A further peril of the paid pastorate is that it produces clergy who feel "stuck" in the pastorate because they believe they lack employable skills.  "I (Frank) personally know a good number of pastors who felt convicted to leave the minstry.  All of their schooling and training had been dedicated to studying and preaching the Bible.  While those skills are noteworthy, they are of limited appeal in the secular job market.  The major hurdle they now face is forging a new career to support their families.  A friend of mine, an ex-pastor himself, is writing a booklet on how pastors can find employment and enter new careers after leaving the clergy system.  His ideas are not based on theory. ..... Even so, it is exceedingly difficult for many contemporary pastors to acknowledge the lack of scriptural support for their office simply because they are financially dependent upon it.  As Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."  No wonder it takes a person of tremendous courage and faith to step out of the pastorate.  Unfortunately, most of us are deeply naiive about the overwhelming power of the religious system.  It is a faceless system that does not tire of chewing up and spitting out its own." - Pagan Christianity?  Frank Viola & George Barna

Deacon: How would you feel if you actually were in those shoes?  What would you say to your wife and kids when you came home with that conviction?  Would you claim that your choice was naiive and based on your knowledge at that time?  What would you do with the rest of your life?  Would you be willing to sacrifice all that you had worked for in exchange for a clean set of convictions?  What if you were 40+ years old and had no resourceful ways in which to figure out another method of providing for your family?

Usher: Maybe I'd just continue to take advantage of the poor and naiive of the church simply out of fear?  Is it any different from inheriting a fortune from my father's moonshine business and then go on to become president of the United States.  Does that make the money clean or justify the actions of my father and how he obtained the riches?

Deacon: Careful, you're stepping on the toes of a lot of powerful people with that one, oh provocative buzzard.  I'm not sure I want to be on the same branch of your tree when certain people read this post.

Usher: It still doesn't make it right.  I feel for people who make choices based on limited knowledge or incorrect knowledge, but God knows and he allowed it.  How much more valiant would it be for a person to come clean and confess such a conviction?  What if it became a movement?

Deacon: If pastors came to terms with this issue, it would destroy the modern church.  Debate would incur and those against it would rationalize it away for fear of losing everything they had worked for.  I would venture to say that in any kind of volume it would bring massive disruption and in the end, major revival to the body (not the modern church), but the body of Christ, the believers.  But man will not do it, it must be brought about via calamity, hardship or both.

Usher: How refreshing it would be to know that gathering to share in our lives with Christ would be something other than listening to one man's current interpretation of his one-sided relationship.  When will people truly figure out that it's not following man, it's following Christ together?  It's a corporate experience, not an oratory!

Deacon: Relax Usher, you don't have to get so trumped up about it.  Man has followed man since the beginning of time and will continue to want a king on earth, a leader to tell him what to do and someone to think on his behalf.

Be Your Own Pet are a bunch of young kids from Nashville.  Get Awkward is their second album.  According to the liner notes, two of them were born in 1988 and one of them in 1990.  1990!  They play three-chord punk music which focuses primarily on having fun and partying.  I like to think that Black Flag's "TV Party" might be an influence, but really they sound more like The Muffs than anyone else.   Jemima Pearl is one of those surprisingly cute punk singers who explode in a gruff gravelly voice (although never TOO rough or gravely) which makes all the proceedings quite fun.

The songs are short (only 2 songs are over 3 minutes), fast, and generally fun.  Song titles like "Food Fight," "Zombie Graveyard Party!" "Bitches Leave" and "Bummer Time" should give you some sense of what the songs are about.  I'm led to believe their first album was a bit more aggressive (enough to get Thurston Moore to sign them to his Ecstatic Peace record label).  But this one keeps pretty well to the three chords (and occasional guitar riff) and fun shouting and singing.

It seems like every few years there's a new young punk band who takes up the mantle of punk rock and BYOP were the most recent (although their web site says the just broke up).  And it's cool for young kids to have a new young band to look up to.  Much like the theme of the book below, if you're over 25 you 'll probably just think that this band is ripping off [insert your favorite brash young punk band here] but really who wants to listen to 40 year olds singing about parties and whatnot.  So, if you're looking for a new young band, then, check them out.  There's not too much new about them, but then, that's not the point, is it.

And according to Wikipedia, three tracks were removed because they were deemed too violent (!).  Maybe the album is well suited to this book after all.

[READ: September 16, 2008] Little Brother

I have to get this out of the way:  READ THIS BOOK!  It is fantastic and it will motivate you like nothing I've read.  READ IT READ IT READ IT.

Okay, I feel a little better.

I read an interview with Cory Doctorow in American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association.  It was a short interview about this book, and he said such great things in a few paragraphs, that I immediately went to work and checked out the book.   And, wow, what a fantastic book.

This may be the kiss of death for any young reader, but Little Brother is an important book.  And everyone should read it.  And yes, I know it is fiction, but fiction can be a very powerful tool for waking people up to injustice.  Upton SInclair's The Jungle was instrumental in the creation of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration.  Not bad for a work of fiction, eh?

It's a different world now, and one book probably can't have as much of an impact as it did then, but we can still hope, right.  Oh, and Cory Doctorow is a pretty cool thinker as well.  I'll give more details later, but for now, let's get to the book.

Little Brother is about Marcus, a 17 year old high school student who spends much of his free time with technology (he goes by the name W1n5t0n): he builds his own laptops, he creates small camera detectors out of toilet paper rolls, and he thinks of ways to confuse the motion sensing gait-detector at his school.  Yes, that's right, there are computers all over his school.  They can't look at your face (that would be unconstitutional) but they can monitor the way you walk, because, like fingerprints, everyone has a unique walk, and its a way to see who is not where he is supposed to be.  Although as Marcus points out, walks may be unique, but they are also VERY similar, and very easy to mask. And we'll learn a bit more about false positives very shortly.

