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The movie version of the Dark Knight. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted below.

(p. A15) A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

For the full commentary, see:

ANDREW KLAVAN. "What Bush and Batman Have in Common." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 25, 2008): A15.

(Note: ellipses in original.)

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Source of book image:
http://bp2.blogger.com/_Sar8IPNlxOY/SClPS33oTxI/AAAAAAAAB_0/B8GjajHtetY/s1600/PixarTouch.jpg

(p. A19) One of Mr. Catmull's other inspirations was to hire computer animator John Lasseter after he was fired by Walt Disney Co. in 1983. (He had apparently stepped on one too many toes in the company's sprawling management structure.) Then again, as Mr. Price reports, in the world of computer animators, workplace comings and goings seemed to be part of the job. Mr. Lasseter himself had already quit Disney and then returned before being fired. In the creative ferment of computer animation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, what mattered most was the work itself: Never mind who signs the paychecks - what project are you working on now?

. . .

One of Pixar's first projects revealed a truth that would point the way to success: Storytelling is more important than graphics firepower. The company created a short film, directed by Mr. Lasseter, called "Tin Toy," about a mechanical one-man band fleeing the terrors of a baby who wants to play with it. "Tin Toy" made audiences laugh in part because it turned established themes on their heads. The story was told from the toy's-eye view, close to the floor. The baby, doing what babies do, seemed like a gigantic, capricious monster. "Tin Toy" won the 1988 Academy Award for animated short film.

The upside-down "Tin Toy" point of view seems to fit much of what happened at Pixar afterward. The company made a deal with Disney in 1991: The little animation outfit would produce three movies, and the entertainment behemoth would distribute and market them. With the outsize success of the first movie in the deal, "Toy Story" - it grossed $355 million world-wide - Pixar and Disney were perhaps on an inevitable collision course over control and profits. Mr. Price adroitly depicts the clashes between Mr. Jobs and his nemesis at Disney, chief executive Michael Eisner, and captures the sweet vindication of Mr. Lasseter as the projects he guides outstrip the animation efforts of his former employer.

The sweetest moment in the Pixar saga came two years ago, when Disney bought the company for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal - one that gave Pixar executives enormous power at their new home. Mr. Jobs sits on the Disney board and is the company's largest shareholder. (Mr. Eisner left in 2005.) And Mr. Lasseter became the chief creative officer for the combined Disney and Pixar animation studios, where Mr. Catmull serves as president.

The day after the sale was announced, Mr. Lasseter and Mr. Catmull flew to Burbank, Calif., to address a crowd of about 500 animation staffers on a Disney soundstage. "Applause built as they made their way to the front," Mr. Price reports, "and then erupted again in force" when the two men were introduced. "Lasseter was welcomed as a rescuer of the studio from which he had been fired some twenty-two years before." In one of their first moves, Mr. Price says, Messrs. Lasseter and Catmull "brought back a handful of Disney animation standouts who had only recently been laid off." Redemption, after all, is essential to any story well told.

For the full review, see:

PAUL BOUTIN. "Bookshelf, An Industry Gets Animated." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 14, 2008): A19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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Source of the images: screen captures from the CNN report cited below.

With self-righteous indignation, the left often accuses the right of "McCarthyism."

But many on the left are happy to limit free speech when what is spoken is not to their liking.

Jon Voight's column in the Washington Times has ignited a firestorm, and caused at least one Hollywood insider to openly advocate blacklisting Voight from the movie business. The CNN story cited and linked below, gives some of the details.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example.

On our campuses, free speech is often violated if the speaker speaks what is not politically correct. For many examples, see some of the cases discussed on the web site of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Another example is from my own personal experience as a young scholar many decades ago. I had applied to three or four top PhD programs in philosophy and was initially rejected from every one of them, even though I had a nearly perfect GPA, and very high test scores.

I was especially surprised by the rejection from Chicago, because an Associate Dean had visited the Wabash campus the year before and talked with me about applying to Chicago. He had looked at my record and said, 'with your record, if you score X, or above on the GREs, it is almost certain that you will be accepted.' (I don't remember the exact number he said.) Well I scored above X, but was rejected. So I wrote to the Associate Dean, saying I was disappointed and asking if he had any insight about the rejection. He told me that he was dumbfounded and that he would look into it.

Awhile later, I received a letter reversing the decision of the University of Chicago Department of Philosophy. I never learned all the details, but apparently the Dean of Humanities had over-ruled the Department of Philosophy. (This is fairly unusual in academics, and though I do not remember her name, I salute that Dean for taking a stand.)

Years later, the episode came up in a conversation with a member of the philosophy faculty. He said that he had been on the admissions committee the year that I had applied, and that I had been rejected because I had mentioned Ayn Rand in my essay about how I had become interested in philosophy.

For some of the details of the Voight story, see:

Wynter, Kareen. "Bloggers Fire Back at Voight." CNN Feature, broadcast on CNN, and posted on CNN.com on 8/8/08. Downloaded on 8/8/08 from: http://www.cnn.com/video/?iref=videoglobal

(Note: the clip runs 2 minutes and 27 seconds.)

Voight's op-ed piece ran in the Washington Times on July 28, 2008 under the title "My Concerns for America" and can be viewed at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/28/voight/

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(p. C6) The American Medical Association is hulking mad at Marvel Studios.

Last week, the advocacy arm of the powerful physicians' group unleashed a tsk-tsk campaign against "The Incredible Hulk," a Marvel film that opened on Friday and is distributed by Universal Pictures. The complaint was of "gratuitous depictions of smoking."

