"Supporting" Actor?

I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised, but also baffled, at the Golden Globe nominations. Inglorious Basterds for Best Picture? Excellent. Christoph Walz nominated? Awesome. But nominated for Best Supporting Actor? What gives? Sure, in such an ensemble film, he didn't as much screen time as your typical Best Actor nominee might, but good luck trying to convince anyone who's seen the film that he wasn't the star. I assumed that he had a Best Actor (Golden Globes, Oscars, what have you) nomination wrapped up after the first scene.

Makes me wonder; if one of Tarantino's original choices for the role of the Colonel Landa, Leonardo DiCaprio, had been cast instead, would he have been bumped up to the big-boy's category?

The End of the NFL?

No, it's not very likely, at least in my lifetime, but who knows? I happened to catch some CNN on an airport TV while waiting for a delayed flight yesterday, and saw some coverage of (congressional?) hearings on concussions in football. CNN is a bit behind, as usual, because it ran this as 'breaking news' when these studies have been ongoing for a while, and Mr. Tipping Point wrote a very interesting article about it in the New Yorker recently.

Is watching tackle football really akin to dogfighting though? Not so sure about that conclusion. But I do know that while most societies consider themselves to be civilized, eventually some future culture looks back at certain aspects of said society and thinks, "those barbarians! how could they live in a world where _____ passed as entertainment! I'm glad we're more enlightened than they were back then." Is tackle football going to fill in that blank one day?

Is Nothing In This City Sacred?!?

Four young geniuses were arrested downtown last night after they were seen driving around in a pickup truck with the large #8 statue last seen on Eutaw Street, outside of Camden Yards. 

Did they really think that they could get away with it?

Lockerbie Ugliness

We know how the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber is playing here - understandably, not well at all - but how's it look from the other side of the Atlantic?

This BBC article hints that the whole thing could be about oil. There's a shocker.

This piece in The Scotsman refers to a "Deal in the Desert" meeting in 2007 between Gaddafi and Tony Blair, but doesn't elaborate.

Most importantly though, there seems to be quite a divide between the U.K. and U.S. victims' families as to whether Megrahi is actually guilty. The trial was apparently controversial for a number of reasons.

Still, the whole thing looks really bad. Megrahi dropped his appeal when, due to a legal issue, it stood in the way of his "compassionate release". Scotland's justic system screwed up; they should have heard his appeal properly or kept him in prison. His release carries the stench of a minister who was swayed by prevailing U.K. opinion that the convicted got a raw deal. That should have been for the courts to decide during the appeals process. Sure, there would have been outrage from victims' families if he had won his appeal, but unlike the apparent capriciousness of his release, it would have carried some legitimacy.

Another Perspective on Health Care

This article from The Atlantic is certainly thought-provoking. Now, I can't vouch for the veracity of the author's statistics or other claims, but at face value it's a compelling article. A few items that I zeroed in on while reading it:

• This excerpt below reminded me of Bjorn Lomborg's take on global warming, that's it's really not so bad, when compared with all the other bad stuff that we could be spending money trying to mitigate:
  

  As a nation, we now spend almost 18 percent of our GDP on health care. In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1 percent of total government spending; now that figure is 20 percent, and quickly rising. Already, the federal government spends eight times as much on health care as it does on education, 12 times what it spends on food aid to children and families, 30 times what it spends on law enforcement, 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation, 87 times the spending on water supply, and 830 times the spending on energy conservation. Education, public safety, environment, infrastructure—all other public priorities are being slowly devoured by the health-care beast.
  
  By what mechanism does society determine that an extra, say, $100 billion for health care will make us healthier than even $10 billion for cleaner air or water, or $25 billion for better nutrition, or $5 billion for parks, or $10 billion for recreation, or $50 billion in additional vacation time—or all of those alternatives combined?

• Why does health insurance work so differently from every other form of insurance?:

  Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.
  

  Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no?

