Tuesday, February 09, 2016

The Month That Was - January 2016

I have no resolutions. I never do. I sort of inventory my wishes and make nebulous plans, but not resolutions. Perhaps I should make resolutions. My cholesterol is up; getting that to drop that would be a good one. And my labs from my last physical suggest there is a "liver thing" going on for which the strategy seems to be to do more tests in six weeks.

For now I am just expecting that 2016 will be a lot like 2015. That may be very boring for you to read about so I am batting around ideas to spice things up here. We'll see.

[Rant] The Opposite of Righteouos
[Movies] Mad Max:Fury Road
[Rant] 2016 Plans
[Books] Book Look: How to Catch a Russian Spy
[Sports] Cheater's Code

[Rant] The Opposite of Righteous

I try to avoid scanning the media because it makes me so depressed. Not because the news is all bad or the world is going to hell; that has always been the case and always will be -- that is to say, the world is probably just fine or at least as fine as it has ever been. No, what bothers me is not anything ideological, it's personal. If you read the media, you are left with the impression that the bulk of the population is seething with moral indignation of the perceived evil of the other side. This effect is magnified anytime you get close to election season, which we are. My facebook feed fills up with glib memes and "liked" political propaganda to the point where it outnumbers cat videos 2-to-1, which is saying something.

The act of heralding your comments and opinions is the basis of human self-organization, of how we build coalitions to accomplish things that require more than individual efforts. What I find so disturbing is how infantile and banal these sentiments are. They range from inane comments about how a favored news-celebrity "destroyed" a news-celebrity on the other side, to vacuous memes about gun control and immigration and such, to these futile-minded hashtag campaigns.

What are these people trying to achieve? Do they think they are swaying opinions with their facebook posts? The answer, of course, is no. Or if they do think that, they are deluding themselves about their own purpose. There are three things they are achieving: (1) Mood affiliation; finding others with common feelings and patting each other on the back in encouragement. (2) Demonstrating their goodness, for in the depth of their hearts they know that people who believe these things are good and those who don't are bad. (3) Offering anyone who is susceptible to such temptation the opportunity to raise their status by making similar statements and thereby affiliating themselves with the good people.

That may sound condescending but that's not how I intend it. Do these actions truly achieve one of the 3 effects I listed? I can see them as a form of small-talk to (1) bond with others of your tribe, but does that glib meme that supposedly highlights the hypocrisy of the other side when it comes to immigration or gun control or abortion (2) demonstrate your goodness or just make you look shallow enough to reduce complicated subjects to memes and snark? And honestly, are the people susceptible to such thoughtlessness (3) the kind of people you want to affiliate with?

Of course this folly is heightened by the election and, yes, I realize it's always been like this, but the internet makes it more obvious. I really don't want to make this a sneer at everyone who posts this stuff, but it does depress me to think that this is what constitutes the ongoing political conversation. Perhaps I'm just an old man yelling at clouds.

I know the expression of political opinion is supposed to be a good thing that all concerned citizens should partake of as civic duty, but considering that these are immensely complicated issues that well-intentioned people on both sides have pursued for years with no clear resolution, how does pointing out that somebody got "annihilated" on some news/entertainment show last night really add value? Facile opinions are in oversupply; thought and perspective are the rare commodities. Am I wrong to think we'd better off if folks spent a little more time critically curating their opinions?

You know what? Most people who indulge in this sort of behavior would agree with me about this, they just wouldn't realize I'm talking about them. They probably think that they are scrupulously objective and unbiased in their actions. It's other people who are the problem. The world is made for those who aren't cursed with self-awareness.

Now I'm depressed again.

[Movies] Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road was very good. The actions sequences were second to none, comparable to Whedon at his best and made more impressive by the lack of CGI. It's an all time top ten action movie, for sure, and highlights my previous observations that we are in a Golden Age of action movies; that this will be a era that, over the long term, is considered that apex of the craft of making action films.

That said, it's been awfully overrated as a piece of drama with many serious movie review sites calling it the best movie of the year (2015). If it is, then the quality of other sorts of movies must have dropped like a stone. As compelling as it is to watch, there is no theme or plot pattern that hasn't been ground into the dirt a thousand times over. The characters and their arcs and motivations aren't anything new or particularly complicated.

A good deal of praise has been given in the name of feminism. The plot revolves around a great female warrior rescuing a trio of enslaved female concubines by removing them from a sadistic patriarchal post-apocalypse to a sanctuary run by a tribe of brave and wise females. There are two males on the side of good, one is there due to common cause the other an enemy who defects; in time both come to see the virtue and nobility of the females and devote themselves to their cause. If you are the sort of person who needs a righteous socio-political backdrop to your entertainment, then it will give you chills. But all that means little to me -- it's just plot and casting choices that could have been made any number of other ways with little or no difference to quality.

A movie can focus on human drama; try to illuminate our lives and struggles in some new or interesting way. These movies are rare and when they achieve this they become art. The great bulk of movies do not. They follow well worn paths looking for different ways to push buttons. Horror films push the fright button, rom-coms push the romance button, action films push the tension button, etc. Films that do this are not art, they are craft. (I can't immediately think of any films that do both, but I can think of a number of TV series that do, although they have a lot more time to do it in.) For the record, craft is not "lower" than art; apple and oranges. Craft is exceedingly difficult to master at the level it was done for Mad Max: Fury Road. Craft at this level can inspire awe.

So perhaps from the point of view of craft, Mad Max: Fury Road is the best film of the 2015. I don't know, I haven't seen that many new releases. Whatever the case, it's wonderfully entertaining and not to be missed.

