Hud writes about the death of the movie theater. My husband and I went to the movies twice while we were home, but it's eight bucks a pop these days! For the price of the two of us, we can buy the movie instead and watch it as many times as we want. I much prefer going here on post, where the price is cheap and the National Anthem is rockin'.

Also, I'm a nerd, and I prefer to watch movies at home because I can knit.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:42 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

Bunker heard another ridiculous statement about how someone's freedom of speech was being trampled. Seriously, do people even know what that means? Have we become so comfortable in our Sanctuary that we can't even discern real oppression, real torture, or real human rights violations? Remember when I was reading The Gulag Archipelago? Remember how the first person to stop clapping at a tribute to Comrade Stalin, after 11 minutes of straight clapping, was sent to the gulag? Or the woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and happened to walk past a truck full of bodies? Or the man who had doodled on a newspaper photo of Stalin? All of them gone. Disappeared. Dead. That's a freaking example of not having freedom of speech. Heck, even Europe's closer than we are, where Oriana Fallaci can be prosecuted for being "offensive to Islam" in her book.

Anyone in the US who barks "freedom of speech" doesn't even know the meaning of the term. They live to see another day, don't they? They don't go to trial for the things they've said, do they?

They need a civics lesson.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 195 words, total size 1 kb.

This Amritas post about translating reminded me of a class I took in France. I signed up for it because it was called "Communication et Langage", but I didn't realize until I was weeks into the class that it was under the science dicipline and was a course about animal communication (I kept thinking we'd do a bit on animals and then make it to humans: we made it as far as gorillas.) One exciting aspect of the class was that my animal knowledge was pretty poor. I found that I could understand everything in the class except for the names of the animals. So I would write down what I thought I was hearing and then try to guess what animal it was by the description of how they communicate! And then I'd get home and look in a dictionary and go, "Oh, badgers!" It was a funny language learning experience because I knew everything in the sentences except for the key word!

Translating is hard, by the way. When I lived in France, my mother and uncle came to visit me, and we all went to visit my relatives. One elderly relative was very witty and was always making jokes and references to things that happened hours prior, and my mom and uncle always wanted to know why everyone was laughing. Then all the French relatives wanted to know why it took me three paragraphs to explain a one-liner...usually because I had to explain something that had happened two days before that I hadn't translated back then because I didn't think it was important. My brain was so tired at the end of that week.

When we first moved here to Germany, I was hard at work translating a Swedish play. I got twenty typed pages done before I got my job, and I haven't touched it since. I want to finish it after we get home from our vacation; I enjoy translating as a hobby, though I doubt I'm that good at it. I started translating this play because it's so good that I want others to be able to read it, and I can't even find an original Swedish copy, much less one in English translation. So I decided to make my own. I wish I could translate my favorite Swedish book too.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 389 words, total size 2 kb.

Teaching 7th grade has made me think a lot lately about parenthood. It scares the bejesus out of me, to be honest. I look at all these kids all day long, and I worry that my kid could be a jerk. I honestly think some aspects of it are luck-of-the-draw. Sergents' kids are jerks and captains' kids are jerks. White kids are jerks and black kids are jerks. Boys are jerks and girls are jerks. I really don't know what it is that makes a kid act like a complete fool, but I am scared to death that my own kid will be a jerk someday. 7th grade has really shut down my maternal instinct.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:53 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 117 words, total size 1 kb.

I have been thoroughly enjoying the book The Skeptical Environmentalist. It's amazing how things that we've been told our whole lives -- the "litany", as Lomborg calls it -- are not exactly true, or at least not exactly testable. Acid rain? Didn't happen. Exxon Valdez? Not as bad as everyone claimed. 40,000 species extinct every year? Ha. Global warming? Well, I'm just starting that chapter, but so far it's pretty untestable. It's an amazing read because one-third of the book is references and endnotes; Lomborg did his research. I'm disgusted by what makes it into science without sources.

