Competing Interests in Environmental Friendliness

Bike lanes encourage cities to be more environmentally friendly. So do driverless cars. But to me they seem competing in interest. A city with bizarre bike lanes set ups will be inherently much more difficult for a driverless car to navigate. Further, a flow of bikers will represent a complex and fluid array of potential hazards the car's computer system will need to avoid.
On the other hand, driverless cars, by their very nature, are way more fuel efficient than manually-controlled cars. And thus a city interested in protecting the environment would want to create a road system that was driverless car-friendly. Which might mean moving bikes as far off the road as possible in order to eliminate hazards to the cars.


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The Hypocritical Failings of Andrew Sullivan

OMG Andrew Sullivan. The worst kind of person is the one that when proven categorically wrong doubles down on his position. This is exactly what Andrew Sullivan openly loathed about right-wing pundits circa 2008-2011. This sociopathic behavior was one of his strongest criticisms of Sarah Palin. And thus, he has become exactly what he most loudly hated. But then, isn't that how it always goes?

Seriously Andrew, can ANYTHING make you disappointed with Barack Obama?



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Privilege

Sully posted a link to this video of Tim Doner, a 17-year-old polyglot who can speak (to varying degrees) nearly 20 languages.

It is barely mentioned in the video, but Tim attends The Dalton School. And to me that was the singularly most important detail about this boy, and we can draw so many conclusions from it.

While its easy to celebrate Mr. Doner's accomplishments and truly I would be a jackass to not acknowledge that the kid is obviously brilliant, what would be equally egregious is if I didn't ask just how many languages he would have learned if he had grown up in Kansas City Public Schools? Or in East St. Louis? Or anywhere other than a posh prep school in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that regularly matriculates a vast number of students to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton?

Ask yourself, as you watch that video, two questions. The first is the one I've spoken above...how would Tim Doner have done without all that privilege?

The second, vastly more important question, is what our society would look like if every teenager had access to the education quality found among ultra-rich Manhattan prep school attendees. What if every school was a Dalton School? What if every American student could be taught Mandarin by a native-speaking Chinese teacher in a class with a student/teacher ratio of 3/1?

I think there's a deep cynicism in America right now, evidenced by Federal and State budget cuts to education. It implies that humans are no longer something the Government thinks of as a good investment. I realize crony capitalism and lobbying and what have you tend to drag government dollars away from things like education, but nevertheless many Congresspersons are parents and therefore have to realize by cutting state education budgets they are crippling the ability of future generations to create a productive and vibrant society and economy.
Or...they are secure in their own privilege and subsequently their children's privilege allows them to attend a local Dalton School analogue, making the state education cuts meaningless to them personally. Nevertheless this indicates cynicism, because it means those Congresspersons believe that state education will not produce anything but bad apples and chaff, so why bother spending state money on it, and the students within it.
Or...they are simply so cynical about the future of American society that they'll throw it away in favor of a hedonistic, cronyism-filled present.

Because unless you are cynical about the future, you'd be throwing everything you can at the kids. They're our salvation. You'd be shoving free biology textbooks into their hands, begging them to find cures. You'd give them unfettered access to high-performance computing facilities and climate data and beg them to solve anthropogenic climate change. You'd install gigabit internet in every school, give every student a laptop, maybe an iPad. You'd demolish old schools and build new ones with big north-facing windows and ask the kids to sit there for an hour a day and dream up a brighter future. You'd pay the best teachers a small fortune to go into the slums and teach kids there. And in places where kids left school everyday and had to go to an unsafe home, you'd open cutting-edge boarding schools where they could learn in an environment of trust and security. And you'd not give two shiny shits what any of this cost because you'd realize the cynicism should be turned back on your generation, and not projected forward onto the children. You broke the world. But the kids can fix it. That is, if you just stopped knee-capping them the day they're born.

Honesty is necessary, too. We can't have a world where 100% of children turn into Tim Doner at age 17. The reality is that a bell curve exists. Someone else might learn as hard as he can and achieve the best he can achieve: Air Conditioner Repairman. But at least he will have come to that profession honestly, as opposed to now, where a privilege pyramid exists and honest, good service professions are looked down upon from above by those who were born into a caste that would never have had to do that work anyway.

There are few things that annoy me more than state budget cuts to education. When you cut education funding, only the rich get educated.


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Parenthood

Is way more fun than blogging.

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American Capitalism

Capitalism is sort of like a game of poker, where people are all competing against one another. Everyone gets five cards, and if you are skillful and know how to bluff when you need to - and you get a lucky hand every now and then - you can win out.