  Is this really a big problem for our health-care system? Well, for every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance. Much of this enormous cost would simply disappear if we paid routine and predictable health-care expenditures the way we pay for everything else—by ourselves.

• We hear a lot about how other nations' citizens have it better-off because of universal coverage. That might be true, but evidently they're struggling with rising costs too (of course, their care costs, on average, are still much cheaper than ours):
  

  Whatever their histories, nearly all developed countries are now struggling with rapidly rising health-care costs, including those with single-payer systems. From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period. Cost control by way of bureaucratic price controls has its limits.

So what does it all add up to? Should we ("we" being the government, in theory, anyway) not even bother to attempt any incremental fixes, since they probably won't work? Will this round of supposed reform set the stage for a future, more positive round, or leave the public too frustrated or indifferent to try again?

The author's proposed solutions (on page 6 of the article) are attractive and certainly seem to make sense, but I suspect that we're already stuck too far down in the system; if people are up in arms about relatively modest changes, how would we ever succeed in so fundamentally changing the way that health care is paid for?

Health Care Town Hall Hysteria Goes Local

Ben Cardin held a "town hall" meeting on health care in Towson last night, with predictable results. Yes, the polarization of this country continues, with lobbyists and interest groups pulling strings (on both sides) and opponents of reform - any reform - hoping that volume alone will win the day.

O.K., so maybe you think the government plan is socialized medicine. Could even be true, depending on which form the final plan takes, but is that the best you've got, roll out the specter of scary socialism and hope that it sends everyone running for the hills? Now go one step further, and tell us why that's so terrible. Can't do it? Words escape you? Too hoarse from shouting down your senator/congressman recently? How about you make an actual argument or shut up. There's enough real data out there to argue for or against health reform, but if you're too lazy to do so, by all means continue shouting. Eventually though, you'll lose your voice, so it's win-win either way; a meaningful discussion, or blissful silence.

Will Defense & Baserunning Get Their Due?

Maybe, thanks to this very cool technology. Although limiting release of data to the public because of teams' "competitive concerns" is just plain dumb. Trust me, MLB franchises; if your shortstop sucks, the fans (especially the stat geeks) will already know it. This system will just act as confirmation.

Still, no matter how quickly technology progresses, the best fielding still has to be seen to be believed.

A Modern McNamara?

With the death of Robert S. (for Strange! seriously) McNamara, I've seen a few online pieces comparing the Iraq War's own Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, with the infamous "architect of Vietnam". In the future, will Rumsfeld be universally reviled, as McNamara evidently was? I don't think so. Sure, there are similarities: both presided over wars that were seen as disasters of planning and of execution, both were notorious micro-managers, both had put their stamps on war plans. But whereas Kennedy and Johnson were never able to sell their quagmire (sorry, but I'm legally obligated to use that word, since this is about Vietnam) to a skeptical and eventually outraged public and press, Bush, Cheney, and the neocons did a fantastic job of duping a complacent public and a lapdog press corps.

Sure, there will be moments when Rumsfeld feels the wrath of the public [aside: explain to me what a multi-millionaire is doing riding the bus? Part of me is impressed that he's willing to take public transportation, part of me wonders if he's really just incredibly cheap]. But I think that those moments will be few, compared to the many public excoriations that McNamara faced. And while I admire that this father confronted Rumsfeld at that bus stop, I wonder how much good it does, other than making the guy feel better (after his blood pressure returned to normal). Rumsfeld was already an old man, long-bereft of any idealism or sense of justice after various roles in government, when he assumed his last government post - very different from McNamara, who was 44 when he became Secretary and was, by all accounts, broken by the War.

Ah, Summer!

Sustainable Seafood, Recession-Proof Beverages

This ranking of supermarkets by the sustainability of their seafood operations (according to Greenpeace) makes me all warm and fuzzy because we frequently buy fish at Wegman's, but less-than-fuzzy because we also buy occasionally from Trader Joe's. Anyone else surprised that this hippie grocery enclave appears so far down on this list? Anyone not surprised that a chain called H.E. Butt is in last place?