Much of what Lomborg points out is the cost-benefit analysis of environmental issues. Sure we could save ocean-dwelling amoebas by banning fertilizer, but at what cost? Recycling paper might seem like you're helping the environment, but for the cost and effort, it's apparently better to burn the paper and plant new trees. I like Lomborg's approach of balancing nature and cost.

If you're interested, the introduction chapter is available on Lomborg's website. It's a good read.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:34 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 176 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Sarah, I bought the book when it first came out and I love it. My husband is a marine biologist and has checked many of Lomborg's references, they are right on, yet Lomborg was castigated by his profession and is still hit with slime from time to time. Truth hurts. If you know who Semmelweis was, you can understand why I bring him up. The truth will out but it may take a century. Do a google on my name and you will find my husband's book, his brother's books, (from Australia) and my son's book, a children's book. Only the last one is good reading for the masses, the first are reference.

Posted by: Ruth H at April 09, 2005 11:15 AM (po2/z)

2 Reading Lomberg puts a different perspective on Kyoto doesn't it. Check out junkscience.com it's a website that tracks bogus stories. The primary thing that bugs me about environmentalists is the brainwashing of the youth. When I make comments about the religion of environmentalism and what a crock it is there are people who I think would like to burn me at the stake.

Posted by: Toni at April 10, 2005 08:48 AM (OZMKs)

3 Sarah, You have just identified another area that goes under-reported / mis-represented... A lot like the military and the war in Iraq. Apparently balanced (not just good) news is just not sexy enough to sell. At the least, I wish the media would consider reporting on both sides of the issues. Anyway, the book is also one of my favorites. And Toni says it well... When you try to discuss these issues, people focus on what they hear, without a healthy skepticism. Oh well.

Posted by: Jean at April 11, 2005 08:51 PM (7jvO1)

4 I would take him more seriously if he were a scientist rather than a statistician with an axe to grind. The fact that he doesn't post any perr reviewed articles is a bright red flag screaming "hack alert!" as well. SciAm tore him a new one, though they went close to an hominem in some of their critiques. If you read the analysis of his work in Nature, though, you'll see that he is clearly dishonest. Go the the library and find a copy of that critique/review and you will see that the book is about as honest and insightful as those books written in '99 saying that the Dow was going to keep growing steadily to 30,000 with no hiccups. His most interesting stats are always from non-peer reviwed sources (some "facts" were even from works produced by industry lobbyists!). The way he skewed statistics looks more like deliberate misleading rather than sloppiness, though neither is really forgivable. If you want to make yourself feel good and pretend that we are not having a negative impact on the environment then it is a really great book. If you want to take an honest and unbiased look at the scientific data as presented by actual scientists then it is worthless. It is also valuable as a case study in how to abuse statistics and non-peer reviewed sources to decieve people.

Posted by: VOT at April 12, 2005 12:42 AM (k7PQl)

5 Hmm. Aren't we the little elitist, VOT? Peer-reviewed articles are highly overrated. The fact is, statistically speaking, Lomborg tears so-called "established" environmental science to shreds -- and he's a lot more honestly than the "scientists" you speak so highly of. Kyoto has been unmasked as a very expensive way to do little more than bankrupt the developed nations of the world while doing little or nothing at all for the undeveloped or developing nations. Frankly speaking, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq has done more for the "have-nots" of the world than any amount of money "have" nations will pour into bad jokes like Kyoto.

Posted by: Nathan at April 12, 2005 11:04 AM (Fj//k)

6 Sarah, I'd be wary of Lomborg's claims. Look at some actual data at:- www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Annual/HadCRUG.gif (The raw figures are also available there.) I've worked at Met Office, and they're good guys; if they say it, then there IS warming, world-wide. While you may doubt the causes, but be planning to cope with the results - which is called Global Climate Change, and includes changes in winds, temperatures, amount and timing of rainfall and cloud cover.