Marcus is a geek, he used to play D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) and LARPs (Live Action Role Playing Games--in which you dress up as fantasy characters and act out scenarios...ah, if only they'd had that when I was a young D&D player).  But since he became an older teen he has been heavily involved in ARGing, (Alternate Reality Gaming).  On a day that he and his four friends skip school to begin the latest round of the coolest ARG around: Harajuku Fun Madness,  there is a terrorist strike in San Francisco.  In the commotion, Marcus' friend Daryl is injured.  While trying to flag down help, the four friends are taken by the Department of Homeland Security.  Since the kids are full of techie gadgets they are immediately under suspicion--even though they are all American citizens.

They are taken on a boat to a location somewhere off of San Francisco (what is eventually nicknamed Gitmo-by-the-Bay), where they are held for several days and interrogated.  In all this time, their parents don't know if they are even alive or dead--DHS does not notify them.  After a few days, the DHS releases three of them--Daryl is left behind in an unknown limboland.  They inform Marcus that if he tells anyone about what happened, they will recapture him and that will be the end of him.

What happens next is an inspirational story of underground subterfuge.  Using the inspiration of sixties protests and marches for freedom, Marcus tries to rally the youth of San Francisco to fight the DHS.  Marcus loves his country, he loves the freedoms that we have, and he hates to see them not only stripped away, but practically given away by a frightened populace.

Freedom isn't Free [a popular bumper sticker reads]
So why do we keep giving ours away? [is my rejoinder]

The DHS has begun tracking people through their RFIDs.  RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification) are real and they are in everything.  The most common usage of RFID trackers are your EZ Pass (or Fast Lane or Smart Pass or whatever you call the automatic toll paying device in your car).  I knew several people who didn't want "the government" tracking where they went in their car, so the wouldn't get an EZ Pass.  I got one anyhow because I figured if the government knew I went to New York City every couple of months that would be okay.  In the book however, RFID detectors have been placed all around San Francisco, and so, they can now track your every move.

As with much in the book, I'm not exactly sure how much of it is actual and how much is just plausible.  It's entirely possibly that there are RFID detectors all over San Francisco, but I've no idea if there are.  However, there are enough factual things in the story to let you know that at the very least, many of the scenarios are quite possible.

Marcus is followed by the police one night because of his BART pass (the public transportation version of the EZ Pass).  They want to know what he's being doing in certain areas of San Francisco.  It's just routine surveillance, they tell him.  And he is understandably pissed.  And here Doctorow gives one of his many informative passages....  What I liked about the book is that Doctorow explains some pretty detailed and complex ideas, but he keeps in character, with the wonderment of a  teen excited about a new game.

This passage in particular I found enlightening and scary:

Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists.  Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twentythousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bankrecords, or tollpass records, or public transit records, or phonecall records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time.

In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people.

Guess what? Terrorism tests aren't anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes.

What this all meant was that the Department of Homeland Security had set itself up to fail badly. They were trying to spot incredibly rare events--a person is a terrorist--with inaccurate systems.

No matter what you think about Homeland Security, or it efficiency, it's hard to argue with these numbers.

Back to the story.  Marcus is outraged by what happens, and even more so when he learns that his beloved laptop that he built has been bugged.  He uses his XBox, complete with ParanoidLinux, (an operating system that encrypts EVERYTHING) installed.  Soon, he is organizing a resistance movement called the XNet.  And, he is no longer w1n5t0n, he is now m1k3y, and he uses all of his tricks to try and bring down the DHS.

His parents (mom is a British ex pat who loves to get her knickers in a twist about injustice and dad is a former marcher in the sixty) do not know the full extent of what happened to Marcus.  When they hear about the XNet on NPR his father is appalled at these kids' behavior. This surprises Marcus until his mom tells him that his father was devastated at the thought that Marcus was dead.  Marcus's dad has joined the ranks of people willing to sacrifice his freedom for a (false) sense of security.

Marcus tells people how to create RFID jammers [Google RFID jam for thousands of hits] which causes great disruption to San Francisco and even Marcus' dad.  The Xnet subversion spreads throughout the world, where people post videos of abuses by the DHS, and offer other ways of jamming the system.  There's even a punk festival organized by the XNet: Never Trust Anyone Under 25.

This slogan is obviously appropriated from the Yippies' "Never Trust Anyone Under 30" (there's a bit of a history of the Yippies explained by one of Marcus' teachers (a great exposition resource in a YA novel)).  The difference between the 60s and the 2000s is that in the 60s the police couldn't capture everyone at a protest.  Now, they can use technology to immobilize thousands of people at once.  And, unlike in the 60s, the media seem to be unwilling to investigate beyond the information fed to them by the government and corporations (liberal media, ha!).

I'm not giving anymore of the book away, because even though I think it is important as a book of protest, I also thought it was a great read--I couldn't put it down, I read it in traffic jams--and it is suspenseful as hell.

Oh, and just in case you think it's all technology and security...there's a pretty steamy romance brewing with a fellow XNetter too.

So, read the book!  Get a copy of it somewhere: buy it, go to your library, or download the whole book for free here.  No kidding.  Doctorow gives away all of his works with a Creative Commons license. Why?  Well, he'll tell you here.  But in a nutshell he says:

For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy.

What's a Creative Commons license?  They'll tell you here.

Doctorow is one of the great champions of freedom of information.  You can tell that this story combines a number of his passions.  He's also a co-editor of one of my favorite sites: boing boing (although I didn't know that until just recently).   And here's his own website: craphound.

The back of the book has bibliographical information about how to find and do many of the things in the books.  There's also some afterwords from Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and by Andrew "bunnie" Huang, the original Xbox hacker.  The add real-life inspiration to the story.

And speaking of real life, the end of the book implores you to vote in the upcoming election (in the fictional world there's an upcoming election, too).  And, I implore you as well...if you're old enough to vote, get the facts, learn the truth and vote against the people who are taking our freedoms away.

