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Comment Forum

Friday Comments Forum — Top Ten Films

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Here’s the Friday open comments post.

Today’s suggested topic is a list of “10 all-time favorite films.”

Today’s topic — top ten favorite films, has been a happy challenge. It’s a challenge to pick just ten, but a happy challenge.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Inspired.

High Noon (1952). A fine western, and rightly celebrated. Marshal Will Kane stands his ground, in a tribute to individualism. Over fifty years later, it still holds up.

Exorcist (1973). Parodied many times, but a great film from William Friedkin. Some the the scenes have a real tension, in those moments of conversation.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Great Harper Lee book, and a solid, serious performance from Gregory Peck in the film.

North by Northwest (1959). My favorite Hitchcock film.

Henry V (1989). Better even than Olivier’s version, Kenneth Branagh conveys Henry’s transition from supposedly callow ruler to wartime leader.

King Kong (2005). Beautiful and moving. Astonishing. My favorite of all time.

Dark City (1998). A science fiction gem: “…a lifetime of knowledge in a single syringe.”

Bringing Up Baby (1938). Always funny.

His Girl Friday (1940). Some of the funniest lines on screen, in a comedy about a big city paper.

The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings are, of course, fine.

Although the comments template has a space for a name, email address, and website, those who want to leave a field blank can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it.

I’ll keep the post open through Sunday afternoon. Enjoy.

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Laws/Regulations

Beautiful Whitewater

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During the week, each morning, I’ve posted photos of wildflowers near a parking lot on our college campus. There are two reasons for posting them. Those photos appeared Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

First, the flowers make beautiful photographs, however poor the photographer. Seen as they are, they’re lovely.

Look back over the photos from the full week, seeing these plants closely, and I think you’ll agree. Even my poor photography cannot spoil them. They’re living wonders.

Second, they reveal not merely natural beauty, but diverse and plentiful life — each small patch is home to both plants and animals, a small ecosytem all its own. A person might conclude that plants like this are all a jumble, but they’re more than that — they’re beautiful plants and animals of an interdependent order.
Natural lawns are like this, too. I don’t have one, but I can see that they’re beautiful and representative of a created order. These beautiful but harmless lawns should not be mowed down, in whole or part, by municipal mandate.

There are things to be said in favor of a homeowner’s natural lawn.

It’s a legitimate use of private property, earned by private citizens, and cared for by them. No bureaucrat bought the properties on which these lawns grow — they were not earned at his labor, were not nurtured with his time, and should not be subject to his meddling. This is the arrogant presumption of publicly-paid officials: that they may not only draw a salary at public expense, but may restrict and control the fruits of others’ salaries at their whim and discretion. It simply shows an official’s disrespect for the boundary between public and private, to regulate ever father. To other communities, it makes Whitewater a subject of criticism by contrast with their own practices.

Sometimes an official will insist on regulating private property, but will wail, gnash his teeth, and rend his garments at the slightest criticism of his public performance. Regulations should rest on the presumption that private property should remain free of public meddling. Similarly, those regulations should be free of motivation from spite, pique, and retaliation for public criticism.

It’s wrong to contend that these are merely weeds, as that’s simply misinformed and ignorant. They’re not weeds, but a delicate, small ecosystem of living things. It merely battens on ignorance to contend otherwise.

Lawns like these, few in number across the town, cause no harm to others, although one can expect specious arguments along those lines. Should such arguments be made, they will merit a thorough and comprehensive refutation, debunking flimsy arguments. That’s a refutation that one should be happy to make, if the necessity were to arise.

Someone, somewhere, saw the beauty in the wildflower flowers planted near the campus this summer. He was right to do so. Plants like these, and other wild varieties grown with care by homeowners in town, and worth admiring, and defending.

Uncategorized

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 8-20-10

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Good morning,

Today’s forecast for Whitewater calls for a chance of thunderstorms, with a high temperature of eighty-six degrees.

The Friday Comment forum topic for today will be ‘top ten favorite films of all time.’ I’ve found it hard to create a list with only ten, but it’s been fun trying.