In the movie, which drew a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, Gen. Thunderbolt Ross, a bad guy played by William Hurt, is rarely seen without a smoke-spewing cigar. (Presumably, the physicians' association worries that children who identify with the authoritarian general -- who wants to annihilate the Hulk, played by Edward Norton -- may be tempted to pick up the habit.)

For the full story, see:

BROOKS BARNES. "Physicians' Group Furious at Cigars in 'Hulk' Movie." The New York Times (Mon., June 16, 2008): C6.

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(p. 5go!) "In 1985, I took a train to London from Royal Air Force Mildenhall (Base) with a couple of med techs and decided to check out some of the plays," Brodston recalled in his e-mail.

His theater date was a native Briton who had joined the U.S. Air Force.

"We came upon a play that had Charlton Heston in it, 'The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,'" Brodston remembered. "We couldn't afford the tickets, so they put us on the 'king's cuff' (standby tickets for students and servicemen)."

Just as the house lights were dimming, an older woman led Brodston and his companion up the steps to a private box because no one had claimed the seats.

"Be quiet and don't tell anyone," she furtively whispered because she wasn't supposed to give away box seats that normally fetch up to $300 each.

Two minutes into the play, the door at the rear of the box opened, and two people sat behind them. Engrossed in the play, Brodston and friend paid little attention.

"At intermission, we looked up and saw Lord Laurence Olivier and his wife, Joan Plowright, sitting behind us!"

. . .

In 1999, Brodston crossed paths with Plowright in New York, and she remembered the night they shared a box at the London theater.

"Larry used to get mad when people made fun of Chuck's acting," Plowright told Brodston. "He loved Chuck in 'Ben Hur' and that silly ape movie ('Planet of the Apes'). He and the children would watch those movies again and again."

For the full commentary, see:

BOB FISCHBACH. "Bob's Take on Cinema: A night of fine theater with Chuck, Larry." Omaha World-Herald (Thursday, June 12, 2008): 5go!.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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Will Smith in I Am Legend. Source of photo: http://blogs.bet.com/news/newsyoushouldknow/?p=1398

Will Smith's remake of Charleton Heston's The Omega Man, is a pretty good movie. It shows a lone scientist struggling to cure a terrible disease in a world where he has lost almost everything that he valued. The Will Smith character exemplifies the motto of the marines: semper fi.

But I think I still like the Heston version a bit better, even though its special effects are dated, and Heston may have been a bit old for the role.

Why, then? After some thought, I think there is one main reason I like the Heston version better: the villains in The Omega Man, have ideas, while the villains in I Am Legend are subhuman, idealess vampires. The battle of good against evil in The Omega Man is both physical and intellectual, and that makes it easier to care more deeply about the outcome.

Still, I Am Legend is a good movie, showing a heroic man's lonely struggle to remain true to his mission.

(And his canine companion should have received some sort of award too.)

(p. 2E) West Point, N.Y. (AP) -- Will Smith wasn't nominated for an Oscar this year, but his role in "I Am Legend" has earned a different "academy" award -- from the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.

Smith was named the first winner of the Cadet Choice Movie Award, de­signed to honor the character that best per­sonifies West Point leadership qualities on the silver screen.

For the full story, see:

"People; Cadets vote Will Smith a winner." Omaha World-Herald (Mon., Feb. 25, 2008): 2E.

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(p. B1) While film still is central in big Hollywood features, it's unclear how long it will be before even the biggest feature movies go all- digital. The buzz in technical movie-making circles these days involves the two-month-old, ultra-high-resolution digital Red camera. Boosters say it looks nearly as good as 35mm film -- and costs around $30,000, or about the same as renting a 35mm camera for 10 days.

Thanks to cheap computers, a similar sort of creative destruction is happening everywhere in the industry. Color adjustment used to require expensive oscilloscope-like monitors. It first moved to specialized -- and expensive -- software, but lately it's done with relatively low- cost (say, $200) "plug-ins" by companies like Red Giant Software.

For the full story, see:

Lee Gomes. "Editing on Big Films Is Now Being Done On Small Computers." Wall Street Journal (Weds., Oct. 24, 2007): B1.

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   "Thor Halvorssen at his office in the Empire State Building."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 11)  Since 2005, having already founded two nonprofit organizations focused on free speech and human-rights issues, Mr. Halvorssen has made the movie business part of his portfolio of controversy-stirring efforts. Established with a small amount of his money, his nonprofit Moving Picture Institute has raised about $1.5 million in donations to date to pay for, promote and seek distribution for documentary films.

At a time when the most successful documentaries on political or social issues all seem to be anti-corporate, anti-Bush, pro-environmentalist and left-leaning, the Moving Picture Institute has backed pro-business, anti-Communist and even anti-environmentalist ones. The latest, “Indoctrinate U,” follows the first-time filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney as he turns Michael Moore’s guerrilla interview tactics on their head to address what he sees as political correctness on campus. In one scene, Mr. Maloney strolls into the women’s studies centers on several campuses and, playing innocent, asks directions to the men’s studies center. He is met with genuine bafflement, derisive laughs or icy hostility.

To Mr. Halvorssen his new role as a fledgling movie mogul dovetails perfectly with his other activities. “Pop culture has (p. 12) the power to be transformational culture,” he said. “A film can reach a lot more people than a white paper. You could think of the film as a trailer for the white paper.”

