January 2010

Tue Jan 12 16:47:10 PST 2010

Remember the shit storm when then Colorado University professor Ward Churchill lobbed the rhetorical stink bomb of calling the 9/11 attack victims “little Eichmanns?” Remember the second shit storm when it was found that he had previously committed academic misconduct?

Well, what about the shit storm when a jury found that the investigation which uncovered the misconduct was politically motivated?

Oh, wait, there wasn’t one. The story indeed got covered in the establishment media, but it never made the front page.

And not only that, the judge then proceeded to take the unusual step of basically ignoring the jury’s verdict. That story also got conveniently buried.

Look, it was a stupid thing to say. Lots more working class people got killed in those attacks than big time capitalists did. But it doesn’t justify what happened to the guy. Being tactless is not a crime.

As one politically conservative professor from Oklahoma remarked:

Suppose I publicly criticize the local police department, and their officers subsequently start following me all over town, ticketing me for minor violations that they normally would ignore.

Am I being punished for breaking the law — or for exercising my right of free speech?

It’s entirely possible, in other words, for a sanction to be purportedly based on an actual, non-political offense while at the same time the sanction is politically motivated.

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Tue Jan 12 17:21:07 PST 2010

I saw Avatar last week. Some random observations follow. My opinions are so mixed that I couldn’t decide whether to give it a negative spin by listing the bad stuff after the good stuff, or a positive one by doing vice versa. And it’s not really possible to list both at the same time and be organized. So I flipped a coin.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Purely technical notes:

• It was the first 3D move I’ve seen. Yes, it’s really possible to make things look like they’re in the theater right in front of you. This was generally eschewed in the main feature itself (which usually opted for the perception of depth behind the screen instead of ahead of it), but some of the previews couldn’t resist making use of the gimmick.
• I was worried I might get a headache from watching it. I didn’t. Doing a Google search on “3D movie headache” reveals that it’s not that unusual to get one, however.
• If you look at the screen without wearing glasses, it looks all blurry and double-imagey. Which makes sense, because they are projecting two cross-polarized images onto the screen. The same thing happens if you tilt your head, because the polarizers in the 3D glasses are no longer 90 degrees with respect to the undesired image channel.
• If you look through the glasses the wrong way, it just looks flat. All or most of the 3D effect vanishes.
• I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a passing fad. There have already been two 3D movie crazes, and we’re about as far from the one in the early eighties as that one was from the one in the mid fifties.

The good:

• It basically comes out and says that committing treason against one’s “own” government can be a good thing.
• It legitimizes resistance. Not only that, it legitimizes armed resistance. It accurately portrays those who run civilization as being willing to use violence to get their way, thus making at least some degree of violence inevitable in any successful resistance.
• It delegitimizes the “war on terror;” the human invaders in the movie use some of the same rhetoric the ruling class uses in the “war on terror.”
• The fact that such a narrative can make an entertaining story is an indication of how tenuous the system’s grasp on our hearts is. If offers hope for those of us who want to see it fall and be replaced by something better.

The bad:

• The ridiculous name of the sought-after mineral substance. Unobtanium? Oh, please.
• The rather formulaic duel at the end. How Hollywood.
• The oft-mentioned “the natives need a white savior” element. It’s really the worst thing about the movie, and it’s really, really bad. We’re somehow supposed to believe Jake can get to the highest level in another society in a mere three months, something that takes 20 years or so for a Na’vi to do. It would have been possible to show a human “traitor” playing an critical role in the struggle without going to this excess.
• It’s particularly nauseating how we’re supposed to believe Jake figures out the secret to taming that huge flying beast, and we’re supposed to believe the Na’vi never did figure that trick out (thus having to rely on the extremely rare times other methods work, hence how few times it’s happened), even though they’ve lived on that planet (and rode smaller flying beasts) for millennia.

Just plain unbelievable:

• How effective primitive weapons and wild beasts were against advanced weaponry. This goes against practically everything in history about conflicts between tribal peoples and civilized, technological ones. It’s pure fairy tale. A more realistic scenario would involve a campaign of stealth and sabotage (by Na’vi Jake had taught the fundamentals of technology to, and which would have been called “terrorism” by the human leadership) instead of it being purely a battlefield victory.

A summary of the original scriptment can be found here; it’s quite a bit better than what ended up coming out of the studio.

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Wed Jan 20 10:28:44 PST 2010

Mainly, the end of this:

I always thought this was the most accurate of all the spoof posters put out by the righties.

