I now hate Quentin Tarantino and his films even more

After seeing Pulp Fiction I swore never to watch any more of Quentin Tarantino’s films, seeing them as vehicles for him to indulge his personal fantasies of violence and the use of racist language, especially the N-word. However I am aware of many fans of his who claimed that he was some kind of genius filmmaker and that I was just not getting it. One of these was a highly respected professor of film at my university. When I wrote about his films five years ago, some readers of this blog tried to explain to me why he was good. I was not convinced.
[Read more…]

When is a riot not a riot?

In the US, whether something is called a riot or not has little to do with the amount of damage or harm caused by it. If the rioting crowd is largely white and the cause is because their team won some sports event, as happened on Sunday in Philadelphia when the local team won the Super Bowl, then it is ok. If the crowd is of mixed ethnicities and is protesting social and economic injustices, it is not ok. If the crowd is largely black and the cause is police brutality, then the riots squads are brought out to deliver a brutal crackdown.
[Read more…]

Selective, self-interested outrage over civil rights abuses

Those who have been following the recent sexual abuse cases may have heard of the Shitty Media Men online spreadsheet that allowed people to anonymously post their experiences and name their harassers. Harper’s teased an upcoming article by Katie Roiphe that promised to reveal the name of the person who created the list but Moira Donegan she decided to out herself before it appeared and explained why she did it, saying that until then the ‘whisper networks’ that warned people to avoid certain people in power only reached the few who were well-connected.
[Read more…]

Didn’t you see the sign, Michele?

Wacky former Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann had announced that she was thinking of running for the Minnesota senate seat vacated by Al Franken and that she was going to ask her god what he thought about the idea. There was a time when I would have welcomed the entry of a loony right-winger into an election because they would not win but would provide plenty of entertainment. But after Donald Trump won, that has ceased to be a risk-free option..
[Read more…]

How can this guy not have a primary opponent?

There will be a primary election on March 20 to select Republican and Democratic candidates to vie for congressional seats in Illinois and the third district has drawn some interest. On the Republican side, only one person has filed to run in this election, guaranteeing that he will be the party’s candidate. Not having a rival in primaries is not unusual. What is unusual is that this unopposed person has the most appalling views.
[Read more…]

The big stories that Robert Parry broke

Investigative journalist Robert Parry died last week at the age of 68. Jon Schwarz writes about the qualities that made him a great journalist which, as should not be too surprising, made it hard for him to work for his former employers at the Associated Press and Newsweek that he said tried to suppress his accounts that held the powerful to account, so he started his own news service called ConsortiumNews.
[Read more…]

Prayer in school

From Chris, a friend and colleague and reader of this blog, I received this link about yet another case of prayer in schools. Despite repeated court rulings that formal and institutionalized prayer in schools is unconstitutional, many schools operate under the radar and continue to indulge in it. As is often the case, the practice is challenged only when a student gets fed up with having to listen to other people publicly express their faith.
[Read more…]

The problems with self-driving vehicles

Now that self-driving vehicles (SDVs) are becoming a reality, people are paying close attention to accident reports involving them. In almost all the cases, it appears that it was an error by the human in the other car that caused the accident. Here is a compilation of dash-cam videos taken from SDVs as they avoid accidents, some of which required quick reactions.


[Read more…]

The major lesson of Vietnam will never be learned

January 30 was the 50th anniversary of the launch of what is known as the Tet Offensive, Tet being the name of the Vietnamese New Year. The forces of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army launched a concerted attack on US and South Vietnamese all over South Vietnam and even right in the heart of Ho Chi Ming City (then called Saigon), including the headquarters of the South Vietnamese General Staff, the Independence Palace, the US Embassy, the Navy Headquarters, and the National Radio Station.
[Read more…]