When
· Naughties
· · 2005
· · · May
· · · · 16 (3 entries)
“An Art of Flawless and Unredeemable Vulgarity” · For those of us inclined to reading, there are few pleasures sweeter than an unalloyed, unsugared, unmerciful polemic, delivered with style and vigor and aimed at a thoroughly deserving target. Which is to say, Anthony Lane’s triumphant trashing of Revenge of the Sith is a masterpiece, and we are all in George Lucas’ debt for giving Lane such a monumental and soft target. Lane is purely and unapologetically mean-spirited, punching gleefully well below the belt and connecting with every blow. I am no more than a grasshopper in the presence of a master, but am still moved to remark that Lucas is a pasty-faced overgrown adolescent with a really dumb haircut, and that his talent for the occasional really great special effect in no way makes up for his lame plot devices, preschooler-cartoon characters, and profound lack of good taste.
Hey There, Big Blue! · So, it’s now officially OK for IBMers to blog. I read their policy guidelines with interest, since I led the drafting of the Sun version when we launched just over a year ago. The IBM policy is remarkably consistent with ours, there are only a few differences that leap out at me. First, there is specific advice to “speak in the first person”, which I think is excellent and we should steal next time we do a revision. Second, under the heading “Add value” there is language that makes it pretty clear that blogs on IBM properties are supposed to be about IBM’s business and not much else. I guess this is reasonable, but it would rule out things like our globalful and Isa, which add some chuckles to the world and don’t cost much. Even our mostly-tech blogs regularly veer out into off-the-job territory, for example, I just hopped over to blogs.sun.com and out of the most recent posters picked chandanlog(3C). Hmm. Finally, under the heading “Don’t pick fights” (who could disagree) there is a flat statement “You should avoid arguments”, and that’s just wrong. Human intellectual progress relies heavily on arguing things out, some guy named Socrates was a pioneer. About three-quarters of my job consists of arguing with people about one thing or another, how could I not do it here? A blogosphere without arguments would be a poor, thin, boring place. Still, it’ll be nice to have IBM around, and here’s my advice to to all the incoming Big Blue bloggers: don’t forget to have fun.
Party Party · British Columbia is having an election Tuesday the 17th. I won’t be there because I’m taking a plane out at 7AM, so on the weekend I took the kid off to the advance poll. I thought I’d turn it into a civics lesson, but a parliamentary election turns out to have too many levels to explain easily. He got the idea about picking a name and marking an “X” beside it, though. In BC there are two parties that matter, the Liberals (their website is wonky in Safari, bah) and the NDP. In American terms, the Liberals are approximately moderate Republicans and the NDP approximately liberal Democrats. The last NDP government was incredibly bad and the voters got so irritated they elected a legislature with the Liberals holding 77 of 79 seats. The NDP has gotten rid of most of the clueless schemers from last time around and while they aren’t expected to win, we should have a better-balanced legislature after the election. Also the Green Party is looking strong and may elect a few members this time, which I think would be healthy. In our riding, the Liberals are running a boring marketing exec while the NDP has a boyish entrepreneur (creator of Happy Planet juices. Along with these two, the Greens, and an independent, we had candidates from the Work Less Party (Workers of the World - RELAX!) and the Sex Party. Seems like these last two should contemplate a merger.