He paused, then said, “Put it this way: What ‘Sideways’ did for pinot noir, I want to do for freedom.”

. . .

His upbringing helped make a self-described “classical liberal” rather than a conservative, big on free markets and individual liberties, and convinced that “government is not your friend most of the time,” he said. “And I abhor fascism, whether it’s socialist or National Socialist.”

. . .

“The Sugar Babies,” a documentary by Amy Serrano that Mr. Halvorssen helped produce, takes on the issue human trafficking of Haitian workers on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. A screening at Florida International University in June erupted into what local press described as “a near riot” between Dominican and Haitian audience members.

Other documentaries championed by the Motion Picture Institute include “Hammer & Tickle,” a lighthearted look at the subversive jokes Soviet citizens told about their leaders.

And Mr. Halvorssen was a co-producer of “Freedom’s Fury,” narrated by Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, which describes the role Hungary’s Olympic water polo team played in that nation’s 1956 uprising against its Soviet occupiers.

No doubt the most contentious film on the Motion Picture Institute roster so far is ''Mine Your Own Business,'' billed as ''the world's first anti-environmentalist documentary.'' Phelim McAleer, an Irish journalist who received a fellowship from the Motion Picture Institute, traveled to Romania, Madagascar and Chile, where international environmental groups oppose planned mining operations. His film -- financed by Gabriel Resources, a Canadian mining company -- portrays environmentalists as condescending elitists while impoverished locals insist they would welcome the jobs and development the mines would bring.

. . .

Mr. Halvorssen speaks of a ''YouTube revolution'' with the Internet, along with on-demand cable and satellite television, freeing independent filmmakers from Hollywood dominance.

Ultimately, he added, he hopes that ''exploiting technology, marketing and alternative distribution will transform human rights, making it inspiring and even sexy.''

For the full story, see: 

JOHN STRAUSBAUGH.  "A Maverick Mogul, Proudly Politically Incorrect."  The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section  (Sun., August 19, 2007):  11 & 12.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

For more information on the documentaries of Halvorssen's Moving Picture Institute, see:

http://www.thempi.org/

    Poster for the movie "Mine Your Own Busines."  Source for poster:   http://billhobbs.com/myobposter.gif

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   Source of book image:  http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41WVH9PAR3L._SS500_.jpg

. . .  capitalism as practiced in the U.S. is different from the capitalism practiced in, say, Singapore or Saudi Arabia. "Capitalism...takes many forms, which differ substantially...in their implications for economic growth and elimination of poverty," three economists write in "Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism." The book identifies four strains of modern capitalism and argues the U.S. version is particularly well-suited to creating and exploiting innovations that boost living standards.

. . .

The book was written by William Baumol, an eclectic New York University economist impressively energetic at 85 years old; Carl Schramm, president and research director of the Kauffman Foundation and a recovering health economist and insurance executive; and Robert Litan, an economist-lawyer who was a budget and antitrust official in the Clinton administration. (Disclosure: I recently spoke at Kauffman's Kansas City, Mo., headquarters.)

. . .

Along the way, the economists make a point often missed in the romanticism about "small business." They aren't talking about all small businesses -- the corner dry cleaner, for instance -- or all the self-employed. Their entrepreneurs are entities that provide a new product or service or develop methods to produce or deliver existing goods and services at lower cost.  . . .

It all sounds great -- and compelling. A capitalism that cannot spur innovation and/or display flexibility to reorganize itself cannot be a model. In their book, though, the three touch too lightly on an issue about which Mr. Litan has written previously. As he puts it in an interview: "An entrepreneurial society is going to be more of a high-risk society."

The strengths of U.S.-style capitalism are apparent. No place in the past quarter century has better mixed the ingredients of talent, imagination, education, science and capital. But the risks are apparent, too: workers who lose jobs and find new ones that pay far less and lack health insurance, widening disparities between economic winners and losers, challenges posed by stiffening competition from low-wage, increasingly skilled workers abroad, and schools that aren't improving as fast as the economy is changing.

Preserving the strengths of American capitalism requires finding a way to reduce the anxiety and harm posed by such risks without losing the entrepreneurial vigor. That's the hard part.

For the full commentary/review, see:

DAVID WESSEL. "CAPITAL; By Capitalism's Vigor May Hinge On Confronting Its Risks."  The Wall Street Journal  (Thurs., May 10, 2007):  A2. 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

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  Some of the crew of Gruz 200, including the director Alexei Balabanov, who is second from the left.  Source of the photo:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

(p. B1)  The film is named "Gruz 200" (Cargo 200) after the zinc-lined coffins in which dead Soviet soldiers were shipped home from the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan. Messrs. Balabanov and Selyanov say they made the movie as an antidote to what they describe as rising nostalgia in Russia for the Soviet period.

"I show what filth we lived in," said Mr. Balabanov, a director sometimes described as Russia's Quentin Tarantino. "Society was sick from 1917 onwards," he added, referring to the year the Bolsheviks took power.

The film -- a graphically violent story of the sexual abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of a sadistic Soviet policeman -- paints a relentlessly negative picture of a time that many Russians recall with warm nostalgia. The filmmakers hope to release the movie overseas but haven't yet signed up a foreign distributor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who restored Russia's Soviet-era national anthem, has called the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," and polls show a majority of Russians regard the period as one of relative prosperity, stability and national pride. 

. . .

