Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism gets a bad rap because of its contradictions and shortcomings, which is evident in all ideologies. Nothing is 100%. It is pragmatic, however, a compromise stemming from ideological contests that were waged over the decades in the backdrop of the contest with the Soviet Union and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. The nuclear threat had a clarifying effect on the free market liberalism ideology that set the USA vs the Soviets. It asked the question: if we're facing down nuclear war, what is it that is so worth this annihilation? As in, what is the line to which we are willing to destroy everything on earth so that this reality does not come to pass?

Presentation

So I've been thinking lately about presentation.

I've never really ever paid much attention to appearances. I've never really made an effort at communicating an idea to another person. I've mainly just stumbled through life and made my own conclusions, and then left it at that. I believe this or that. Why? I just do based on vague feelings and impressions.

Women devote an inordinate amount of effort into their appearances. It is because they recognize the importance of appearance, because they are more social and less autistic overall than men. And you know what? They're right.

So my New Years Resolution is to improve my appearance, my presentation, and my communication.

In Defense of the UN 1948 Partition Plan in Palestine/Israel

The 2014 war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip has piqued my interest in Israel. Oddly enough, I had never really dug into the history of the place. It astounds me how much there is to the land, and how endlessly fascinating I find the state of Israel. In the past few weeks I have veered from Zionist sympathizer to Israel is a fascist colonialist project and now I'm back to Zionist sympathizer (though not as much).

Here are my thoughts on the matter. Here are my insights.

The most misleading aspect of Israel/Palestine is the notion of the 1967 border. The assumption is that the 1967 border is the beginning and the end of all conflict. The truth is that the conflict is much deeper. The Palestinians do not want only 1967 borders. They do not want the West Bank and Gaza. They want the entirety of Israel, including Tel Aviv. The reason that the peace process has not worked out is because fundamentally, the Palestinians are unwilling to let go of the "right of return" for their refugees. The refugees, who currently number 5 million. Which itself is a misleading number. The number expelled is 700,000, roughly. Of those original 700,000, 30,000 to 50,000 remain alive today. Given that 1948 is 66 years away from 2014, a significant number of the surviving first-generation refugees were under 5 years of age in 1948. So there are 4,950,000 descendants of Palestinian refugees, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation refugees, who want to "return" to Israel. Despite the fact that they have never set foot in Israel itself.

The reason that the Palestinians refuse to let this go is because they believe that the 1948 UN Partition plan was unfair. They believe that they were right to go to war.

Here is a typical perspective of the Palestinians.

In short, in 1947, the Jews numbered about 608,000. The Palestinians numbered 1,293,000. The Jews received 55% of the land, with 408,000 Arabs in the borders. The Palestinians received 45% of the land with no Jews within their borders. So you have 31% of the people receiving 55% of the land.

From their perspective, I understand. But objectively, as a 3rd party observer, I have to disagree with this point. The 1948 UN Partition Plan was in fact quite fair.

For starters, 60% of the Jewish partition was desert.

Take that 60% off the table, and you have roughly 30% vs 45%.

Secondly, Jewish immigration was inevitable. In the wake of the Holocaust, the world powers had no stomach to prevent Jews from moving wherever they wanted. In 1948, many wanted to move to Israel. A Jewish state would inevitably want to absorb all of them. A state can control its own borders. To do otherwise would mean no state, and in the wake of the Holocaust, a state was necessary and Palestine was the only place it could be.

By 1951, 675,000 Jews had moved from across the world to Israel. Now, while that number is artificially boosted by Jews living in Arab countries who, in the wake of the 1948 war and hostility towards Jews in general in Arab states, fled to Israel, it is likely that even without the war the numbers moving to Israel would still be significant. In any event, about 360,000 European Jews moved to Israel by 1951.

