Charlie Wilson's War (2007)

It's good as a sort of primer into political logrolling while describing how one liberal Texas representative got America to fund a successful war by Afghans against the Soviets for only about $1 billion. Interesting oblique criticism of the war in Iraq is slipped into the dialogue in places. The film also highlights the opportunity lost -- this successful war was not supported in the end with economic aid in a way that could have led Afghanistan to liberal or western leaning democracy.

Why beautiful people have more daughters by Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa

For me this book was fascinating from beginning to end. Written by evolutionary psychologists, its focus is mostly on sex differences and genetics. It begins by positing that humans genetics developed on the savanna and that genetically influenced behavior hasn't changed significantly since we were 'civilized'. There are quite a number of -- for me -- unexpected predictions or explanations from this direction of reasoning. For example, a man gets the (perhaps subconscious) urge to buy a sports car in a mid-life crisis because his wife is going through menopause and no longer able to bear children. The car advertises his fitness and wealth to younger women. Men take on more risks to acquire wealth and status because not to do so could mean not attracting a female mate and not passing on genes. Women does not have to (or want to) take risks because she has something rare and desirable, the egg. Also, once a male scientist (artist or businessman) is married and has a child, his output drops considerably. Single scientists (and engineers?) continue to produce results until much older. (Read the book to understand why.)

About the title, beauty is apparently wasted on males from a reproductive standpoint. Generally, women don't weigh male beauty heavily in their partner search. (However, if they are at the fertile part of the hormone cycle, they do search for a particular kind of testosterone heavy look, of solid jaws, extra height, and muscles.) Thus, nature has it rigged so that the prettier folks turn out more girls to whom beauty is more useful.

Interestingly, with all their work, they were still unable to explain genetic survival value of homosexuality or the reason for its development.

Ratatouille (2007)

Amazingly drawn/rendered, this film about a rat chef is incredibly well done. It's light years better than the other animated rat movie.

News Hour with Jim Lehrer in HD

Wow, Jim's tie is shown with such incredible detail. One of the first national newscasts in HD. That's pretty neat.

Spiderman 3 (2007)

This was an okay movie. I liked it considering my expectations. It goes over conventional, but perhaps timely parables about revenge and forgiveness. And the action sequences are reasonably good. The villians are a bit confused, and there are surely too many of them. For example, the black sticky blob of meteorite thing is a villian too. But having the thing landing exactly in the right place and coincidentally infect Spiderman seems so impossible that one has to completely suspend disbelief about it.

The shade of poison trees: Dashboard Confessional

Seems to fit my horrible mood right now. Early tracks seem a little mellower perhaps than previous albums. The title track is actually my current favorite of the disc. Lyrics

France 24 (Vent-quatre)

French news delivered just like BBC World except the English is a bit shaky and the music not quite as snazzy.

Planet Earth

The BBC series narrated by David Attenborough has amazing cinematography. A Hi-def and high speed camera mounted on a helicopter captures amazing hunt sequences so they can be replayed in slow motion: a huge white shark arcing out of the water and going after a sleek, but defenseless seal, a crocodile snapping at the leg of a huge wildebeast, grasping it, and drowning it (apparently after several hours), african dogs diabolical strategy of splitting up to surround and hunt down antelope (one of which escapes by taking a desperate swim), and hungry pride of lions going after and taking down a large solitary elephant male at night. Some of the most breathtaking landscapes and seascapes are also featured. The series is quite long and should take a few sittings to go through. I think I got fatigued just looking at too many amazing vistas and hunting sequences. The behind the scenes parts of the DVD are actually utterly fascinating as well with Attenborough narrating as well in his wonderfully proper English prose.

Counter-Insurgency Field Manual

For some reason, Gen. Patraeus is not listed as the author explicitly. But perhaps this is because the manual seems have input from many sources. While I haven't read the whole thing through, it seems to build entirely on the idea of population protection. This is simply because if the insurgents cannot hide among the population then they will be easily eradicated. As well, civilians will not be encouraged to join or help insurgents if they feel the US Armed forces are helping them and protecting them from the insurgents.

I suppose it is very interesting that there is so little (bad) news out of Iraq recently. It could very well be that this strategy is working, if only just barely.