(p. B2)  Mr. Balabanov says "Gruz 200" is based on his own experiences while traveling across the Soviet Union in the 1980s, as well as on stories he heard second-hand.

Mr. Selyanov says he believes it is his "duty" to remind people of what the Soviet Union was really like and combat the rising warmth for the period. "We have to fight this nostalgia," the producer says.

But the film has been dogged by controversy since even before it opened. Mr. Balabanov says three prominent actors who had played in his previous films refused parts once they read the script. "They were scared," he said. The director was forced to use largely unknown actors.

. . .

Russian TV networks, controlled by the state, have balked at even late-night showings -- critical to financial success for Russian movies.

"We don't have the courage to put something like this on the air," said Vladimir Kulistikov, head of the No. 3 NTV network, in a statement.  

For the full story, see: 

ANDREW OSBORN.  "From Russia, Without Love: New Movie Slams Soviet Union."  The Wall Street Journal By  (Thurs., June 21, 2007):  B1 & B2.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

   The sadistic police captain is portrayed by Alexei Poluyan.  Source of the photo:  online version of the WSJ article cited above.

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    "THE DOCTOR MIGHT BE IN Cubans young and old at a Havana clinic in 2004."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below. 

CUBA works hard to jam American TV signals and keep out decadent Hollywood films. But it’s a good bet that Fidel Castro’s government will turn a blind eye to bootleg copies of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s newest movie, if they show up on the streets of Havana.

“Sicko,” the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week, savages the American health care system — and along the way extols Cuba’s system as the neatest thing since the white linen guayabera.

Mr. Moore transports a handful of sick Americans to Cuba for treatment in the course of the film, . . .

. . .

Universal health care has long given the Cuban regime bragging rights, though there is growing concern about the future. In the decades that Cuba drew financial and military support from the Soviet Union, Mr. Castro poured resources into medical education, creating the largest medical school in Latin America and turning out thousands of doctors to practice around the world.

But that changed after the collapse of the Soviets, according to Cuban defectors like Dr. Leonel Cordova. By the time Dr. Cordova started practicing in 1992, equipment and drugs were already becoming scarce. He said he was assigned to a four-block neighborhood in Havana Province where he was supposed to care for about 600 people.

“But even if I diagnosed something simple like bronchitis,” he said, “I couldn’t write a prescription for antibiotics, because there were none.”

He defected in 2000 while on a medical mission in Zimbabwe and made his way to the United States. He is now an urgent-care physician at Baptist Hospital in Miami.

Having practiced medicine in both Cuba and the United States, Dr. Cordova has an unusual perspective for comparison.

“Actually there are three systems,” Dr. Cordova said, because Cuba has two: one is for party officials and foreigners like those Mr. Moore brought to Havana. “It is as good as this one here, with all the resources, the best doctors, the best medicines, and nobody pays a cent,” he said.

But for the 11 million ordinary Cubans, hospitals are often ill equipped and patients “have to bring their own food, soap, sheets — they have to bring everything.”  . . .

. . .

Until he had to have emergency surgery last year, Fidel Castro — who turned 80 this year — was considered a model of vibrant long life in Cuba. But it was only last week that he acknowledged in an open letter that his initial surgery by Cuban doctors had been botched. He did not confirm, however, that a specialist had been flown in from Spain last December to help set things right. 

For the full commentary, see: 

ANTHONY DePALMA.  "‘Sicko,’ Castro and the ‘120 Years Club’."  The New York Times, Section 4  (Sun., May 27, 2007):   3. 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

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   Former Senator Fred Thomspson.  Source:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

Mr. Moore was back from Cuba, where he made a documentary on the superiority of Castro's health-care system. Mr. Thompson suggested Mr. Moore is just another lefty who loves dictators. Mr. Moore challenged Mr. Thompson to a health-care debate and accused him of smoking embargoed cigars. Within hours Mr. Thompson and his supposedly nonexistent staff had produced a spirited video response that flew through YouTube and the conservative blogosphere. Sitting at a desk and puffing on a fat cigar, Mr. Thompson announces to Mr. Moore he can't fit him into his schedule. Then: "The next time you're down in Cuba . . . you might ask them about another documentary maker. His name was Nicolás Guillén. He did something Castro didn't like, and they put him in a mental institution for several years, giving him devastating electroshock treatments. A mental institution, Michael. Might be something you ought to think about."

You couldn't quite tell if Mr. Thompson was telling Mr. Moore he ought to think more about Cuba, or might himself benefit from psychiatric treatment. It seemed almost . . . deliberately unclear.

PEGGY NOONAN.  "DECLARATIONS; The Man Who Wasn't There."  The Wall Street Journal  (Sat., May 19, 2007): P14.

(Note:  ellipsis in original.)

See Fred Thompson's response to Michael Moore on YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds_GhRxivOI  

    Source:  screen capture from Fred Thompson's response to Michael Moore at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds_GhRxivOI

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   The Titanic sinks.  Source of drawing:  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:St%C3%B6wer_Titanic.jpg

Here is one of my favorite lines from the "Titanic" movie.  It is spoken by the hero, as the Titanic sinks:

Jack Dawson: I don't know about you, but I intend to go write a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about all this.

Source:

"Titanic" movie (1997), as recorded in:  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Titanic

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   Charlton Heston as Robert Neville, the last scientist on earth.  Source of photo:  http://datacore.sciflicks.com/the_omega_man/images/the_omega_man_large_09.jpg

In the 1970s, one of my favorite films was "The Omega Man" (1971) starring Charlton Heston as the doctor/scientist who was the last healthy man on earth.  A plague had killed most of humanity, leaving a few in a demented "tertiary" condition.  Heston as "Robert Neville" had developed a vaccine, but only had been able to test it on himself, as the world collapsed.  