[UPDATE: September 27, 2008] It's very rare that I get trecommed a YA book to Sarah, since that's her thing, but I'm very glad I did, as she enjoyed the book too.  Here's her take on it.

A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

SOUNDTRACK

So hooked was I by the video for "Buddy Holly" that there was little chance of me ever disliking Weezer.  When Pinkerton came out, it quickly became one of my favorite records.  "Pink Triangle" is such a great song about unrequited love for a lesbian.  And of course, "El Scorcho" is a wonderfully off-kilter single.  Since then, Weezer have put out a bunch of albums, some with titles and some without.  This is their 3rd record called Weezer, but it's the Red Album because its cover is red (duh).

I know that many people can't stand Weezer (or at least couldn't back the last time I bothered to check what the pop culture world was thinking...although I think they may be cool now).  They have an uncanny sense of pop melody even when their songs are weird or funny or even seemingly out of tune.  I think that's why I like them so much, because their songs sometimes start out of tune and the ultimately wind up being super catchy.  I also like them because Rivers Cuomo went back to Harvard to get his degree in English (one wonders of course, why he chooses to write such pedestrian rhymes, but that's another story altogether), and because he's a geek in general.

No doubt you've heard at least one Weezer song, and you'd be living under a rock if you haven't heard their new, ubiquitous single "Pork and Beans."  And "Pork and Beans" is as good a place to start as any.  It's got fairly heavy guitars, it's catchy as all get out, it's rather anti-authority, and parts of it don't make any sense...that's Weezer for you.

This record is pretty strong overall.  The first 5 songs are pretty standard Weezer.  There's a really heavy start song, a sentimental song "Heart Songs" which name checks some of Rivers' favorite songs growing up, and what has become my favorite song on the record: "The Greatest Man that Ever Lived."  This is a long song (for Weezer) at nearly six minutes.  What's cool about it is that every verse is done in a different style of music: there's a metal verse, a choral verse, a spoken word verse etc.  And the chorus is simple and wonderful.  It could go on for twenty minutes and would still be great.

"Everybody Get Dangerous" is a weird song to me.  It doesn't quite sound right. It's still catchy, but I think maybe saying the word dangerous makes a chorus sound weird.  (How's that for subjective?).  Or, which is more likely, the verses are the catchy part and the chorus is the off-kilter section.

The second half of the record strikes a few firsts, in that the other members of the band sing lead vocals on a few tracks.  Even though the songs are good (and when I heard "Automatic" on the radio the other day on WRXP, it sounded great by itself) there's something off about them being on a Weezer record.  I think maybe I associate Rivers' voice with their style so much that any other voice just makes things seems askew.  That said, the songs are good, they're just not "Weezer."

I have to get back to the lyrics though.  Rivers is more about harmony and melody, I know, but sometimes those lyrics are so simple as to be almost a joke in themselves.  Maybe that's the point.  (And as an English major myself, I secretly believe it is the point).  After a few listens I stop cringing about the lyrics and I just start enjoying them.

The last song gives me some problems because it runs nearly seven minutes long.  Obviously not a problem in itself, but the last two or two and a half minutes are just the song fading out, which...come on.

[DIGRESSION] I think I'm probably the only person who gets bothered by songs that fade out too long or songs that I think should be a minute shorter than they are.  And I realized it's because I have a limited time where I can listen to music carefully.  And so when I do, I don't want it wasted with silence or fade outs or final choruses that repeat sixteen times. On the other hand, if I just have music on in the background (which is how most people listen to music) you will hardly notice those extra 45 seconds.  But when you're in the car, and you know you'll be at work in exactly 3 minutes, you don't want 2 minutes of fade!

[READ: August 14, 2008] One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

My first real awareness of Solzhenitsyn actually comes from the Moxy Fruvous song "Johnny Saucep'n":

Well he was just some Johnny Saucep'n when he walked into that kitchen.
And the chef picked up the order and put down his Solzhenitsyn

I'd made a mental note to check him out based on this (it doesn't take much sometimes).  But then when he died on August 3 (and who could have even imagined he was still alive), it was a second impetus to read him.  The last straw came when a patron asked for his obituary.  He said he used to teach his books.  So, I asked him where I should start.  He told me One Day... (it's by far the shortest) and I made sure to read it right away.

And thus, I have now read two Russian books in a row.  (Mental Floss magazine also had an article about Ukraine that I just read about as well, so there's lots of Russian in my blood these days).

One Day is the story of Ivan Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet gulag.  He has been in prison for 8 years and has two more to go on his sentence.  The reason for his being in the camp is a trumped up charged of being a spy for the Germans (he was captured by the Germans and escaped, but since he was crossing from enemy lines he was branded a spy).  The story follows (as you may guess) one day in the prison camp.

Camp conditioners are brutal.  Official policy is that if the temperature drops below minus 40 degrees F, they do not have to work.  On this day, the temperature hovers around minus 25 degrees F, so they must go off to work.  Today's work includes building a building for future prisoners.  Thus, they are erecting a building with bricks and mortar OUTSIDE in minus 25 degree weather.  There is a heater, but it is of little help (and they must find the fuel for it themselves).

The zeks (prisoners) are given three meals, yet they hardly receive the minimum requirement (everyone up the chain of command takes a bit extra), so they barely scrape by.  A zek considers himself lucky if he can lick out an extra bowl.  Any sort of misbehavior (actual or imagined) (including licking out another's bowl) gets you sent to the hole, which is pretty much a hole.  As Ivan puts it, a short stay gives you pneumonia, a ten day staff (a common punishment) and you'll never recover.

Clearly, reading this book at lunch time during the summer, was not the most sympathetic reading time.

