Far East Cynic

I know I have been long overdue in posting some reviews of recent books I have read. Perhaps the one benefit of my recent trip across the pond is the books I got read ( and in one case) re-read. But I have been remiss in sharing them with you.

Well, no longer. Lets start with the one I most recently received:

I only received it recently and am only about half way through it. I like Kaplan's books even if his support for the Iraq war was totally misplaced. I think, from his tone in this book, he realizes how much the Bush administration fucked up its planning and execution of the war-and it also serves as a prime example of how a failure to understand how geography, and how it influences groupings of people-caused the US to experience nothing but pain and suffering in Iraq.

Kaplan also makes a great point that Americans live lives that are largely ignorant of the travails of the rest of the world. Protected by two oceans and unbombed and uninvaded, Americans have a sense of superiority over Europe that is unjustified. As he points out: "The militarism and pragmatism of continental Europe, to which Americans always felt superior, was the result of geography, not character." reminding us as John Adams did, "There is no special providence for Americans and their nature is the same as that of others."

I am just now to the section discussing the Indian Sub-continent where he is pointing out that for all their faults, the British were a unifying force in India-and their leaving created a vacuum that has never been fully replaced. ( Not that I believe either the Indians or Pakistanis are fully capable of doing so). 

I am looking forward to finishing the book.

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Next up is Thomas Rick's book The Generals.  This is a comprehensive look at America's Army flag leadership from World War II to the present. Like Rick's other books its very readable-but at the same time its hard to agree with all of his conclusions. A few of my disagreements:

1) He is too much in love with the idea of firing people. He cites Marshall's propensity to fire people. This may have indeed been the case-but in Marshall's day people got second chances. Plus, as the history shows, sometimes firing someone only made matters worse. Firing only should be an option of last resort-not first. And times now are different than then.

2)  He has clearly drunk the Petreaus Kool-Aid, more than a little too much of the stuff.  ( The book was written before the great and powerful man was exposed as just a man-with unfulfilled needs like the rest of us.) In his examination of the Iraq war and Petreaus he glosses over the fact that Petreaus was a part of the problem before he became the solution.  And that contrary to popular belief, "The Surge" of which he was proclaimed a saint because of-did not work.

3) While some of his other criticisms of generals are on the mark-in particular his sizing up of MacArthur, he is very, very, unfair in his criticisms of Norman Schwarzkopf. Basically he takes the side of the "we should have gone to Baghdad" crowd. I think this a case where "Stormin Norman" was smarter than Washington Post journalists. And Schwarzkopf was fortunate enough to have a President who understood what his real mission was.

It still a good read-so long as you understand up front, that Ricks has his own agenda, and its not necessarily right.

Don't drink the Kool-Aid!

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I re-read Joseph Stiglitz book, The Price of Inequality. I think the guy is right on the mark.

To Mr Stiglitz, this inequality is the result of public policy being captured by an elite who have feathered their own nests at the expense of the rest. They have used their power to distort political debate, pushing through tax cuts to favor the rich and adjusting monetary policy to favor the banks. Many of the new rich are not entrepreneurs but “rent-seekers”, he says, who use monopoly power to boost profits.

I happen to agree with his view point 100%

Stiglitz is right to focus on the issue. Across the developed world, the average worker is suffering a squeeze in living standards while bankers and chief executives are still doing very nicely. This dichotomy is bound to have social and political consequences. Most reasonable people understand that-not so your average Fox News viewer in America. Who is too busy complaining about "wealth redistribution" to the "Lucky Duckies" than what is really happening. Namely that the wealth is heading upwards.

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The final book I am in the process of finishing ( have been reading it off and on in starts when I am depressed, which lately has been a lot) is submitted without comment. 

I have a lot I would like to write about. I just have no spirit or energy to do so. I've been busy at work getting ready for a meeting next month. And at home I have been dealing with S.O.'s increasingly frivolous views of life and doing her womanly duty. Long story-best not gotten into here. Bottom line is she better change…..soon. Don't even think about asking me to change; zero sex is not an option. I am getting laid one way or another.

Anyway……………………………..

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I've done a lot of reading on planes and trains lately. I thought I would pass on some of my observations on the books I have read recently. First on the block is my reading of a book about an American in Paris.

 The story of this book is simple. A writer in a rut in New York, basically citing a language ability higher than his real skill in French-bluffs his way into an a job as a copywriter in an advertising firm in Paris. The ensuing chapters regal us with the story of his running hard into the wall of believed ability in French vs real ability in French. Something I can relate to. (  See previous post, "I can totally speak Nihongo".) Like me he rapidly discovers that he understands what is being said to him reasonably well-however his ability to turn that into a spoken response that doesn't make him seem like a complete idiot is a rather daunting task. ( One I overcame when actually living in Japan, however now-thanks to 4+ years away from the promised land-is atrophying. As for my spoken German-the less said the better).