If you add 675,000 to 608,000, what you get is a Jewish population that is roughly parity to the Arab population. Of which, if the 1948 UN plan had survived, would also share their state with 408,000 Arabs. And 60% of that is desert.The remaining 800,000 or so Arabs would live on 45% of the land. This is actually quite generous, all things considered. The Arabs would in fact have twice as much land per person in their state. This is taking into account that 60% of Israel's 55% of the land is desert and it is not taking into account the property owned by Arab citizens of Israel.

The alternative to the 1948 plan would be to give the Arab majority in Palestine the right to block all Jewish immigration (which they clearly wanted to do). It would have meant no Jewish state, or one that was more an autonomous region than a true state. In the wake of the Holocaust, a state was going to happen. Even ignoring the Holocaust, the 608,000 Jews in Palestine had a right to self-determination.

If the 1948 UN Partition plan is fair, then that changes the Palestinian national narrative. The cornerstone is that it was completely unfair that a minority be awarded so much land. The resulting war is thus one of resistance against an unfair partition. But if it were a fair partition, in fact if it were a more than fair partition, then the 1948 war isn't resistance anymore. It is rejection of a fair deal.

Israel eventually encompassed 80% of Palestine with the conclusion of the 1948 war. 711,000 Arabs became refugees. The remaining state of Israel contained 156,000 Arabs and roughly 700,000 Jews, who would then be augmented by another 700,000 immigrants.

Against Earphones

For a long while I was obsessed with in-ear monitor earphones. They seemed like such an elegant solution. The outside world is noisy and chaotic. With in-ears, you can go anywhere and COMPLETELY SHUT OUT the outside world. The world can go by your soundtrack, and since perspective is everything, some semblance of order can be made.

My first in-ears were the Koss Plugs.

That's how I knew them. There was something about how you could modify the back of them with some cotton or foam or something that made the sound MUCH MUCH BETTER.

The next major ones I used were the Zune V2's

They could fit underneath a bicycle helmet and beneath scarves and I could ride throughout the city, miles upon miles, listening to whatever fit my fancy.

There've been more since. These things are very fragile and with heavy use tend to fray in about six months time.

But with in-ear earphones, you miss half the sound. The story comes from the song, which comes from the dance, which is how man communicated to other men and women around the campfire after a day of hunting. Get too far from that root and you lose part of it.

In-ear headphones make music into a cerebral experience. They seek to come as close as possible to directly connect music to the brain, without any intervening body part coming in the way.

But by listening with just your head, you miss the thump of bass on your chest, going deep to your gut, which is not where music is listened to and analyzed, but instead where music is truly felt, literally, on a physical level.

Which is closer to the dance, which is thus closer to the spirit that we celebrate when listening to music.

Why I Watch Downton Abbey

This is contemporary dance.

This is why I watch Downton Abbey.

The whole dancing-in-a-sexually suggestive way so that the female has her back turned to the man is...to state the obvious...degrading. It makes the woman just a piece of ass, to put it crassly, with her personality turned away from the man, so the two of them don't really communicate, don't really know each other.

How The Empire Strikes Back Ruined Star Wars

Now, don't get me wrong, the Empire Strikes Back was certainly the best movie of the franchise. Thanks to the talents of Lawrence Kasdan, especially, the Empire Strikes Back was the most emotionally striking and technically impressive movie of the bunch, with a textbook screenplay and perfect pacing along with amazing sights.

It also ruined the franchise.

Why?

Because it destroyed the myth of the Jedi.

Now, this was a scene from the first film. An alien threatens Luke Skywalker in the bar and so Obi-Wan Kenobi cuts off the alien's arm.

Step back and think about it.

Cutting off someone's arm completely is a pretty extreme move. Especially since it isn't really apparent that he had a weapon. And even then, if Darth Vader could choke a man to death who was in another room, perhaps ten kilometers away,

Or Yoda could easily move a multi-ton space fighter

why couldn't Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is at least comparable to Vader, intervene without cutting off the man's arm?

