Kylog

I got a ticket on 11/27/2006 for speeding on Highway 26 near the Cedar Hills exit. It was about 10:30 am and I was driving to work. I was cited for 77 in a 55, which is probably true although conditions were excellent (dry, light traffic) and I wasn’t gaining on the car ahead of me, which was probably 200 yards ahead.  Not to mention that Highway 26 is entirely people speeding.
Beaverton couldn’t make it clearer that traffic tickets are pure and simple revenue generators (as opposed to a nominal concern for citizen safety, etc):

• they don’t offer traffic school (note that more law-abiding drivers are not in the interest of preserving the revenue stream)
• the base ticket price (for this ticket) is $336, it can be reduced to either $303 or $252 (roughly 10% or 25%) based on tickets on your record — honestly, this is an exorbitant amount and the reductions are nominal
• you can wait in line for several hours to plead No Contest before a judge, but the Clerk told me the judges rarely go below the lowest figure above

Given the above setup, there’s little incentive to contest, and no opportunity to demonstrate a concerned response. In short, they’ve done everything in their power to make this a pure revenue stream. Not even instituting traffic school (which they could charge for) is a clear indication of how little they care about traffic safety.
Grrrr.

This is the third book in a row I’ve read on Oppenheimer (and related subjects), and this one is middling. The subject of this book is “the people and events that led to the destruction of J Robert Oppenheimer,” although one of the book’s flaws is that it isn’t as focussed as that statement from the introduction might have it. For one thing, it’s simply a given in the book that he was “destroyed” or “ruined” and yet there’s scarcely a page or two about Oppenheimer the man or about Oppenheimer the man’s reactions to his security clearance hearing. It’s a pity too, because he’s such a fascinating personality and compelling character that it would be interesting to learn more about him, personally or professionally. (I haven’t read it yet, but the Kai Bird biography might be the trick here.)

What the book is more closely about is precisely the 1954 security clearance hearing, although McMillan spends about the first half of the book winding up to the subject in roundabout ways. She clearly has done her homework and has stories to tell, but she gets caught in the middle often: for example, when she goes into some depth on Teller and his contributions to the H-bomb, she appears to be digressing to slap Teller around if her real focus is the Oppenheimer security hearing, but on the other hand she doesn’t go into enough depth if her purpose is to analyze the post-war community of (thermo-)nuclear bomb research.

Also, the book needed an editor to pick up the places where she repeats vignettes or quotes that she related 50 pages earlier; this unfortunately makes the book come off slapdash at times, although I think it was actually meticulously researched (no doubt just squeezed out under deadline). And, stylistically, the book’s general methodical, dry tone (suitable to the material) is occasionally punctuated by McMillan’s outrage with melodramatic chapter endings like: “the vast arsenal of superfluous nuclear weaponry that curses us today.” My heart is with her, but she compromises the book with unbalanced rhetoric like this every 20 pages or so. One almost feels that she just couldn’t stand being sober any more and has to yell out.

So the book has a number of failings, yes, but it’s still largely readable and it makes an excellent supplement to more consequential books. I would certainly start with the like of Gregg Herken’s The Brotherhood of the Bomb before reading this one. But coming to this book after Herken’s, it does a nice job of filling in some of the gaps by virtue of a narrower focus and a number of authorial interviews providing little insights here and there. Not a must read by a long stretch, but not a waste of time for sufficiently interested readers.

I’ve just started reading Sprawl: A Compact History a cleverly-titled book by Robert Bruegmann. I am coming to this book as an interested layperson, with absolutely no academic or professional background on the subject. I feel I must start with that disclaimer because, at least up to the 50-page mark, I feel I’ve innocently stepped foot into Bruegmann’s personal pissing match with the urban planners of the world (or the US). The best way to describe this book is as vehemently anti- the anti-sprawl movement.

