Innocent Bystanders

A Slightly Different Vantage Point Than Biden Offers… March 31, 2012

“I’ve watched him make decisions that would make another man or woman’s hair curl,” Biden told the crowd of 150 inside the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee, according to a pool reporter on scene…

…while the rest of us have watched him make decisions that would make another man or woman’s stomach turn.

Examining the Essential Elements of John Carter March 30, 2012

I’ve been a huge fan of the Princess of Mars series for nearly 40 years. I have all 11 books in the series, as well as all four books of ERB’s other, lesser-known series, Carson of Venus. I even have most of the Jandar of Callisto series – a virtual clone of PofM by Lin Carter.

In short, I’m pretty hardcore when it comes to swashbuckling adventure with a healthy sprinkling of sci-fi.

So my daughter and I went to see John Carter 3D last night, and I thought I’d share a few impressions; particularly since there have been a lot of very negative reviews floating about the web. So here it is broken down by my personal categories for rating movies (which may stray a bit from Ebert’s).

• Swashbuckling (B+): The movie never developed a true sense of swashbucklery, hampered largely by the writers’ focus on Carter’s disillusionment with noble causes. And oddly, after all that focus, the dang writers forgot to fix his disillusionment. Instead they have him decide to fight for love, which is nice, but not nearly as noble as fighting for freedom for the peoples of Mars. Reluctant heroes brooding over past tragedy don’t swashbuckle well.
• Sword-Fighting (B+): The books are all about these amazing sword fights, reminiscent of the movies from 80 years ago. In modern times, I don’t think anybody would have minded if they’d upgraded the sword fights with some Yuen Woo Ping-type action (like Yoda w/a light saber, for example). But no, pretty conventional hack-‘n-slash stuff.
• Eye-Candy (A-): Can’t speak for the ladies’ level of satisfaction, but I was a little disappointed with the babe content. Not that Dejah Thoris wasn’t quite the hottie – she was obviously assembled by first-class artisans. But she’s pretty much the only woman in the movie. They should have written the story to spend a little less time with the Tharks (thus saving money on CGI), and more with the babespeople of Helium.
• Buddy Relationship (C): As long as you’re rewriting portions of the story, you should go ahead and take advantage of the things you’re doing right. Kantos Kan was turning out to be a great character, and would have made an excellent bud for John Carter (as well as lightening up a lot of the movie), but we only really get to enjoy him in one scene. Guys love a buddy movie, and this could have been a good one.
• Amazingly Creative Death Scenes (D): It’s like they didn’t even try.
• Special Effects & CGI (A): As long as you’re going to blow your budget and make a movie that is hugely in the hole from the start, you might was well make the coolest aliens ever. And that’s what they did. Awesome job on the Tharks.

Overall I’d give the movie an A-. It’s biggest weakness is that they tried to cover too much ground, so they skipped over a lot of development and exposition. A couple more scenes each would have really helped cement the romance between John and Dejah, the brutal culture of the Tharks, the virtues of the society of Helium, etc. If you have read the books it’s a little annoying to see some of the explanations crammed in at the last minute as an afterthought, but if you haven’t, then you end up baffled and really irritated (like many of the reviewers on-line).

But I liked it. The daughter liked it. You just might like it, too.

Initial Unemployment Claims Data – Goin’ Nowhere Real Fast March 29, 2012

The initial unemployment claims data is out, and is essentially unchanged from the beginning of the year. Last December we had a dramatic drop in claims from around 400K to the 355-365K range, but since then there’s been no improvement. This is probably due to increasing gas prices, so President Obama’s complacency and Stephen Chu’s starry-eyed “we’ll fix gas prices by replacing gasoline with green energy (in 30 years)” are hoisting this administration on its own petard.

You’ll be needing a graph:

The Declining Competitiveness of US Higher Education March 14, 2012

I was sitting at a table with Ace, NiceDeb, and a few other luminaries back at the Conservative Blogger Conference in November, weighing forth upon the decline of American universities’ dominance of global academia. “20 years ago only 5 – 10% of technical papers in my field were from foreign sources, and they weren’t very good,” I thundered, “but now over half the papers are from furriners, and most of them are darn good!”

They nodded politely and turned the conversation back to topics more genteel.

But check this out:

U.S. and U.K. universities still sit at the head of the class in world higher education, but emerging schools in Asia and elsewhere threaten to shift the global balance of academic power, a major study shows.
…
“The U.S. has the most highly regarded universities in the world by a long way. … No other country comes near it,” said Phil Baty, editor of the Times’ rankings.

“But,” he cautioned, “there is absolutely no room for complacency. A large number of U.S. institutions have seen their standing in the table slip, with some of the great public institutions taking significant hits as the world watches their public funding being slashed. Meanwhile, the top Asian universities, which have seen very healthy levels of investment from their governments, have almost all seen an increase in their reputational standing. There are clear signs of the start of a power shift from West to East.”

In the 2010-2011 survey, US institutions took 54 of the top 100 spots, according to the UK Times’ survey. In the most recent survey, we took only 44.

Haven’t I been telling you? I’ve been telling you.