Babel (2006)

Did this thing win some award? Approximately simultaneous stories with different synchronization points. Hasn't that been done to death in TV serials?! Sure, there are some high points and hilarity. The Japanese policeman was cute. Pitt gets the typical in your face selfish and senseless American attitude of being superior to everyone else when surrounded by foreigners. Then Pitt breaks down at a ridiculous non-sensical point in talking to his son on the phone and exposes his less than stellar acting ability. The deaf girl is so desperate for sex she walks around naked and gets her breast caressed -- ok, this wasn't a high or low point for me though really -- actually, I was hoping she might put her clothes back on or the guy would take his clothes off. But I suppose this must be the reason why the movie won a Golden Globe. Otherwise, it's totally hopelessly boring and too long.

Crysis

I just tried the 1.9GB demo which took hours to download over my slow broadband. The North Koreans decide to take over Islands down by the Phillipines? How do they supply their troops, via Star Trek transporter!? It's first person shooter. The gameplay is easy and intuitive -- except the damn crouch button is 'Z' instead of the Call of Duty 'C' (but this can be customized anyway). The graphics are pretty amazing, so who cares that the story makes no sense?

New rules: polite musings from a timid observer, by Bill Maher

Bill Maher is quite funny as a liberal commentator on his HBO show. And in this book on tape, he shows the wide range of his brilliance. His delivery is short and sweet, with 3-4 sentence paragraphs encapsulating each joke.

McLaughlin Group

The PBS political discussion television show is full of yelling, attitude, interruptions, and arguments between right and left leaning commentators. Overall very entertaining.

Oriental Institute / Smart Museum at University of Chicago

Here 'Oriental' refers to the Middle East, and I think it is one of the best collections of such art in the US. The other University of Chicago museum is the Smart Museum which houses more modern Western art is smallish and a little less impressive (though the kid at the desk was super nice).

Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen

How do you find a good ethnic restaurant in a new town? Is it right from an economics perspective to give to beggars? Can you enjoy billions without spending it? The book attempts to answer these questions. Honestly, the writing is seems a bit scatterbrained and disorganized, but still it is interesting in parts. And some of the answers make sense. An interesting point is that attention and time are really the scarce items in modern western society.

Buffettology by Mary Buffett (Graham) and David Clark

Want to understand how Warren Buffett makes his investment decisions? It seems pretty simply explained in this 10 year old book by his ex-daughter-in-law, Mary.

Full Circle by Michael Palin

Palin spent a year traveling around the Pacific rim in 1996. There's a startling variety in all these different countries on the Pacific rim. The Northern hemisphere is more monolithic and actually a bit boring. But the rest of the trip through Southeast Asia and South America is different and interesting. Palin has the dry, self-deprecating and inoffensive British humor which is easy to listen to, but doesn't make for much extra entertainment. Still it isn't needed because the locales are so interesting in an of themselves. His excellent descriptions fill in well for the lack of actual images from the book on tape. There is probably a video somewhere, which is hopefully shorter than the book on tape as it might be rather boring actually seeing the place and getting the verbal description at the same time, and only worth fast-forwarding through.

I'm the one that I want by Margaret Cho

The first 2/3 of this is pretty funny. She does a couple voices pretty well. Her mother's Korean accent seems spot on. And the generic dumb high school slacker voice is funny. She talks about how she's a fag hag. But that whoever a gay guy takes to the prom is instantly a fag hag also. I guess that's news to my date.

The second half is about some hardships after her brush with television fame. It's incredible how drugged out or drunk Margaret Cho had gone through life during that time. But this part is told with truthfulness, and I think the reader (or listener) could learn something from her experience. I.e. maybe it's wise to avoid that sort of downfall into drugs and alcohol. Anyway, it certainly seems the cause of a lot of unhappiness in her life.

Art Institute of Chicago

One of the best big metropolitan museums in the country especially for paintings. Maybe even better than the Met for paintings.

The Lives of Others (2006)

People I know seem to like this film. I liked it, but I was in a rush to see it, so I was watching at 2x speed using WinDVD. It's possible it didn't come across as well as it might have at that rate. I liked the idea that one's way of life might or might not be interesting -- or worth saving -- to an outsider. Here the East German secret police try to find dirt on an author because one of their leaders wants to have the author's girlfriend. It's good, but perhaps with the hype I heard, a bit of a letdown.