Now, American Capitalism is a little different. In American Capitalism, whoever comes to the table with the most money almost always wins. This happens because you can pay the dealer to give you extra cards. Or you can pay the dealer to withhold cards from your competitors.

In American Capitalism, if you win a hand and it is discovered that you cheated by peeking at your neighbor's cards, you are only fined a small percentage of your winnings.

In American Capitalism, if you complain to the dealer that you only got 4 cards and your competitor six, you are chastised for being lazy, and you are expected to overcome the seemingly unfair odds.

In American Capitalism if you get a bad hand you can just buy new cards. If you cannot afford new cards, you must play the hand you're dealt.

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The Daily Dish - Andrew throws in the towel

Sullivan, this morning: "it remains unlikely that we will reach our target of $900,000 by the end of the year"

He goes on, ironically: "But I didn’t start this blogging thing to be rich. I started it to be free."

That's just the thing, Andrew. The internet wants to be free. When you enacted your paywall, you committed Internet Original Sin: you thought people would pay you for something they could get elsewhere for free.


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TAE's Iron Man 3 Review

Obviously, don't read this if you don't want to be spoiled.

First off, I was entertained. I'm not one of those pretentious people who expects The Best Movie Of All Time every time I walk into a theater. I rarely go to movies, and when I do I intentionally set a low bar so that I don't feel like my precious time and money were wasted. With that in mind, I very much enjoyed Iron Man 3 from start to finish.

(stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled, last warning...)

But....

First, a bit of history. Since Tony Stark/Iron Man was debuted exactly 50 years ago this past March, he's had hundreds of enemies. But the four greatest are (arguably) these: The Hammer family (Justin and his daughter Justine), The Stanes (Obadiah and his son Ezekiel), The Mandarin, an Doctor Doom. At least that is my opinion. So when Iron Man 1 featured, Obadiah Stane, and Iron Man 2 featured Justin Hammer, I was on board. Rumors began flying, before Iron Man 3 filmed, that the primary villain would be Mandarin, so I was pumped. Mandarin had been an on-going nemesis of Iron Man for the last 49 years, so there was plenty of source material!
Another bit of history. The "Extremis" storyline in the Iron Man comics was written by Warren Ellis in 2005-2006 and is consistently ranked amongst the top 3 Iron Man storylines ever (Armor Wars and Demon In A Bottle are the other two). In this storyline, Aldrich Killian, a scientist at A.I.M., commits suicide, leaving a note for his colleague Maya Hansen that he has let Extremis loose on the world. One man, Mallen, is given the Extremis serum, and when Tony Stark tracks him down Mallen beats him to within an inch of his life. In the critical moment, a dying Tony Stark realizes he must take the Extremis serum himself in order to survive and defeat Mallen. Stark takes the serum, recovers, finds himself able to communicate directly with his suit as the Extremis serum has turned him into a cyborg, and he goes and defeats Mallen.

And then we have , Iron Man 3. Look, I get it. There's no rule that says "thou shalt follow the comics dutifully." And with that in mind, I am willing to look past the fact that Iron Man's oldest foe was instead 'Ben Kingsley pretending to be Russell Brand'. I was willing to not care that Tony Stark doesn't get the Extremis serum, Pepper does. I was willing to let it slide that War Machine is rebranded "Iron Patriot" even though "Iron Patriot" is actually a villain (Norman Osborne) in the comics.

But what I can't abide are plot holes. I jokingly told a friend once that what Hollywood needs is a profession where you just read screenplays and point out the flaws. All screenplays should be required to get a pass from this person before the movie can be filmed. In Iron Man 3, the plot holes were not hard to find...

Late in Iron Man 3, the game is clear: Killian and Hansen have kidnapped Pepper and injected the Extremis serum into her so that Tony will be forced to fix Extremis and save Pepper from exploding. If this is true, why then did earlier in the movie Killian have a squadron of attack helicopters shoot missiles into Tony's house while Pepper, Stark, and Hansen are all inside?! At one point during that early helicopter attack, a goon is firing a gatling gun directly at Stark and only the fast acting Mark 42 armor saves him from being shot in the back. At another point, Stark, in the armor, is pulled deep into the ocean, and the helicopters seem to leave, presuming him dead. Please someone explain why Killian was attempting to kill Tony (and Pepper and his co-conspirator Hansen) all at once!

The ENTIRE plot of Iron Man 2 hinges on the idea that the arc reactor is the key technology that makes Iron Man a superhero. Whiplash replicates the tech and suddenly Iron Man is vulnerable. In Iron Man 1, the arc reactor is a key plot point, as Stane needs it to power his Iron Monger suit (and no other Stark Industries engineer can replicate it) so he literally steals it right out of Tony's chest. Please someone explain then why Tony is seen in Iron Man 3 charging his armor with a car battery? Ignoring the fact that car batteries are actually really bad at charging things (they are high current so they can crank your engine, but they drain after an hour of running your headlights), why doesn't he just plug his arc reactor into the armor to charge it...you know, like how the armors were powered in literally every instance on film before this moment?

