perfidy

Marlon Brando sleeps with the fishes. CNN says it's from "unknown causes," but anyone who has watched his weight balloon over the past few decades knows better. The legitimate news outlets can do Brando a proper obit better than I ever could, so I will leave it to them to do the chronologies, rave about his career, and wonder at his eccentric behavior. I have some thoughts of my own.

Of all the actors of his generation, Brando understood the power of raw physicality better than anyone; he used his entire body as an expressive instrument. His first roles capitalized on his ability to project untamed raw violence and sexuality with an undercurrent of confusion and rage. His best early work, “The Wild One,” “On The Waterfront,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” all benefit from this talent. Entire books have been written on John Wayne’s physical vocabulary, and his conscious nods to classical statuary. But where Wayne, for all his grit, could throw a hint of effeteness into the mix when required (don’t believe me? Look at how he stood! Hip to the side!), Brando was never less than a bull. Even in their prime, noted overactors like heirs Al Pacino and Robert De Niro could more than echo the ferocity of Brando’s rages.

But the bull learned to be subtle too. Building on his Method roots acting on the stage, Brando came to understand that the camera sees everything. A mere twitch of Brando's massive eyebrow could reveal entire universes below the surface, and the hunch of his shoulders could connote rage, confusion, self-loathing, defensiveness, or weariness. The same man who played Stanley Kowalski as an inferno played Vito Corleone as a smolder.

For a striking example of his versatility in this regard, compare Corleone to Colonel Kurtz. With nothing more than some cotton in his cheeks, Brando played Vito Corleone as a hunched old man who, though once physically powerful, was now terribly weak. Kurtz, on the other hand, emanated sheer black menace. Using the same set of postures—even sitting the same way—Brando managed to convey two completely opposite characters. Many under-actors, Ed Harris, Kevin Costner, David Duchovny, sometimes act entirely with their faces, and sometimes only with their eyes. Brando could act with his scalp-- “Apocalypse Now” proves it.

It is ironic that the greatest body actor ever to walk a silver screen got larger as his talent waned, as if he was cloaking his talent in fat and ego until he was a waddling joke in a muu-muu, grunting his way through embarrassments like “The Island of Dr. Moreau” as if his mere presence was enough to lent gravity to the silliness. And now, fittingly, his body is all that’s left.

Rather nasty storm last night on the frontier. I was certainly surprised, because weather is usually mild here. Even summer thunderstorms blowing in from the west or south that start out violent have vented most of their anger and energy on New York or Connecticut- as so many of us will- before they get here. Typically we'll get some snarling, but it's brief and only signals sustained rain to come.

Last night was different. Between 2.30, when I was startled awake by what sounded like a tank's main gun firing (CRACK!!!) beneath my window, until the worst had blown over and I got back to sleep around 3.40, was sustained electrical disturbance and violent atmospheric shockwaves therefrom. Or what I used to call "thunderinlightning".

With me not being accustomed to sustained atmospheric violence, the storm gods certainly had my undivided attention. I couldn't remember the last time I experienced such a storm; there wasn't even that much rain, really. But it was certainly the first time I noticed the smaller subtleties within the larger cacophony.

Different thunders: sustained, tearing ones; low rumbling ones; sharp violent ones. The tank gun "CRACK"s were sudden and powerful but over in a split second. The low rumblers were like artillery, shaking the entire house for several seconds and even feeling reverberations in my own chest. Others still did all of these things at once, or maybe simultaneous discharges made it seem so. Oftentimes with many every minute. And it went on...and on...and on, for over an hour.

It was the light show though that made a true spectacle. Everything was dark, with no ambient light, then lightning flashes would illuminate the whole room, but just for a second, in that purplish glow only lightning delivers and in a weird, pulsating strobe. And as with the thunder, several times a minute for an hour.

The whole experience was Studio 54 on the eyes and the Western Front on the ears.

This is too cool to live! An interactive quiz: can you guess the Presidential election year, based on that year's electoral college map?

(Make sure not to hover your cursor over a map while you're thinking... the link title gives it away!)

Thanks to Eugene Volokh, who has ruined my afternoon.

Christian Science Monitor has a brief quiz up. Kinda fun. Turns out I'm a "realist", which I believe I copped to when I took polisci 110. So I seem to be internally consistent. So Monday wasn't a total loss- I accomplished something.

Other, more detailed quizery here. My score: Economic left/right: -1.75 (or slightly left of center)
Social libertarian/authoritarian: 1.13 (or a hair above center)

So I'm a touch authoritarian (shocking, I know) and a hair left on my economic ideas, but basically centrist on both axes. Or roughly midway between Gerhard Schroeder and the current Pope.