Those in the "tertiary" state had been organized by a former broadcast commentator named "Matthias" into the "family" whose goal it was to burn books, and destroy all remnants of science and technology. 

At one point near the end, the family captures Neville, and as the family destroys Neville's paintings, and laboratory, Matthias rants that Neville is the last scientist, the last remnant of the old world, and that all will be well when they have destroyed him.  Then comes one of my favorite exchanges.

Matthias: Now we must build.

Robert Neville: Build coffins, that's all you'll need.

When I saw the movie again today (3/16/07) for the first time in decades, I was worried that I had built it up in my memory, and that the reality would be way disappointing. 

I was relieved to see that the movie, though not perfect, was still plenty good enough.

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   Venus Ramey shows how she balanced her pistol on her walker to shoot out the tires of an intruder on her farm.  Source of photo:  screen capture from CNN clip "Granny's Packing Heat" as viewed on 4/23/07.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, there have been some renewed calls for more gun control (see the WSJ and NYT articles cited way below).  But we should not forget that a gun can also be a leveler; it gives the ordinary citizen a fighting chance against the thief and the murderer.

There was a great scene in the first Indiana Jones movie (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 1984) where Indy is being chased by a huge bad guy armed with swords.  The crowd clears, and the the huge man confidently and ominously twirls his swords.  Indy looks at him quizzically for a couple of seconds, pulls out a pistol, and shoots him. 

When I first saw that scene, the theater erupted in laughter and applause.

Laughter and applause are also appropriate responses to the story of 82 year old, former Miss America, Venus Ramey: 

Miss America 1944 has a talent that likely has never appeared on a beauty pageant stage: She fired a handgun to shoot out a vehicle's tires and stop an intruder. Venus Ramey, 82, confronted a man on her farm in south-central Kentucky last week after she saw her dog run into a storage building where thieves had previously made off with old farm equipment.

Ramey said the man told her he would leave. "I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said.

She had to balance on her walker as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.

"I didn't even think twice. I just went and did it," she said. "If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be 6 feet under by now."

 

For the full story, see: 

Associated Press.   "Armed Miss America 1944 Stops Intruder."  Forbes.com Posted 04.21.07, 5:00 AM ET Downloaded on 4/23/07 from http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/21/ap3637737.html

CNN has a great clip on this story, under the heading "Granny's Packing Heat."

The WSJ article mentioned above, is:

VANESSA O'CONNELL, GARY FIELDS and DEAN TREFTZ.  "Next Debate: Should Colleges Ban Firearms? The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., April 18, 2007):  B1 & B10. 

The NYT article mentioned above, is:

LESLIE EATON and MICHAEL LUO.  "Shooting Rekindles Issues of Gun Rights and Restrictions." The New York Times (Weds., April 18, 2007):  A19.

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We went to see "The Bridge to Tarabithia" this afternoon (2/25/07), which I thought was a sad, but good, movie aimed at older children, but with enough plot and enough characters to care about, to be of interest to adults too.

I heard a quote in the movie that I liked and I don't remember having heard before.  It's source was given as Teddy Roosevelt, who is not one of my favorite presidents, because of his efforts to increase the size and power of government.  But he wasn't all bad, and he sometimes spoke well:

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

 

Theodore Roosevelt, Speech in New York, September 7, 1903 [26th president of US (1858 - 1919)]

Source of quote, and information about quote: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2056.html

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  Rand, Ruddy, Wallace, and Jolie.  Source of photos: http://ustimes.us/ayn_rand_no_longer_has_script_approval.htm

(p. 9)  BACK in the 1970s Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of ''The Godfather,'' first approached Ayn Rand to make a movie of her novel ''Atlas Shrugged.'' But Rand, who had fled the Soviet Union and gone on to inspire capitalists and egoists everywhere, worried aloud, apparently in all seriousness, that the Soviets might try to take over Paramount to block the project.

''I told her, 'The Russians aren't that desperate to wreck your book,' '' Mr. Ruddy recalled in a recent interview.

Rand's paranoia, as Mr. Ruddy remembers it, seems laughable. But perhaps it was merely misplaced. For so many people have tried and failed to turn the book she considered her masterpiece into a movie that it could easily strike a suspicious person as evidence of a nefarious collectivist conspiracy. Or at least of Hollywood's mediocrity.

Of course Rand herself had a hand in blocking some of those attempts before she died in 1982. Her heirs in the Objectivist school of thought helped sink some others. And plans for at least a couple of television mini-series fell to the vicissitudes of network politics and media mergers.

But Rand's grand polemical novel keeps selling, and her admirers in Hollywood keep trying, and the latest effort involves a lineup of heavy hitters, starting with Angelina Jolie. Randall Wallace, who wrote ''Braveheart'' and ''We Were Soldiers,'' is working on compressing the nearly 1,200-page book into a conventional two-hour screenplay. Howard and Karen Baldwin, the husband-and-wife producers of ''Ray,'' are overseeing the project, and Lions Gate Entertainment is footing the bill.