The book is an enjoyable read and at the beginning you are quite enthralled with the experiences that he relates that anyone who has lived overseas has experienced. The typical American frustration that things don't work the same as they do back home; trying to communicate basic needs; culture shock at a different value system ( although by the end he quite correctly points out that the French are not as different from Americans as we think they are) and finally the challenge of keeping a relationship alive when you partner is even more at a disadvantage than you are. ( Which quite accurately describes my issue with the SO in Alabama and here).

Unfortunately, in this book you ultimately end the read with a bad taste in your mouth. That is mainly because, just about when you get to the point where you are rooting for Rosecrans Baldwin, he goes and figuratively kicks you in the nuts.  After a mere 12 months of living in the city of light-he abandons it, for a pretty crass reason-he sold his book. And he decided to go home. After that point I had no sympathy for the guy. A year and you pack it in? In Tokyo that person would be considered a wimp of the first order. And he didn't even have to deal with Japanese toilets. A year in Tokyo is just scratching the surface of the city and the people-I have no doubt its the same in Paris. That this cretin was allowed to turn it into a book that made him some money ( this was not the book he sold BTW) just grated me to no end. Add on to that the fact that he was getting to do some good traveling and meet some high powered people and you have to ask yourself one question, " Who the fuck does this guy think he is?" It reminds me of a satyr who goes to Bangkok and whines about the quality of the cuisine. You are in the middle of a steak banquet and don't know it.

There are some interesting anecdotes in the book-but in the end I was disappointed. It was your typical expat "nose in the air story". Basically the European version of " I came to Asia and can't believe all these Western men who went nuts over the women. I didn't come to Japan for the women." Yea, well screw you pal-I did and they lived up to expectations. Clearly Bangkok would be wasted on this guy.

So, I am glad I read the book-but I won't  be reading it again. Take you highbrow attitude back to New York.  And come to an overseas country when you can stay a while.

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The other book I have read recently was much more satisfying intellectually-and quite depressing professionally and emotionally. I read Peter Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism. Its good for me professionally since I am having to deal with Israelis in real time in my day job-which is both fulfilling and frustrating at the same time. 

In June 2010, Peter Beinart published a long article in the New York Review of Books with a provocative title: The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment." The article caused a storm of protest. There had been increasing reluctance from the Jewish establishment to criticize any aspect of Israeli policy. This assault was all the more shocking because it came from "inside the tent.'' Mr. Beinart is a committed Zionist and an observant Jew

Beinart's book was useful for me, because it exposed many of the the falsehoods that lay at the core of the beliefs of the Israelis that I have to deal with. If you spend any time with members of the IDF they will consistently remind you that Israel is a small country surrounded by enemies. What they conveniently leave out of course is that many of the enemies have been created by the IDF themselves-and by Israelis schizophrenic settlement policy in the west bank. Beinart correctly points out that Israeli policy is at least in part life-threatening. With continued hostility from the outside, Mr. Beinart is convinced that the best solution would be the establishment of a Palestinian state. But recent peace proposals have been accompanied by conditions that make acceptance impossible. Above all, Jewish settlement in the West Bank has made the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state increasingly unlikely.

And it is that point I part ways with Peter Beinart. He supports the core belief of Zionism-that such a state is ultmately necessary. My point is that religion-whatever its form-is a lousy basis on which to build a nation state. If Israel were not so tightly wedded to the Jewish faith-and to its really radical Haredi practioners it could probably come to a reasonable accomdation that would servie the interests of both Jews and Arabs. But that is at odds with Israel's very core-and thus the problem we live with. As a Mandate supporter -albeit retrocactively- I understand both points of view very well.

But Beinart is right-there is no going back to that, and there can be no denying Israel's Jewish character. So ultimately it is in Israels interest to solve the Palestinian problem.

Except-under Netanyahu-it does not want to. A point Mr, Beinart makes quite well.

Beinart does the math that most conservative evangelical Christians don't want to-nor do the most ardent supporters of AIPAC.

  Most experts believe that if Israel does not disengage from the Palestinian territories, the number of Arabs living under Israeli control will soon outnumber the number of Jews, forcing Israel to make a difficult choice: Either maintain the status quo, in which Palestinians can't vote, and stop being a democracy, or grant Palestinians the right to vote and end the country's status as a democracy with a Jewish majority. 

"The big question for me is can Israel survive as a democracy and a Jewish state?" he said.

"We are moving toward the day in which Israel's occupation will be permanent, when it will be impossible to create a viable Palestinian state," he added. "When we wake up to the reality that that's happened, it will force my children to make the choice that I don't ever want them to have to make: between being a Zionist and being a believer in democracy."