Cutting off the arm is incredibly stupid. First of all, it is disproportionate. Secondly, it draws attention to Obi-Wan Kenobi, since it was done in front of a roomful of persons.

The answer is that the above two images are from the second film. In the first film, the Jedi are more akin to savage mystical warriors, more myth than reality. In Eastern religions, tales abound of holy men who can do insanely amazing feats. In ancient China, for instance, holy men were said to have been able to make themselves bulletproof through their mastery of chi, able to withstand the blast of a gunpowder cannon from ten feet away.

In the Star Wars universe, the holy men are masters of The Force. But, just as most people in the modern day do not believe in Chi, so too do most people not believe in The Force in the days of Star Wars.

Image aside, the man was mocking Vader from a secular standpoint.

So, why did Obi-Wan Kenobi cut off the man's arm? Because that's what Jedi do! Jedi are mystical holy warriors. They are wild and unkempt. They cut off the arms of other people because that's just how they roll! They're not nice and cuddly. They're cruel, deceptive and manipulative, and severe. 

Their enemies are not the Sith, who conveniently take on all of the evil features of industrial society. Their enemies should be the secular professional classes, who tolerate a disfiguring of the natural order for higher standards of living. 

Instead, as the series has gone on, this notion has been forgotten. 

Here is a recent depiction of the Sith.

The Sith are red-skinned wild warriors. 

They have been made into, and I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but they have been made into Native Americans. 

Somehow, all of the bad aspects of industrial society, the pollution, the selfishness, the killing of innocent persons, have all been grafted onto the bad guys, who choose these vices because they enjoy them. Meanwhile, the Jedi and the Republic have it all: they live in harmony with nature despite being in an advanced star-faring society, they are selfless, and they preserve life. And never do they ever must make a choice against those values. 

It's two-dimensional, basically.

And it all started with the Empire Strikes Back, when Force powers were let out of the bag. With the Empire Strikes Back, the conflict moved from being one of the secular world vs the mystical world, and instead to a two-dimensional mystical and evil protagonist, that the good secular persons could wipe out with zealotry. 

The Strokes, in view of Lou Reed

I never really managed to get into the Velvet Underground. I've listened to some of their songs, which felt kind of hum-dum, like something that I could appreciate but not really really dig. Not something that was a daily listener for any time of the day, like some songs and bands can be. Just something that should be played once in a while, on a lark, maybe at the right time of the day, maybe as a joke with others, kind of like how much should be.

A big reason I never got into the Velvet Underground is that the Strokes were out when I tried to start listening to them, and the Strokes were just more fun. Yeah, they are to some degree derivative, but the songs are catchier, the lyrics plumb the depths of the human condition with equal snark and irony, and they really have an energy to them, a musicianship which is impressive in a clockwork manner than the laid-back Velvet don't have.

Because the Strokes are a marriage of the East Coast and the West Coast. They do have the East Coast cynicism that Julian Casablancas so expresses in his lyrics, which were ironic at first but now are kind of who he is. But they have the West Coast sunniness of the Beach Boys, in the guitar work of Albert Hammond Jr., whose father was, of course, Albert Hammond Sr.

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The Education of Charlie Banks

I was a Radiohead fan in high school. I guess I could say that I liked them because of their post-rock synths, their anti-technology message, or their instrumentation, but the truth is that I liked them because they were critically acclaimed and everyone said that theirs was the best album of all time and I wanted to be a fan of the smartest band of the decade.

I wanted to be a fan, but I never really was a fan. Radiohead's music is cold and detached. There's not much life to it. It's all just depressing stuff about not leaving your room because everything and everyone is awful. But pessimism is taken as seriousness by too many people. There's always some form of class snobbishness in the kind of music people listen to, and because school really is all about class in society, music is just another front.

