Month: June 2013

Arrested Development Season 4: No Good Guys

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[Here thar be spoilers!]

2013-06-11 Arrested Development

It took us about a week of evening viewing, buy my wife and I watched all 15 episodes of the new, fourth season of Arrested Development. I think this Washington Post review does a pretty good job of summarizing what the show has historically done right artistically:

“Arrested Development” was five years ahead of its time. Its meme-ability predated the rise of the meme. Its parodies of 1 percenters and malfeasant corporations were 1,000 news cycles ahead of the subprime mortgage crisis and the Olympic debut of Rafalca. The metastatic third and final network season, which wrapped in early 2006, thumbed its nose at the mundane forces that brought about its demise: modest viewership, fleeing advertisers and fickle TV executives. Each would soon be immaterial to a series’ distribution and survival.

Dan Zak, who wrote the review, then goes on to heap accolades on the newest season, although conceding that it’s not exactly cotton-candy entertainment:

The new 15-episode season of “Arrested Development” is staggering in its ambition, surgical in its execution and diabolical in its conclusion. It’s a chore to watch and a delight to decrypt. Its overwhelmingness contributes to its initial underwhelmingness. But in time, with a moment to reflect, it begins to feel like the fullest and fraughtest expression of its form.

It is, in a perverse way, the “Ulysses” of sitcoms.

2013-06-11 George Michael
George Michael: He was innocent and likable before, but he’s sort of a tool now.

Maybe Zak is right, but the vicious ambition of the show is not what drew me in as a fan in the first place, and so the most recent season missed it’s mark with me.

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Does the NSA Use Backblaze Storage Pods? And Other Oddities…

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There’s more information about government surveillance coming out of the woodwork than I can keep up with. One of the most interesting stories I’ve read since the news broke last week is a blog post from Backblaze about whether or not the NSA is using Backblaze storage pods to keep all that data they’re snooping. Backblaze is an online backup company offering unlimited, low-cost data backup. They keep costs down by building their own storage racks. They don’t sell the racks, but they do open-source all the designs. Version is 3.0 which stores 180TB of data for less than $2,000.

The post makes a very solid case that the NSA might be building their own Backblaze storage pods. There’s a lot of extra information about the intersection of IT and national intelligence that’s interesting as well, such as the fact that the NSA might be interested in the Backblaze pods because they are open-source, which makes it easier to keep the purchases secret.

2013-06-10 Backblaze Storage Pod 3.0

Other interesting stores: 

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The Mainstream Media and Obama

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2013-06-10 Obama

There has definitely been a different tone in mainstream media coverage of the Obama administration since the current wave of scandals hit the headlines. Has the news media finally decided to vet President Obama?

To some extent: yes. I think that the news of the Department of Justice’s monitoring of the AP press pool in particular had an impact in how the press views the White House. And there are only but so many times you can listen to Jay Carney blatantly and obviously lie to you before that starts to get annoying, I would think.

On the other hand, Breitbart is quick to point out that not a single one of the scandals was actually broken by the American press. Now, Breitbart being Breitbart, the site has a definite bias and really reaches to actually make their case, but I think the fundamental reality–that the press doesn’t really pursue the Obama administration they way it has others–is true. The Daily Caller points out that the initial New York Times opinion piece critical of the Obama administration (President Obama’s Dragnet) was quietly edited to dampen the initial criticism of President Obama. Initially, it stated that the Obama administration “has lost all credibility”, but within a few hours this had been qualified to read “administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.” (emphasis added by Daily Caller).

From where I’m standing, it looks like the American journalistic establishment feels a lot less obligated to carry President Obama now that he has secured a second term. Their work, in a sense, is done. There’s therefore a lot more freedom to criticize the President, but not much appetite for it. All the criticism to date is indirect if it refers to President Obama at all. If it were not for international press and the right-wing alternative media, I don’t think we would know as much today as we currently do.

T&S Post: Don’t Debate the Trinity

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2013-06-10 Trinity_knight_shieldAfter a little bit of a break from posting at Times And Seasons over the past few weeks, I’m back in my usual Monday morning slot with a post about the futility of debating the Trinity between Mormons and mainline Christians. Check it out, if you are feeling theologically inclined. (There’s also a gratuitous Star Wars reference to help things along.)

So Your Government Is Spying On You, Now What?

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The Onion's take is also spot-on, as per usual.
The Onion’s take is spot-on, as per usual.

So last week we found out that the government has been routinely collecting all of the metadata from cell phone calls virtually all Americans make for years. Then we learned that the NSA has the capability to tap directly into the databases of Internet giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple to collect search history, emails, file transfer history, and even live chats of individual users. Big news, eh? (Guardian, NYT)

Not to bestselling author and major blogger John Scalzi, who wrote about the revelations:

Apparently I was the only person in the US who assumed the government was already doing something very much like this? Because it was doing it under Bush, and if Obama had gotten around to stopping doing it, his administration would have made a big deal about it, no? And since the Obama Administration never said a single word about it that I can recall, it was probably still going on? So I guess what I would say is, yeah, seems not surprising in the least…

Scalzi’s attitude is refreshing next to all the faux shock and muted outrage from the Left–who would have screamed bloody murder if this were going on under Bush–and the sudden remembrance of civil liberties from the Right–who notably didn’t make a fuss under Bush. In that spirit, I want to try and talk about the program itself: what it really entails in terms of privacy and civil liberties and what it really offers in terms of safety. FWIW, I’m a skeptic of the more extreme claims of the privacy movement (who often strike me as 21st century Luddites) and also of a lot of security measures in the wake of 9/11 (which are often best described as “security theater“).