Going back to Extremis...Hansen and Killian have injected it into Pepper to force Tony to fix the serum so that he can save Pepper. He refuses, and...yet...Pepper doesn't explode...

Tony has an anxiety attack at one point and the 10-year-old, Harley, suggests he fix his anxiety issues by "building something." Tony appears to have a Eureka moment and says "okay" and builds...a Nintendo Power Glove? The source of, nor the solution to, Tony's anxiety is never really explained.

What, exactly, was Pepper doing as a day job? At the end of Iron Man 2, she tells Tony she will absolutely not be CEO anymore. But clearly (and Kevin Feige confirmed it) she is still CEO of Stark Industries. Okay, fine. Then why is she in California? Didn't Stark Industries build a big, tall, shiny, environmentally friendly corporate headquarters in New York City that was a key plot point in The Avengers? If Pepper Potts is CEO of Stark Industries, why is she...in fact why are any Stark employees...in Malibu? Consistency, Marvel! Come on!

When Killian comes to Stark Industries to ask Pepper to invest in his project, she clearly knows him...but from where? She wasn't at the 1999 scene in Bern.

Will someone please explain to me how the Extremis girl immobilizes the Iron Patriot armor (just by touching it) with Rhodes still inside it, yet its internal computer systems still work, Iron Patriot/Rhodes is transported instantaneously to Miami, and then after Killian blasts his Extremis heat onto the Iron Patriot armor's tummy, somehow the goon, Savin, is able to make it fly and shoot and stuff? Who at A.I.M. is technologically capable of fixing the Iron Patriot armor (in under an hour)?

Multiple heavily-armed terrorist helicopters moving up the Pacific Coast Highway, then firing missiles and guns, and there's no military response? Suspension of belief can only go so far...

Killian: "We need to capture Pepper Potts so we can use her as leverage to force Tony Stark to fix our Extremis serum."
Hansen: "Okay, she drives herself places with absolutely no security, let's use some of our helicopters and our limitless supply of goons and just grab her when she's alone in her car."
Killian: "Woah woah woah, this is a summer blockbuster! We need a MUCH more elaborate kidnapping plot than that! And I need to be there personally, and then back in Miami minutes later."

All that being said, in terms of plot holes, this movie was SO much better than Prometheus.


And now for the good things.
Tony's interaction with the boy, Harley, were very good. While I thought the anxiety attack/NYC PTSD character development was weak, I really enjoyed his interaction with the kid, and I thought the dialogue was pretty genuine. Tony's interaction with the news van technician was also great. In fact generally the dialogue throughout the whole movie was really sharp.

Holy Hall of Armors, Batman! So many awesome armors. I felt a little cheated that we only got to see about a dozen of them up close before Tony blew them all up.

In general, I thought the movie's overall plot was really good. The character Tony Stark is at his best when he has to face human problems, and can't just hide inside his armor and blast things. And generally, this entire fracas was created by Tony Stark in 1999 he simultaneously blew off Aldrich Killian and also arrogantly provided evidence on his nametag to Maya Hansen that he could fix Extremis. Put another way, this movie did a great job of showing that Iron Man's greatest foe is always actually Tony Stark.

Who have you trampled in your past? I am a smart guy, I walked out of the theater wondering who I have wronged in the past that might hold a grudge against me. Or what opportunities I might have missed because I was arrogant.
Had Stark helped Killian/Hansen with Extremis, how much better would the world have been? In this movie version, Extremis is a serum capable of regrowing limbs. In Iron Man 1, Stark has a crisis because he's spent his life building weapons...what if he had funded and worked with Killian/Hansen on Extremis? Stark Industries might not have been just a weapons manufacturer by 2008.
This is why I will give this movie good marks. It simultaneously entertained me as well as made me retrospective about my own decisions.

All in all, I recommend this movie to all audiences.

A couple parting thoughts:
Am I the only one that thinks Jon Favreau randomly showed up on set dressed as John Travolta from Pulp Fiction, everyone laughed, and they let him stay in that outfit...and that it was NOT planned? He looked completely ridiculous and it was distracting.

Having seen all three Iron Man movies, Thor, Captain America, all four X-Men movies, Wolverine, both Fantastic Four movies, both Hulk movies, Daredevil, Elektra, all four Spider-Man movies, and The Avengers, I have to say: there is only one Joss Whedon.


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