Blue States and Red Devils

Who do you love? -- Picture courtesy of Eagle Vision

by blogSpotter
Today’s article is a bit of a mixed bag -- movie review and political commentary. The two are actually (however remotely) connected, for readers who might think I’m totally stream-of-consciousness in my writing. I just watched Blue State, a small-budget sleeper movie from 2007. In it, Breckin Meyer plays John Logue -- a young, Kerry-Edwards campaigner disillusioned by the 2004 Presidential election loss. He decides to act on a drunken campaign promise and move to Canada since Bush has just been reelected. He takes on a fellow traveler , Chloe (played by Anna Paquin), to share gas and travel expenses and they embark on an adventure of romance and new awakenings.

The movie is billed as a comedy but is dead serious in its exploration of our loyalties, our egos and our sometimes empty political posturing. I have to acknowledge that even as a “damn liberal” Democrat, some of my very best friends are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, as is much of my family. Blue State makes it very evident how many different shades of red, blue and purple there really are, and how nearly impossible it is to dismiss the different shades. (Spoiler alert) -- the movie brings out the fact that John’s older brother was a casualty in Iraq and it shows John’s stridency (shared by many of us even now) that Iraq is a bad, unnecessary war. The movie doesn’t solve any big political arguments or serve to change anyone’s mind -- it serves rather to show us how deeply mired we are in our family and cultural origins. No amount of Houdini maneuvers can free us from that.

Now speaking of “good” and “bad” wars, much has recently been made of Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan with an eye on exiting in 2011. Liberals such as Michael Moore decry the escalation while conservatives decry the pre-announced withdrawal date. To conservatives, I would admonish that no large expenditure of men and money should be without expected benchmarks, targets and yes, time goals. None other than Bush’s man Rumsfeld expounded the idea (although he didn’t act on it). If the pivotal date arrives, and the results aren’t at hand, the date will probably be “slipped” but it’s something that our military will seek to avoid.

To liberals, I would remind them that crazy Arabs flew some airplanes into our buildings eight years ago. We haven’t caught Osama Bin Laden, we haven’t closed any Madrasas schools that teach anti-American hatred, we haven’t laid a finger on Wahabi Arabs that sponsored most of the terrorist activities, we haven’t significantly reduced Taliban influence in Afghanistan or Pakistan and we haven’t done much more than inflame Al Quaeda. Given the sad, sorry, namby-pamby, illogical and politically correct response we’ve given to this over eight years, I would say we should finally, at last, focus American man-power and attention to the people and geographic locale(s) that actually produced 9/11. To do otherwise is to invite a reoccurrence.

In sum, I think Obama gave a reasoned reaction to the events going on. It’s not a blank check or an open-ended engagement. It’s a stated objective and let’s hope for the sake of everyone involved that the objective is met. It would be politically expedient and tidy if it's met by 2011, but it might not make that date. Afghanistan differs from Viet Nam in significant respects, but should it come to develop a resemblence let us have the wisdom and grace to cut our losses and learn from our mistakes.


© 2009 blogSpotter

Oh Thank Heaven for Windows 7

Redemption for MS? -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Hello geek-readers. It's time to do our Operating Systems retrospective/review. When Windows Vista came out in February 2007, I was spellbound by it's Mac-inspired aero interface and it's Mac-filched gadgets. These baubles distracted me from serious functional issues -- long boot up/shutdown, long file loads, driver compatibility issues, DRM issues, and highly intrusive permissions checking. My Vista experience was deplorable -- I was shocked because I’ve used MS products for 20+ years and never had so many issues. A year or so later, I had to report that Vista was a dud -- roundly and soundly rejected by the business community as well as home users.

Dubbed Longhorn, during its long development, Vista was a giant change from XP, and it did actually bring some interesting new visuals and functionality (e.g., Windows Media Center). In the 11th hour before release, Microsoft had to devote major resources to anti-virus engineering -- that may have diverted them from the primary purpose of good customer experience. I’m very happy to say that they saw the light on the road to Diminished market share. Windows 7 has corrected many of the Sins of Vista.