Let’s start with the successes of the government program, such as they are, which is codenamed Stellar Wind.

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First Ever Footage of Live Oarfish in Deep Water

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Oarfish are mysterious because, until now, they’ve only ever been observed near the surface of the water dead or dying, and not in their native, deep ocean habitat. There’s nothing really impressive about the dead specimens except their size (up to 30 feet long) and shape (weirdly flat).

2013-06-06 oarfish

But now there’s video of a live oarfish taking by a remotely operated vehicle. Alive and where they belong, these creatures a beautiful and amazing looking. Watch for yourself:

You can get more details from the story at GrindTV.com.

Anthony Weiner in Shouting Match with Democrat Voters

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2013-06-06 WeinerI was pretty disgusted to see Mark Sanford’s return to politics from his well-earned disgrace, so I’m impressed that New York Democrats seem a lot less forgiving of Anthony Weiner’s ploy to resurrect his own career, at least according to this article from Politicker. Speaking at a New Kings Democrats candidates forum, Weiner got some incredibly harsh words in the open question period. My favorites came from Jess Strauss, who opened by pointing out that “three candidates in a row–mayoral candidate John Liu, Brooklyn borough president hopeful Eric Adams and Mr. Weiner–had all come to the Democratic club and apologized for something.” Weiner tried to turn the tables on Straus, asking who he supported, but:

Mr. Strauss interjected, arguing that the club’s goal was to bring new people into the political system. “It is very difficult for us to do that when he have politicians out there who are behaving this way,” he said.

Ya think?

The folks who attacked Weiner all support other candidates, but I’m not sure if that really means anything in this case. I mean, if their opinions about Mr. Weiner are perfectly honest, they would support someone else, wouldn’t they? As for Weiner, he seems as arrogant as ever:

“I’m going to win this election, OK, and I’m gonna govern this city really well,” he declared. “If you don’t think I should even be standing here today, I certainly would respect that. I mean, you’re supporting another candidate who’s not gonna win.”

It was really frustrating to watch Sanford win. I’d really love for Weiner to lose. I mean, the American people have got to draw the line somewhere, right?

The Problem With Democracy Is All The People

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TheGalen (a regular commenter here at DR) posted an article from Washington Post’s Wonkblog to my Facebook feed: The people have taken over American politics, and they hate it. He says it’s related to my earlier post (The Problem of Too Much Democracy), and he’s right.

2013-06-06 Crazy People
Flipper soccer has nothing to do with this post, but it came up when I did a Google image search for “crazy people,” and this post is about crazy people taking over politics. By the way, DO NOT do a Google image search for “crazy people”. It was a bad decision on my part.

The Wonkblog piece points out that easy access to information about voting has empowered motivated ideologues to outmaneuver the apathetic (and moderate) masses:

Politics is a niche hobby, not unlike mountain biking or playing the oboe. Only a small number actually follow the proliferation of political news; few send e-mails to members of Congress or volunteer for campaigns. So the opening of U.S. politics, [Stanford University political scientist Morris] Fiorina wrote, “had a perverse consequence: political power and influence were transferred to political activists who were not like most people.”

Fiorina writes that the perverse result of this takeover is that:

Against all natural expectations, Americans liked their government better, trusted their leaders more, and voted in higher numbers in the bad old days when party bosses chose nominees in smoke-filled rooms; when several dozen old white men (mostly Southerners) ran Congress, when big business, big labor and big agriculture dominated the interest group universe; and when politicians didn’t have the tools to figure out what their constituents wanted.

There is one question to raise, however. Were things actually better back then? Or were people just happier because they knew less?

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Daily Rituals of Creative Genius

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2013-06-05 Daily RitualsI think there’s a real danger in trying to imitate everything successful people do. Sometimes folks who have genius for art have no ability to understand or articulate that genius, and sometimes people who look like geniuses are just lucky. However, I do take a lot of heart in the ability of incredibly successful artists to achieve great things in steady, bite-size increments. Here’s what I find the most heartening, however:

The busier people were less precious–you learn to fit [your creative work] in, and you don’t have these elaborate eccentric rituals if you have children or a day job. Someone like Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22 in the evenings after work. He’d write for two or three hours a night after his job as an advertising executive doing campaigns for magazines. He was not a tortured artist. He found as much joy in his day job as writing Catch 22 at night. “I couldn’t imagine what Americans did at night when they weren’t writing novels,” Heller said. Currey also notes in Daily Rituals that even when Heller quit his day job to write full-time, he still only worked on his novels for two to three hours a day.

Maybe there’s hope for my artistic dreams after all?

Check out the full article for more info on the book Daily Rituals.