 

If you don't believe him, spend some time reading Israeli newspapers-which is a part of my daily work-and you will see he is closer to the mark than we care to admit.

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I'd love to write some more about US politics, but to tell you the truth, it really depresses me right now. The stark truth is that country is slowly, but surely, heading off the rails. Its legislative branch is not functional and it has primarily to do with one party only. Please spare me the both sides do it bullshit. Only one party clings to a brand of idealism totally out of sync with the ideas of the world these days. And its aided by a hack group of enablers called the Roberts Supreme Court:

Underscoring the point, a Bloomberg poll of 21 constitutional scholars found that 19 of them believe the individual mandate is constitutional, but only eight said they expected the Supreme Court to rule that way. The headline nicely conveys the reality of the current Court: "Obama Health Law Seen Valid, Scholars Expect Rejection."

How would you characterize a legal system that knowledgeable observers assume will not follow the law and instead will advance a particular party-faction agenda? That's how we used to talk about the Chinese courts when I was living there. Now it's how law professors are describing the Supreme Court of the John Roberts era.

Ezra Klein writes quite skillfuly how this happened.

The first step was, perhaps, the hardest: The Republican Party had to take an official and unanimous stand against the wisdom and constitutionality of the individual mandate. Typically, it’s not that difficult for the opposition party to oppose the least popular element in the majority party’s largest initiative. But the individual mandate was a policy idea Republicans had thought of in the late-1980s and supported for two decades. They had, in effect, to convince every Republican to say that the policy they had been supporting was an unconstitutional assault on liberty.

 

But they succeeded. In December 2009 every Senate Republican voted to call the individual mandate unconstitutional. They did this even though a number of them had their names on bills that included an individual mandate. (For more on the political history of the mandate, see this post.)

The unity among Senate Republicans reflected a unity among all the institutions associated with the Republican Party. Fox News and right-wing talk radio pushed the idea that the mandate was unconstitutional. Republican attorney generals began pushing the idea that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. Conservative think tanks — including the Heritage Foundation, which arguably brought the mandate to Washington and the Republican Party in 1989 — began releasing a steady stream of material arguing that the mandate was unconstitutional. Conservative legal scholars began developing arguments showing the individual mandate was unconstitutional. Within a matter of months, the fact that the individual mandate was unconstitutional was as much a part of Republican Party dogma as “no new taxes.”

All of this forced the controversy over the individual mandate into the mainstream media, too. After all, if one of America’s two major political parties thinks the most significant health reform since Medicare is unconstitutional, well, that’s a story! And, as most Americans are not constitutional law scholars, it made the individual mandate look like questionable policy. As Yale law professor Jack Balkin put it to me in the New Yorker, “If you’re reading articles in the Times describing the case against the mandate, you assume this is a live controversy.”

 

This was in great part due to all the months of coverage of “grassroots” town halls with people screaming that “Obamacare = Socialism”, endlessly covered by networks like CNN, had something to do with the message being muddled. Then when White House officials go out to correct the narrative, they get shouted down by Village types who say “But clearly the people are against this, so why are you doing it?” It is clearly wrong-as most smart Constitutional Scholars point out. But what it says about the stupidty of the American people and the dysfunction of a government that should know better is glaring.

And so the founding fathers weep from heaven. And I remain comitted to living away from those besotted shores because of that stupidity.

This is what you get when a bunch of Hollywood scriptwriters are sitting around with a bag of weed, a bong, several bottles of Scotch and time on their hands. Palin vs Nazi's from the moon!

Space Battleship Yamato without the anime.

One of the biggest PR mistakes the Navy ever made was to take part in the filming of the Final Countdown in 1980. I streamed the movie tonight on Netflix-I was really suprised they had it available for streaming.

For those who are not so long in the tooth-The Final Countdown is about The USS Nimitz, being drawn through a time warp from 1980 to a couple days before the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, and the crew must decide whether to launch a preemptive strike against the incoming Japanese carrier fleet with their more advanced air wing, or allow history to take its course. It stars Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farantino, and Katherine Ross. As a movie-I think most will agree it sucks with a capital “S”. But for anyone who was in carrier aviation during the late 70′s and the early 80′s you can’t hate the movie totally. Because, at least for me, the movie was a trip back through time to a period in my own life.

In 1978, I was to make my first class midshipman cruise. Now having been regaled again and again with stories of Subic and pictures of the Senior’s Honey-ko’s, I knew where I wanted to go: Any ship in Westpac. In those days-they did not have “aviation cruises” or any other such nonsense.(Which is as it should be IMHO).  You either went to a ship or a submarine for four weeks-to learn about going to sea and what Division Officers were supposed to do. So I put in my wish list. Westpac, Westpac, Mediterranean.

