Lessons for Teachers

From one of the co-authors of the new Putin-endorsed Russian history textbooks:

You may ooze bile but you will teach the children by those books that you will be given and in the way that is needed by Russia. And as to the noble nonsense that you carry in your misshapen goateed heads, either it will be ventilated out of them or you yourself will be ventilated out of teaching…. It is impossible to let some Russophobe shit-stinker (govnyuk), or just any amoral type, teach Russian history. It is necessary to clear the filth, and if it does not work, then clear it by force.

And from Putin himself:

As to some problematic pages in our history--yes, we've had them. But what state hasn't? And we've had fewer of such pages than some other [states]. And ours were not as horrible as those of some others. Yes, we have had some terrible pages: let us remember the events beginning in 1937, let us not forget about them. But other countries have had no less, and even more. In any case, we did not pour chemicals over thousands of kilometers or drop on a small country seven times more bombs than during the entire World War II, as it was in Vietnam, for instance. Nor did we have other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance. All sorts of things happen in the history of every state. And we cannot allow ourselves to be saddled with guilt--they'd better think of themselves.

via Leon Aron at The New Republic and Scott Horton at Harper's, who appears to be triumphantly returning to his blog (let's hope).

Better Together

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I will ask it anyway.

I don't have a Kindle, but I would like one. What I would like even more is to be able to easily purchase/download a document that I could read on my laptop (or maybe even my phone/PDA). This is especially true for books that I purchase for research -- I want them to read them, obviously, and to enjoy them and digest the information therein, but part of the advantage of an electronic document is that I can also work with such a document, directly, without having to type notes or scan in a copy, both of which extremely labor-intensive compared to ripping a CD or DVD.

Mostly, though, I would like to be able to purchase a document that gives me options. If I buy a CD, I can easily rip it into a compressed digital format, giving me the option to use it in its original physical form or to port it around in a form that lets me store it, work with it, use it on other devices, and so on. I've got the "original" document -- that is, the item in its retail physical form, at maximum fidelity, and I've got a copy with slightly less fidelity but more malleability. I get to have the best of both worlds.

So why doesn't Amazon, lord of all things bookly, whether digital or non-, offer a special package for books that they sell, consisting of the physical book, a PDF copy for your laptop, online preview access to the scanned copy available at the store, and a version for your Kindle? (Audiobook optional.) Obviously, this would only be appealing to people if the package (I don't know, let's call it the "digital edition") were cheaper than purchasing these items separately.

There's ample precdent for this. Amazon itself will frequently let you stream a copy of an album that you purchase a physical copy of from its store. I've bought special edition movie DVDs where the bonus DVD includes a digital copy (usually with DRM) of the film for your computer or iPod.

Booksellers could even cut out Amazon altogether by offering books with CDs or a digital download code. Likewise, other companies could potentially outflank Amazon by offering a "Netflix for Books" -- in particular, a subscription service that gives you access to as many digital books as you'd like (possibly, again, with a digital timeout).

It just seems like the digital books market is much more timid than they should be; there are new possibilities here, and plenty of lessons to be learned from folks in other media who have this world better figured out.

Be Kind Rewind

From the A/V Club via J Kottke comes this question: What movie(s) have you rewatched the most times?

This is a particularly weird question for me to answer because I obsessively rewatch a lot of movies. There are very few movies that I enjoy at all that I wouldn't like to watch again and again. And again.

So the following is limited to movies that I have seen at least fifty or more times, movies whose screenplays I've memorized.

The original Star Wars trilogy
The Princess Bride
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers
Fiddler On The Roof
The Beatles Anthology
Finding Nemo
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
The Little Mermaid
Memento
Citizen Kane
Unforgiven
Malcolm X
The Shawshank Redemption
Goodfellas
M
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Annie Hall
The Big Lebowski
Groundhog Day

I've got my eye on you, FF

Has anyone else found Firefox 3 for Mac to be slow, buggy, and crash-prone? I don't understand, because on my Windows install, it rocks.

I've gone for a stripped-down install with a bare minimum of extensions. But otherwise, Firefox, this is your last chance. I've been using you (on Windows, anyways) since version 0.5. Don't make me end this.

The New Needs Friends

Roger Ebert on the job of the critic:

A new documentary by Todd McCarthy opened in New York the other day: "Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema." I saw it at Toronto 2007, and I hope it opens around the country. You likely have never heard of Pierre Rissient, but it is likely he has had more influence on the world of good films in the last 60 that anybody else. I tried to explain why in [this] article. Pierre says his role in many situations is to "defend," by which he means "support," the films and directors he approves. The Telluride Film Festival named one of its cinemas after him, and made T-shirts quoting him: "It is not enough to like a film. One must like it for the right reasons."

That sounds like critical snobbery, but is profoundly true. I don't think Pierre is referring only to his reasons, although knowing him well, I suppose he could be. I think he's saying you must know why you like a film, and he able to explain why, so that others can learn from an opinion not their own. It is not important to be "right" or "wrong." It is important to know why you hold an opinion, understand how it emerged from the universe of all your opinions, and help others to form their own opinions. There is no correct answer. There is simply the correct process. "An unexamined life is not worth living." [...]

I believe a good critic is a teacher. He doesn't have the answers, but he can be an example of the process of finding your own answers. He can notice things, explain them, place them in any number of contexts, ponder why some "work" and others never could. He can urge you toward older movies to expand your context for newer ones. He can examine how movies touch upon individual lives, and can be healing, or damaging. He can defend them, and regard them as important in the face of those who are "just looking for a good time." He can argue that you will have a better time at a better movie. We are all allotted an unknown but finite number of hours of consciousness. Maybe a critic can help you spend them more meaningfully.