The Starfish and the Spider by Brafman and Beckstrom

The book talks interestingly about decentralized organizations and their strange power: they are the starfish. The Apache tribe was given as an example of dispersed independent groups which the Spanish found most difficult to fight. Interestingly one way the US found to control the Apache was to 'give' the groups cattle. They would then need to adopt some tops down leadership to divide up the cattle favorably, thereby turning somewhat into the starfish opposite, the spider. An interesting aside is that the depicted the promoters of starfish organizations, called catalysts, tend to be very unique individuals. One person was shown to be a cultivator of weak relationships. He met 'acquaintances' daily and wanted to help them by connecting them to others that he'd met.

Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget by Marianne Legato

The book is about sex differences in the brain. It reviews the basics which we all know about including the one in the title. I never really understood these differences outside the framework of stereotypes. The books shows there to be science behind those stereotypes. For example, women see networking and linkages as vital for survival: protection and social support. Men see relationships as not totally necessary and are willing to be just be independent and self-reliant. Women are better conversationalists and remember conversations with more detail than men. Men like for people talking to get to the point. Many women don't mind talking on and on about things and in significantly more detail.

Overall, an interesting book.

Take It Back by James Carville and Paul Belaga

This book is full of details of Republican strategy which succeeded in defeating Democrats in recent elections. And perhaps you wouldn't be surprised to hear that it is full of what I would call 'dirty tricks'. It describes the bullying of the media to prevent them from asking the oppositions or even neutral expert response to press releases. The concerted effort to paint Kerry as a waffler, even misquoting him to suit their aims. Carville and Belaga also describe lobbyists buying Presidential and Congressional attention -- influence peddling 101 including a discussion of Abramoff.

But their main focus is how to get the Democratic party back in winning shape. A lot of it seems needed. Many Democrats, myself included naively believed that Republicans would at least play fair. But now we know better, and the Republicans need to be countered with aggressive measures. Almost every attack needs to be answered. And the authors generally recommend focus on moderating stances on controversial topics -- basically moving to the middle.

Overall an enlightening view of the Republican (sorry) 'enemy' and how it has created a winning machine out of narrow focus on pleasing the base. And though written in 2006, it even mentions the recently highlighted fact that the southern white voter courted by the Republicans -- those who vote against their own economic interests -- are turned angry by the 'value' debate hot buttons purposefully pushed by the Republicans. These issues include abortion, homosexuality and most shamefully racism.

A Reporters Life by Walter Cronkite

This book on tape is narrated by Cronkite himself. He was present a wide sweep of television news from the beginning through Reagan years. Fascinating listening to a person from another era -- it's almost other worldly.

Breach (2007)

The current highlighted imdb review is correct -- the pacing of this film is slow, and it's more of a drama than the action flick many might expect. Still Chris Cooper is pretty good as the uncharismatic and unappreciated traitor Robert Hansen. Ryan Phillippe plays the young agent clerk to Hansen, actually put there by the FBI to spy on Hansen. Phillippe relies heavily on his good looks, but as an actor, he's rather one-dimensional. His acting at play-acting anger at Hansen's constant suspicion of him even rings as artificial. He does serious or ironic looks okay though.

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But actually Phillippe was not bad as a gay teen many years back on One Life to Live as reported by OhLaLaBlog.

Shooter (2007)

Mark Wahlberg probably worked out a lot for this film. He's got huge shoulders and arms. It's compensation for his lack of height, and for me actually it works to some extent. Overall, a dumb action flick.

** Spoiler ** Vigilante justice in the end seems a little morally bankrupt.

[Temp location: Howard Street] California Academy of Sciences / Steinhart Aquarium

This natural history museum is currently shoehorned into a tiny space next to Moscone center. Most of the current exhibits are of fish, snakes, turtles, frogs or lizards. The tropical fish tanks with coral are amazing and beautiful. There's a tank with a huge bass, probably magnified significantly by the special aquarium glass, but still quite impressive. In all, it's quite surprisingly entertaining, but only good for about an hour or so.

Will be curious to see the transformation when it moves back to permanent (LEEDS platinum) digs in Golden Gate park, but that's in 2010 Sep 2008!

A review of the new French museum of architecture

NYT Sarkozy opens the new museum which is across the river from the Eiffel Tower.

Crocker Museum, Sacramento

Judge Crocker was one of the big four Sacramento businessmen and railroad magnates. Stanford, Hopkins, Crocker, and Huntington are all depicted in paintings in the large main salon. Crocker is the one with the unconventional facial hair: a long pointy beard of all white hair without a mustache. It makes him look like a KKK member, but anyway...