Unfortunately the NROTC unit at The Citadel had an interesting policy in those days-if they even thought you had the major, and or the grades, to go nuke power-that was the kind of ship they were going to send you to. Since I was a Mathematics major ( only at the behest of mother Navy in order to get a scholarship) and my grades were pretty good, it wasn’t long before a note was found on the bulletin board. I was to see LCDR Porter as soon as possible to discuss my first class cruise. I recall thinking not a lot about it at the time-assuming I was going to be winging my way to Subic and my own honey-ko in no time.

Unfortunately, LCDR Porter had other ideas. “You have the grades to go nuclear power-so you have to go on a nuclear power cruise. What type of submarine do you want? Boomer or Fast Attack?”

“Umm, neither sir. They don’t get enough liberty.”

” Cruise is not about having fun”. ( I would come to hear these words more than a couple times in later years during my DH tour. I didn’t understand them then-and come to think of it, I still don’t understand them now).

“Well sir, I still want to see some ports. So put me down for a cruiser or a carrier”.

LCDR Porter’s face wrinkled up into a disgusted look-and I was dismissed.

As it turned out, I was ordered to the USS Nimitz. But not for 4 weeks- for 10 weeks. Which destroyed the nice little, decent paying summer job I had lined up when I got back. On the plus side-because it was a “nuke” cruise, I got commercial tickets to Spain for further transfer to the ship ( a process that ended up taking five days, and I got to join the ship in Livorno, Italy-just as the ship was begining its liberty swing up to Portsmouth UK and Wilhelmshaven Germany.

What does this have to do with the movie? Well because I was on the ship so long-there were 9 of us in the same boat-the powers that be, allowed us to concentrate of standing bridge watches for the tail end of the cruise. I was actually able to qualify as JOOW ( radio) and stood that watch in a bridge watch section. As a result, I got to know several of the bridge officers that you see in the movie.

The other thing about the movie is that the low visibility paint scheme was not anyone’s idea of a FITREP bullet yet. So the CVW-8 aircraft were brilliantly painted up :

“They’re going to let the Japs do it again!”

In the ready room scenes -I can recognize a lot of the folks-some of whom went on to do some really big things in Mother Navy. The pilot flying the helicopter at the end of the movie ( the one that gets blown up) later became Air Boss on USS America ( where I did my first three cruises). As an air boss he was, shall we say, less than popular, so there was always some mild cheering when the movie was played on the ship’s TV and the helo gets blown up.

There is also an interesting ( or not so interesting) post script to the movie. The flying scenes with Zero’s were shot in Key West. That’s why you can see a Viggie being towed off the line in one of the opening scenes. VF-84 was sent down on detachment and did the flying scenes ( remember this was pre-CGI).  A few years later, it was alleged that the squadron had under reported its flying hours expended on the movie, in return for a lot of “stuff” being left behind by the production company. At the time the CO had moved on to become CO of Test Pilot School. It became an ugly scandal (complete with “60 Minutes coverage”)-and he was forced to retire. Subsequently he went to law school and spent years trying to clear his name. As far as I know-whatever was taken was for the squadron, the CO did not profit one bit from it. But mother Navy still did not look kindly on it-when they were charging the film company 2560 dollars a flight hour. The guy had flown in Vietnam in the F-4 and was one of the first pilots to fly the F-14 in the early 70′s.

You can see some pictures of the detachment at Key West here.

Some trivia:

The E-2 shown flying is an E-2B from VAW-112. Because of AIMD bench configurations and the continuing introduction of E-2C aircraft to the fleet, West Coast squadrons were flying with East Coast Airwings and vice versa.

When an F-14 does a steep dive and pulls out just before crashing into the ocean while “playing” with one of the Zeroes, the “scream” the F-14 made was created by mixing the sound of the jet engines with the actual scream of the pilot’s wife when she saw that clip for the first time. (The guy had actually departed the aircraft and just barely recovered it in time).

During shooting of the opening shot where the CAG’s Tomcat is taking off from Pearl Harbor, the film crew actually underestimated the blast radius of the Tomcat’s exhaust and one of their cameras was blown over when the plane went to full afterburner, which resulted in the shot being filmed from a slightly different angle than originally planned.

The F-14′s used for the dog fight sequences were freshly delivered from Calverton NY.

As a movie-it was not so great. As a memory of a far better time-it does just fine. And seeing an air wing without Hornets? Well, that is just a bonus!

”I don’t remember ever seeing grown-ups behave less seriously.”

There was no need for this offense to come, but woe all the same to those by whom it came, and woe above all to those who whitewashed and rationalized it.-Christopher Hitchens.

