thought experiment

If, as they say, a million monkeys pounding on a million typewriters for millions of years would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare ...

Then how long would it take my cat to produce Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea by walking back and forth across our laptops as we attempt to work (which apparently one of her favorite sources of entertainment, judging by the frequency she chooses to do it)?

Thoughts like these prevent me from actually being productive and getting my finals done early.

Movie review: Up

Well, on Monday the wife and I were feeling a bit stressed after a schoolwork-filled and altogether unrestful weekend so we decided to catch an afternoon movie, a rare treat for us. Curious about what all the fuss was about, we opted for Pixar's Up.

I accept the proposition that last year Wall-E redefined what an animated film can be. Up does that, only much more so. While appropriate for the younger set, it's definitely not a kids' movie. It's a 96 minute meditation on grief and loss and regret featuring an elderly widower (Ed Asner) as its protagonist. It's heart-felt and emotionally raw, but the emotion feels genuine and never contrived. It's also hilarious. But it'll still make you cry. Seriously, it will. I can't remember the last time I cried because of a movie. I didn't even cry when I was 6 and Bambi's mother was shot, but I had a tear roll down my cheek during Up.

The verdict: I submit that this is the best film of the year so far. It's really not even close, especially if you only consider wide releases. Go see it. If you regret it come see me so I can tell you that you're an inhuman monster to your face.

Magic 3, Cavaliers 1

I'm sad now. It's a deep, pervasive, penetrating sadness with which I am all too well acquainted. At the same time, since my sadness is so familiar to me, it's a little like a friend coming home after a long vacation. A friend that you hate with every fiber of your being because he's such a jerk to you all the time but then he'll be nice to you for just long enough to make you think that maybe this time it will be different but then it's not and you'd think it would stop hurting eventually but somehow it never does because each wound is a little different. That's what it's like.

And the season's not even over yet. I'm a little ahead of schedule.

Another one for the good guys

Another series, that is. My Cavaliers finished off the Hawks with only slightly more difficulty than they had with the Pistons. As a Cleveland sports fan, this is really the only star in my constellation worth gazing at right now. (Did that metaphor work on any level? My guess is an emphatic no.)

This is because my Indians are off to a truly atrocious start (14-22, 4.5 games behind the Tigers at the time of this writing) and my Browns, by all accounts, are destined for another season of sub-mediocrity. This Cavs team is the best shot that we've had at a championship since 1997, and it's fair to say that my hopes are officially "up." In every other instance in my life where I've allowed this to happen my hopes have come crashing back down very soon thereafter. But this time it's going to be different ... I think ...

(to be continued)

fun with numbers

According to a new survey released last week by the Pew Research Center and reported by CNN, the religious group in America most likely to support the use of torture is white Evangelicals. The group least likely to support torture is people unaffiliated with any religion.

Does anyone else find this as disturbing as I do? What is it about Jesus that makes people want to simulate drowning and slam peoples' heads against retractable walls provided they're wearing collars to prevent death? It's times like this I wish I wasn't an American Christian.

Think of the children

So I was watching the culmination of the glorious awesomeness that took the form of the Cavaliers 4-0 sweep of the Pistons today when I had a realization.

A whole generation of basketball loving kids is going to grow up in Detroit hating LeBron James. (When I have really important realizations they're usually italicized, by the way.)

Think of that for a moment. These are kids that live in Detroit, so they obviously don't have a whole lot going for them. And to to top it all off they won't get to enjoy the best basketball player of their generation because of deep, churning, visceral bitterness stemming from a series of days like today.

I should know. I was obsessed with the Cavaliers as a child in the 1980s, which were really the dawn of Michael Jordan's dominance. We were able to put together some remarkably talented teams, but always managed to come up short in the playoffs. Like in 1989. "The shot." That's right. "The shot" has its own Wikipedia page. Give it a click. I'll be here when you get back. Allow me to set the scene ... May 7, 1989: Cavs are favored in the series but find themselves down 3-1 at home in the Richfield Coliseum ... You know what, I can't even describe it. Too painful. Still. 2 decades later. Just know that the scene ends with Jordan celebrating and Craig Ehlo crumpled on the floor along with a small but very important piece of my soul. And on that day I started hating Michael Jordan. With the intense, irrational, unadulterated hatred that only a seven year-old-boy with shattered dreams can muster.

And for that reason I was unable to truly enjoy most of Michael Jordan's amazing career. It's a shame this all has to happen again.

Torture memos and the sale of the American soul

“Have you ever heard of blowing off steam?”
-Rush Limbaugh, in reference to the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib

I’ve been thinking a bit about the drive in the media to defend the practice of torture since it became public that we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in a month. Each argument to defend the practice can really be reduced to one or more of the following, each more specious than the one preceding it:

It’s not that bad. Guys in fraternities have been doing it for years; freshmen used to get hazed on football teams all the time. Let’s be honest with ourselves for once. Our government used some of the same techniques that were perfected in the Spanish Inquisition and used during the Salem Witch Trials. These are things that we put war lords and third world dictators on trial for in tribunals whenever we get the chance. It’s torture. Call it what it is.

We have to because we get so much good information from it. It’s only thing that kept us from being attacked again. I call this one the Bauer fallacy. It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that standard interrogation techniques consistently produce more reliable intelligence than torture does. And the whole “ticking bomb torture scenario” is a myth, so you can give it a rest. I’ll give that one a fair hearing after it’s been documented once in the history of the world.

Doctors and lawyers were overseeing the whole thing. That makes it all good. Yeah, doctors and lawyers never take part in unsavory things like holocausts, either.

Then there’s usually some broad claim about it being un-American to think that America should be held to the standards it set for itself. And it's all bullshit.