Just a quick note: Saw it last night and wasn't really all that impressed. There just really wasn't much information there. There are a few nuggets -- like the fact that out of 534 Members of Congress, exactly one has a child who is enlisted. Bush's seven perplexed minutes after being told about the World Trade Center are telling. But beyond that, there just really isn't a whole lot there. It's funny in a few places, and worth seeing for that. But it's just too...simple.

I don't think conservatives should get too upset about the film; it isn't really all that serious. For the same reason, I don't think dems should raise it up to be something that it is not.

I make all the serious arguments right here. Hah! ;) You don't need Michael Moore.

Thank God. SCOTUSBlog has details, but the gist is that the Supreme Court has decided that the Executive Branch may not arbitrarily imprison citizens without trial or recourse. It sounds like a no-brainer, and in my opinion it is. What the hell were they thinking?

Under the government's theory, George Bush could declare John Kerry to be an enemy combatant and imprison him, without recourse or trial. Would they do that? Of course not. But they would have the right. I can't think of anything more anti-democratic, or anti-freedom. It is inexplicable to me that they would even have attempted to assert this power.

The most powerful voice on the opinion is that of Scalia, who thinks that the majority didn't go far enough in slapping down the government. His dissent goes right to the first principles of democracy, and is required reading.

Being genetically designed for cave-dwelling, my recent trip to British Columbia's Sunshine Coast had predictable results. Two days in, I had a nice sunburn/sun reaction. I've seen it a dozen times before and I know that seeing a doctor is a good idea when it gets severe. Since I haven't lived in Canada in ten years, I don't have a provincial health card any more. I therefore entered the BC medical system as a simple cash-carrying person (yes, we do have that in Canada).

I called in the morning, and had an appointment for that afternoon. The doctor and I spent about 15 minutes together, and I walked out with my prescription. Let's tote up the costs:

$40 for the office visit, cash. $9.32 for the prescription. Both those figures are in Canadian dollars, so at today's exchange rate my interaction with the health system cost US$36.57.

About two years ago the same thing happened while here at home. I did get an appointment for the same afternoon, but I had to wait about an hour and a half. The 10 minute office visit cost around $65 (covered by insurance, but shouldn't we look to see how much we're being charged). The prescription cost about $20, for the same medication; our interaction total is about US$85.

There's no discernible difference in the quality of care received, for an interaction like this, between the US and Canadian system. So why do we have such a difference in charges to the patient? There's a laundry list of reasons, I suppose. Doctors in Canada don't have the same vulnerability to malpractice; there's some legislative protection, and large jury awards are almost unheard of in Canada. Staffing costs are higher in the US, which means higher costs to cover.

One of the largest factors is the massive administrative and paperwork overhead in the US system. This burden is estimated to chew up almost 30% of medical dollars; it's the constant paper cut knife-fighting between physicians' offices' admins and their counterparts at the insurance companies. The insurance companies don't want to pay out; the longer they can hold on to their dollars the more they earn on investments. Most doctors in the US have at least one and usually more people on staff who work payment issues almost full-time.

Administrative overhead in the Canadian system is about 6%, and other socialized medicine systems run about the same.

I think the medical insurance companies are at the heart of this. An ob-gyn friend has just been presented with a Faustian deal by her malpractice company; either sign a new agreement with a "tail clause", or lose her insurance. The malpractice insurance policy used to cost $85,000 per year. The "new deal" is that if she ever ceases insuring with this company, she must pay them two years, in full upon doing so. Malpractice insurance companies are local, so if she moves to another state, this amount would be due and payable.

So she should just go to another insurance company, right? Wrong. Malpractice insurance is highly specialized; it turns out that in our area, there is exactly one company offering malpractice insurance to ob-gyns. Of course, that company is likely owned by another, much larger company that does national health insurance, but for the purposes of this contract it is irrelevant.

Her practice of (I believe) eight ob-gyns are all being forced into the same deal. Some of them are nearing the end of their careers or don't have any plans to move; for them the deal is still possible.

There's a bizarre little circle at the heart of the system. That first $85,000 in revenues is paid by insurance companies and then routed right back to insurance companies. We know that the payout rate for medical malpractice insurance is around 4 to 1; for every four dollars taken in, one dollar is paid out. Mathematically, this tells us that the insurance industry needs to keep malpractice underwriting small and local; only when the risk is concentrated can the premiums be justified. In the aggregate malpractice insurance is rather profitable.

By shifting money into the malpractice stream, the cost of health care has been exaggerrated. Insurance companies have dramatically raised their rates over the past four years, citing increased costs and malpractice, when they themselves are the primary reasons for those cost increases.