Really, now, 2008 was merely a presidential election victory. Nothing more. The fundamental nature of the system remained unchanged. You can elect whomever you want to the job of running a system of hierarchy and privilege, but in the end he’s still just running a system of hierarchy and privilege.

The most indoctrinated population the history of the world remained fundamentally unchanged, as did the machinery that indoctrinated them. It should therefore be no surprise that the same system that herded people into supporting a war in Iraq on extremely flimsy pretenses can be used to herd them into voting based on equally flimsy ones.

The power of wealth remained unchanged. So whatever health care (and bank bailout) bills that passed would be distorted by having to first and foremost cater to the needs of the privileged. There is more than a germ of truth in the Tea Partiers’ claim that the health reform bill is a bloated monstrosity. (Where they err is when they claim it is so because it’s “socialism” instead of corporate welfare.)

If there had been the sort of widespread grass-roots radicalism that existed during the administrations of LBJ and both Roosevelts, then there would have been reason for hope. It would have served the interests of the system to kick down a few meaningful reforms in order to defuse the anger. But there wasn’t. So they didn’t. Ruling elites never do anything simply because it’s nice.

What will happen to health care reform? It won’t happen. It theoretically could still happen, of course. For openers, the House could simply pass the bill the Senate has already passed, verbatim, skipping the conference committee rewrite. But it won’t happen. We’re talking liberals here. Their psychopathology is the unrealistic desire to always be loved by all people in all circumstances. They’ll cave so fast it’ll make your head spin. I guarantee it. In fact, they’re already starting to.

Given all that, was it still worth it for me to support the effort anyhow? Yes. First, as much as I’d like to see more radical efforts taking place, they currently aren’t. Second, even though it was fated to be an awful bill, it was discernibly less awful than the status quo. Third, it almost passed. It was always a crap shoot, but it wasn’t that far-fetched a one. If I had to do it all over, I’d still take the crap shoot.

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Thu Jan 28 13:48:16 PST 2010

I’m starting to get active in amateur radio again. It’s as a result of suffering a broken ankle last spring out of cell phone (but, based on maps, well within 2m repeater) coverage territory. So much has changed in the 10 years since I regularly got on the air.

One of the changes is D-STAR, a new digital mode that’s used on the same VHF and UHF bands that FM commonly is. Like all new technologies, its promoters claim it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I don’t think so:

• D-STAR offers no advantages over FM when it comes to range. The range is about the same for both technologies.
• It doesn’t offer big advantages in audio quality, either. Oh, sure, they say it does, but really, FM is pretty damn good in terms of voice quality. Piling a slight improvement on what’s already almost ideal isn’t that big a help. Especially given how the resulting audio will go to the same tinny little loudspeaker, which is the real limiting factor in audio quality.
• It ends up being worse in fringe areas. Instead of gradually dropping out like FM, it’s a typical digital mode: everything’s fine until you suddenly “fall off a cliff” without warning.
• It’s significantly more expensive. And, thanks to its reliance on proprietary technologies instead of open ones, it’s going to stay that way.
• It’s utterly incompatible with existing analog FM equipment. There’s a lot of money invested in that equipment, and it’s not going to be thrown out casually.
• In most cases, trying to make ham radio be more like a cell phone is pointless. Cell phones are far more universal, operate in full duplex, and don’t have any pesky FCC regulations limiting what can and cannot be said. If you want something that acts like a cell phone, you’re far better off just getting a cell phone.
• Ham radio is also not that great a way to access the Internet. Pull up a web page with ads on it? Presto, you (and the repeater control operator) are in violation of FCC regulations against commercial speech on ham radio.

That said, I think it will find its uses. It’s a brand-new way to send data, and the bit rate is considerably higher than old-fashioned packet radio. It’ll be great for sending visual information (e.g. photographs, scanned signed documents) for emergency communications and to remote areas beyond the reach of the cell network.

It also might find some use in the most congested major metropolitan areas, since it allows more signals to be packed into a given amount of spectrum space than analog FM. Than again, making more use of currently-underutilized bands like 33cm and 23cm can achieve the same end goal without having to resort to proprietary technologies.

If electronics technology keeps advancing, eventually digital modes will displace analog FM for voice transmission. I don’t expect that to happen for another decade or two, however. First, the false start of D-STAR will have to run its course. Then something that has better weak/fringe performance than FM will come along, and the trade off of having more range (for the same or less transmitter power) will be worth putting up with the “fall off a cliff” effect when range is exceeded (and the cost of getting new equipment).

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