Posted by: Terry V. at April 14, 2005 06:49 AM (YawHj)

7 Terry, Lomborg doesn't say that warming won't happen, he only says that 1) current models fall short in being able to predict the extent of warming and 2) Kyoto is not a solution we need to entertain. If you could pick up the book, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the global warming chapter.

Posted by: Sarah at April 14, 2005 07:41 AM (MOoZ+)

8 Dang, I was out for a while in a conference. "Hmm. Aren't we the little elitist, VOT?" No. I'm quite down to Earth. I do believe that scientists are the experts whose positions on topics that they specialize in are more likely to be correct than the views of various yahoos spouting propaganda. The truth is that those spouting 'elitism' are usually dangeruosly close to relativism. Sadly relativism used to just be the sloppy minded thinking of the left, but these days our side is polluting ourselves with it. "Peer-reviewed articles are highly overrated." Perr review is one of the fundamental mechanisms for assuring scientific credibility. If you want to reject it, feel free, but it buts you outside the pale of current scientific method. See also remarks about relativism above. "The fact is, statistically speaking, Lomborg tears so-called "established" environmental science to shreds -- and he's a lot more honestly than the "scientists" you speak so highly of." The fact is that it makes you feel good to believe that. If you actually look at the critiques in Nature, you will see that not only was Lomberg using bad science, but he got his math wrong on fundamental points. When you correct his math errors, his argument falls apart. Bad science is not so surprising since he isn't a scientist. Bad math is unconscionable, as math is the thing Lomborg is supposed to be good at. "Kyoto has been unmasked as a very expensive way to do little more than bankrupt the developed nations of the world while doing little or nothing at all for the undeveloped or developing nations." I don't support Kyoto, I think it is both extreme and poorly conceived. That doesn't mean that I am going to ignore the reality that climate change and other significant environmental impact caused by humans are very real and that we continue to contribute to it. Lomborg wrote a book that lets the credulous pretend that unconfortable facts are not there. The fact is that we should be looking at reality objectively and not let political prejudices let us get sloppy in our thinking and pursuing the truth.

Posted by: VOT at April 16, 2005 07:31 PM (/FAAp)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Today the husband and I took a day trip to Nuernberg. We visited two very polar things: the oldest bratwurst restaurant in the world (dating back to 1419) and the Neues Museum, a museum of modern art. The bratwursts were awesome, and we intend to visit that restaurant again. The museum...well, I often think modern art should be called "weirdo art".

Back in the day, artists were praised for how closely their art could ressemble reality. Art was good if the shading was correct, the proportion was in perspective, and the figures actually looked like human beings. I'm no art connoisseur, but I figure that's the gist. Art was supposed to be beautiful. The Coronation of Napoleon is beautiful. George Washington Crossing the Delaware, though wrong, is beautiful. And I can even get a bit more modern. Some van Gogh is nice. I like La Grande Jatte. One time in college there was a student exhibit and one person had put together this sculpture with all different clear glass cubes filled with things: buttons, cotton, twigs, fireants, flower petals, string, etc. I was fascinated with that piece, and I even went and got my husband from his dorm room and dragged him back to see it. I loved that thing, even if it was weird. But what I saw today took weird to eleven.

If you zip-tie a bunch of old blankets together, is it art? If you spraypaint the body of a VW Bug silver, is it art? If you paint a giant canvas only green, is it art? Is a display of cell phones? When you enter a museum, you're supposed to be able to tell if something is a bench to sit on or a piece of art. But the straw that broke Andy Warhol's back for me was art by Gabrijel Stupica. I just don't understand.

Old timey classic art was art because it took extreme talent and skill. I can't draw a Rembrandt. But this? Who decided that this was art? How did Stupica become famous? I don't understand modern art because I don't understand who decides that it's good. There were perhaps three things that I liked in the Neues Museum, and the rest was just weird or lame. The ones I liked, I wanted to stare at. But I still don't understand why they're art.

And then we went to a restaurant that people have been eating at since they thought the earth was flat...

Posted by: Sarah at 02:09 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 414 words, total size 3 kb.