What will we have with our fish...a nice IPA, perhaps? Recession-be-damned, we're [read: the U.S.] still drinking at about the same clip as we have since 1947, according to Callup (do these Gallup folks have a poll for everything?).

Beer: How Cold Is Too Cold?

Any true beer lover already knows this - well, maybe not the exact numbers, but he/she definitely has a feel for the right temperature range - super-cold beer doesn't always mean good-tasting beer. [The simple equation: colder = less carbonation = less aroma/taste] So the coldest beer in Baltimore, as found by the City Paper, at 30.2F? Waaaay too cold for a decent beer. Probably just right for Bud Ice; almost no chance that you'll actually have to taste it!

Of course, that helps explain why brands like Coors Light trumpet their cold-indicator bottles and cans. Some small amount of credit should be given to the marketing geniuses at Coors, though; at least their thermochromatic ink activates within the correct temperature range for lagers.

Olbermann Turns Critic, Positive Developments

Keith Olbermann is generally viewed (rightly so) as a big Obama supporter/cheerleader, so it's a bit surprising - but very gratifying - to see him smacking the administration around on its continuation of the Bush Secrecy Doctrine.

At the same time - and since I've been so negative towards the Prez on his economic policy and the above constitutional issue - he's kicking ass on plenty of issues:

• Gates' Defense budget - it actually makes a lot of sense! Never mind that it has no chance of getting through the House; too many districts are home to weapons-making factories. But it's refreshing to see. Next, any chance of getting cuts across the board, and shrinking the war industry in general?
• Obama is reaching out to Iran, both in his recent video to the Iranians, and his decision to become involved in current nuclear talks. And there are no signs that he asked Israel's permission! Quite to the contrary, actually.
• The government's long-standing (an largely ineffectual) policy of isolating Cuba might be coming to an end.
  

Can The Small Stuff Add Up?

When it comes to climate change and reducing carbon footprints, most attention is paid to the big-ticket items: wind farms, solar, hybrid vehicles, battery technology. But could capturing portions of lost energy be as worthwhile, collectively, as pursuing the big targets? From the heat energy lost in the normal operation of the typical combustion engine, to the energy absorbed by the ground as it's walked on, to the flushing of a toilet - will these sources of "free energy" ever be harnessed at a large enough scale to make a difference? Or will attempts to collect, store, and re-use this energy remain on the fringes of the green movement?

Here's the latest device - similar to the toilet retrofit above - coming soon to a sink near you (?)

Dirty Larry

Sure, there was plenty of corruption and likely war profiteering in the Bush administration. But we figured Obama's presidency would be different, right? Well, I certainly did.

Wrong.

Creeping Doubt

So lemme get this straight - Obama and his financial wizards give Wall Street how many hundreds of billions, with few real strings attached, and then go after Detroit and G.M. over a few billion in loans? They must still believe that Wall Street is the economy, they're too spineless to stand up to the money lenders and High Lords of Finance, so they're going to act tough by interfering with an industry that actually produces things! Mr. DeLorenzo, putting aside his ever-present hyperbole, sums it up well in his March 29th entry. Does Wagoner deserve some blame? Sure. And nobody's going to lose sleep because a multi-millionaire is out of a job. But the double standard is certainly troubling. It's yet another depressing example of insiders cashing in, while the political sleight-of-hand directs the public outrage over all of these bailouts towards an appropriately hapless target. The truth is that if GM was one of the favored Wall Street brokerages or investment banks, Wagoner probably would be working for Obama at Treasury instead of getting fired by him.

Coupled with the administration's adherence to some of the previous administration's bad habits regarding secrecy, detention, and the surveillance state, and my disillusion is beginning to spread.