But regardless, the most bizarre thing about this book is that Ivan is a surprisingly good-natured individual.  Even though in the morning when he wakes up, (at 5 AM before everyone else, even before 6AM wake up) he uses all his ingenuity to try to go to sick bay to get out of work.  When it doesn't work out, he seems to take everything else in stride.  In fact, as far as days go, this one was a particularly good one for him.  Without giving too much away: he scores extra rations, he avoids getting put in the hole, and most fascinatingly, he builds a wall.  He is working on the wall of this building, and since he has masonry skills, he is put in charge of this one section of the wall.  A great deal of time is spent at this wall: how it is so cold the cement freezes very quickly, etc.  But what makes it so fascinating is that he really gets a groove going on, and starts enjoying himself.  The hard work warms him, and he gets a sense of satisfaction from what he's doing; so much so that when the whistle blows for his day to be over, he wants to finish his section!  (He says its so that it won't settle incorrectly for tomorrow).

All in all you get this really weird sense that he sort of likes being in the prison....  He even says as much at one point: he has been away from his family for so long that it may be easier for him to stay where he is.  When I started the book, I imagined I was in for a horror story the likes of Elie Weisel's Night, or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.  I was blown away at how not terrible he made it sound (despite all of the horrors within).

Solzhenitsyn himself was in the gulag for many years, so this story is somewhat autobiographical.  It is still surprising that it was published when and where it was, and yet when you read about its impact, and its effect on the USSR specifically and human rights in general, it's amazing how much a little recognition can have.  I also hate to sound like he had it easy in the gulag.  I'm not saying that freezing temperatures an no food is easy, but compared to the things I've seen and heard at Guantanamo Bay, this isn't nearly as bad.  i assume he tried to keep it more mild, so that it would get printed, as if he told the real gruesome details I can't imagine the paper would have printed it.

Nevertheless, I don't think I 'm ready to read Gulag Archipelago anytime soon.

-- H. L. Mencken

Karl Popper. Semizdata, Monetarist History, Starbucks, Irena Sendler, and the Federal Reserve.

A problem with being slightly right brained and having over 3000 articles waiting in your Google Reader app is that it is easy to be simply overwhelmed with probing problems and finding more. I have a pair of drives often. The first is to find the hidden connections that drives society and individuals. The second is a drive for justice. I probably would have been a good futurist. I see trends in our country that frighten me. Inflation as a result of the Fed increasing levels of debt and borrowing to fund our empire and socialist nanny state mixing with decreased civil rights and increased government monitoring. Of course only a terrorist or a criminal would oppose more government control over daily life right? This frankly frightens me. I don't believe in being a chicken little isolation-survivalist 'the sky is falling! praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!' I do believe in being wise about trends. I am trying to sell my SUV and then my van to get into one newer all wheel drive car for reliability and travel and one older much less cost car for commuting to work. I want higher gas mileage and no car payments when the dollar collapses. I want to pay off all my debts so I can sell and move if need be soon. I want to turn my backyard into a productive place. Tater towers, rain barrels, productive gardening, cheap wind energy, and play and family area. Selling the TV should help this.

So many big picture things upset me about our world I am reminded that I am a missionary here in my culture, place and time. I know that my home is in heaven far away from the elitists, sluggards, overlords and mindless. I am terrified that I may not be an authentic person but a result of trends and forces. I want to be a person who loves Jesus and follows Him. I want to be a missionary to my family, neighbors, friends, and strangers. I want to be wise about the streams and currents of this world that drown people in marketing created desire, zeitgeist politics and entertainment distraction.

This is why I can only say my political views are libertarian. I want a free society where I am not afraid of my neighbor or my politicians or my bank. I want to be able to work and trade freely, give freely and not be constrained by label politics when I speak and hopefully love people. We too often lay judgement on the unsaved instead of the saved. We speak sadly of the pastor who cheated on his wife and want to support him but look down our noses at the teenager who has pierced her nose, is a mother and smokes weed. She is not saved, what do you expect her to act like? Take the pastor out behind the woodshed and love the teen mom by helping her with babysitting, getting a job, a free or cheap car and a safe place to live and raise the baby. Share Jesus with her and stories about how Jesus spoke with women of ill repute and how He stood up to the religious leaders of the day.

BTW, it's too bad no one ever told H.L Mencken that Jesus didn't like the religious leaders of His day either.

A wrap up to this post. The statist-communist is a natural outgrowth of sin. the SC wants to get the most out of the least effort and does not have a problem with creating an idol called government to force everyone to see government as god and force everyone to worship it and sacrifice (taxes) to it. So, good communists like Upton Sinclair will write books that make two types of people the evil antagonist: Christian and capitalist. Both stand in the way of world government worship.

The Christian and capitalist have been hated and persecuted by the SC for at least a hundred years. When I watched there will be blood I was chilled by looking at the old me. I've written about this and talked about how the character Plainview represented my mentality before I became a Christian. I then realized the two characters, the oil-man and the false preacher, where representations of all the SC hates. So he hyperbolizes and stereotypes them. This is the goal of the SC. So much is written about this I won't add to it but I hope this brings forth some discussion in your own family. I don't believe Christians have to walk around terrified listening to Alex Jones every night wondering when the Chinese are going to invade wearing U.N. uniforms. I do believe we should embrace an open society because we are the salt. When the world is going to hell and your family has been obediant to Christ your family is going to be a beacon of hope to others when your family loves them and helps them. If your family runs from culture, buys ammo, believes Alex Jones and protests the Gay Nazi Athiests no one wins. Fellowship with other believers, show hospitality to the lost. Funny thing about being lost, they act like it. I know, we are not to be polluted by this world. Is it possible to be in culture but not polluted by it? Is it possible to grow in wisdom of other's intentions?

sorry. never blog late when dehydrated. must sleep know. time to put this post to bed.