The husband and I watched FahrenHype 9/11 yesterday. I thought it was a very good rebuttal to the Michael Moore movie, and I'm sad that nearly no one in the US will see it. Why can't FahrenHype 9/11 get the theater time that the original did? I personally thought it was better made anyway. The whole time I was watching, I kept wishing that my Swedish friend could see it, since she got treated to Fahrenheit 9/11 on German prime time TV the night before the American election.

I felt the worst for the soldier who lost both of his arms; he had no idea he was in Fahrenheit 9/11. His footage was from an interview conducted with Brian Williams in which he explained what it feels like to lose a limb. His statements had nothing to do with the war or politics, and he certainly wasn't talking to Michael Moore. Moore used the footage without consulting this soldier, which is completely despicable in my eyes. Many of the people in Fahrenheit 9/11 had no idea they were going to be in a Michael Moore movie.

Moore is sneaky and corrupt. I wish more people could see FahrenHype 9/11 so they can get a more balanced view of the truth.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:17 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 212 words, total size 1 kb.

I think this is disgusting. In a comparative religion class, no one should be forced to bless Muhammad. Must they also refer to Jesus as "Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior"? I find this outrageous. Comparing religions should be a factual analysis of traditions and customs; students shouldn't have to participate in those customs in the class.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:46 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 59 words, total size 1 kb.

Mud wrestling? My husband's platoon barely has time to eat or sleep, and some units in Iraq have time for parties that would make fraternities jealous? What on earth is going on?

I've avoided writing about it so far, but one of the hardest things about the deployment for me to handle is the difference in mission. Some soldiers are working around the clock while others have so much free time that they're bored or causing trouble. Where is the sense in that?

I know I'm biased and think that my husband works harder than anyone else in Iraq. And maybe he does get more down time than I'm led to believe. But his company's sector is the size of Kosovo, so he doesn't even have time to go to the gym or talk to me. He's allowed 30 minutes on the computer, but often he doesn't take the full time because he's got too much to do. When he was in Najaf, he fell asleep on the phone with me: his platoon was working four hour shifts with two hour breaks (four on, two off, four on, two off) for an entire month. Not all units in Iraq are doing that.

I am trying to understand the distribution of missions in Iraq, but I can't. I hope that when my husband comes home, I can ask him more about what he's done. Perhaps I've misunderstood, but I think at the end of the day my husband would be far too tired to go to a mud wrestling party.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:21 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 261 words, total size 1 kb.

I hear people talkin' bad
About the way we have to live here in this country,

Harpin' on the wars we fight,
An' gripin' 'bout the way things oughta be.
An' I don't mind 'em switchin' sides,

An' standin' up for things they believe in.

But when they're runnin' down my country, man,
They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.

I read about some squirrely guy,
Who claims he just don't believe in fightin'.

An' I wonder just how long,
The rest of us can count on bein' free.

They love our milk an' honey,
But they preach about some other way of livin'.

When they're runnin' down my country, hoss,
They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 124 words, total size 2 kb.

I had heard about Ahmad Al-Qloushi before -- the Kuwaiti student whose college political science professor in California failed his pro-US paper and told him to get psychiatric counseling -- but until I read this post at the Rottweiler, I didn't know I could actually read Al-Qloushi's essay. The English teacher in me was intrigued.

A lot of people in the 'sphere, political science profs included, said they also would have given the essay an F. Several commenters have expressed the idea that if a student can't perform at a higher level than Al-Qloushi, he has no business being in college. That brings up a very delicate issue that I struggle with every day.

The university I work for is specifically designed for soldiers. There are no requirements of any kind for entrance, other than a high school diploma or GED. No ACT, no SAT, no high school transcript; if you want in, you're in. Some of our students are very bright, others are not. Some want to get an education, others want promotion points and couldn't care less about the content of the class. Some, I hate to say, probably have no business being in college, but they are.

