Quantum of Solace

I rarely see movies in the the­ater and I rarely rent them until they are avail­able for five days (so I can rent it on Fri­day and not return it until Mon­day). So most of the “movie reviews” I post will not be of much use to many readers.

But I do not see that as a rea­son to not post them!

I watched Quan­tum of Solace last night. I had rent­ed Casi­no Royale a while back and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a bit long and felt like watch­ing two movies back to back, but I thought it the best Bond film ever. I looked for­ward to sequels.

Quan­tum of Solace came out to such bad reviews that I was in no hur­ry to rent it. I believe I was mis­led. This was a fun movie to watch. It may not quite be up to the stan­dard of Casi­no Royale, but it is close.

More impor­tant­ly, plot wise it is the end­ing of Casi­no Royale. Both of these movies are too long and have plen­ty of exces­sive action that could be edit­ed out with lit­tle dam­age (and maybe improve­ment!) to the films. Maybe it is my imag­i­na­tion, but it seems like some of the back and forth between M and Bond that was cov­ered in the first film was done again in the second.

There are two good movies here with more edit­ing. As it is, there are two movies worth watch­ing which are cer­tain­ly the best of the most­ly dread­ful Bond series.

Regulating the economy

To be hon­est, reg­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my is most­ly over my head. Or, maybe, just bor­ing to me. Either way, when­ev­er an arti­cle men­tions deriv­a­tives two or more times, it is iffy that I will get to the end.

Still, it is an impor­tant top­ic. I’m sure some argue that the less reg­u­la­tion the bet­ter. And I can’t argue that. As long as there is enough, there should­n’t be more.

I’m guess­ing that every time an eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tion is writ­ten, there are par­ties that imme­di­ate­ly set about find­ing a way around it. So, even though it is impor­tant for the present reg­u­la­to­ry scheme to be adjust­ed to new real­i­ties, we should nev­er assume that all con­tin­gen­cies are covered.

It seems like what we real­ly need is some­one who iden­ti­fies prob­lems and acts on them. Did­n’t most of Amer­i­ca under­stand there was a hous­ing bub­ble? Was­n’t this clear a cou­ple of years ago? Or ear­li­er? Did­n’t Fed Chair­man Greenspan com­plain of irra­tional exu­ber­ance in the stock mar­ket in 1996, four years before that recession?

In both cas­es, every­one under­stood that eco­nom­ic growth was being dri­ven by bub­bles. But no one had the polit­i­cal courage to do some­thing about it. Maybe end­ing a bub­ble inevitably leads to a reces­sion (and who wants to be respon­si­ble for that?), but I’m bet­ting end­ing the bub­ble soon­er rather than lat­er would lessen the recession.

Maybe the next round of eco­nom­ic growth will be pow­ered by an increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty instead of a bub­ble. You know, for a change.

Iran’s choices

I am copy­ing the fol­low­ing poem from 3quarksdaily.

    Inscription

Meh­di Akhavan-Sales

The stone lay there like a mountain
and we sat here a weary bunch
women, men, young, old
all linked together
at the ankles, by a chain.

You could crawl to whomev­er your heart desired
as far as you could drag your chain.

We did not know, nor did we ask
was it a voice in our night­mare and weariness
or else, a her­ald from an unknown corner,
it spoke:

“The stone lying there holds a secret
inscribed on it by wise men of old.”
Thus spoke the voice over and again
and, as a wave recoil­ing on itself
retreat­ed in the dark
and we said nothing
and for some time we said nothing.

After­wards, only in our looks
many doubts and queries spoke out
then noth­ing but the ambush of weari­ness, oblivion
and silence, even in our looks
and the stone lying there.

One night, moon­light pour­ing damna­tion on us
and our swollen feet itching
one of us, whose chain was the heaviest
damned his ears and groaned: “I must go”
and we said, fatigued: “Damn our ears
damn our eyes, we must go.”
and we crawled up to where the stone lay.
One of us, whose chain was looser
climbed up and read:

“He shall know my secret
who turns me over!”

With a sin­gu­lar joy we repeat­ed this dusty secret
under our breath as if it were a prayer
and the night was a glo­ri­ous stream filled with moonlight.

One…two…three…heave-ho!
One…two…three…once more!
sweat­ing sad, curs­ing, at times even crying
again…one…two…three…thus many times
hard was our task, sweet our victory
tired but hap­py, we felt a famil­iar joy
soar­ing with delight and ecstasy.

One of us, whose chain was lighter
salut­ed all, then climbed the stone
wiped the dirt-caked inscrip­tion and mouthed the words
(we were impatient)
wet­ted his lips (and we did the same)
and remained silent
cast a glance at us and remained silent
read again, his eyes fixed, his tongue dead
his gaze drift­ing over a far away unknown
we yelled to him”

“Read!” he was speechless
“Read it to us!” he stared at us in silence
after a time
he climbed down, his chain clanking
we held him up, life­less as he was
we sat him down
he cursed our hands and his
“What did you read? huh?”
He swal­lowed and said faintly:
“The same was written:

“He shall know my secret
who turns me over!”

We sat
and
stared at the moon and the bright night
and the night was a sick­ly stream.

Trans­la­tion: Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak

Even if Mous­savi was some­how declared the win­ner, not that much would change for Ira­ni­ans. It’s not like it would sud­den­ly become a sec­u­lar state with all the free­doms Amer­i­cans take for granted.