Herman Leonard, renowned photographer of America’s jazz musicians, passed away this week. His photographs were only recognized years after they were first taken, but in the 1980s he received the recognition his photos deserved. The New York Times recalled his accomplishments earlier this week:

Herman Leonard, an internationally renowned photographer whose haunting, noirish images of postwar jazz life became widely known only in the late 1980s, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 87. A resident of Pasadena, Calif., Mr. Leonard died after a short illness, said Geraldine Baum, the director of Herman Leonard Photography. Mr. Leonard never set out to document the birth of bebop, though he wound up doing just that. He was simply a young jazz lover whose camera gave him entree into the many New York clubs — the Royal Roost, Birdland, Bop City — whose cover charges he could not afford.

A slideshow of his photographs is available at the New York Times website.

Law

Jonathan Tobin: The Federal Government’s Steroids Problem

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A waste of resources, and prosecutorial grandstanding. These cases suck time and money that should be allocated against violent crime. Tobin has it just right:

The news today that former baseball great Roger Clemens has been indicted on federal perjury charges will, no doubt, serve as the catalyst for another outpouring of moral outrage about the use of steroids or other so-called performance enhancing drugs in sports. Clemens, like Barry Bonds, another superlative player who has also been indicted for perjury about his steroid use, is exactly the sort of person the authorities love to single out for prosecution: wealthy and arrogant, and thus extremely unpopular.
….the government has yet to demonstrate why the use of these substances is of sufficient import to justify the not inconsiderable resources that the Justice Department has deployed to ferret out baseball’s steroid users.

….what national peril did steroids pose to the republic and its citizens that made it necessary for both Congress and the Department of Justice to spend so much time and money chasing after Clemens and Bonds?

….The real reason is that prosecuting wealthy adult athletes generates enormous publicity, which is something that both members of Congress and federal prosecutors crave.

Via The Federal Government’s Steroids Problem.

Laws/Regulations

Wisconsin State prison head lives in Illinois – JSOnline

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Exemptions:

The state employee in charge of responding at a moment’s notice to riots and other disturbances in Wisconsin prisons recently moved to Illinois, more than 90 miles away from his office in Madison.

The employee also received an exemption to state policy requiring him to keep his specially equipped emergency response vehicle at his home overnight. The same policy forbids the car, a 2008 Chevrolet Impala similar to a police cruiser equipped with a special two-way radio, to be driven outside of Wisconsin.

Under an agreement reached with the head of the Department of Corrections, Division of Adult Institutions Administrator Bill Grosshans parks the car in an elementary school lot overnight in tiny Hazel Green, about five miles from his home in Galena, Ill.

via State prison head lives in Illinois – JSOnline.

Free Markets, Freedom of Speech

Dr. Laura Schlessinger: Confused Whiner

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I’ve never listened to Dr. Laura Schlessinger on the radio, but I’ve read that she’s quitting radio because, by her account, her “First Amendment rights have been usurped” because she used the “n-word” on the air. (I know who she is, and know of her manner; I’m not, however, a listener.)

Schlessinger’s claim in nonsense, as Paul Riismandel writes in Dr. Laura lived by the market, died by the market:

Lest anyone be confused, the current state of US law and policy makes it perfectly legal for Dr. Laura to use the ?n-word? and most other words in the English language on the radio. The only exceptions to this are in cases of indecency, which only pertains to discussing matters of sexual and excretory functions; racial, gender and other types of epithets are not policed by the FCC in any fashion.

Rather, what happened to Dr. Laura is that she felt the harsh sting of the marketplace at work. Rather than attempting to bring any sort of governmental action the coalition led by Media Matters took aim squarely at Dr. Laura?s advertisers and called them on the carpet for supporting her program and the speech it contains. As it turns out, it looks like big companies like General Motor?s OnStar and Motel 6 decided they?d rather not be associated with a program that tosses around the ?n-word? and pulled their advertising.

It’s not a violation of the First Amendment for private advertisers to decide against running commercials on her program. Quite the contrary, that decision is a free choice of those private parties, and an exercise of their economic liberty.

If these advertisers decide she’s objectionable, and association with her damages their brands, they’re well within their rights — and not violating hers — to walk away from her program.

She’s still free to use any number of insulting terms; she’s just not entitled to expect private parties to pay her in advertising when she does so. She’s equally free to try to find advertisers from among companies that don’t mind racial insults, but she’ll find that’s a small and shoddy market.

She’s simply wrong about the First Amendment, and an irritating whiner, to boot. It’s well-past time she picked herself up, and accepted responsibility for her own conduct.