Update: This blog post might convey my meaning better than I did (although my post was first!); not that Wagoner didn't deserve to go (I really can't say, since I've never run a car company), but that this administration is guilty of gross inconsistency/hyprocrisy in its dealings with Detroit and Wall Street. [Elected officials inconsistent and hyprocritical? In other news, the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow.]


Update II:A few more thoughts (from various perspectives) from the Electronosphere about Obama, Wagoner, U.S. industrial policy, et al:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/opinion/31holstein.html
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123846388674472223.html
• http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/03/31/rand_lenin_and_obama/index.html
  

Aptera Sighting in DC!

I almost missed it b/c I was looking the wrong way, but then noticed everyone else on 17th Street staring at the same thing...Aptera is in DC to chat with some politicians about (what else, these days?) loans, manufacturing loans to be specific.

I was just getting used to seeing Smart cars every once in a while, but this was much cooler to see in person; the first future-car technology that I've seen - live, in motion, on a city street - that actually looks like it belongs in the future.

B/c Mr. Grau requested, nay, demanded it, more info on Aptera:

Their web site. Not a lot of concrete stats or numbers yet, but they're supposedly forthcoming. They're also rumored to be delivering the first production model to a real-life customer by the end of this month! Sales to California residents only, though. They're also going t have two initial versions of their 2-seater, an all-electric and a hybrid. They've hinted at a regular ICE as well, possibly in two flavors (gasoline and vanilla, um, diesel).

Here's the test drive by Road & Track last month. They really liked it!

Dodged a Bullet

I called in yesterday to the U.S. District Court's automated juror line, to find out if I would need to report for jury selection today. Fortunately, I was excused from jury duty, perhaps because of my responses on the juror questionnaire concerning the death penalty, and that there were no circumstances under which I vote to impose the it, given a conviction.

Well, I turned on the TV this morning before leaving for work, and every single local news channel featured a story on this trial! Every station's story also mentioned that the judge had decided to keep jurors' identities secret, out of concerns for their safety. So my being "soft on crime" may have lead to an improvement in my personal safety!

Here's another article about the trial that has more on the decision to grant anonymity to the jurors.

He Means Well, But...

...Mr. Obama's stimulus plan strategy looks like it relied to much on the goodwill of Republicans - you know, the minority party that, politically speaking, has an interest in seeing his presidency go down in flames - and now the plan is that much poorer for all this "cooperation".

"The Dude" Gets Smacked Around at Sundance

To think that I always thought that The Dude was a lover, not a fighter ("Just take the four dollars, man!"). Well, maybe he's not really much of a fighter, since he apparently didn't get a punch in.

[for those of you non-Achievers, Jeff "The Dude" Dowd is the real-life person upon which the Cohen Brothers based Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski]

Sasha!

It's unsurprising, but still pretty remarkable, that the arrival of such a small creature can cause so much...commotion. So many regular activities, so much of life's daily rhythm, blown completely away with the birth of a child. It certainly made a difference that this particular child (my daughter! even a few weeks in, still somewhat strange to think of oneself as a father) added to said commotion by arriving well ahead of schedule, by a whole five weeks!

As lucky as we are to have Sasha healthy, despite being pre-term, we're equally fortunate to have our families and friends so involved, and so very generous. It's far too easy to take those around you for granted, but ocassions like this really bring all the generosity, caring, and concern, into focus. Whether a beatiful baby shower - complete with a special guest, the actual baby! - or the food that nieghbors, family, and friends brought over, or a grandma who hopped on a plane not twelve hours after the birth to come help us out for a few weeks, or grandparents who cleaned our house, took care of our furry, non-human (sorry to break it to you Marty, but you're actually a dog) daughters, and outfitted their first grandkid with enough clothes to last until she's age five, it's all been quite cool to have all of you around and watching out for us. Thank you.

Will this blog turn into "All Things Sasha"? I don't think so; I've tended not to include too many personal/family posts in the past, and that trend will probably continue. But there will be updates here and there. And you never know - after all, one shouldn't underestimate the enthusiasm of a proud dad...