all up. The subsequent ones came out too slow for me. I read many of the non-Rawlins books, too, and liked them fine, but my addiction was definitely for Easy.
Years passed and I moved on to other things, but recently I noticed that four Easy Rawlins books existed that I had not read. Scandalous! So last week I had the pleasure of remedying that: Six Easy Pieces (a set of linked short stories in which Mouse is (happily) resurrected), Little Scarlet, Cinnamon Kiss, and Blonde Faith.
My Rawlins-fest has left me with few complaints. Happy to have Mouse back, and the older Easy does not disappoint. The books look at recent American history with a sharp race-sensitive perspective, unlike any other writer.
Only, I don't see why Easy had to die.
There, I said it. Mosley may be tired of him, but I'm not.
When I find a writer I like, I tend to collect and devour everything I can by him, and when I found Devil in a Blue Dress, I did the same. I think there were about four novels out at the time, and I ate them all up. The subsequent ones came out too slow for me. I read many of the non-Rawlins books, too, and liked them fine, but my addiction was definitely for Easy.
Years passed and I moved on to other things, but recently I noticed that four Easy Rawlins books existed that I had not read. Scandalous! So last week I had the pleasure of remedying that: Six Easy Pieces (a set of linked short stories in which Mouse is (happily) resurrected), Little Scarlet, Cinnamon Kiss, and Blonde Faith.
My Rawlins-fest has left me with few complaints. Happy to have Mouse back, and the older Easy does not disappoint. The books look at recent American history with a sharp race-sensitive perspective, unlike any other writer.
Only, I don't see why Easy had to die.
There, I said it. Mosley may be tired of him, but I'm not.
05 August 2008
Native Speaker
I suppose I bought this book by Chang-Rae Lee because I had heard the author's name and it had won a lot of prizes, but I really didn't know anything about it. As I started to read, I began to dread what was coming: another sad story of immigrant displacement and alienation. And it is (though perhaps not so sad as anticipated), but Native Speaker is also a love story and a thriller, and succeeds rather well at its multiple genres.
Lee is a fine writer. I look forward to reading more of him.
Lee is a fine writer. I look forward to reading more of him.
04 August 2008
Manhattan Melodrama
Got this movie as part of a set of non-Thin Man DVDs with William Powell and Myrna Loy. It also stars Clark Gable, who's awfully charming, and Mickey Rooney (playing Clark Gable's character, Blackie, as a boy) who looks and sounds pretty much the same as he does in more recent films where he's an old man.
We had to laugh at the harmony between this movie's title and its plot, since it is probably one of the most melodramatic movies we have ever seen, and yet it's remarkably watchable.
I guess it's hard for a movie with Powell, Gable, and Loy not to be watchable.
We had to laugh at the harmony between this movie's title and its plot, since it is probably one of the most melodramatic movies we have ever seen, and yet it's remarkably watchable.
I guess it's hard for a movie with Powell, Gable, and Loy not to be watchable.
City of God
We watched this Brazilian film on DVD from Netflix the other night and weren't sure what to expect. Turned out to be an excellent depiction of life in a Rio de Janeiro favela (slum), with terrific performances, and also a fascinating documentary reflecting on the history of the drug/gang wars in Rio's favelas.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
01 August 2008
Another Cyclist Killed
Yesterday I was home reading a book when I heard a blaring car horn and then a crash. I live right above Lake Shore Drive, so (unfortunately) that sequence of sounds isn't terribly unusual, but when I got up to look out the window I expected a fender-bender on the Inner Drive and not to see a bicyclist sprawled in the middle of the Outer Drive. I watched as crowds gathered, emergency vehicles arrived, and the cyclist was (finally) zipped into a body bag (I really wanted to know if he was still alive; the body bag told me, finally, that he was not).
It was terribly sad, and, more, I couldn't understand it--what was the cyclist doing on the Outer Drive? News accounts have been no help. The Trib and Sun-Times both posted inaccurate and incomplete stories about the event (one says the cyclist died enroute to the hospital, the other says a man was trying to cross LSD and makes no mention of the bicyclist).
A witness, in the Sun-Times story comments, says,
It is frustrating that our local papers are not getting reporters out there to cover this very local story. And meanwhile, this cyclist is assumed by most folks who hear about this to be a suicidal idiot and not a victim of typical motorist carelessness (I don't mean the motorists on the Outer Drive, but the cab on the Inner Drive).
It was terribly sad, and, more, I couldn't understand it--what was the cyclist doing on the Outer Drive? News accounts have been no help. The Trib and Sun-Times both posted inaccurate and incomplete stories about the event (one says the cyclist died enroute to the hospital, the other says a man was trying to cross LSD and makes no mention of the bicyclist).
A witness, in the Sun-Times story comments, says,
This report is inaccurate. The cyclist was going northbound on inner LSD when he was hit by a cab (who fled the scene), thrown into southbound outer LSD where he was hit by another vehicle. I live at this site and was there when it happened.
It's not good to disparage the dead by insinuating he was trying to do someting stupid like walking/riding accross outer LSD!
It is frustrating that our local papers are not getting reporters out there to cover this very local story. And meanwhile, this cyclist is assumed by most folks who hear about this to be a suicidal idiot and not a victim of typical motorist carelessness (I don't mean the motorists on the Outer Drive, but the cab on the Inner Drive).
19 July 2008
Heartburn
This is one of those movies with a great cast (unbelievably great--a very young Kevin Spacey, even, in a tiny role) that nonetheless ends up being a dud. Nothing really happens in this movie--at least nothing of much interest. For a while you earnestly wait for something to happen, and then you sort of give up, and just sustain yourself with Meryl Streep occasionally doing something interesting onscreen--Jack Nicholson almost never does--and then the movie ends, and you shake your head and say, "That's it?"
Yes, that's it. Unfortunately.
Yes, that's it. Unfortunately.
18 July 2008
Kontroll
It's hard to know what to make of this movie, which takes place entirely underground, in Budapest's subway system. The protagonists are the system's ticket checkers, who have the unenviable job of demanding passengers show their tickets or passes and levying a fine if proof of payment is not forthcoming.
The ticket checkers work in teams, and the film follows a team that is on probation--for newness, presumably, but it may also be for lameness (the team includes a narcoleptic).
The atmosphere underground at times seems disarmingly normal and other times is flatly sinister--there's a killer loose: a self-styled grim reaper who shoves random passengers into the path of oncoming trains and disappears. And manages to do this without being captured by the ubiquitous security cameras.
Our hero is a young man who seems clearly overqualified for his role--and indeed, we find out that he had been a big success in the above-surface world but chucked it all. We watch the movie because we want this directionless fellow to find his direction: when he does, the movie takes off.
The ticket checkers work in teams, and the film follows a team that is on probation--for newness, presumably, but it may also be for lameness (the team includes a narcoleptic).
The atmosphere underground at times seems disarmingly normal and other times is flatly sinister--there's a killer loose: a self-styled grim reaper who shoves random passengers into the path of oncoming trains and disappears. And manages to do this without being captured by the ubiquitous security cameras.
Our hero is a young man who seems clearly overqualified for his role--and indeed, we find out that he had been a big success in the above-surface world but chucked it all. We watch the movie because we want this directionless fellow to find his direction: when he does, the movie takes off.
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