Its been a weird week. I’ve been wanting to get around to posting this series of posts-but between conducting I-tunes and You Tube University 101 courses for the S.O. ( I think she can now be officially classified as untrainable when it comes to doing anything but posting to Facebook), and succumbing to early evening assaults from the rack monster-I’ve gotten zero writing done.

One other factor is at play. I have been reading, trying to make some sense of the bout of lunacy that seems to have infected the American political discourse of the past few years, and as Hitchens notes, is poisoning our collective national blood stream. For the last 2 and 1/2 weeks, I have been immersed in reading six books more or less in tandem. I’ve been using them for a springboard for examining what I believe are two facts that go hand in hand in explaining tea party foolishness: 1) The world is fundamentally changing in such a way that the US is becoming just one of the dogs-not the top dog.  Which leads to 2)that the tea party and for that matter,  a good number of Americans,  can’t accept that fact.

I started with this book to gain some perspective on what actually happened on that day in 1773 and contrasting it to what the Tea Partiers say happened. The book is called The Whites of Their Eyes , The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History.

Its a pretty good rundown of fact vs fiction-and more importantly it helps debunk some of the idol worship when it comes to the Founding Fathers. I was particularly happy to see her examine Thomas Paine in totality.

Another book-that makes for a natural follow on is The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama by William Bunch. Now the title may turn off some tea party fans-but he is actually pretty fair to both sides and his narrative is very factual. He treats his subjects with fairness-even when the logic of their ideas is totally lost to him and to any reasonable reader. Truth in advertising- he has written for Media Matters and is a Philadelphia journalist, but you should not let that stop you, the facts are still the facts and are easily verifiable through his notes. One theme that emerges-and will run through some of the other books is how the ideas might never have taken hold-but for the deliberate nurturing of some very skilled manipulators; the worst of which seems to be Glenn Beck.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, I took the time to read Dana Milbank’s book: Glenn Beck and the Tea-bagging of America. Milbank, as many of you know,  writes for the Washington Post and comments for MSNBC- so its pretty obvious he is not a Beck fan.Nonetheless it is a pretty good itemizing of Becks history, especially his back ground in morning radio and his voyage into the world of recovering and mentally corrupting ideas of AA. I’m of the personal opinion that people don’t understand well enough how total acceptance of Mr. Wilson’s philosophy can lead you down a really screwed up path-and it certainly has in Beck’s case.

Shifting gears-I have three books that are about the future and document the changes coming to the world stage. These changes are culmination of some key decisions and events that began in the 15 years after World War II, and are bearing both good and bad fruit. Much as we would like to change the direction of these changes-they are going to happen. Whether we want them or not.

So I started with this book: Why the West Rules … for Now by Ian Morris. Looking at the past, Morris argues that the presence of abundant coal (i.e. cheap energy) and high wages in Britain provided an incentive to innovate, develop, and adopt labor-saving, high energy devices that were the driving forces of expansion of the British Empire and subsequently the American one. He also examines the key role advantages of geography played and how those advantages may be diminished in the current and future world we live in.

It is an interesting idea-and debunks some of the ideas about the idea of British or American exceptionalism. Given similar advantages perhaps another civilization might have beat the world to the punch. Its food for thought-and better reading than you will see most neoconservatives recommend.

The next book comes back to the present and is the chronicle of how we lost our way and became enamored with  more or less permanent war in the current “War on Terror” . Washington Rules, by Andrew Bacevich is the book. The book is a provocative challenge that he,  and I,  and a whole host of others who came into the military in the late 70′s were taught throughout our careers.

Bacevich argues rather persuasively that repeated acceptance of the idea that the US had a “moral responsibility” to intervene in the affairs of other sovereign nations has lead the US to a path of “insolvency and perpetual war.” Furthermore Bacevich points out that blind acceptance of these bad ideas is not limited to one party-both political parties have rogered up to them with disastrous results. Essentially this book is the outgrowth of Bacevich’s military career and the self-education that led him to doubt the “facts” that he had been taught over time. That point rings a bell with me-because my own journey of 29 years in the Navy led me to reject most of the “conservative” tenets that I thought were cast in stone. Like Bacevich I was fortunate enough to have been allowed considerable time out of this country and could learn that there are other ways to do business.  Bacevich writes in a readable style-and his points jump from the page. Number one of which is that, for whatever good we are doing in hell holes like Afghanistan and Iraq, the opportunity cost to our own status and economy is simply not worth it. As a result, the attitude of American superiority has led us to pass on opportunities for periods of unprecedented peace, instead of getting into conflicts again and again.  I think it is important because all those folks whining about the debt-need to remember how we got that debt. As I have said before-the effects of the war(s) are a lot more than we realize.