Weird Tales

La Crosse Tribune: Wisconsin Man Cited for Harassing Woman at Express Lane

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A woman in a Saukville grocery’s express lane was ridiculed by a man for having more items than the stated limit of ten. In ridiculing her, he called her “fat” and “ugly.”

(I’ve no idea what the woman looks like, but considering the man’s choice of insults one can guess she likely isn’t thin and beautiful.)

Nonetheless, the man is a fool, twice over. First, these kinds of public scenes are susceptible of a disorderly conduct charge. There are places to observe that someone’s fat, and places where a confrontation about those lawful remarks may give rise to a charge for the ensuing confrontation (one that may be instigated by another private citizen or an official). Better to avoid the whole scene.

Second, do you want to take a stand on this matter, of all things? An express lane in a supermarket, even one that might be occupied by an irritating hag, is hardly a suitable cause for a public confrontation. If it were otherwise, shoppers in Wisconsin would be having these confrontations many times each day.

There are better causes than this.

See, Wisconsin Man Cited for Harassing Woman at Express Lane.

Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Liberty

When (Canadian) Bureaucrats Attack

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Kevin Libin, of the Canadian National Post has a story about how Canadian officials are bullying a libertarian family of immigrants to Canada from what was Soviet-occupied Poland. They left a dictatorship, but they’ve run into the soft, oppressively bureaucratic culture of modern-day Canada. (Sadly, something like his story might easily happen in countless places in America.)

Peter Jaworski wasn’t born in the cradle of freedom, but his mother says she hid illegal, anti-Soviet pamphlets in his baby carriage, covertly passing them out to fellow dissidents on the streets of Wroclaw, Poland. When local police sent an order to his father to report to them for unspecified reasons, the family used a permit to travel to Germany and fled, eventually settling in Orono, Ont[ario].

Since coming to Canada, Peter has celebrated freedom with more enthusiasm than most. He helped found the Institute for Liberal Studies, a libertarian advocacy group; he’s writing his PhD thesis about concepts of ownership rights; and every summer for the past 10 years he’s hosted the two-day Liberty Summer Seminar on his parents’ acreage. There, a few dozen libertarians – past attendees have included Conservative Cabinet minister Jason Kenney and Ontario Cabinet minister Randy Hillier – camp out on the idyllic grounds, hear a handful of pro-liberty speakers, tap their feet along with some freedom-minded musical acts, and enjoy Mother Jaworski’s cooking.

At least, they used to. This past July may have been the last, as the libertarians met their nemeses in the flesh: bureaucrats armed with a red tape roll full of regulations that may not only shut down the seminar for good, but threaten to hit the Jaworskis with as much as $50,000 in fines for using their property for reasons unapproved by government.

“I thought government would help me to do business, to be independent, not to be on welfare, but it’s the opposite. It’s like “you own this property? Now we own you,” Marta Jaworski says. “Government is just like Big Brother. Without government we would [apparently] be all dead. They think we need them so much in every aspect of our lives.”

The way they’ve come under officials’ scrutiny is so very typical of how bureaucrats operate in towns across this country:

The Jaworskis aren’t sure why inspectors, after years of summer seminars, suddenly showed up on the property to itemize violations. There was a “complaint,” they were told, though they insist neighbours always seemed fine with the event, which drew 72 people this year, each paying $125 each ($75 for students). They recently turned their home into a bed and breakfast to make ends meet, marketing their pastoral property as a perfect spot for wedding planners. They suspect another hospitality business in the municipality of Clarington turned them in. They have no proof, but they have grown suspicious others are exploiting government to hurt them.

Ever wonder if this happens in your own towns, where a businessman will use regulations — and cozy connections to local officials — to harass his competitors? Often, when bureaucrats say they re pro-business, it turns out to mean only the business owners they like, their friends’ businesses. For their friends’ competitors, there’s not so much liking, and a lot of regulating.

It’s a middling official’s way of feeling important, of misusing the public trust to be a ‘person of influence.’

See, Bureaucratic Bullies Foil Annual Libertarian Retreat.

Government Spending, Law

Wall Street Journal – SEC Sues New Jersey as States’ Finances Stir Fears

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One can expect to read of more suits like this, against sundry state and local governments that have issued bonds –

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in its first securities-fraud case against a state, accused New Jersey of misleading investors about the health of its two largest state pensions while selling billions of dollars in bonds.