I later learned that just because someone speaks in a faint British accent, it doesn't mean they're worth listening to. I later figured that a lot of the great thinkers from the past simply spent too much time staring at parchment and so came up with overly complicated thoughts which were simply elaborations of the base feelings they felt. For instance, Ayn Rand of Atlas Shrugged fame was also an amphetamine addict. The prophet of radical individualism was fueled by a drug known to cause paranoia and aggressive behavior.

I've been listening to Limp Bizkit lately.

And I really enjoy it.

The sound is monstrous, the vocals are distinctive, and there are weird sounds in the atmospherics. It is innovative. It is a fusion of rap and metal. Art is all about combining things together. Rap/metal is art. At the same time, they're not annoying. They don't take themselves too seriously like Linkin Park, the Deftones, or Rage Against the Machine. They don't try to tackle serious topics. The lyrics are about day-to-day problems in life. A lot of the rhymes are really stupid, but you know, it's more fun listening to these stupid rhymes than trying to like The Roots or Common because they are *serious* bands that you must be *serious* while listening.

Which takes the fun out of music.

Listening to the music, I get the impression that Fred Durst is *not* the huge jerk that everyone made him out to be. That he really was misunderstood on a colossal level. People tend to take things at face value and so they'll point at the misogyny on "Nookie," but you know, it's honest, it's base, and everyone has relationship problems.

But if you pay attention to the songs themselves, well, it takes a sensitive artist to get the nuances of the songs and what makes them work. A knucklehead simply wouldn't be able to manage to write a catchy hook in the first place. To write that catchy hook, one has be able to step back and away from the complexity in playing the songs, to get a sense of the impression that the song makes on someone else.

Durst isn't the band of course, though he's frequently the whipping boy of the group. If you watch videos of them in rehearsal space, he makes up for his lack of musical ability by communicating with the rest of the band and working with them in getting the song across. Like a director.

Which brings me to The Education of Charlie Banks.

The Education of Charlie Banks is a coming of age story set on a leafy Ivy League campus (presumably Cornell), where young minds wrestle with big questions and do battle with the great philosophers. The setting is more Radiohead than Limp Bizkit.

But it is directed by Fred Durst.

Charlie and Danny are best friends. Charlie comes from a humble liberal background. Dad's a bookstore owner with a strong conscious that he tries to instill in his son. Danny comes from a family of two college professors who live in an opulent townhouse. He wants to be a cool guy, a guy of the streets.

They both know Mick. Mick comes from the rougher part of town. He's good with his fists and he's quick to anger. Their friendship with Mick is strained when he shows up one day at their leafy college, and to the surprise of Charlie, proceeds to take the social scene by storm.

Mick doesn't have the education of Charlie or Danny. But he has an animal instinct and a way of getting right to people. He quickly insinuates himself with the richest guy on campus and the prettiest girl. He starts auditing the classes and it turns out that he has the raw ability to understand the topics being discussed.

But he still has the street in him. He is quick to anger and he is violent. Things don't work out.

It works. The story-telling is focused and to the point, without being shallow, but without meandering either. It simply works. Like a good pop song.

I noticed this first in Jonathan Franzen's book The Corrections, but authors often will split aspects of themselves among different characters. And while Durst didn't write the movie, he was at least chosen to be director and worked closely with the writer of the movie in creating it. Mick is clearly the one closest to Durst's heart. Someone from the rough part of town who doesn't really belong there but is able to take his place among the rich and connected.

Yet, in Durst I do sense that a lot of the tough guy stuff is a facade. He isn't as hard as Mick. Not by a long shot. He is deep down inside the sensitive Charlie. The movie ends with a confrontation. Mick vs Charlie. Charlie is clearly outmatched and doesn't stand a chance. Mick lets him get his shots in, but he takes Charlie out. Charlie is lying on the ground, and Mick is geared up to deliver the final blow.

Sometimes people can change, but they can only change so much. You can't become someone else, but you can at least stop doing the things that you know cause harm.

It's a great movie. Check it out.