The main salon is where more than 100 paintings are stacked floor to ceiling on all four walls. Thankfully for my neck there are no paintings on the ceiling. While this method of presentation does allow density of paintings, it does make the upper paintings very difficult to see. And paradoxically, they seem to have placed the smaller paintings up there. The reason might be that the larger paintings are more famous and well known, and it makes even less sense to have them put way up and out of the way.

Overall the museum is in much need for the expansion -- which is planned to be complete in 2010 -- to make room for more of the collection which seems reasonably good, although judging on the samples on view Crocker's partner Stanford clearly has a much more varied and higher quality collection at the Stanford University campus.

Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

The book on tape is narrated by President Carter himself. It gives a history of the Palestinian question. Carter comes across as a man seeking to trust others and seeking peace. Here he takes a stance more critical of Israel than the conventional Western opinion. He deplores Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land, its building of the winding, segregation barrier within the disputed territory -- ostensibly to protect (illegal) Israeli settlements, and poor treatment of Palestinians in general. He compares the second class citizenship of the Palestinians in occupied territories to that of Apartheid.

I actually think Carter is right and the comparison is apt. Israel is very strong country with a strong economy and military and should follow the UN resolutions to revert to its internationally recognized borders.

But regardless of your opinion on the matter, the history of the region is fascinating and enlightening as he gives the background of Israel, the surrounding nations, and then describes the situation with the various American Presidents and their administrations.

It's all too much by Peter Walsh

A good philosophy about stuff. Interesting, that it's not just tips on how to put stuff into boxes and how to sort and rearrange stuff. It kind of shows how a philosophy towards stuff can drive a better relationship with it and avoid overfilled houses of stuff, and even a less stressful and less guilt ridden life.

Alpha Dog (2006)

Really? Based on a true story? It's about some young drug dealers funded by one of their dads. The little brother is innocent and cute, and believable as a woman trap. Still he's pretty dumb. The other guys however are more complete idiots. One of the thugs is impotent and perhaps gay. Homophobic slurs and insults are used liberally throughout the movie, but there is also homophobia driven self-hatred and violence. The story is yet another example of: get a bunch of teenage boys together, and they will just plain do stupid things.

It's weird how despite the guns, they manage not to kill each other outright. In strange scenes of vandalism, they pretend not to see each other. There is a weird restraint or truce in place, at least in the beginning.

A comparable drug dealer movie, Brick, is better. Not my favorite genre though.

The Holiday (2006)

A complete chick flick. Jude Law, who seems to be a cad in real life, has only fleeting moments of pretend charm here -- with the winning and innocent smile. Cameron and Kate are better and somewhat convincing as women completely out of luck in the romantic world.

V for Vendetta (2006)

The story is a protest against the Bush government in disguise. With the evil chancellor of Britain -- who sets curfews, throws dissidents in jail, tortures them and puts them through medical experiments, perhaps on mind control -- acting as a stand-in for Bush, the Republicans and the religious right. As an argument against big brother, terror laws and the like, it sort of works. It does give an idea of what would happen when the government gets the power to listen to phone conversations without warrants or to throw people in jails in other countries without rights, like the Bush government has. It's quite scary actually.

The evil Brits also use their power against gays particularly. It's a bit of a tenuous linkage, although somehow I am not unhappy about the inclusion.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Del Toro gives us an amazing world which is a mixture of the supernatural and reality. One strange incongruence is that while the story takes place in Spain, the Labyrinth's architecture and trappings have Native American looking roots. It makes sense only if you think about the director being from Mexico. The visuals are amazing regardless.

Daily Show (and Colbert Report) online video slowness

I'm been thwarted from my daily Comedy Central fix by the extraordinarily painful slowness of their video page. If only someone would embed all their videos in a blog every day, I could avoid this pain. Well, I've attempted this (not every day, but periodically) HERE.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

It is entertaining to read, but did not evoke in me any laughs out loud or weepy sadness. This book was more like a final reassembling of a puzzle. Tying up of loose ends. As I read the book, I got the sense of a bit of arbitrariness of the rules of magic and magical items set out by the author. Fans of the books, might argue it's just like the real world; surely I could comprehend there are exceptions to every rule. A key item in this book and, in fact, in the whole series, is a magical cloak with unfailing invisibility, impervious to other spells. This alone is a super powerful item and allows huge sections of this last book's storyline to move forward. It is analogous to the One Ring of Tolkien's series (that item interestingly also bestows invisibility, but also much else). Still, the cloak isn't really given the full lore than perhaps it deserves. And I think (and probably many would agree) the writing here is nowhere near as good as Tolkien's. Overall, Harry Potter's world is a bit fragile and doubt took hold of me with the least inquiry into its workings.