The more things change…

About 410 years ago, Shake­speare wrote in The Sec­ond Part of King Hen­ry the Fourth:

Like one that draws the mod­el of a house

Beyond his pow­er to build it; who, half through,

Gives o’er and leaves his part-cre­at­ed cost

A naked sub­ject to the weep­ing clouds,

And waste for churl­ish win­ter’s tyranny.

I.iii.58..62

And a love­ly addi­tion to the land­scape for the rest of us!

Unfinished house

Father of the Grad

I have been remiss, though I plead exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances. I have had some com­put­er dif­fi­cul­ties that have pre­vent­ed me from manip­u­lat­ing pics.

My daugh­ter grad­u­at­ed from Franklin Col­lege last month. I am the proud Dad.

Father of the Grad
Father of the Grad

There’s not much more to say. She’s smart, tal­ent­ed and a fine young woman.

I’m from the government…

Over many years I’ve heard con­ser­v­a­tives mock lib­er­als with the line about beware the per­son who says “I’m from the gov­ern­ment, I’m here to help.”

But in recent for­eign affairs it would seem that this is exact­ly what the con­ser­v­a­tives want the Pres­i­dent to say to the Iranians.

Not that any­one thinks there would actu­al­ly be any help.

Father’s Day

I grew up a Chica­go Cubs fan. I don’t know exact­ly when I became a Cubs fan, but by the time I was ten, I was a Cubs fan. My best guess is that Ray Raynor, who did a morn­ing show for kids on WGN TV in Chica­go, was respon­si­ble for mak­ing me a Cubs fan.

Dad was a White Sox fan. But I had no idea that Dad was a White Sox fan until I was well into adult­hood. One would think that I might have got­ten a clue from the num­ber of times I walked in on him watch­ing the Sox game when the Cubs were also play­ing. I would com­ment that the Cubs were on and he always changed the chan­nel to the Cubs game. I just fig­ured he did­n’t know.

Some­time in my twen­ties or thir­ties Dad told me the sto­ry of how he became a White Sox fan. As a child, Dad was a Cubs fan. In 1929, Dad was twelve years old. The Chica­go Cubs were in the World Series for the first time since 1918 (when Dad was 2 years old).

It was the fourth game of the series. The Philadel­phia A’s were up 2 games to 1. But the Cubs were look­ing good to even the series at two games each with an eight run lead in the sev­enth inning.

But the A’s scored ten runs in that sev­enth inning, aid­ed by Hack Wilson’s fail­ure to catch two fly balls that he lost in the sun. Twice in the same inning!! Wil­son was the star of the team, hit­ting 39 home runs and dri­ving in 159 runs while bat­ting .345 that year, so it was dou­bly painful that he con­tributed so much to the bad inning.

The A’s won the game and went on to win the series. Dad could­n’t take it. He aban­doned the Cubs and became a White Sox fan.

As it turned out, he had made a good deci­sion. It took thir­ty years, but the White Sox won the World Series in 1959.

The Cubs looked good to get to the post sea­son in 1969 and I was right there keep­ing a scrap­book since Jan­u­ary. Every word the Chica­go Tri­bune print­ed on the Cubs was in my scrap­book. The Cubs blew it in the end and the Mets beat them out. I threw my scrap­book away in dis­gust, but I was still a Cubs fan.

Two weeks ago, the Cubs were mired in a slump and they were play­ing Min­neso­ta. The Twins had men at first and third with one out. A fly ball was hit to medi­um deep right field. Mil­ton Bradley, a high pro­file acqui­si­tion pri­or to the sea­son who has­n’t played well, caught the fly ball. Then he tossed it into the stands.

At that moment, I had an under­stand­ing of what my Dad might have felt back in 1929.

I’m still a Cubs fan (and I’ve enjoyed the last few games!) but it got me to won­der­ing. If I had switched alle­giance to the Sox after 1969, I would have only had to wait 36 years for a World Series win. As it is, I’m still waiting.

Electronic cigarettes

Tech­nol­o­gy march­es on.

The arti­cle in Slate is called Vapor War; Our irra­tional hos­til­i­ty toward elec­tron­ic cig­a­rettes by William Sale­tan.

The e‑cigarette has no tobac­co and deliv­ers assort­ed fla­vors and option­al dos­es of nico­tine in a vapor. No smoke. No odor.

The ques­tion is: should this prod­uct be regulated.

Sale­tan makes the case that it took decades of evi­dence to con­vince us to reg­u­late cig­a­rettes; that near­ly all of the things that make smok­ing dan­ger­ous are miss­ing in e‑cigarettes; and, cit­ing a 2007 study that found “that res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms like cough, phlegm, and tight­ness in the chest increase with cig­a­rette use and cannabis use, but are less severe among users of a vapor­iz­er. … The odds ratio sug­gests that vapor­iz­er users are only 40% as like­ly to report res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms as users who do not vaporize.”

He con­cludes that “The engi­neer­ing and re-engi­neer­ing of drugs will only get more com­pli­cat­ed as tech­nol­o­gy improves. We’d bet­ter start think­ing ratio­nal­ly about it.”

And he’s right. We should be think­ing ratio­nal­ly about it. The facts are that nico­tine and THC are drugs and that the e‑cigarette is a drug deliv­ery sys­tem. To allow either of these prod­ucts to be sold with­out estab­lish­ing whether they are safe or not and with­out appro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion does not strike me as ratio­nal. The one study in front of us says it is only 40% as dan­ger­ous to the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem as cig­a­rettes. Sounds plen­ty unsafe to me.

In hind­sight, did we go about cig­a­rette reg­u­la­tion the cor­rect way? Wait until there are plen­ty of peo­ple mak­ing mil­lions of dol­lars off mil­lions of addicts who also vote?