Much has been made of the movie's soundtrack by Johnny Greenwood; and its well deserved. The score is sometimes beautiful, it quivers and sustains during tense moments. Sometimes the well-known instruments provide a completely unsettling noise. Its a great addition to the film itself, and reflects the changing images on-screen.

For me, watching the movie was kind of easy - I wasn't shocked at several of the developments. Thanks to having read both Flivver King and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; There Will Be Blood (based upon the book Oil!) thus follows Sinclair's somewhat familar formula. Its as much a social and political commentary as it is a character piece. In portraying Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis is engaging, you can see why he's a self-proclaimed "oil man." Even with the familiar storyline the film was still wonderful to watch. As mentioned before however, its not for everyone. It takes its time turning out the story, and the use of silence and little dialogue can be unsettling. What this does however is let actions speak louder than words; we almost get inside characters heads. Attemping to watch the film is recommended, and well worth watching to the end.

Besides, any film who's last lines are "Alright, I'm finished now" is certainly interesting.

Now that I've seen the movie, this clip from Saturday Night Live makes complete sense. If you haven't seen the movie, I encourage you to watch it just for Day-Lewis' acting as well as to understand this hilarious SNL skit.

 http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/play.shtml?mea=221737

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich

You've probably heard of the first two and the third was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year (click here to read David Quammen's review titled "Bird Brains" and published August 1, 1999). Heinrich, who I am not familiar with, is a well known science writer who focuses on animals.

Lately, I've been feeling like it would be good to re-read some of the classics so expect to see me read books like Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe this summer.

Paul Thomas Anderson realizou o filme “Haverá Sangue” (There Will Be Blood) e com ele arrecadou dois Oscars de entre oito nomeações, como a de Melhor Filme do Ano (que haveria de ser entregue aos irmãos Cohen pelo seu “Este País Não É Para Velhos” (No Country For Old Men).

Já se conhecia que os textos de Thomas Aderson têm mensagens nas entrelinhas. No caso “Haverá Sangue”, no qual o realizador adaptou o guião a um romance de Upton Sinclair, é possível perceber as origens da monumental teatralidade do povo norte-americano (neste aspecto Daniel Day-Lewis e Paul Dano têm prestações fabulosas), os desvios profundos causados por uma cegueira religiosa. A ambição e a concorrência feroz também.

Todas estas obsessões continuam presentes nos dias de hoje na sociedade norte-americana. Veja-se a forma teatral, espectacular com que os candidatos se apresentam aos seus eleitores, como se tudo se passasse num programa de entretenimento do Jay Leno ou da Oprah Winfrey. Também a cegueira religiosa, que continua a ser responsável por várias tragédias mais ou menos mediáticas estão aqui retratadas. O poder de deus o poder do dinheiro ou ainda o poder do amor, numa correria paralela mas que se fundem por vezes.

O filme, que passou na última sessão do Cineclube de Guimarães (18 de Maio de 2008), causou em certo desalento. Não será um filme tão marcante (como o foi “Magnólia”) e, por isso, dificilmente será lembrado no futuro. Tirando as prestações de Daniel Day-Lewis e Paul Dano, o filme é pobre. A banda-sonora original, da autoria do Radiohead Johnny Greenwood chega a ser perturbadora (o que neste filme talvez nem soe despropositada).

What you see above is a simple map, but it explains what the models say in a fairly general agreement.  This is Saturday midday and you can see no rain here or in Baltimore.  There is general agreement that for the Preakness Stakes Weather that the system lifts up and out to the northeast and for the run for the Black-Eyed Susans, the Pimlico Racetrack weather will be dry.  There is some notion, especially with this 00Z Thursday run of the NAM that the system may be slower...which would mean the rain hangs around here a bit deeper into Friday morning and the rain stick around in the Delmarva into the pre-dawn Saturday hours at the Pimlico racetrack.  Nevertheless, the previous  forecast still holds for both here and there.  It will be up to the Pimlico People to get the track dry for the Preakness and they probably will.  We get a pretty good amount of rain here on Thursday.  They get it there on Friday for Black-Eyed Susan Day.  They are dry on Saturday for the Preakness with midday temps in the upper 50's or low 60's. We are dry on Saturday and late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, a weakening front may bring us some rain and a few t'showers late Saturday night followed by a decent Sunday.  Snow White still says bet the ranch on the big brown horse.

On This Date In History:  On this date in 1923, novelist and "muckraker" Upton Sinclair went to jail in Los Angeles, Cailifornia.  The charge against him?  He was charged by the LAPD of expressing ideas that were "calculated to cause hatred ann contempt" for the Federal government.   Sounds pretty bad.  What ideas did he express?  Why the dastardly skalawag Sinclair  spoke to a group of striking transportation workers and read the Bill of Rights!!! 

That's right....well...sorta....see, he never made it through all ten amendments.  He didn't even make it through the first one.  He read part of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America which guarantees freedom of speech, of religion, of the press and when he got to the part about the right "of the people peaceably to assemble," that's when the men in blue swept in and hustled him off to the pokey.   Not only was  he in jail for 22 hours, it was 22 hours without being allowed to speak to anyone.  The police chief wanted to hold him even longer.  But, there was an insider.

An underling to the chief called Sinclair's wife, who called a lawyer who subsequently gained Sinclair's release.  As for the police chief, he got fired. Oh...not for violating Sinclair's Constitutional rights or anything....at least officially.  Nope...the chief got fired  after he was found at night in a parked car with a  woman and bottle of whiskey!!!  Now that is criminal mischief if I've ever heard it before. He's lucky they didn't lock him up and throw the keys away.

Just another example of how the police in this country have gone beyond their duties or beyond the law...in this case violating a basis for our Republic and the country didn't fall apart. The issue got dealt with and so did those involved and the world didn't stop spinning, nor was Presidnet  Warren G. Harding called a liar or blamed.  It happens.  We are still trying to build a more perfect union but we have yet to have perfect people in every level of government.