Link A NYTimes opinion piece along similar lines.

The History Boys (2006)

Originally a play, the storyline is based on experiences in the playwright's life. Alan Bennett who is gay wrote this play which is full of gay references and in fact the main storyline is related to the gay teacher. A somewhat surprising aspect is that the straights depicted seem so incredibly gay curious or at least gay friendly. The boys' camaraderie and friendships even between straight characters are intimate, yet without the fear and homophobia that usually comes with such close male relations. In this respect, it's such a fun, hopeful and friendly world (with a few ugly exceptions) that the movie was so heartening for me to watch.

And yet there are dangers too. A gay man's love of a straight man can be very painful, and having an object of affection willing to go just halfway might be terribly confusing, disappointing, and humiliating -- it's just not worth going too far down that road, it seems to me. (And so a love like this happens at least once to a gay man in his life, and after going through that probably he learns to avoid this pain in the future...) The movie does skillfully avoid such toxic fallout as was portrayed in Notes on a Scandal, but I could see this movie skating on the edges of it.

The movie has a fine demonstration of one of my new favorite Brit words: "Oi!", exclaimed to mean: "What the hell are you doing?!", "Pay attention!" or something similar.

Talk to Her (2002)

As with all Almodovar films, the music is great. It seems Almodovar likes to use some of the same players -- a couple actors in Talk to Her are also in Volver. Overall a very interesting story about women in comas and the men who take care of them, partially told in flashbacks.

Minor spoilers: One interesting theme in the movie is that one lover is sad and cries when he sees something beautiful without his beloved because he can't share it with her. There are interesting extensions to this used to great effect, such as what does it mean that he doesn't cry at something beautiful. Here is also an interesting reversal of common stereotypes. A man who lives with his mother, is a hairdresser and a nurse is straight! Also, looking back, you will realize why it is that the nurse wanted a hug from his friend.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Don't believe in God? This is a great book for you. Believe in God, but don't mind being disabused of the notion of God or think it can't be done (you've been indoctrinated to such an extent that there's no way you think you can be convinced otherwise), then you've nothing to lose by reading this (though you might want to read The Selfish Gene first to give yourself the full chance of being convinced). Dawkins who wrote The Selfish Gene and is an expert on evolution is an atheist. He takes a strong stand against the idiot zealots and encourages other non-believers to do the same. Stop letting these crazy people run the planet and spread their crazy ideas. I was pumped just by the preface.

It's actually quite funny in parts. People have made all kind of weird, illogical arguments for the existence of God. With well written prose, Dawkins pretty much takes apart all the faulty reasoning (circular, non-sequitur, etc). In fact, he points out that the founding fathers of America were in fact extremely secular for the day and fought to remove references to religion (Christianity) in founding documents. Overall he does a great job at systematically discussing and refuting all the reasons people have given for why God exists. He also discusses why religion came about (homo sapiens tendency to personify unexplained agency), but isn't needed and is in fact bad for humanity. (A key reason is that it indoctrinates children into accepting religious tenets as truth without question/thinking. This primes them for atrocities such as suicide bombing or setting abortion clinics on fire.)

One of the main reasons people have for the existence of God, is that things are too complicated to have come to be without some higher intelligence. As a scientist and key proponent of evolution, Dawkins obviously disagrees. Complex organisms have taken a long time but slowly evolved to become more complex. Looking at the end result or culmination of evolution -- people, trees, even the smallest ant, it's quite truly wonderous, but it's the end of a process which survival advantages benefited ancestors and propagation of their genes. Those less wonderously adapted to survival simply did not survive, but they have even left fossils behind as proof of their existence. There is no need for a God acting in 7 days. Dawkins excoriates people who are too lazy to understand the science appropriately and would rather cling to old superstitions which were used to explain the world before science came to understand it.

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Personally, I think it's just the idea of heaven which sustains religion (okay, in conjunction with early childhood brainwashing). People are just too blindly hopeful of something magically like life after life to accept the true deadness of death. Wishful thinking. Hey people snap out of it!