Finally, I am just beginning to examine this book: The World in 2050-Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future, by Laurence C. Smith.  I’m not far into it-but it seems to have an interesting premise: What will a world look like where population is nine billion, sea level  has risen by a foot and atmospheric temperature is up by several degrees, and globalization continues apace?  If current political rhetoric -is any indicator, we are not ready to hear the answer. Two of his principal tenets-climate change and insufficient natural resources to meet demand-are firmly rejected by a lot of tri corner hat wearing citizenry.

The point of this effort is not to say that all six of these authors are presenting the definitive truth or have all the answers. However without at least some exploration and accumulation of facts, one is left to cede the field to the overwrought emotionalism of Sarah Palin and her Facebook freaks.  I rather not stoop to that level thank you very much-so I think it’s time to stick my head back into the books to finish them. Unlike Saint Sarah-I firmly reject the proposition of American exceptionalism and think that it has done more harm than good.  This homework assignment is reinforcing for me why I am right.

Well this sucks. Frackity, frack, frack, frack.

It would appear that SyFy does not share my love of the series Caprica.

Better be careful-the Tauron mafia is not going to like this very much. Probably an STO plot.

No more holoband porn babes-sigh.

Sayonara, Zoe!

And I will be out of town for the next two weeks. Thank God for the DVR.

Because……

I am now totally hooked on the series………….

I took the S.O to see the movie this weekend. I had mixed impressions. I thought it was still a good movie but the first one was better. The first one had more of an edge to it.

Idle observations:

The years 2000-2010 produced, for the most part, no really good music. At least it seemed the creators of the soundtrack could not find any. The best song in the whole movie was at the end-and it was an 80′s song that was featured in the first movie.

Both movies are morality plays. It is important to understand that going in the door. They are designed to teach a lesson-especially in the case of the second movie where the so called masters of the universe f*cked the rest of us over to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. At least in the first movie it was only Bud Fox getting screwed over. ” How  many yachts are enough Gordon?”

I’m always amazed at how people who get wiped out to the tune of a million dollars or more-can still afford uptown Manhattan apartments to live in. How does that work exactly? Me-I lose my job-I’m living  in a run down one bedroom apartment or a used travel trailer in a disreputable trailer park.

Fusion was still never proved to be viable.

The Charlie Sheen cameo appearance in this movie was laughable to say the least. You get f*cked over so hard that you have to spend time in jail and you are civil to the guy who put you there? I don’t think so.

I sure wish I had the money to hang out in the New York clubs the financial guys do. The tuna in those places was MARVELOUS.

Doesn’t any one use birth control any more?

‘Money Never Sleeps’ is like watching two hours straight of CNBC, which is great if that is your channel of choice, but not a triumph for a feature-length film.

In the ‘80s, lighting a cigar with a $100 bill was sexy. In 2010, it’s damn near porn.

Overall? A good enough film-but the original is better. If for nothing else, the first movie left you trying to figure out how Fox made a ton of money at Gekko’s expense. I give it a solid C-nothing extraordinary, which is a damn shame.

When I was a young man, I was a fan of the short lived TV show, Battlestar Galatica. I was going through flight school, there had been only one Star Wars movie and the Galatica seemed like an aircraft carrier. Besides-the chicks on the show were pretty hot.

When its reimagined version came out a few years ago- I did not follow it much-I was living in Japan and had other things to do, like go to Tokyo for my Japanese classes and find new and better bars on the way home. I did watch the final episodes of the series when it closed-but I found the ending, and the changes from the original series-to be dissapointing. For the record, Starbuck is supposed to be a man. And second, when you come upon a young planet earth wth nothing but natives for the conquering, you don’t just toss your technology aside and live like the natives.

So I was curious what was going to happen when Sy Fy developed the prequel series Caprica. Caprica is set 58 years before the Cylons destroyed the 12 colonies and launched the “rag tag, fugitive fleet” on its lonely quest for Earth.

The first time through- I did not warm to the series so much. I could not get it. Here was a world that had developed spaceflight, yet still had people dressing like they lived in the 1950′s-complete with fedora hats for the men. And while there was lots of new technology-it seemed odd to me that so much of the world looked and seemed like the current world we live in now. After all we don’t have interplanetary travel yet-much to my chagrin.

Then, quite by accident, I stumbled upon the first 12 episodes available for down load on I-Tunes. I down loaded and loaded all of them up to my I-Phone. While I was on this recent series of international travel I watched the series again. The light bulb finally came on -and now I can truly say I am hooked. I can’t wait till the series resumes again in October.

Science Fiction has always been a clever way to provide interesting commentary on current events and I realized that Caprica was following this old SciFi tradition very well. The plot line of  Caprica tells the story of how Colonial humanity first created the robotic cylons, who would later plot to destroy humans in retaliation for their enslavement.  I always hate it when they use that term-they are machines, they are meant to be used and abused. That is not enslavement. People are enslaved. Machines are used.