So when I grade their essays, by what standard should I grade them? By my own, based on my classes at Truman State University? By a universal standard of Perfect Writing, as if that exists? Or by the standard of other students and how they match up to each other and what we've learned in the class? I generally have taken the latter approach, for better or for worse. I don't know of any other way to grade them; I walk the fine line between grade inflation and concrete benchmarks every day. I teach them structure, and if they follow it (or attempt), they do well. My students do not leave my class thinking like Den Beste or writing like Lileks, but hopefully they leave my class a little better than they came in.

Ahmad Al-Qloushi's essay ain't the greatest in the world. But I've seen far, far worse in my classes. He was also attending a junior college, not a top-rated university, which is where many of his critics work. I'm not saying that he deserved an A, only that perhaps his peers' papers weren't much better. He'd fit in perfectly in my class, where I have many non-native soldiers who write quite poorly. Hell, even my American-born soldiers make the same grammar mistakes Al-Qloushi made.

I'm not trying to justify a grade either way for this student, since I'm not a political science professor, but I can't help but wonder what the rest of the class' essays looked like. Were they similar, and thus did they also fail?

Posted by: Sarah at 04:41 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 462 words, total size 3 kb.

My husband's brother returned from Iraq safe and sound yesterday. Just a short six weeks until both boys are home.

And, in honor of the boycotts, yesterday I spent money on a Kitchenaid mixer, Bill Whittle's book, a TV/DVD for our education center, and a trip to Fort Lauderdale. Take that, protestors!

Posted by: Sarah at 01:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

The other English professor here offered to lend me a publication he uses in his classes that is a compilation of outstanding essays from incoming freshmen at Loyola University. It seemed like a good idea, but I just flipped through the entire thing, and I don't see myself reflected in any of the essays. Not a one. I don't see myself in essays entitled "Reagan-Era Backlash" or "A Socially Unjust Relationship in Wartime America" or "Dissenting Patriots." I don't hear my voice in essays about how money is the root of all evil, how war is always bad, and how the American Dream is "a prevalent [idea], but not a realistic one." And I sure as hell don't want to read an essay about how the 9/11 terrorists were acting under their own sense of justice, thus we can't judge them since justice means different things to different people. Plus I'm pissed off that the prof who lent me the book has dogeared the page on the essay "The Unjust Aspects of U.S. Foreign Policy."

There's not a single voice in this book that speaks to me. There's not a single incoming freshman I can relate to. I keep thinking about that kid from Protest Warrior and getting more and more depressed, knowing that his is a lonely voice.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 221 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Perhaps you could loan this prof your copy of Atlas Shrugged. The one with a big heart drawn around the sketch of Ayn on the back cover and a lipstick kiss on the front.

Posted by: mdmhvonpa at January 19, 2005 11:11 AM (/D3gv)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

John Kerry whines:

In his comments, Kerry also compared the democracy-building efforts in Iraq with voting in the U.S., saying that Americans had their names purged from voting lists and were kept from casting ballots.

Like my brother. Who would've voted Republican.

Posted by: Sarah at 01:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

I finished reading The End of Racism the other day, just in time for Martin Luther King Day. I've been thinking about the content of people's character lately. I don't care what color someone is as long as we can find some common ground. I have common ground with Baldilocks, Amritas, Vinod, and Zeyad, and we're all different colors. (Conversely, I have little in common with Wonkette, and we're exactly the same shade of pale.) Blogging is the great equalizer: often you read someone for months before you figure out what they look like, but it doesn't matter because relationships are based on ideas and brains instead of looks. CavX could have three eyeballs, and I wouldn't even care.

I'd say that the military is about the least racist place you can be. The Army discriminates on rank, not color, and there's so much intermarriage and living side by side. Everyone has the same experience in the Army, regardless of color. And my husband joked once that where in the civilian world could most of his big bosses be black (like his COL and MAJ were at the time). Unfortunately though, there are still a lot of people who feel the thumb of racism. Many of my black students write their essays on black issues, on racism, on discrimination. I wish sometimes we could move beyond those issues. I wish we could make it to "the end of racism." I just have a hard time trying to grok why we can't.