Don't think for a second that I am proposing myself as that critic. I am only trying to define what I aspire to. I have learned most of what I know about movies from other critics, and by critics I mean everyone who has ever given me an interesting insight into a film. If "Siskel & Ebert & Roeper" had any utility at all, it was in exposing viewers, many of them still children, to the notion that it was permitted to have opinions, and expected that you should explain them.

I'll add to this a chunk of Roland Barthes' "The Death of the Author":

Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’—victory to the critic. Hence there is no surprise in the fact that, historically, the reign of the Author has also been that of the Critic, nor again in the fact that criticism (be it new) is today undermined, along with the Author. In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered; the structure can be followed, ‘run’ (like the thread of a stocking) at every point and at every level, but there is nothing beneath: the space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced; writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to evaporate it, carrying out a systematic exemption of meaning. In precisely this way literature (it would bebetter from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law. [Emphasis Mine --TC]

You Begin Where You Are

Dean Starkman at CJR on the financial market crash and the business press coverage of it:

Critiquing the business press right now... is a bit like critiquing the London fire department during the Blitz: All the major institutions are on fire. The press is scrambling to cover them. What are they supposed to do?...

And now it seems to me that a significant line has been crossed with a headline on the front page of this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight
The story is good, with explanations and analysis of what’s happening and why, but it’s the headline that’s important.

They say on Wall Street that no bottom can be reached without what they call “capitulation”—basically when investors give up hope that the market will recover and just sell.

For me, the flat, declarative headline on top of a news story, as opposed to opinion or analysis, on page one of the Journal is a sign that the flagship of the financial press has capitulated.

Back In Time

I've decided that I would rather listen to Menomena's Friend and Foe about a dozen times rather than listen to any more new music this year. Somebody please wake me if something is worth changing my mind.

Who Needs Another Two Cents?

So one of the stories today at TPM and elsewhere is that during an interview John McCain gave which was broadcast on Spanish-language radio in the US and Spain, McCain was asked about meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero, and gave an answer that either

1) ducked the question;
2) indicated that he didn't know who Zapatero was;
3) indicated that he believed Spain was in Latin America;
4) indicated a crazily aggressive position towards a NATO ally;
or 5) indicated that McCain wasn't paying attention or couldn't hear clearly, possibly because of the reporter's accent.

I think the answer is probably more #5 than anything else, and here's why:

Then there's a moment of awkward pause before she says. "But what about Europe? I'm talking about the President of Spain."

McCain: "What about me, what?

Interviewer: "Are you willing to meet with him if you're elected president?"

McCain seems to have heard "what about Europe" as "what about you?" Hence his reply, "What about me, what?"

Bear in mind, too, that when you listen to the audio, you get a crystal-clear recording of the interviewer, much better than what McCain doubtlessly heard over the telephone.

So listen: McCain has probably a less-than-ideal reception. He's tired. The interviewer is speaking quickly and in with an accent. And he isn't exactly a spring chicken. (I'm sure we'll hear that of course McCain's hearing isn't perfect, that there were times that he couldn't hear anything -- in Vietnam!)

But instead of asking the reporter to repeat or clarify the question, he returns to a fistful of generic and not very illustrative talking points about Latin America and democracies throughout the world.

I think this may show more than that McCain is clueless or confused. It shows that he's stopped listening. That he's forgotten that what people liked about the Straight Talk Express wasn't just that McCain said what he thought, without restorting to rehearsed formulae, but that McCain actually seemed to be paying attention to the people around him, to address their concerns and honestly answer their questions. This is the difference between Candidate McCain and Senator McCain -- or even between Candidate McCain in September and Candidate McCain in May:



I don't want to get too nostalgic about either of those guys, because they both had their problems. But it's clear that that time is over, that window is closed. It's going to be "on message" McCain from here until November. And the problem is that the message itself is thin as a wafer.

Update: TPM's Josh Marshall essentially agrees with me.

Blackmail and Backchannels

In these heightened days of diss-finishing and job-applying, I don't have time to read much -- in fact, expect my reading/writing of blogs to tail off for a while in the next few weeks -- but if I could buy a book unrelated to modernism or cinema right now, it would be Barton Gellman's Angler, which contains scoop after scoop after story after unbelievable story from Dick Cheney's Vice Presidency.

Here are excerpts from Gellman's book and links to the original Washington Post series Gellman wrote with Jo Becker.

Here is Jon Stewart's interview with Gellman on The Daily Show:



You can also listen to Gellman's interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Last, Scott Horton's interview with Gellman in Harper's is pretty astonishing:

You open the book by recounting the role Cheney played as manager of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential selection process. Cheney, you suggest, milked this position for all it was worth–he gathered compromising information on more than a half dozen figures at the pinnacle of the Republican Party. Do you consider Cheney’s handling of the vice presidential vetting process to cast any insights on Cheney’s later conduct as vice president?

A candidate for the presidential ticket expects to be put under a microscope. Even so, the process that Dick Cheney designed was strikingly intrusive. For one thing, he did not rely on trust. He asked people like Bill Frist, Tom Ridge, and John Kasich to give him direct access to their FBI files (ironically, by way of the Freedom of Information Act, which Cheney has never liked) and to sign waivers of privacy for all health records without exception. He asked the contenders whether there was something that would make them vulnerable to blackmail—and if so, what? (I imagine a sensible person would bow out rather than answer “yes” to that one.) All this has a certain logic: You don’t want a blackmailable commander-in-chief (or understudy), and campaigns don’t want unpleasant surprises.

The news in my book about this process is that Cheney never filled out his own questionnaire; that the heart surgeon who vouched for his health never met him or looked at his records; and that Bush and Cheney never interviewed anyone for the job until Cheney already had it nailed.

That's just the first question.

A Serious Man For Serious Times