Nonetheless, it is the interesting story of how the first Cylon robot becomes self aware. I also find the technology of the show fascinating-especially the Virtual world that creates the vehicle to make the first Cylon self aware. ( Plot spoiler follows). The virtual world is the ultimate of electronic gaming-enabled by “holobands” that allow you to assume the form of an avatar and navigate through a world where any thing is possible. ( Pioneered by the porn industry of course).

The central characters, the Graystone family includes the father Daniel and mother Amanda, a computer scientist and surgeon respectively. When their daughter Zoe dies due to the religious fanaticism of her boyfriend, Ben Stark, her father manages to resurrect her — after a fashion. Already having acquired a digital clone of her personality developed by Zoe herself, he uses stolen technology to create a robotic version of his daughter, the first step towards creating the Cylon race.

In the worlds of the colonies, polytheism is the religion. Try to imagine Greece-with 21st century  technology. Monotheism-the belief in the one true god-is the Caprican version of Islam in this series. Ben Stark is the modern day Islamic terrprist. Or is he a Christianist? It is never really clear.  In one of the early shows, this line is spoken: ” Don’t you realize how dangerous this is? A belief in one all knowing, infallible god, with which there is no disagreement-and in whose name unspeakable acts of violence can be committed.”  I found that particularly interesting and it provokes interesting parallels with our own age and history.

And that is what Science fiction is supposed to do. Provide a vehicle through which clever commentary on our own society can be expressed. In Caprica, its about a   a world intoxicated by success. And technology. It opens a lot of ideas for discussion-since the virtual world featured in the series can be likened to some of the video games of today.

The second  half of the series airs in October-I can’t wait. If you have not watched the first episodes-buy it or down load it.

Or the dog gets it.

And we would not want that to happen would we? Especially when this book will make you a lot smarter about the world you live in. And unlike Sarah Palin’s book-you can rest assurred that there were no ghost writers at work here. Steeljaw Scribe is one of the writers in the book: Securing Freedom in the Global Commons.

Details here-and as an extra added incentive, you will be giving SJS a chance to lord it over me that he has money from his “book deal” when I talk to him every week. Surely that’s worth a few bucks in entertainment value alone.

Details here.

That just won’t seem to go away-the book meme is back again.

What is the book meme? It is where you list the last ten books you have read-and no, Manga does not count. ( Damn it Jim, I’m a doctor-not a reader!).  Oh what the heck-here are the last 10 that I have read or am currently reading:

1) Imperial Cruise- This is a book about the journey of  William Taft and Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter to Japan to negotiate a settlement to the Russo-Japanese war. It is by James Bradley, same guy who wrote Flags of Our Fathers. Now that was a good book. This one? Not so much. The biggest problem with this book is that Bradley turns it into an anti-colonialism screed about the Philippines and Korea, without considering the context of the time. Plus, given the current track record of Madame President Arroyo-its not certain that Teddy Roosevelt was wrong: The Filipinos just might have been better of under American protection. Interesting history-but you will want throw the BS flag pretty early.

2).Rape of Nanking-by Iris Chang. I did a detailed review of this book back in 2006. I wanted to go back and re-read it for two reasons: 1) to refresh my memory for another book about China I was to read and 2) to have ammunition to throw at the S.O. every time she goes on one of her “ I don’t understand why the Chinese are so pissy” rants.

3) Red Light Nights, Bangkok Days-Chronicles of Sexuality across Asia. -by William Sparrow. Hey, a man needs to hang on to his dreams, doesn’t he? Nuff said.

4) Six Days of War-By Michael Oren. Its a pretty good account of  the Six Day War in 1967. Does a particularly good job of chronicling how the Arabs were inept in the build up to and the prosecution of the war.

5) The Wrecking Crew-by Thomas Frank. Its an account of the hollowness of many conservative ideas before Bush junior and during. An enjoyable read but I agree with Publishers Weekly about it: While Frank’s assessments and interpretations of key events, players and party doctrines is accurate and justifiable, his overwhelming blame of the Republican Party as the source of everything that’s wrong with this county and as the emblem of self-destructing government denies the Democrats and the citizenry their roles in a decaying democracy. That sums it up pretty well-although his description of Saipan as being some sort of sexual playground, kind of overstates what it is really like there. ( Its about the sweatshops set up in the Marianas).

7) Shanghai Girls-by Lisa See. This book was not what I thought it was about. Has all the makings of a movie on  Lifetime someday. Blech!

8  )  Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America.-by Mark Ehrman. This is what almost two years of exile in Shopping Mall USA will do to you. See line 3-stoking the fires of my dreams.