A large part of the problem is that the rethinkers’ case is not readily made in a convincing way via self-evident sound-bites. “The ‘HIV’ tests don’t detect a virus”, or “ ‘HIV’ tests have never been proven to be specific for ‘HIV’”, while perfectly true, are based on evidence that is too technical for most people to feel comfortable with; to appreciate the strength of the case against HIV/AIDS theory, to appreciate that those mainstream-contradicting sound-bites are really true, requires prolonged immersion in much data. Even the most concise as well as documented overview, say, Christine Maggiore’s excellent What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?, or Rebecca Culshaw’s similarly concise yet also comprehensive Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?, are hardly bed-time reading. A promising alternative approach is through “fiction”.

There’s a long and respectable history of literary fiction that aims to acquaint readers with important facts. (Most good literature teaches at least indirectly about people and about human life, of course, but I’m now referring to deliberately didactic treatments of specific issues.) Sinclair Lewis in Martin Arrowsmith conveyed important truths about medical practice and medical research and commercial conflicts of interest. Upton Sinclair revealed through novels some ugly truths about the meat-packing industry (The Jungle), the oil industry (Oil), and others, and his Lanny Budd series can serve as a descriptive political history of the era of Nazism, the Second World War, and its aftermath. Most recently, Michael Crichton exposed the lacunae and fault lines in the current obsession with man-caused global warming in State of Fear.

HIV/AIDS seems a natural candidate for this sort of treatment, and Stephen Davis has put his hand, head, and heart into the endeavor. His first novel, Wrongful Death: The AIDS Trial, was published in 2006; the second, Are You Positive?, appeared this year.

Both books feature legal trials, and are thereby consistent with my growing suspicion that HIV/AIDS theory will only be overturned when the mainstream is forced, in a court of law, to reveal the extent to which the theory is like an Emperor wearing no clothes at all.

Wrongful Death tells the story of a class-action suit brought by relatives of those who died needlessly because “HIV-positive” people were treated with AZT. The novel was exceptionally timely, given that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was just then recommending that “HIV”-testing should become routine. If that were to happen, then a few perfectly healthy people in every thousand would be misguidedly told that they harbor a deadly virus and should begin taking drugs whose “side” effects make the rate of “adherence to treatment” quite low and which ultimately reward compliant adherence with serious illness and often death.

Davis follows, for legal reasons, the convention of claiming fictional character for the protagonists (except for a few well-known public figures), but readers at all familiar with HIV/AIDS matters will recognize many of the characters, most of whose names are faithful to the initials of their real-life models. The story is told in quite a straightforward manner, an appropriate vehicle for acquainting readers with the facts in a steady succession of digestible pieces. Though the story is straightforwardly told, there are also a couple of ingenious twists in the plot.

Are You Positive? features a trial that has, unfortunately, some real-life precedents: an HIV-positive man on trial for transmitting the virus to a sexual partner. As in the earlier book, the real-life models of some protagonists are recognizable, including by their initials. The evidence is unfolded at digestible pace: the lack of validity of “HIV” tests, the racial bias of the tests, the particular likelihood that TB patients and pregnant women will test “HIV-positive”. The recommendation that everyone be tested is mentioned, and the gruesome story of the orphans used as guinea pigs in clinical trials. The Padian study revealing lack of sexual transmission is dissected expertly. Gallo’s scientific failings are described accurately, as well as his self-incriminating testimony in the Parenzee trial in Adelaide (Australia). The role of conflicts of interest in the HIV/AIDS industry is brought out. An Appendix has a recommended “Informed Consent” form that people should require their doctors to sign if they are being asked to take an HIV test.

The story is told very accurately indeed in this novel. Because I already knew that every detail is correct, I found it emotionally difficult reading--I know of a dozen people languishing in jail for the crime of making love while testing “positive” for a supposedly active infection that the tests cannot actually establish, and there are surely many more in jail of whom I am not aware. HIV/AIDS-naïve readers, however, may not experience that emotional burden as they are led slowly to doubt what the conventional wisdom insists on.

My respect for these books and their author was only increased when, toward the end, I found cited one of my favorite epigrams, one I had used myself for years as the motto of a newsletter I once edited:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Both these books are paperbacks published via automated “on demand” printing. Their material quality is comparable with such productions from large publishers, but in their lack of typographical errors they are far superior to most contemporary works, including in hard covers from long-established and respected presses.

Rethinkers ought to consider giving these books to their friends and acquaintances who scoff at the possibility that the mainstream could be wrong about HIV/AIDS. Leading HIV/AIDS-naïve people through salient details of the evidence in measured and linear succession is likely to make it easier for them to begin to shake off unthinking acceptance of the conventional wisdom than trying to argue all the scientific issues in concentrated form. Wrongful Death cites hundreds of supporting published sources; Are You Positive? relegates them to the website. In both cases, you can assure those to whom you give these books that the cited evidence is solidly supported in the mainstream literature and that the cited sources represent fairly the totality of what has been published and what is known.

We here at Too Old like the fast food (of course everything should be done in moderation) and Rally's is a place that we like we are travelling around to the various locations you can find us. Even OutKast reps Rally's burgers in their song, Elevators. On the subject of fast food, we enjoy it when we have it, because it is quick, convenient and satisfying. Even more important, we do not have to clean up after the mess. Like them skinny ass cigarettes from Virginia, we have come a long way… Part of the distance that we have come is typified by The Jungle.

This drama is an historical classic I was forced to read in high school and I am thankful for that. The drama and action (not to mention its historical underpinnings of socialism/communism in America) is the reason that The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is one of my favorites. For those not fortunate enough to have read this work, it centers on the meatpacking industry in Chicago around the turn of the century. The protagonist is trying to feed his immigrant family, while at the same time attempting to not become one of the many statistics in the factory. The conditions in the factory are beyond disgusting, with rodents and human parts getting blended in the mixture and then sold.