Bruegmann takes issue with many apparent tenets of thinking about sprawl: sprawl is uniquely American, sprawl is uniquely post-WWII, spawl is uniquely middle-class. But as he does so, this reader sees him dashing about to prop up his straw man before he cleverly smashes it to pieces. In short, he may have found some particularly doctrinaire writers who think there have been no places in time or history outside late 20th century America that have had low-density urban housing. And if so, they must be soundly routed from their caves by his retelling of history. But as is so often the case with those who would joust with straw men, Bruegmann ends up undermining his own arguments.

At least for this non-doctrinaire, non-professional reader, Bruegmann has the unintended effect of convincing me that there is something qualitatively different about post-war America. It’s actually humorous how often he insists that his straw man is a fool, then nicely proves the fool’s point. For example, he provides density gradient graphs of London for every 50 years from 1800-1950 (why not 2000 by the way?), demonstrating that there has always been low-density urban housing. Yes, but the increasing flatness of the gradients over time is exactly what one thinks of as sprawl. And his parenthetical remarks about the dead flatness of the density gradients for Phoenix brings home what an excellent tool density gradients are for understanding sprawl. Likewise, when he gets to the post-war period, he is compelled to explain all the ways in which sprawl became so much more prominent in the US than anywhere else in the world. All very interesting stuff.

So, 50 pages into this book, I’m finding it an engaging introduction to the subject, while at the same time, Bruegmann provides much unintended amusement as he repeatedly proves his opponents’ points. This is just the history third of the book though; I’m curious how his rhetoric does when he gets to the “diagnosis” and “prescription” thirds of the book.

Just finished reading this book. Well, sort of. I gave up at page 263. Don’t get be wrong — this is an exceptional book filled with insight; it offers a balanced, nuanced read on the war. Assume you’ve read all the positive reviews and they’re all true! The problem is that George Packer is sooo subtle and sooo nuanced and sooo desperately in need of an editor. And really at the end of the day he doesn’t have a point. He has a personal journey, he has a travelogue, he has a myriad small stories of meeting people, he has so many thoughtful thoughts, he has a hundred small insights, he is such a talented, courageous guy. But it would be nice if he had a point, or a narrative, or a purpose. It just got old after a while.

One other thing: if you start reading and the intellectual history of neoconservatism that goes on and on pre-war starts to drag you down, never fear: just skip to page 150. When the war starts and George goes to Iraq, the book completely switches from background, intellectual-in-NYC mode to journalist-in-Baghdad mode. I actually liked the neocon history (although it was long and devoid of a point like the rest of the book), but others might want to skip ahead.

I’ll definitely keep an eye out for future books by Packer, though; he really has a unique talent. With an editor or if he were to take a stance, he could be a real force to reckon with.

Maybe another day I’ll write an entry “Brokeback: The Phenomenon,” but having just seen the movie, it seems to me that the movie itself warrants some comments. The only thing I will say about the outrageous hype and hyperbole that have surrounded this movie is that it all makes it tough to just sit and watch the movie unencumbered by expectation. Ah well, Ang Lee and crew can hardly complain about too much attention.

First, the good stuff: the cinematography is gorgeous. First and foremost, it’s gorgeous in the high mountain scenes filmed in the Canadian Rockies — not only is the scenery gorgeous, but the setting for the broken backed mountain allows incredible framing, and the many shots of the sea of sheep on the mountain are mesmerizing. But beyond the mountain, it’s also gorgeous in the spare scenes in trailer parks and small town apartments. The shot of Ennis’s wife sitting alone at a coffee table after seeing her husband making out with a strange cowboy is framed perfectly, and the movie is consistently filled with such careful and striking cinematography. I also must say that the acting is generally great, specifically in the person of Jake Gyllenhaal and the supporting actors (Heath Ledger wasn’t that persuasive to me, despite being clearly in the Important Role).