Whether Ms. Jolie, who has called herself something of a Rand fan, will bring the novel's heroine, Dagny Taggart, to life on screen, or merely wind up on a list with other actresses who sought or were sought for the role -- including Barbara Stanwyck, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett and Sharon Stone -- remains to be seen. Until now, at least, no one in Hollywood has figured out a formula that promises both to sell popcorn and to do justice to the original text, let alone to the philosophy that it hammers home endlessly, at times in lengthy speeches. (The final one is 60 pages long.)

But Mr. Baldwin said he believed that Mr. Wallace and the rest of their team were up to the task. ''We all believe in the book, and will be true to the book,'' he said.

For the full story, see: 

KIMBERLY BROWN.  "FILM; Ayn Rand No Longer Has Script Approval."  The New York Times, Section 2  (Sun., January 14, 2007):  9 & 14.

    A 1957 photo of Rand in New York.  Source of photo:  http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/11/news/atlas.php

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   Source of book image: http://www.shopaim.org/assets/images/large/458i.jpg

There are better books on Reagan.  But Bosch's book has a few illuminating anecdotes.  Here is one:

(p. 63)  Reagan first learned about Communists and their intentions as a member of a Hollywood union, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).  He had been introduced to the Screen actors Guild by his wife Jane Wyman and had quickly risen to become a member of the Guild's board.  As a SAG Board member, and later as its president, he mediated a dispute between two rival unions.  One of the unions, the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), was led by a suspected Communist, Herb Sorrell.

. . .  

(p. 64)  Sorrell and Reagan went head to head.  When Reagan crossed a picket line outside Warner Brothers, Sorrell called for a boycott of his movies.  Reagan was called a fascist.  An anonymous phone caller threatened to disfigure his face so he could never act again.  He began to carry a gun and accepted police protection.  He became an informant for the FBI 

"These were eye-opening years for me," he later wrote.  "Now I knew form first-hand experience how Communists used lies, deceit, violence, or any other tactic that suited them to advance the cause of Soviet expansionism."

Source: 

Bosch, Adriana.  Reagan: An American Story.  TV Books Inc., 1998.

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  Salma Hayek.  Source of image: http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/0273-spe/Events/0273-spe/hayek_sa.lma?path=pgallery&path_key=Hayek,%20Salma

(p. A18) Scientific American, in its November 2006 issue, reaches a "scientific judgment" that the great Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek "was wrong" about free markets and prosperity in his classic, "The Road to Serfdom."  The natural scientists' favorite economist -- Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University -- announces this new scientific breakthrough in a column, saying "the evidence is now in."  To dispel any remaining doubts, Mr. Sachs clarifies that anyone who disagrees with him "is clouded by vested interests and by ideology."

This sounds like one of those moments in which the zeitgeist of mass confusion about national poverty, world poverty and prosperity comes together in one mad tragicomic brew.

. . .  

Mr. Sachs, who is currently best known for his star-driven campaign to end world poverty, has apparently spent more time studying the economic thinking of Salma Hayek than that of Friedrich. 

. . .

Mr. Sachs's empirical analysis purports to show that Nordic welfare states are outperforming those states that follow the "English-speaking" tradition of laissez-faire, like the U.K. or the U.S. Poverty rates are indeed lower in the Nordic countries, although the skeptical reader (probably an ideologue) might wonder if the poverty outcome in, say, the U.S., with its tortured history of a black underclass and its de facto openness to impoverished but upwardly mobile immigrants, is really comparable to that of Nordic countries.

Then there is the big picture, where those laissez-faire Anglophones in, first, the U.K. and, then, the U.S., just happened to have been the leaders of the ongoing global industrial revolution that abolished far more poverty over the past two centuries than a few modest Scandinavian redistribution schemes.  Mr. Sachs apparently thinks the industrial revolution was led by IKEA.  Lastly, let's hear from the Nordics themselves, who have been busily moving away from the social welfare state back toward laissez-faire.  According to the English-speaking ideologues that composed the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, Denmark, Finland and Sweden were all included in the 20 countries classified as "free" in 2006 (with Denmark actually ranked ahead of the U.S.).  Only Norway missed the cut -- barely.

Mr. Sachs is wrong that Hayek was wrong.  In his own global antipoverty work, he is unintentionally demonstrating why more scientists, Hollywood actors and the rest of us should go back and read "The Road to Serfdom" if we want to know what will not work to achieve "The End of Poverty."  Hayek gave the best exposition ever of the unpopular ideas of economic freedom that somehow triumph anyway, alleviating far more national and global poverty than more fashionable Scandinavia-envy and grandiose plans to "make poverty history."

For the full commentary, see:

WILLIAM EASTERLY.  "Dismal Science."  Wall Street Journal  (Weds., November 15, 2006):  A18.

(Note:  ellipses added.) 

Hayek's courageous masterpiece is:

Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1944.

Easterly's great book on how to encourage economic development in poor countries, is:

Easterly, William. The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.

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Schumpeter famously stated that creative destruction is "the essential fact" about capitalism.  Was he right? 

To determine what is "the essential fact" you need to first answer the question "essential for what purpose?"  If the purpose is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" then I think you can show that creative detruction is indeed the essential fact about capitalism; in the key sense that with creative destruction you have a form of capitalism that is best able to enhance "live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Terminator famously said "Come with me, if you want to live!" ("Terminator 2: Judgment Day," 1991).  Life is a choice.  You can choose death instead.  Most people, most of the time, choose life. But there are examples of choosing death.  E.g., Leon Kass, an oft-quoted "expert" on medical ethics issues, is against current efforts to lengthen the human life span:

(p. D4)  While an anti-aging pill may be the next big blockbuster, some ethicists believe that the all-out determination to extend life span is veined with arrogance.  As appointments with death are postponed, says Dr. Leon R. Kass, former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, human lives may become less engaging, less meaningful, even less beautiful.