Here is a picture of the Champ burger that Checkers/Rally's sells

Thanks to Teddy Roosevelt, we passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which prevents things like that were described in the Jungle from happening. Or, so we had hoped

WFTV reports this story that caught my eye (and caused me to lose my appetite)

SANFORD, Fla. -- Eyewitness News discovered a popular Sanford fast food restaurant that's accused of storing food on the floor inside the men's restroom. The food that was left on the floor in the restroom was just one of several critical violations health inspectors found at a Checkers location in Sanford.

Employees at the Checkers store on South French Avenue at West 15th Street (see map) apparently decided it was okay to store buns for their hamburgers inside a not-so-clean men's room.

Tuesday, it appeared they had changed the policy, but not before racking up a dozen health code violations.

"The bread was stacked sky high to the ceiling, plus it was only about 12 inches from the men's commode," said former customer Willie Jones.

Checker's goes through a lot of hamburger buns at its drive-thru restaurants. It's hard to even think about what might happen to those buns in a tiny, smelly and dirty bathroom. One customer told Eyewitness News he didn't like the manager's reaction to his complaint about the bread box-bathroom stall combination.

"'You got the bread in the men's restroom.' She got angry with me. She got T'd off and she locked the door," Jones said.

Health officials didn't settle for that solution, forcing the store to throw away all of it. Unfortunately, they don't know how long the Sanford Checkers kept both bread and cups in a bathroom that was quickly cleaned as Eyewitness News arrived Tuesday. An employee denied the bathroom-food storage system.

"Were you guys storing bread in there?" WFTV reporter Steve Barrett asked.

"No sir," the employee replied.

That employee and the bread delivery man seemed perplexed about where the bread should go Tuesday as an Eyewitness News crew looked on. They finally took it inside the kitchen.

"Do you ever see them put the bread you bring in the bathroom?" Barrett asked the delivery man.

"No comment," he said.

In all, the Checkers location was cited for a dozen violations, including nine "critical" violations. They were for things like storing food on the floor and having a faulty water treatment system.

The manager would not come out and talk Tuesday and no one called back from the corporate office for comment.

If you want a full report of what the inspections found, then click here

I know that toilet paper gets short some times and you give some other things a look, but hamburger buns? Isn't that kinda wasteful? Yeah, we thought so too…

I hope that I made a good choice in moving here. The only down side to this move is that I cannot bring my previous posts with me. So, if you are also new to What the Book! you can find all the old posts here. I have really been enjoying the whole blog thing and reading all the other book blogs that are out there.

I will answer all comments that are left here on the comments page of the given post. So, if you leave a comment be sure to check back again later for my response to your comment. I think that's one of the better things about having a blog, reading what others have to say about my posts and the various suggestions for books I should read.

On a different note I'll leave you with a list of the books I'm currently reading:

1. No Logo by Naomi Klein - Quebec for the Canadian Book Challenge.
2. The 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers - Germany for the Orbis Terrarum Challenge.
3. Oil! by Upton Sinclair - for Bookleave

I only wish I had more non-fiction on the go but that's soon to be happening for when I start the Non-Fiction Five Challenge in May. So, I look forward to my new blog space and all the books I'll be discussing here. Until next time keep those pages turning.

It's an old and tired complaint, but one not without merit: assigned reading makes kids infinitely less likely to enjoy the book. I constantly go into assigned books begrudgingly and ready to hate them. Moby Dick. Augustine's Confessions. The list goes on. Could I enjoy these books in a non-school atmosphere? Maybe.

Recently I found a copy of The Children of Men by P. D. James which I never knew my family owned. I was struck by a strong urge to read the book cover to cover. And after a couple of weeks I had. It's a wonderful book and I looked forward to reading it every day.

While I was reading it I was also reading The Jungle, a good book. But I read The Jungle slowly, almost trying to find something boring to complain about. Naturally, The Jungle was assigned reading for Logic class.

Assigned reading doesn't work.

AKA: Oil ! - Laufzeit: 158 Minuten - Land: USA

Dieser - mit mehreren Oscars ausgezeichnete - Film basiert auf Upton Sinclair's früher Novelle "Oil!" (erstmals im Jahre 1927 herausgegeben), und beschäftigt sich mit dem Leben Daniel Plainview's (Daniel Day-Lewis). Große Themenfelder decken seinen persöhnlichen moralischen Verfall, seine Familienangelegenheiten und seine Bestrebungen ein lukratives Geschäft aus dem schwarzen Gold zu machen, ab. Wir befinden uns im frühen 20sten Jahrhundert, als Daniel Plainview den wahren Wert des Öls für sich entdeckt - nachdem er für einige Jahre recht unerfolgreich im Minengewerbe gearbeitet hatte. Eines Tages nimmt er sich eines ausgesetzten Waisenkindes im Säuglingsalter an - und nennt diesen Jungen H.W. Plainview. Es scheint als hätte er große Pläne mit ihm (im Kindesalter gespielt von Newcomer Dillon Freasier). Und gerade in dieser Periode; während des Erwachsenwerdens dieses Waisenkindes; beginnt der Film das Porträt Plainviews in voller Intensität und Stärke zu zeichen.

Daniel Plainview ist eine sehr zielstrebige Persöhnlichkeit, die versucht alles an sich zu nehmen was sie kriegen kann - scheinbar um jeden Preis. Er kauft einige weite Landstücke auf auf welchen er Öl vermutet; lässt die ersten kleinen Ölraffinerien errichten und kommt in den Kontakt mit den Siedlern der Gegend. Selbstverständlich würde er ihnen nicht sein wahres Gesicht zeigen; er scheint ein abgebrühter Geschäftsmann zu sein welcher eines jeden Tricks habhaft werden kann wenn es darauf ankommt. Schon jetzt zeichnet sich eine gewisse Gier und Machthungrigkeit in seinen Augen ab. Mit Sicherheit sehr zum Nachteil seines Sohnes, für den er im Grunde kaum Gefühle übrig zu haben scheint. Ein weiteres, schwerwiegendes Ereignis; welches die Dinge nicht gerade leichter machen wird, folgt. Sein Sohn wird schwer verletzt nachdem es eine große Gasexplosion auf einer seiner Raffinerien gegeben hat - er ist auf beiden Ohren taub.