So what do we have with Windows 7? Some people have likened 7, code-named Blackcomb, to a giant service pack improvement to Vista -- maybe a Vista service pack 3.0. In fact, it is a largely new-from-the-ground-up OS, but Microsoft set their sights on making Windows 7 the avenger of Vista’s top complaints and problem areas. It’s at least 500mb less bloated and installs faster (although my own Vista upgrade still took @ 3.5 hours). Where Vista took a whopping seven-plus minutes to boot, I can be happily typing data on Windows 7 within 2 minutes of pushing the On button.

Windows 7 has a clean, tidy interface that will cause very little training issues or upset to users of XP or Vista. There are some new ‘paradigm’s’ (pinning icons to a Mac-looking dock, showing Control Panel in different views) but most of that is optional and only-if-you-want-it. Windows 7 is mostly a terrific under-the-hood fix to everything that plagued Vista -- it really is the child that Vista should’ve been.

I actually bought a new HP laptop and also upgraded my existing Vista laptop. I’d be remiss not to mention the amazing features you can get now for way under $1000. My new HP has 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive, faster processor, bigger screen (etc etc etc) for $200 less than what I spent on the Vista machine. The list price (not even the sale price) was $679.00. To me this is all amazing -- and I’ll be amazed if a lot of Acer, Sony, Gateway, DELL, HP and other such devices aren't snapped up this holiday season.

Windows 7 has already been very successful with pre-orders stacking up prior to its October 22nd release date. Net Applications reports that Windows 7 already achieved 4% market penetration in 3 weeks where Vista took 7 months to achieve the same. Maximum PC, CNET and other publications have lavished praise on 7 (and some revoked the premature praise they gave to Vista -- worth mentioning). I myself think that Windows 7 is great -- it should be a much-needed shot in the arm for MS. I do wonder why my 4GB Windows 7 HP still takes about twice as long to boot as my 1GB Macbook running Snow Leopard, but that’s another blog. At 2 and 1 minutes respectively, both boot quickly enough to avoid triggering the “blogSpotter impatience threshold” which no sane operating system wishes to provoke.


© 2009 blogSpotter

Nailin' Palin

Something about Denali -- Picture courtesy of HarperCollins

by blogSpotter
Apologies in advance to anyone who thought my blog title was in reference to a porno movie. Am only using the word “nailin’ “ in the sense that individuals are caught doing something questionable (in this case, being a shameless publicity hound). If the porno sense of the title is what focused your attention, by all means read on.

Many men think that Sarah Palin is a hottie. I look at her with her Grammy glasses and school marm hair and have trouble seeing her in that light. Is she sexier than Barbara Boxer or Madeleine Albright? Well, yes but that’s about as far as it goes. She could be Miss November on a calendar of female politicos that need to stay dressed. Now one might ask – is she Presidential material? Could she be the GOP nominee in 2012? Back when John McCain made her his 2008 veep candidate, I wrote a softball article about her, “Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington”. I didn’t really have a lot to go on – I thought her rustic, Alaska moose-hunting background made her seem like a feisty, tell-it-like-it-is Annie Oakley character. As things moved along, I became aware how very, very wrong she was for any place on anyone’s ticket.

Many people have poo-poo’d the now infamous Katie Couric interview as a “hit job”. In retrospect, Katie asked softball questions like “What magazines do you read?” and “What Supreme Court cases have made the biggest impressions on you?” For someone aspiring to the highest or 2nd-highest office in the land, these should’ve been gimme questions. Instead, Palin became tongue-tied. Not only could she not answer the questions, she gave rambling, incoherent replies that might even make you think she went off her medications.

She was credited in her veep debate with Biden for (at the very least) not stepping in it or making a total fool of herself. The bar was set very low. That she makes Dan Quayle look like a Nobel contender went largely unnoticed by her “core” GOP supporters. McCain’s campaign advisor, Steve Schmidt was on pins and needles the whole time – he has since said unequivocally that we dodged a bullet on that one.

Palin has rewarded the McCain camp (most recently in her magnum opus “Going Rogue”) by lambasting them. Apparently they gave her coaching points on how to talk and dress for public appearances. Wonder why they might have thought it necessary? Palin has most recently been embarrassed by the Playgirl modeling career of Levi Johnston, her (no longer) potential son-in-law. He has come to the fore with several juicy tidbits about the Palin family dysfunction. It’s “he said/she said” but still we have to ponder – do we want Jerry Springer episodes staged in the White House?