Eric posted MLK's essay War and Pacifism over at Thank My Recruiter. We're fighting a war now against people who want us dead because of the content of our character. They want us all dead, black and white. We need to find our common ground and band together to protect our country's character.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 312 words, total size 2 kb.

Apparently in 1970 there was a popular comedy show in the USSR patterned off of Laugh-In. So Laugh-In dedicated an episode to making fun of the Soviet version of the show, creating a Soviet "party room", Soviet jokes about the past and lack-of future, and a crappy looking wooden wall that they told Soviet knock-knock jokes from. Hilarious stuff. They were poking fun at the bad guys in WWIII. It's too bad times have changed; we're not even supposed to suggest that there is an enemy in WWIV. Apparently in the show 24, the terrorists were portrayed as...horrors...Muslims.

CAIR said it called for the meeting Wednesday -- which included representatives from CAIR's Southern California office and from the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council -- to "address the depiction of a 'Muslim' family that is at the heart of a terror plot in the popular program."

The Washington, D.C.-based group said it was concerned that the portrayal of the family as a terrorist "sleeper cell" may "cast a shadow of suspicion over ordinary American Muslims and could increase Islamophobic stereotyping and bias."

CAIR's statement today said that in addition to distribution of the PSAs, "FOX also gave meeting participants assurances that the program will be balanced in its portrayal of Muslims. Network representatives said that they had already reviewed existing episodes and removed some aspects that could potentially be viewed as stereotypical."

Thirty-five years ago, Laugh-In made the joke "Vy is the chickenk crossing de road? To defected to Poland, but he'll be back!" Today we're not even allowed to make-believe that the people we've been fighting for four years could be the bad guys in a drama. Heaven help us.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 283 words, total size 2 kb.

As an English professor, I walk the fine line between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. I'm a descriptivist, so if I were the only English teacher my students had to deal with, it wouldn't be such a big deal that I just ended that clause with a preposition. But the students leave my class and move on to a prof who studied in England and is much more prescriptive than I (or should I just go ahead and say "me"?). I don't care if they use contractions or end a sentence with the dreaded preposition, but he might.

Funny story: I once saw a student in my Swedish class insist to our teacher that you can't end a sentence with a preposition. She was horrified that you can do that quite comfortably in other languages and not feel the wrath of your 5th grade teacher.

Amritas has been writing about Ebonics for a few weeks now, and I've been meaning to jump into the conversation. Finally I couldn't stay away when I saw this, a quote from Labov with Amritas' interjections:

Linguists are building on sand until they can answer basic questions: what are the test-retest reliabilities of judgments of grammatical acceptability [that are essential to the Chomskyan enterprise -A]? Under what conditions do introspections match speech production? [That is, under what conditions do linguists' introspective judgments of grammaticality match what is actually being said by speakers? I can declare that a certain structure is 'wrong' in my office, but if millions use it without any impediment to understanding, then it is I who am wrong. -A]

We say things all the time that are completely comprehensible but grammatically wrong. So what makes them "wrong" if we can understand them? Why do I bother pointing out all the places my students need the past perfect tense in their narrative essays when nine times out of ten it makes no difference for understanding the story? Why is it like fingernails on a chalkboard to me when my students use the wrong relative pronoun, when no meaning at all is lost? Why do I even bother reminding them that "between you and me, he is taller than I"?

One of my German friends heard something on the TV that she was convinced was wrong. She was flabbergasted to learn that "It is I" is correct. I'm sure she's never heard it before. Another German was mad to learn that "Me and my husband are going on vacation", though common, is incorrect. They don't hear the prescriptive versions very often.

So what's a girl to do? For now, my strategy has been to refresh my students' memories on the prescriptive versions, all the while with the caveat that languages change and that someday "It is I" will likely be considered wrong since virtually no one will be saying it. But for now they have to sit on the cusp of language change, like it or not.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:24 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 438 words, total size 3 kb.