Aber anstatt dass der Vater für seinen Sohn da ist; entscheidet er sich, ihn wegzuschicken. Er hat schon genug Probleme mit denen er zu kämpfen hat; ein herzloser, aber sicherlich lukrativer Standpunkt. Doch es gibt bereits ein weiteres Problem welches sich schon am Horizont abzeichnet: Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), der Priester eines kleinen Dorfes in dem er einige gewinnbringende Raffinerien aufgebaut hat, stellt sich ihm mit all seiner (religiösen) Kraft entgegen. Und als ob dies nicht bereits genug wäre; taucht urplötzlich ein Mann auf, der behauptet sein lange verschollener Bruder zu sein...

Daniel Plainview mit seinem Sohn H.W. (klicken Sie auf das Bild um zu einer Bildergallerie auf Outnow.ch zu gelangen)

Dieser Film ist sehr komplex, ein ebenso beeindruckendes wie verstörendes Porträt eines Mannes der an seiner unermesslichen Gier nach Geld und Ruhm zugrunde geht; aber dennoch vor nichts und niemandem halt machen würde. Durch alle Szenen zieht sich eine tiefe Bedrücktheit; eine sehr aussergewöhnliche Stimmung. Dies ist hauptsächlich auf 3 wichtige Aspekte zurückzuführen:

• 1. Skript und Plot des Films sind wirklich sehr innovativ und einmalig in der Geschichte
• 2. Regisseur Paul Thomas Anderson macht wirklich einen großartigen Job
• 3. Die Leistungen der Darsteller sind sehr beeindruckend, ganz besonders die von Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano; und Newcomer Dillion Freasier
  

Mit den ersten 15 Minuten des Films - die übrigens kein einziges gesprochenes Wort beinhalten - ist man "drin" in der Geschichte; wird von ihrer kunstvollen Erzählweise geradezu absorbiert. Das Hauptaugenmerk gilt selbstverständlich dem Schicksal von Daniel Plainview. Doch Sie werden hier kaum das Gefühl haben als handelte es sich um eine der üblichen Charakterdarstellungen; es ist etwas ganz besonderes am Film. Der philosophische Erzählton der zwischen den Bildern mitschwingt - sollte man nicht verpasst haben. Ein weiterer wichtiger Aspekt im film ist das Verhältnis zwischen Vater und Sohn; welches stets undurchsichtig und für den Zuschauer nicht nachvollziehbar bleibt. Die Gefühle der beiden füreinander bleiben winwm größtenteils verschlossen; es liegt an einem selbst gewisse Hinweise zu interpretieren. Ich habe mir bereits eine Meinung gebildet. Es gibt 2 sehr bewegende Szenen, die eine schier unerträgliche Härte seitens des Vaters gegenüber seinem Sohn zeigen; einmal im frühen Kindesalter und einmal als junger Erwachsener. Ich möchte aber nicht zu viel verraten; sehen Sie bitte selbst. Der technische Part lässt kaum Raum für Beschwerden meinerseits. Ganz besonders die Optik wirkt sehr stimmig; die Wechsel von eher klaustrophobisch anmutenden Orten (Minenschächte, enge Räume) hin zu weiten, unberührten Landschaften wirken einfach nur atemberaubend. Die musikalische Untermalung ist nett; jedoch hatte ich das Gefühl dass sie an manchen Stellen etwas zu aufdringlich wirkte.

Schlussendlich: ein wirklich einzigartiger Film; vergleichbares gibt es kaum. Und das ist auch gut so. Ich bin mehr als beeindruckt; vergebe daher an dieser Stelle 9.4/10 Punkten. Und einen Ikarus Award:

- Für ganz, ganz große Schauspielkunst und eine sehr beklemmende Atmosphäre welche sich durch den gesamten Film zieht

Einige Links:

Sehen Sie das Videoreview von Ebert und Roeper...

Der Trailer auf Moviemaze.de... Diese DVD auf Amazon.com

A Stack of Good Ones, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.

Our haul from Powell's. Three of these are mine and one is Karen's. Can ya'all guess which is which. I'll give you a clue. Hers is on the bottom of the stack and is the most intellectual... LOL

Pick of the Week: Rescue Dawn - Terrific true-life POW adventure story starring a method Christian Bale and directed by the greatest of all eccentric geniuses, Werner Herzog. Manages to be a straight-ahead exciting adventure, blackly comic character study and uplifting humanist drama all at once. One of last year's most underrated films.

Also Out:
Enchanted - Charming post-modernist Disney adventure with Amy Adams sparkling and James Marsden a square-jawed Prince Charming of the highest order.
The Darjeeling Limited - Decent Wes Anderson effort but below par by his standards. Performances are all great but a mixed tone and sense of thematic deja vu wear down a potentially marvellous film.
Mike Leigh Collection: Auterist oeuvre of one of Britain's finest purveyors of the human spirit.
Hard Eight - Rerelease for Paul Thomas Anderson's flawed but promising debut film.
Futurama; Bender's Big Score - Pretty decent feature length effort from Futurama with enough quality gags to keep it from running out of steam.
Entourage Season 3 - Some people like this.

Region 1: There Will Be Blood - The Americans have a two-disc edition of this coming out on Tuesday. There don't appear to be many extras for a double-disc but honestly, they could just put the film on there twice and I'd still buy it.