And where does all of this leave us? I hate to say that Palin could still be viable in 2012 if blacks and Latinos sit on their hands as they did in 2004. Then, the same crowd who deemed George W Bush as a weighty intellect can install Palin and clan into the White House. How tragic, both from practical and symbolic viewpoints, that would be.

I must now close with a passage from Palin’s gubernatorial farewell speech – a speech so fraught with poetic malfeasance that Conan O’Brien had William Shatner do a dramatic reading on the Tonight Show:

“Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins”.

Say what? Mother Nature wins, but speech-writing loses big-time. You have to credit her with having a fertile imagination. Fertile, but not at all Presidential. A poll done here in Dallas (NBC5 I think) indicated that even a majority of Dallasites think that Palin should return to private life. Let's hope that she takes the clue and does just that.


© 2009 blogSpotter

Pelosification II

Pelosi at the 2008 DNC -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
On November 7, 2009 the US House of Representatives passed bill H. R. 3962, more generally known as the Health Care Bill. Key provisions:

• A public option will be offered for small business and the uninsured
• Individuals will face a fine if not covered, and so will businesses if they don’t offer coverage
• Insurance companies cannot deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions
• Individuals making more than $500,000 and couples making more than $1 million will get a 5.4% additional tax to help pay for the expanded coverage
• Overpayments to doctors who treat Medicare Advantage patients will be cut back.

There are quite a few other details, but this is the basic package. The Senate is now deliberating on its own version – presumed to be more conservative than the House version.

After Ms. Pelosi steered the House version through its perilous journey, she aptly likened it to Roosevelt’s enactment of Social Security. Health Care is every bit that significant – it was a major concern of Harry Truman as far back as 1948. Conservatives are now restaging tea parties and town councils to reiterate their opposition and their blinders-on mentality.

Is Health Care a redistribution of wealth? It certainly is, and much needed. In the current market, health coverage would cost $700/month per person, minimum. Such a cost is completely unaffordable to the poor as well as the lower middle class. The only option now is to damn these “children of a lesser job” to public hospitals where they can die waiting 4 hours for an evaluation.

One of my conservative friends asked how the 4 hour ER wait would be any different with public health care. I would speculate that an expanded health industry will accompany the advent of increased care -- more hospitals, clinics and medical personnel. A greater percentage of our GDP will go towards health care, which it logically should for a growing and graying population.

We consider parks, libraries, super highways and schools important enough to pay for out of the general tax fund. Universal health coverage should be no less important. It shouldn’t be a consumer extravagance for the wealthy – it should be a basic entitlement like a public education. It somehow makes us a more civilized people when we don’t say, “Devil take the hindmost” to the less financially blessed.

Back in 2006, I published a blog titled “Pelosification” when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House. I did it with a sense of mischief knowing that she is seen by some as a “pushy broad” – an ultraliberal broad no less. I’ve now come to admire her as a feisty fighter and someone who barely, rarely ever takes “no” as an answer when she’s looking for a “yes”. Here’s to Pelosification II – and this time there’s no irony intended. Just lots of admiration.


© 2009 blogSpotter

Hollywood Vacation

Eric near a Venice Beach emporium -- Picture by blogSpotter

by blogSpotter
I’m at the Knox Street Starbucks as I write this, sitting on the outside patio. We’re having a beautiful late Indian summer day -- 80 degrees outside. Have been feeding the sparrows; they appear to like peanut butter cookies. They almost seem more like pets than wild birds -- very cute.

I’m WAY overdue for my LA trip report. My brother Bryan, friend Eric and I went to Los Angeles and Palm Springs two weeks ago. While there, I had the “bizarre allergy attack from Hell” where my nose ran like a faucet and my eyes stung as if someone had thrown acid in them. Everyone speculates that it was the pollution. Mercifully that attack (and ensuing head cold) didn’t come ‘til about halfway into the trip. In spite of all that, I had a very good time -- especially in LA.

NOBODY SLEEPS IN LA
We actually landed in Laguna Beach, a luxury enclave where $5 million haciendas occupy green hills, overlooking a teal blue Pacific Ocean. I have total envy of these people, and had a really good peanut butter milk shake at the Orange Grill on their main drag.