For those Americans looking for affordable health care, you might want to look north of the border. For the cash-paying patient, it's prompt and efficient, and less than half the cost of American care of comparable quality. Powell River British Columbia has noted a recent trend -- medical tourism. It seems that the excellent hospital and ready availability of care has recently been drawing patients from Canada's urban centers, as well as from the US.

And just to head it off, I'll admit that the finest health care in the world is available right here in the US. Of course, only a tiny fraction of the population can actually afford it, but who the hell cares about the rest? Paying twice as much to insure only 60% of the population is the American Way; that paperwork and overhead is the heart of the system. And private medical care must be preserved at all costs! Private care like you can, uh, get in Canada.

Imposing a system on the population that benefits and works for only a small number of people? That's real elitism; the kind that takes food from children, breaks a man's life with medical expenses, laughs at the suffering, and guides the body politic to cement it in place.

From his (former) campaign site...here's what Jack Ryan has to say about "family breakdowns":

I believe that marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman. I am opposed to same-sex marriages, civil unions, and registries.

I believe that we are all equal before God and should be before the law. Homosexuals deserve the same constitutional protections, safeguards, and human dignity as every American, but they should not be entitled to special rights based on their sexual behavior.

The breakdown of the family over the past 35 years is one of the root causes of some of our society’s most intractable social problems-criminal activity, illegitimacy, and the cyclical nature of poverty.

As an elected leader, my interest will be in promoting laws and educating people about the fundamental importance of the traditional family unit as the nucleus of our society.

In the wake of the recent Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruling that has spawned similar lawsuits in other states, it seems likely that defending traditional marriage and codifying that defense will be required at the federal level. As such, as a United States Senator, I would support legislation such as Senator Bill Frist’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), provided the language remains clear in the defining of traditional marriage and protecting the traditional family unit.

I can't quite remember where it is in the Bible, but there's gotta be some traditional justification in there somewhere for asking your wife to have sex in club.

Schadenfreude, oh schadenfreude.

Loyal reader #00012, Guitarpicker, alerts us to recent developments in lethal autonomous robots. USA Today is reporting that the Air Force is testing several new robotic vehicles intended, according to Air Force claims, to "detect the enemy first, will receive any of the initial hostile acts," Meana said. "If you shoot the robot we don't care. We know you're there, you're hostile, and we can keep our forces in reserve to move tactically against the enemy. The robots will save our troops' lives." Staff Sergeant Miguel Jimenez, displaying a stunning lack of concern of the future survival of his own species, said Tuesday, "If somebody wants to spend the money and send something like that out there instead of my life, I'm all about that."

The Air Force is testing two different robots for perimeter security. The first and more expensive is the Mobile Detection and Response System, or MDARS. Looking curiously similar to "Number Five" from the movie "Short Circuit," this robot can be equipped with automatic weapons and pepper spray. It will use radar, TV and infrared to detect and destroy its human prey.

But that's not all. Like Voltron, MDARS can also split into several smaller robots. Okay, only sort of. Here is a snap of MDARS launching Matilda, a mini robot designed to allow inspection under vehicles and into areas too small for the jeep sized MDARS.

Our days as the dominant lifeform on this planet are numbered, as this model will go into production next year. As always, I would like to be the first to welcome our new robotic overlords.

Other cool links:

Here is another, more detailed, story on the robot from the National Defense Magazine.

Globalsecurity.org has pages for MDARS and a related project, REDCAR.

And of course, you absolutely must check this out.

Sayonara, Survivor! Bye-Bye Big Brother! Farewell Fear Factor! It appears the new Arab reality show, Cave In To My Demands Or I'll Saw Your Citizens' Heads Off, is really taking the world by storm. I haven't seen any of this season's episodes yet, but I have read about them and man I am blown away! Many appear shocked at the graphic nature of it, and surprised at the union of ultra violence, political messages, and media saturation; it's that shock that's going to take this show straight to the top!

Lots of good marketing and distribution in US markets, although I don't believe it's getting the same demographic penetration as in the Arab world. Product tie-ins, like with green headbands or specially prepared throwin' stones say, are weak here as well outside narrow markets trending to the young, hip, prostrate crowd. There is some progress on Muslim catch phrases (Allahu akbar; Dar al-Islam; Dar al-Kufr) penetrating the mainstream, but most common usage is still in mosques and prisons.

I have a passing familiarity with other reality TV from the Middle East, like the long running 11th Century House; the unforgettable Candid Clitorectomy; the often imitated A Suicide Bomber Story, and the fun but trifling My Big Fat Obnoxious Husband and His 3 Other Big Fat Obnoxious Wives. But nothing compares to the interest audiences are giving to ...Heads Off.

Looks like Muslim TV really has a hit on its hands.