Oh. My. Lord. Michael Tucker reads my blog. Why anyone reads my blog I'll never understand, but this is huge.

Who the heck is Michael Tucker? Only the guy who filmed Gunner Palace. That's all, no big whoop.

Gulp.

Anyway, gathering self, Tucker is upset that his film will be given an R rating. Yep, soldiers cuss. Tucker humorously quotes General Patton: "You can't run an army without profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight it's way out of a piss-soaked paper bag." He also alluded to a recent editorial by Jack Valenti about how some ABC affiliates didn't show Saving Private Ryan because of the swear words.

But there are swear words and swear words, and never the twain shall meet.

One of my students and I had a long discussion over the summer as he was trying to gather ideas for his paper on the FCC. One of the things I brought up was how lots of naughty ideas can be expressed without using swear words. The examples I gave him were two songs: "What's Your Fantasy" by Ludacris and "The Bad Touch" by Bloodhound Gang. These songs get played all the time on the radio, but they allude to things far more explicit than the f-word alone would conjure. There are no swear words in "whips and chains, handcuffs / smack a little booty up with my belt" or "love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket / like the lost catacombs of Egypt only God knows where we stuck it", but they sure put some images into your mind! You don't need swear words to be explicit.

Conversely, you don't need to be explicit to have swear words. The swearing in Saving Private Ryan is a fact of life. Put 20 men in a life-threatening situation, and you're going to get some colorful language. But it's different than the swearing in a movie like Clerks -- which is also a fact of life but is there for humor -- or the movie Team America -- which I swear Parker and Stone use just to make people mad. The swearing in Gunner Palace is a reflection of reality; it's surely not meant to be titillating like scripted swearing.

When the WTC came crashing down, and the media was recording history in the making, we all heard swear words uttered in fright and horror. Do our children remember that day as a tragic moment in American history or the first day they heard the s-word on TV? Somehow I doubt that's the most important part of the story. The most important part of Gunner Palace or Saving Private Ryan is not that some GI used the f-bomb, but that some GI was there making history.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:49 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 462 words, total size 3 kb.

If you wear a Swedish flag on your clothing in Sweden, it means you are a neo-nazi. I was utterly shocked when my friend taught me that when I lived there. (This knowledge is echoed by singer Maja Ivarsson here, so it's not just that my friend is crazy.) I can't imagine what it must feel like to be ashamed of your flag.

Apollo 11 just landed on the moon: it was amazing. I only wish I had seen the original. And I realized today how freaking cool it is that there's an American flag on the moon. Had we not landed there until 2005, there would be no flag, but we landed in 1969, when it was still OK to think the United States was the best country in the world.

My husband hates the inclusive "we": I certainly had no hand in the moon landing, so I shouldn't put myself in Armstrong's pocket. But I've inherited the mentality that pushed the US to be first. I've inherited the vision that NASA embodies. I've inherited the drive that made Americans work their asses off for ten years simply to go and walk around on a hunk of dust. I'm a product of past determination and success.

There's an American flag on the moon and millions of dollars of equipment floating around in space because Americans decided they were going to the moon. I'm proud I inherited that history.

Posted by: Sarah at 01:46 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 241 words, total size 1 kb.

This weekend I also caught a John Wayne double header: Rio Bravo and El Dorado. (I didn't leave the couch much, being sick and all.) Um...is it just me, or are they the same movie? How did John Wayne get away with that? Sheriff gets dumped by a girl, sheriff turns into a drunk, The Duke sobers him up, everyone jokes that he needs a bath, the fresh new sheriff catches the bad guy and puts him in jail, the other bad guys try to bust him out, they capture one of the good guys and offer a trade, there's a shoot-out, John Wayne wins. Oh, and there are two sidekicks: a young whippersnapper named after a state, and a crotchety old man who guards the jail.

Of course I loved them both, because who doesn't love John Wayne (plus Ricky Nelson and James Caan), but that's the same freaking movie.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:07 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 155 words, total size 1 kb.