In LA, we stayed at the West Hollywood Ramada on Santa Monica, perfectly situated near the most popular bars, cafes and gyms. The Santa Monica Starbucks has 10 people in line all day long. The unemployed actors need their $4 lattes. The cafes start to get crowded at 3PM and stay crowded ’til 3AM. This is a town I could love. The people are superficially beautiful which is absolutely terrible except to look at. Popular shirt: athletic fit tee shirt with plunging Vee neckline (for men). Popular car: 2010 convertible Mustang in red or silver. We dined at various places -- the Tango Grill, Bossa Nova and Skewers were all great.

THE ABBEY
This is THE most popular bar in West Hollywood. It’s a former restaurant, bakery and bar in a large court yard enclosure. There are different rooms with generous fireplaces and couches -- it looks like somebody’s sprawling Spanish Villa where you’ve been invited for the weekend. To keep with the religious theme (it is called The Abbey after all), there are some iconic statues of the Virgin Mary. The crowd is an amazing hodgepodge of West Hollywood habitués, groups of young ladies, and middle aged couples (maybe film producers and their wives?). Everyone is festive and I likened it to a crazy prom night where you’re not sure who will walk through the door next or what they might do. I could probably just live at this place, it was that fun. Maybe I’ve been in Dallas too long.

We did many of the touristy things (Farmers Market, Getty Museum, La Brea Tar Pit). We didn’t do Universal Studios because it was expensive to buy the tickets and an all-day commitment. We enjoyed window-shopping on Rodeo Drive also, but the standout for me was Venice Beach. This lengthy stretch of boardwalk has every imaginable thing you might see on a garish carnival midway. There were jugglers, musicians, magicians, weight trainers, skate boarders, contortionists and vendors galore. The LA weather was gorgeous, balmy high 70’s, so this was a perfect afternoon.

Alas the LA leg of the trip came to an end and we went to Palm Springs for the last 3 days. At this point I was battling a cold, so in fairness to Palm Springs I wasn’t feeling well.

PALM SPRINGS
Palm Springs is a sleepy retirement community of 42,000 people, one hour east of LA. In its “hey day” it was a second home for movie stars. Nowadays it’s known for golf and occasional white parties offered up by the resident gay community. It reminded me of a military base with it’s grid-like streets, and sterile look-alike Spanish-contemporary buildings. Our guest house (La Dolce Vita) was nearly a ghost house with few other visitors -- understandable since we were there in an off season.

We did a few touristy things (mountain aero tram, Palm Canyon tour) but mostly just flaked out while we were there. I was battling my new cold, and the desert air was all I really wanted for my convalescing efforts.

CONCLUSION
My cold and allergy problems impacted some of this trip, but the LA portion made a big impact. I’m currently shopping for some vee neck shirts and looking at Mustangs. I wonder if any bars around here have that Spanish Villa ambience? In the meantime, I’ll just enjoy the Knox Street crowd here in Dallas and think about what to do on my next trip to LA.

© 2009 blogSpotter

Halloween at the Bijou

I don't think Mommy likes me -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I just returned from a week-long vacation in LA and Palm Springs. As soon as I gather my thoughts and notes about all that, I may post a travelogue; I caught a bad cold halfway through the week and it has slowed down my thought process. That doesn’t stop me from doing a movie review (triple-header) however...

ORPHAN
This morning I watched a movie made for Halloween -- Orphan. The movie is basically a retelling of 1956’s Bad Seed which has Patty McCormack as the evil, possessed child. Orphan features less well-known actors, and has a very talented 12 year-old named Isabelle Fuhrman in the role of the disturbed 9 year old orphan, Esther. The movie has received some bad press because it seems to cast shadows on the whole adoption process. The movie company had to change it’s ad campaign as a response. "It must be difficult to love an adopted child as much as your own," was switched to "I don’t think Mommy likes me very much."

I wasn’t too keen that (early in the movie) she was singled out as potentially evil for being precocious or having a large vocabulary for her age. What are we implying? Must you be a dunce to not be evil? There I went and used a word like “dunce” -- hoping that doesn’t put me in the evil category. The movie has you believe that the step siblings wouldn’t report Esther’s bizarre, violent behavior to the parents. I guess movies need incredible events to proceed. Have to confess that I enjoyed some of the sillieness -- it's easily worth a $1 redbox rental fee.