[Rant] 2016 Plans

So what are my plans for this year? Usually I try to rough out both my travel plans and my fitness goals for the year. Lately I've been including house projects because they gobbles so much of my decision making effort. And money. These plans only work out about half the time, but a man's got to have a plan. Although most every other aspect of my life goes unplanned, so maybe a man doesn't got to have a plan.

Let's start with the house. I want to re-landscape a section of the front yard. That should be readily do-able. I think the next renovation will be the master suite. That's not including more minor, but still expensive, decor upgrades like area rugs, and bits and pieces of furniture. This will be my big goal for 2016 but it's a sizable enough project that it may not get done until 2017. After that either the kitchen or the basement, probably the kitchen. But if I get the bit of landscaping done and just make progress on the master suite I'll declare victory.

Travel remains problematic. I can count on a spring trip to FL and out west at Thanksgiving again, but beyond that who knows? I've had Alaska on my radar since forever. We'll see. But there is a plan floating around that might get me back to Hawaii, which I guess I could live with. For the first time I really have no clue where I want to travel this year. I've been getting to urge to hit one of the destination spas again, mostly because I think it would help me break some bad habits I've developed, but that's going to depend on the market to provide me with the extra scratch I need -- those places aint cheap.

Fitness-wise, I want to do another triathlon. I'd like to do an Olympic distance (roughly twice as long as the Sprint distance I did last year). I'll probably do some of my tried and true foot races, being sure to get in a half-marathon somewhere along the way. You know, there's a Half in Yosemite, that might be a good fitness/travel combo.

But the house comes first.

I got 99 problems and they're all good ones to have.

[Books] Book Look: How to Catch a Russian Spy, by Naveed Jamali

It's kind of a fluffy bit of non-fiction. Naveed Jamali, who appears to be a pretty standard issue Gen X slacker sort of guy, finds himself working with the FBI to catfish a Russian agent. It quite an entertaining story. His parent own a research service firm that is frequented by known Russian agents. The parents have been passing along the Russian requests to the FBI for years, but young Naveed gets involved and works to up the ante. Entirely unromantic, the covert meetings here occur in places like Pizzeria Uno and Hooters.

Jamali is capable for the most part, comically drawing on bad movie thrillers to try to figure out how to behave during his clandestine meetings. He is also a bit of a self-absorbed bro, and more than a bit of a drama queen. One suspects all along that the FBI agents must have felt like parents cajoling a immature child. This is borne out at the end when they finally acknowledge that throughout the operation Jamli was driving them nuts. Credit to Jamali for the honesty of this reveal. Also credit to him for appearing to be genuinely motivated by patriotism, which is refreshing.

The upshot of the operation itself is confusing. The relationship with the Russian is developed over the course of years, but as near as I can tell it amounted to little more than FBI being let in on the sorts of information the Russians wanted. Then, abruptly, the FBI decides to take action, except the final outcome does not seem to resolve anything; it disrupts and embarrasses the Russians but I don't see much in the way of practical outcome. It almost seems like the FBI had figured Jamali had gone as far as he could and he might he might blow the whole thing if they pushed him further so they settled for what they could. That's just speculation.

Should you read How to Catch a Russian Spy? Don't feel compelled to, but no harm will come to you if you do. Might be fun for a plane trip or a day at the beach. It's primarily autobiographical so you get the best and worst of Jamali. He is essentially a good-hearted dude, probably a decent guy to hang with, but you'll be hit with immature self-congratulations on every page.

[Sports] Cheater's Code

This pinged my radar because I am one of the eight Americans with an interest in professional cycling and who follows the Tour De France. One of the fascinating things about the Tour to me is the contrast between the strong sense of sportsmanly honor among the participants and the fact that it is also the dirtiest sport with respect to doping or juicing or bio-chemical what-have-yous. They have a tradition that if the race leader goes down in an accident or with a mechanical problem, everybody holds up until he's back on track because they want to win based on their cycling skills, not the happenstance of equipment or road conditions or the like. A point point a couple of years back everyone just stopped racing in a stage because an idiot had thrown tacks in the road and a number of people got blow outs, so they all held up and finished together as a group. It's very admirable and truly idealistic, yet there was also a string of well over a decade when every winner got stripped of his victory due to failing blood tests. The cycling subculture has its own concept of sportsmanship that is more extreme than other sports in both the noble and ignoble directions.

The doping issue seems to have been resolved -- seems -- but it's really hard to consider there to be any mitigating circumstances with the latest method of cheating in cycling. It appears some folks have taken to installing hidden motors in their bikes to give them an added boost. When I skimmed the headline I thought it too absurd to be real, but that's exactly what's going on. Evidently it's not a terribly new development and there are firms out there that provide kits to modify your bike in a stealthy manner. You can read the details at Gizmodo.

I would think cyclists would see this as a order of magnitude more ignoble than doping, because it is a mechanical thing. Shouldn't the same sporting instinct that makes you hold up when the leader has an equipment failure also make you ashamed to enhance your equipment for victory. Doping, as illegal as it was, was at least a change to the cyclist's body which is still, well, the cyclist -- not a piece of equipment. But I don't know. Human beings are designed for rationalized hypocrisy at the cellular level; maybe they'll figure out a way to justify it. If they do, it would really make me wonder where the line will be drawn. Maybe at taking a shortcut to the finish line?

It's going to make this year's Tour very interesting. To the eight of us watching, anyway.