Ok, the not so good stuff. Actually, this is a decent movie, not great, but a workmanlike genre piece (albeit one with an evidently incendiary Twist). As we all know, it’s a sentimental tale of self-betrayal and repression and it’s very sad. It doesn’t do anything interesting from a plot perspective; many scenes lay bare their outline in the first 10 seconds, then take many minutes to unfold, so you need to be braced to keep saying “I saw that coming” throughout the movie. That’s not an awful thing, just a sign of an accomplished director choosing not to innovate but to follow the established rules of his genre. Likewise, Ang feels free (or obliged) to use hack metaphors like the embers still burning in the campsite yadda yadda. (More on the metaphor of the sheep later.)

Unfortunately, the central premise of the movie — the two cowboys passionate but repressed love for each other — is never adequately conveyed to the viewer. They have a couple fucks, a tender moment, and a whole lot of wrestling and rough-housing during one summer. I just didn’t get the chemistry evidently, because I was totally surprised to see how much passion they had for each other 4 years later. But with a rocky foundation to the relationship (in a relationship movie), the movie is left struggling to keep up from that point on.

Some of the root of this is the Ennis character played by Heath Ledger. Completely joyless, completely uncommunicative, literally mumbling his way through the movie, a heel to his wife and kids, and frankly a buzzkill as a lover — this is the character at the center of the movie. I’m certain that we’re supposed to see those still waters run deep, and I’m certain that his taciturn exterior is supposed to belie a tender and wounded soul, but I just saw a joyless, uncommunicative, mumbling jerk. So why exactly was Jack Twist so madly in love with the guy? I dunno.

Which brings me to my last squirm of the movie. I’m never comfortable with movies which present “them” to “us”. And by them and us here, I don’t mean anything about gays and straights, I mean cowboys and moviegoers. Don’t get me wrong, cowboys can go to movies too, but this movie is unabashedly about an other, specifically embodied in our favorite mumbling, repressed, etc antihero. And there is absolutely no overlap between the community of people portrayed in the movie and the community of people targetted as the audience for this movie. We’re all supposed to go to the pictures and be touched and moved by this tale of a poor little man who can’t get in touch with his own feelings due to the pressures of a backwards society, that we the clever, liberal, tolerant members of another society scoff at. We feel pity for the simple soul, and we wish him well. We pat ourselves on the back, and we walk out of the theatre with wet eyes, a clear conscience, and the good posture of righteousness. I don’t like movies that take this stance, willing to stereotype a class and a community to make their point. It just makes me uncomfortable.

So bottom line: this movie qua movie is just ok. But let’s keep in mind the Brokeback phenomenon. Sadly, there is still a lot of backward society, witness theaters in Utah stupidly refusing to show the movie. Vote with your pocketbooks; if Hollywood guilt rewards an average film because it has a gay theme, that’s a good thing. After all, the Oscars are just about the economics and politics of the entertainment business — let’s enable more gay themed entertainment.

Yep, be a sheep, go to the Mountain. And enjoy the scenery.

Just finished reading Ron Suskind’s extraordinary book on Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty. For the moment, I’ll leave aside the remarkable insights the book offers into the Bush administration (but do please read the book for just that — totally eye-opening even to a jaded skeptic such as myself). Instead I want to grab onto Suskind’s insistent thread about how committed Paul O’Neill is to the pursuit of facts and evidence, to the exclusion of ideology.

“Evidence of what is real — that’s what changes everything.” This is the wrenching line from O’Neill as he concludes his career at the Treasury. Throughout the book, O’Neill is portrayed as conservative but completely non-ideological, as being completely committed to the pursuit of understanding.

Of course it’s not as simple as that; one can never leave one’s ideology behind, any more than one can leave one’s language behind. Our ideologies like our language are the framework through which we construct our world, the lens through which we see it. But this is an overly academic point: we can recognize what is ideological and what is not and continuously question the unquestioned.

Suskind convincingly portrays O’Neill as doing just this, and this is really a remarkable achievement. It takes vigilance not to rest on one’s laurels and to start each day asking questions about what is and what isn’t, but this is a mark of O’Neill’s greatness.