New Jersey settled SEC charges that the state misled investors about the health of its two largest pensions while issuing billions of dollars in bonds. Peter Landers, David Weidner and David Reilly discuss. Also, Stephanie Banchero discusses a new company that allows students to bet for (or against) their grades.
State authorities settled the case without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

While it singled out New Jersey, the SEC is conducting several investigations into what other states disclosed about their weakened finances.

States ranging from California to Illinois to New York have been thrown into financial difficulty by the economy but have been able to avoid disaster by selling bonds to investors, many of them individuals seeking safe, tax-free income.

States as a whole face a trillion-dollar gap between the pensions, health care and other retirement benefits they have promised to public employees, and the money set aside to pay the benefits, according to a report by the Pew Center on the States.

The SEC said it is concerned about how these problems are disclosed to investors.

“We want to make sure that states or municipalities who go out and raise money from the public are adequately disclosing all material information in connection with their pension liabilities,” said Elaine Greenberg, head of the SEC’s municipal securities and public pension unit, which was created in January.

In the New Jersey action, the SEC cited municipal bonds in 79 separate offerings totaling $26 billion from 2001 to 2007. Many of those sales occurred after the SEC said the state abandoned a plan to bring pension funding up to snuff.

The SEC’s filing in the civil case described a series of moves that it alleged misled investors into believing the state was adequately funding the $34 billion Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund and the $28 billion Public Employees’ Retirement System.

See, SEC Sues New Jersey as States’ Finances Stir Fears

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 8-19-10

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Good morning,

Today’s forecast for Whitewater calls for a slight chance of thunderstorms with a high of eighty-three degrees.

Jazz singer and activist Abbey Lincoln passed away over the weekend. Allison Keyes recalled Lincoln’s many accomplishments:

Abbey Lincoln, the legendary jazz singer who believed in singing as a political act, died Saturday in Manhattan. She was 80. An actress, artist and composer, Lincoln created music ranging from avant-garde civil-rights-era recordings to the equally powerful but more introspective work of her later years.

Her 1960 collaboration with jazz drummer Max Roach, We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, put her voice smack in the middle of the soundtrack of the civil-rights movement. In “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace,” Lincoln literally screams her anger. But that’s not how she started out.

Village Voice jazz critic Nat Hentoff supervised the recording of the Freedom Now Suite and watched Lincoln transform from a sultry nightclub singer into a more sophisticated artist. Hentoff says Lincoln was a sometimes self-deprecating woman with a ready, sardonic wit, and says her death is a huge loss to a jazz community that doesn’t have musicians like her anymore.

See, Remembering Jazz Singer and Activist Abbey Lincoln.

Keyes’s tribute links to Lincoln singing Driva’Man, and here’s another song from the same album (We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite), Freedom Day:



more >>

Uncategorized

Students Bet on Their Grades – WSJ.com

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A clever idea, but as some of the students quoted in the story observe, lots of kinks that can be exploited by clever bettors, too.

Two New York entrepreneurs are offering college students the chance to put their money where their grades are.

Their website lets college students place wagers on their own academic performance, betting they will earn, say, an A in biology or a B in calculus. Students with low grade point averages are considered long shots, so they have the opportunity to win more money for high grades than classmates with a better GPA.

The pair of recent college graduates who founded Ultrinsic.com say they hope to turn a profit and inspire students to work harder. “It would be great if everyone was intrinsically motivated to get good grades, but that’s, like, not reality,” said Jeremy Gelbart, a 23-year-old co-founder of the site.

Via Students Bet on Their Grades – WSJ.com.

Economy

Human/Capuchin Parallels Revisited – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com

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So are people hard-wired to make bad decisions, the way monkeys do?

Take finance: we tend to play it safe in situations where we stand to make gains. But faced with the risk of a substantial loss, we get nervous and opt for even riskier strategies in the vain hope we can avoid losses altogether….[Researcher Laurie] Santos says that makes us — as Freakonomics readers will have already guessed — just like capuchin monkeys.

Yes, he’s sharp-looking, but surely we can do better than this guy —



A white-headed Capuchin in Costa Rica’s Manuel Antonio National Park. Taken by John Hayashi, 15 July 2006.

Via Human/Capuchin Parallels Revisited – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.