Eragon (the movie)
fantasy/adventure
Cast details, etc., are in the IMDb entry.
InstaRating: 2 out of 5
Having little else to do while school is out, I decided to see Eragon, this season’s epic high fantasy. I went with some trepidation, as the commercials made it seem overwhelmingly, well, cheesy. In hindsight, I had no idea…
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Today, Iraqui President and dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging after a conviction for atrocities committed in his name. Before going any further, let me clarify something so willfully obscured by some commentators on the right: Saddam Hussein was a Very Bad Man. He did terrible things and — while I am myself still uncertain of the ethics of state executions — he did receive a trial and was executed according to the laws of his nation. Opposition to this administration’s policies is not equivalent to admiring Hussein.
All of which is prologue to the following: Now that George W. Bush has seen the conclusion of the twisted pyscho-drama that has occupied his presidency, will he now be able to cope, mentally, with the fact that the United States must move expeditiously to withdraw from Iraq?
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It was announced yesterday (2006 Dec 27) that Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States, passed away at the age of 93. I will admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for the Ford presidency, derided in popular culture as one of the least effective in history. I generally root for the underdog, so I was once in the habit of quoting the stats that showed how Ford had begun to get the economy back in motion, had begun the rebuilding of American military strength after the Viet Nam debacle, and so on. I still think Ford deserves more credit for doing a difficult, almost impossible, task and doing it with some grace. Also, Ford was perhaps the last of the civil service Presidents: someone who saw government as part of the solution and not a problem in itself; someone who thought that the greatest calling for a citizen is to serve his fellow citizens.
On the other hand…
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Interface
by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
(c) 1994
Bantam Dell
InstaRating: 3.5 out of 5
An experimental biochip is implanted in a governor of Illinois after he suffers a massive stroke. Its stated purpose is to repair the connections in his brain, giving him access to speech and motor skills again. Unknown to many, the chip also gives him access to up-to-the-second live polling data, making him an unstoppable Presidential candidate. But more than that — the chip gives a shadowy network of power-brokers access to him — making him their perfect candidate…
Lots of spoilers follow.
So, Election Day has come and gone. I took time to talk about it in each of my classes today — and yes, I know I teach physics; more on that later — and I thought I’d ruminate some here. Full disclaimer: I am a lifelong Democrat who had been reasonably certain they’d find a way to screw it up yet again. (Who knew they could make Kerry disappear?) And I am ecstatic over the triumph of the Democrats in both the House and the Senate. But this isn’t a victory lap. It’s about politics and teaching.
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Just a stay-alive post to indicate that I’m still around, though unable to write about teaching because, ironically, I am too busy teaching.
I have had the honor of being named as the Hun School’s first recipient of a new Distinguished Faculty Endowed Chair. One of the prices is that, today, I had to give a speech at the first-ever Convocation. Since some people have asked, and since I have an ego the size of Montana, I decided to put it up on the Web — to wit, right here on Mongrel Dogs.
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2001 October 7:
I want to speak now.
I have wanted to speak since September 11. The words would not come. The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was, almost literally, unthinkable. And language is the substrate of thought. Scholars have often claimed that what you cannot say, you cannot think. I have learned, a little, that the opposite is true.
The terrorists committed crimes on so many levels, it staggers the mind: on the global and personal level; publicly and intimately; on the field of history and transcending history. One more can be added to their list of offenses: They took away our voice. For too many days we as a people lost our voice. We were silent in shock or quiet from deference. We remained still because we had lost our confidence, our unspoken faith in a world that rewarded virtue and understood human frailties. We had our universe of discourse, our common cultural dictionary, ripped from us violently and tossed upon the dustbin of history.
I want to speak now.
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Though exiled to the swamps of New Jersey, I am a native New Yorker; and so this date arrives every year like a punch in the gut. I no longer think of the attacks every day, but it took 18 months before that ceased. When I do think of them, I am immediately transported back to the moments the Towers fell, and I am nearly overcome again by shock and grief. The victims at the Pentagon and on Flight 93, and their families, deserve our respect and our sympathy; but for me, 9/11 was and is and will always be about an attack on my city — the most primal fear of the civilized human.