Marriage

I have always found Mitt Romney to be...underrated. I found this speech to be genuinely inspiring. At the same time, it makes me want to go here:

 

I will likely never be married. I simply exist on a different...frequency...than most people will tolerate.

The Faces of Public Radio

In Case You're Wondering, Those Are Prison Jumpsuits

Occupation

K-Pop, again

This is a very impressive video. It subtly mocks the older conventions of Asian pop, which I find sappy and annoying, has some organic conversational moments and characterizations, and has the song go in and out.

Very impressive.

Lady Gaga and Ke$ha have done similar music videos where it's some sort of extended narrative. And of course, so has Michael Jackson. But this one has a sophistication to it that fits it perfectly.

I've gotten to thinking about why this is so popular, and it really isn't just the music, but also the lottery/American Idol part of it. Now, American Idol has been great, but really it hasn't produced the biggest acts. The biggest talents come up on their own, through the real industry channels. So Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, etc they never went on stage to American Idol.

In Korea, process is king, so you can take just about anyone, put them through the process, and out comes a pop princess. In Korea, the Idol winner (to a different extent of course, there's no voting or televised performances) becomes the biggest star. And she could be anyone just walking in the mall one day who catches the eye of a talent scout.

This used to happen in America, too. The biggest analogue to K-Pop is the Hollywood studio system. When Gone With the Wind was being produced, there was a nationwide casting call for the female lead. Any woman could be in it.

Nowadays, celebrities gobble up all of the bit parts. It's a more crowded world, simply. The previous system could ensure hits because it was the only game in town. Now, with digital tech, anyone can release a movie. Celebrities are basically a bigger and brighter neon sign.

But I'm tired of seeing Brad Pitt in all of the movies and thinking of the character not as like Colonel Jackson, but as Brad Pitt.

Korea is having it's golden age right now, I think. This is their 1950's and 1960's.

A Movie Idea That I Will Never Have the Time to Pursue

The New York Times is being annoying again. Here, they are sympathizing with a hit and run driver, who by the way has a hispanic/latino last name, telling us his life story of mishap and misfortune. He killed these two people when he slammed into the cab that was carrying them.

Raisy and Nathan Glauber. She was pregnant. The child did not survive.

Here's the hit and run driver.

So what's the movie idea?

Kind of unrelated to this event. It turns out that Mr. Julio Acevedo was once forced to kill a close friend of his. The close friend was a major criminal figure who went by the alias "50 Cent." Curtis Jackson, the rapper, later adopted the same handle. 

So what happened was a man named Richard Bush plotted to have Mr. Acevedo kidnapped. They kidnapped Mr. Acevedo and then threatened family members of his. They gave him a gun. He killed his friend, 50 Cent.

Hell of a movie idea if I ever heard of one. 

Dixe Dirt- Pieces of the World

Here is an album of heartbreak, of the most stricken female voice I've ever heard. It washes over you like a dust storm. It's music of noble suffering, of a western woman out on the hinterlands, of the worry if he'll ever make it back, and yet I don't think she'd have it any other way.

I can't this stupid korean song out of my head

It's catchy.

It's kind of neat how they do all these I guess feminine twirls, which I vaguely recognize from anime I've seen.

Then comes the chorus and they sound like clone ants. It's a little creepy at that point.

Number one group in Korea right now. I'm impressed, actually. The music won't win any, like, feminist race theorist accolades, but the craftsmanship of the music is impressive. The melodies swirl around each other, the beat bubbles up, there's a breakdown, it's all very good.

Chinese Man Sues Wife for Birthing Ugly Baby

Here's the baby

Here's the wife.

Here's what she really looks like

Korean Plastic Surgery

Apparently, men are having face lifts now.

T-Ara Roly Poly

Color me impressed! This reminds me of New Order's Perfect Kiss, just in the length and geekiness of it.

Early Day Miners

This is one of the most calming albums I've ever listened to. It's like a calm nature walk on a cool afternoon.