“Mortality makes life matter,” Dr. Kass recently wrote.  “Immortality is a kind of oblivion — like death itself.”

That man’s time on this planet is limited, and rightfully so, is a cultural belief deeply held by many.  But whether an increasing life span affords greater opportunity to find meaning or distracts from the pursuit, the prospect has become too great a temptation to ignore — least of all, for scientists.

“It’s a just big waste of talent and wisdom to have people die in their 60s and 70s,” said Dr. Sinclair of Harvard.

(And there's the occasional hermit, like the unibomber, who chooses to live a brutish life without electricity and indoor plumbing.)  So long as I, Arnold, and our compatriots, are allowed an island somewhere to peacefully pursue life, I do not much care what Leon and his friends do.  My argument, and the book I am writing on creative destruction, are not written for Leon.  They are written for all those who choose life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The NYT quote related to Leon Kass's praise of mortality, is from p. D4 of:

MICHAEL MASON.  "One for the Ages:  A Prescription That May Extend Life."  The New York Times  (Tues., October 31, 2006):  D1 & D4. 

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PART of what sold James Tirey on a change in attire was the coffee spilled on his legs during a rough flight.  ''It stayed sticky until it dried,'' he said, ''about mid-Atlantic.''

To avoid such incidents, he bought a new pair of pants with an invisible, high-tech surface suited to the exigencies of business travel.  These pants look and feel like most others, but the ingenious finish on the fabric is different:  it is made of tiny, nanosized particles that repel water, ketchup, honey, blood, vinaigrette and a thousand other potential indignities.  With such a surface, he said, ''if coffee is spilled on you, it just beads up'' or runs off.  The pants can be wiped with a paper napkin -- even the skimpy cocktail kind handed out on airplanes -- leaving the material dry and unscathed.

Mr. Tirey, who lives in northern Virginia, bought his pants, called the Steel Pant, at Beyond, a Eugene, Ore., company that makes and sells outerwear for men and women at BeyondFleece.com.  The material is manufactured by the Swiss company Schoeller Textil, which makes both the weave and the nanofinish, called NanoSphere.  On the Beyond Web site, the pants cost $119, the nanocoating an additional $15.  ''It was definitely worth the money,'' Mr. Tirey said of the purchase.

For the full story, see: 

ANNE EISENBERG.  "NOVELTIES; The Chemist's Find: A Way to Shrug Off Spills." The New York Times , Section 3(Sun., August 27, 2006):  5. 

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  In Mogadishu the nose of one of the two Black Hawk helicopters that were were shot down in 1993.  Source of the photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below. 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Sept. 23 — They call her the “Black Hawk Down” lady.

And in the corner of her dirt yard, beneath rags drying in the sun and next to a bowl of filthy wash water, she keeps a chunk of history that most Americans would probably like to forget.

It is the battered nose of a Black Hawk helicopter, from one of the two that got shot down in Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993, in an infamous battle that killed 18 Americans, led to a major foreign policy shift and spawned a big movie.

The Black Hawk Down lady stands fiercely at her gate and charges admission to see it.

“You, you, you,” she said on a recent day, jabbing her finger at three visitors.  “Pay, pay, pay.”

. . .

Ecstatic Somalis ransacked the wreckage, stripping the helicopters and melting down the metal. Some people even ripped insignia patches off the bodies of the soldiers to keep as grim souvenirs.

. . .

But Ms. Elmi had a different plan.  Her husband had died a long time ago, and she had six children to feed.  Two of her older sons were killed, she said, when the helicopter crashed.  She dragged the cracked nose piece, about five feet across but actually pretty light because it was made of fiberglass, back to her house.

. . .  

Ms. Elmi began humbly, charging neighborhood boys the equivalent of a few cents to get a peek at her one exhibit, the last known chunk of wreckage from what Somalis refer to as Ma-alinti Rangers, the Day of the Rangers.

But after the movie “Black Hawk Down” came out in 2001 — and pirated copies found their way to Mogadishu — business boomed.

“So many people came, I cannot count,” she said.  “White people, brown people, black people.”

When asked why they come, she snapped:  “How should I know?  Do you think I am mind reader?”

The entrance fee is now around $3 for foreigners; locals get a discount and pay 75 cents.

. . .

Some people say they fear the Islamists will impose a draconian version of Islam in Somalia, which up until recently had been relatively secular.

But Ms. Elmi said she loved the Islamists.  And she has her own reasons.

“They bring peace,” she said.  “And peace brings tourists.”

For the full story, see: 

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN.  "MOGADISHU JOURNAL; From the Ashes, a Chunk of America Beckons in Somalia."  The New York Times  (Thurs., September 28, 2006):  A4.

(Note:  in the print version, but not the online version, there is a subheader placed in the center of the article that reads:  "An entrepreneur feeds a family, thanks to the remnants of a battle.") 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

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Surfing the Web last fall, a Chinese high-school student who calls himself Zivn noticed something missing.  It was Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that accepts contributions or edits from users, and that he himself had contributed to.

The Chinese government, in October, had added Wikipedia to a list of Web sites and phrases it blocks from Internet users' access.  For Zivn, trying to surf this and many other Web sites, including the BBC's Chinese-language news service, brought just an error message.  But the 17-year-old had had a taste of that wealth of information and wanted more.  "There were so many lies among the facts, and I could not find where the truth is," he writes in an instant-message interview.