WHATEVER WORKS
This small-budget Woody Allen movie challenges our assumptions about what normal really is, when a “normal” family from the deep south dissolves. The daughter seeks life’s answers in Manhattan, rooming with an old, acerbic retired physicist played by Larry David. The mother tracks her down, soon followed by the father. I won’t divulge what happens but each person experiences self-discovery in the unfettered setting of the Big Apple. I can’t say that the movie is ground-breaking since Allen and others have done similar topics in movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan.

MAIDEN HEIST
Can’t help but think that this was a “straight-to-video” movie since I never saw theater ads for it. It features three museum guards who scheme to keep a new curator from moving some of their favorite exhibits off to a museum in Denmark. They work up a plan to substitute forgeries for the real items and all manner of buffoonery ensues. With Morgan Freeman, William H Macy and Christopher Walken, even this “B” movie was an enjoyable use of time while I was answering the door for trick-or-treaters. I am reminded of what Carrot Top said on Jay Leno: “I make my movies right in the video store, and cut out the middle man”. While that makes no sense it still made me laugh out loud.

OK, I’ve had my 3rd dosages of Wal-Phed and still feel like crapola. Have done all the usual things -- fluids, rest, chicken soup. Maybe about three more movies will bring me around. I have a busy week at work next week, as well as my first on-call rotation so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that everything works out OK.

© 2009 blogSpotter

Fear No Evil

Nurses in training during the 1918 Pandemic -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
With all of the attention being given to H1N1 in the media, it’s interesting to compare this pandemic to the notorious Spanish Flu of 1918. The Spanish Flu was named for Spain because Spain (which remained neutral in WWI) is the only country that would give flu updates during the war-time news blackout. Spanish Flu was actually world-wide. It was a form of influenza A and a subtype of H1N1 – the same lovely bug we have now.

There are lingering arguments about whether it was avian or swine, and how exactly it started. Spanish Flu raged from 1918 to 1920 and is thought to have killed 50-100 million people worldwide. A third of the world’s population was infected and it’s deemed by some to be the worst epidemic in medical history. In the USA, 500,000-675,000 people died. The statistics are sketchy because some people struck by the flu actually died from more immediate causes – like preexisting diseases or accidents.

It’s thought that the disease originated in China, came to Boston, MA where it mutated and then forged on to Brest, France. The ongoing World War I abetted the virus due to frequent troop movements, and troops living in close quarters. Some historical perspective has probably been lost, because so much more focus was given to World War I (another kind of “pandemic” where humans kill humans for territorial reasons – another blog entirely).

There are some things about Spanish Flu that were oddities in 1918 but mirror the situation today. Many of the 1918 victims were healthy young adults. Half the fatalities were people between 20 and 40 years of age. A rapid response (called a “cytokline storm”) from a healthy immune system caused young peoples’ lungs to fill with fluid. Other symptoms differed from now and were quite alarming -- bleeding from mucous membranes and the ears. The Spanish Flu was at its worst during summer months where “normal” flu outbreaks more typically happen in the winter. Spanish Flu came in two waves. The first wave was more innocuous – the second wave of late 1918 was far deadlier.

Very oddly, the Spanish Flu ended as suddenly as it started. In Philadelphia, 4,597 died one week in October; one month later there were no fatalities and almost no one with any lingering illness. Some people speculated at the time that treatments improved dramatically – but there’s no real evidence of that. More recent speculation is that the virus might have done a “self-limiting” mutation to quit killing its human hosts. It’s actually in the interest of the virus for its host to live a long life (for viral reproduction) – hence the non-fatal staying power of viruses such as chicken pox and various herpes strains.

There is a long list of well-known people who suffered from the 1918 pandemic including Walt Disney, Lillian Gish and English prime minister David Lloyd George. The Spanish Flu has resurfaced in pop culture – in David Morrell’s If I Die Before I Wake (1997) and Thomas Mullen’s Last Town on Earth (2006) which both speak to the impact on small American towns. The H1N1 that we have now is alarming by 2009 standards but has taken a comparatively paltry 5000 lives worldwide. Still, we have to wonder “what evil lurks” not just in the hearts of men, but in ordinary proximity to poultry, pigs and other well-meaning humans.

© 2009 blogSpotter