These last two  I have not read yet-they are on my to do list.  I probably would not have ordered them, had I not read about them over at Expat at Large.. Once I did read about these books-I just had to get them and read them.

9  )The Singapore Grip-by J.G. Farrell. Life in pre-war Singapore.

10) The Siege of Krishnapur-also by J.G. Farrell. Set in India in 1857 during the time of the Mutiny.

So there! My work here is done. Now get your own books and read them.

Haven’t been able to post so much in the last couple of days. I’ve been tied up in the Alternate Universe-where its not so fun:

But hopefully, I will be able to bridge the gap-starting tomorrow!

I have been thinking about what life in the alternate universe is like-for example in the alternate United States where people actually thought about fixing the country’s problems. Take for example what it could do if it really wanted to fix the debt problem-instead of just giving lip service to it:

1. Substantial cuts in spending. Ensure that the commission is as much about shrinking government as raising revenue. My personal favorite would be to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Do it gradually but substantially. Then index it to life expectancy, as it should have been from the beginning.

Leaving both Iraq and Afghanistan would be a good way to get head start on item 1.

But then we live in the other universe-where no one realizes it is possible.

What me worry?

No need to worry about the next election. John Cusak and Danny Glover have already solved that problem for us:

Of course, in 1972 , the Late Great Planet Earth told us that the European Common Market was the next roman empire too-how’s that working out?

Something tells me this movie will be too much power at the start, not enough power in the middle, add lots of power at the ramp.

Its been a couple of weeks since I got the Kindle DX. I thought I would pass on my observations of the device, and my recommendations of how I think it could get better. Like most things in life, its not 100% great nor 100% bad-it has things to like and things to dislike.

The Good:

     I like the screen size and the ability to change the type font size. I really think it allows me to read a book at a faster rate than I would with a regular book.  I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it allows me to scan more of a paragraph-or if I am just glancing at a paragraph and not really retaining its contents. Nonetheless, the little voice in me that says, "turn the page" appears to be working faster.

     It’s great to travel with on an airplane.

      The side buttons to select pages, table of contents, and to turn the electronic pages are well placed and easy to use. The biggest difficulty I have found so far is remembering to use the "mouse" button to select links and specific books and not the "next page" button for that. However the transition time is so quick-its not a big deal.

       The size of the device. I paid more money and bought the DX model with a 9" screen. I am glad I did.  It allows me to see the list of content I am subscribed to easily-and select what I want to read.

        The Kindle allows me access and the ability to absorb a lot of news content each day. Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines (real news magazines with thoughtful content-not sheer Fox News types of rubbish) are easy to group together and scan through over a 30 minute cup of coffee. ( Or a few beers at a bar on the way home from work.). However the subscriptions are a two edged sword as I’ll explain later. It’s a great news aggregator-especially if you want to understand content, not just hear stupid headlines that reinforce already held opinions like Fox  news, Townhall Harlot,  and Drudge readers do.

         The fact that it updates with the latest editions of the newspapers and magazines and blogs every time I turn it on is cool. I like that-it reminds me of what I think the "Newspad" of 2001 A Space Odyssey Fame would be like.

          Kindle books are significantly cheaper than hard back books. And really old books, like Machiavelli’s The Prince, are free. 

       The Bad:

      The DX comes with a web browser. I have to be honest-its not that great. Sure it will display web pages, but it takes longer to load than on my cell phone-even though it is using the same network. You can tell why in an instant-the bastards at Amazon want you to buy blogs et all through their paid content. The paid content I have subscribed to loads a lot faster than when I put my blog in the URL reader. I object to having to pay for content I should be able to get for free.

       Speaking of content-there is preciouos little foreign newspaper content available through Kindle/ Amazon. I have e-mail subscriptions to the Straits Times, Japan Times,and the South China Morning Post. It would be nice to have them on the Kindle.

       The Keyboard SUX! If you read a blog you want to be able to dash off a snarky comment or two, when you read something that gets your dander up. However, the way it does special characters like quotations and caps-leaves a lot to be desired.

        If you are not careful, the screen changes from portrait to landscape and back again.

       The device has a PDF reader that works just fine, and you can e-mail PDF documents to. It would be better if it had a Powerpoint feature, so that you could do the same with power point presentations. The larger screen makes it more effective than a Blackberry.

       And speaking of a Blackberry, having an Outlook function on the device-e.g read only would be nice.

My recommendation?  Its useful-but only if you are really an avid reader like me. Or you travel a lot. However its still a lot of money to shell out-and it does not pay itself back right away unless you read a lot of books. Oh and the subscription fees for newspapers etc-should be tossed out the window.  This idea that paid content is the only good content is crap. Make money through advertising if you must-but don’t charge me for content I can get free elsewhere.

On the whole, for me-who is a voracious reader-its a good buy.