Then some friends told him where to find Freegate, a tiny software program that thwarts the Chinese government's vast system to limit what its citizens see.  Freegate -- by connecting computers inside of China to servers in the U.S. -- allows Zivn and others to keep reading and writing to Wikipedia and countless other sites.

Behind Freegate is a North Carolina-based Chinese hacker named Bill Xia.  He calls it his red pill, a reference to the drug in the "Matrix" movies that vaulted unconscious captives of a totalitarian regime into the real world.  Mr. Xia likes to refer to the villainous Agent Smith from the Matrix films, noting that the digital bad guy in sunglasses "guards the Matrix like China's Public Security Bureau guards the Internet."

. . .

(p. A9)  . . . , with each new version of Freegate -- now on its sixth release -- the censors "just keep improving and adding more manpower to monitor what we have been doing," Mr. Xia says.  In turn, he and volunteer programmers keep tweaking Freegate.

At first, the software would automatically change its Internet Protocol address -- a sort of phone number for a Web site -- faster than China could block it.  That worked until September 2002, when China blocked Freegate's domain name, not just its number, in the Internet phone book.

More than three years later, Mr. Xia is still amazed by the bold move, calling it a "hijacking."  Ultimately he prevailed, however, through a solution he won't identify for fear of being shut down for good.

Confident in that solution, Mr. Xia continues to send out his red pill, and users like Zivn continue to take it.  The teen credits his cultural and political perspective to a "generation gap" that has come of having access to more information.  "I am just gradually getting used to the truth about the real world," he writes.

For the full story, see: 

Geoffrey A. Fowler.  "Chinese Internet Censors Face 'Hacktivists' in U.S."  The Wall Street Journal  (Monday, February 13, 2006):  A1 & A9.

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   Al Gore.  Source of photo:  http://in.news.yahoo.com/051008/137/60gzj.html

(p. A25) If Al Gore's new movie weren't titled ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' I wouldn't have quite so many problems with it.

. . .

Gore shows the obligatory pictures of windmills and other alternative sources of energy.  But he ignores nuclear power plants, which don't spew carbon dioxide and currently produce far more electricity than all ecologically fashionable sources combined.

A few environmentalists, like Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, have recognized that their movement is making a mistake in continuing to demonize nuclear power.  Balanced against the risks of global warming, nukes suddenly look good -- or at least deserve to be considered rationally.  Gore had a rare chance to reshape the debate, because a documentary about global warming attracts just the sort of person who marches in anti-nuke demonstrations.

Gore could have dared, once he enticed the faithful into the theater, to challenge them with an inconvenient truth or two.  But that would have been a different movie.

For the full commentary, see:

JOHN TIERNEY.  "Gore Pulls His Punches."  The New York Times  (Tuesday, May 23, 2006):    A25.

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Schumpeter distinguished the static picture of capitalism in the textbook model, with the dynamic reality captured in the process of creative destruction.   Apparently Ronald Reagan also understood that a dynamic view is better than a static snapshot.   Michael Deaver recounts:

Danny DeVito was Larry the Liquidator in the movie "Other People's Money." The source of the image of the VHS tape box cover is Amazon.com.

A key passage from Larry the Liquidator's great speech in "Other People's Money":

This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead alright. We're just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure.

You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies makin' buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency, to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.

For a transcript, and audio version, of the full speech by Larry the Liquidator, see:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechotherpeople'smoneydevito.html

Larry would not have been surprised by the following account of steam automobiles that mentions that the last maker of steam-powered cars, Doble, "managed to hang on until the early 30's, building what many consider to be the finest of all the steam cars."

The notion of steam cars seems quaint today, but they were a natural offshoot of an age when much of industry was powered by pressurized steam. By the end of the 19th century, steam engines were ubiquitous, running everything from factories to ships. As a mature, well-developed technology, steam was a logical competitor to electricity and gasoline as a power source for early cars.

Electric vehicles disappeared relatively quickly, a result of their batteries' meager storage capacity and high weight. The popularity of early gasoline cars was hampered by the arduous, sometimes dangerous, hand-crank starting routine.

As a result, in the early decades of the 20th century steam managed to hold on against the "explosive" engine — as Stanley advertising derisively referred to the internal combustion motor. More than 125 companies manufactured steam automobiles. Among American companies, Stanley, White and Locomobile were the most successful, with Stanleys priced higher than mass-market Fords but below the luxury brands of the time.

Even the most innovative makers of steam cars were not impervious to developments in other technologies: the introduction of the electric starter on the 1912 Cadillac sealed their fate. While gasoline-powered cars became "transportation on demand," steam cars still needed up to half an hour for the entire process of lighting the burners and developing sufficient pressure before driving away.

White dropped out of the steam business, and Stanley's operation in Newton, Mass., was gone by the mid-1920's. Only Doble, in Emeryville, Calif., managed to hang on until the early 30's, building what many consider to be the finest of all the steam cars.

For the full article, see:

ROB SASS. "Autos on Monday / Collecting; When These Boil Over, They're Ready to Drive." The New York Times (Mon., February 27, 2006): D9.

The Stanley Rocket Racer that held the land-speed record for four years for cars of all power plants, starting in 1906. It reached a speed of 127.659 mph. Source of photo, and caption information: NYT article cited above.

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