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Archives for October 2003
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Am I the only libertarian disturbed by the U.S. Army’s production and use of a violent FPS video game as a recruitment tool?
The use of military force abroad isn’t a game and it shouldn’t be promoted as such. And despite the Army’s claim that the game allows the player to “virtually experience Soldiering in the most realistic way possible,” I doubt the gameplay includes graphic representations of civilian casualties.
But even if you’re willing to ignore these issues, it’s still shady that the government is providing a free tax-subsidized video game that competes directly against private software companies in the marketplace.
They Killed Kenny…
How would you look as a Southpark character? Find out.
‘The Greatest Poet That Has (N)ever Existed’
Will Wilkinson has an interesting post discussing a rather odd remark made by Charles Murray in a recent interview:
“I think that the number of novels, songs, and paintings done since 1950 that anyone will still care about 200 years from now is somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Not exactly zero, but close. I find a good way to make this point is to ask anyone who disagrees with me to name a work that will survive–and then ask, “Seriously?” Very few works indeed can defend themselves against the “Seriously?” question.”
In responding to Murray’s assertion, Wilkinson asks the following question:
“A more interesting, albeit unanswerable, question would be: What works would a cultured person in 1800 cite as likely to last 200 years? And then the followup: Would he have been right?”
The question is far from unanswerable. Two hundred years ago The Poems of Ossian, a set of forged works attributed to a nonexistent Gaelic bard, would have been an unimpeachable selection for any list of works likely to last 200 years. Napoleon carried a copy of the book. Goethe wrote that “Ossian has, in his heart, supplanted Homer.” Thomas Jefferson even referred to the fictitious Ossian as “the greatest poet that has ever existed.”
Two centuries later, the book only really remains in print as a historical curiosity. And strangely, newspaper op-eds from roughly the same period are read as “classics” by every high school student in America.
There is a part of me that finds it arrogant that anyone would presume to know what works of art will stand the the test of time.
Another part of me immediately began making a list of my own, starting from Murray’s cutoff in 1950:
- Madame Récamier de David by René Magritte (1951)
- “4′33″” by John Cage (1952)
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
- On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan (1954)
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
- “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (1956)
- Kind of Blue by Miles Davis (1958)
I really don’t know for certain if any of these works will be remembered in 2203 A.D., but I simply don’t want to believe Murray will be right and these wonderful things will be forgotten.
Understatement of the Year Award
It seems that one of the subcontractors hired to work on the Berlin holocaust memorial was a supplier of Zyklon B gas pellets used in Nazi death camps. An International Herald Tribune article contained the following quote regarding the scandal:
“The problem we discussed is very complicated,” Lea Rosh, a member of the board, told a German newspaper on Sunday. “We asked ourselves: Where should one draw the line? And we came to the conclusion that the line is very clearly Zyklon B.”
Anyone’s Better Than Jackson
I’ve always found it a bit odd that our currency, with a few exceptions, features images of our presidents. While visiting France several years ago, I was amazed to learn that the French bank notes of the time (pre-Euro) bore the images of Eugène Delacroix, Blaise Pascal, Paul Cezanne, Gustav Eiffel, Marie Curie and other figures whose contributions were not primarily to the political realm. I found it to be a rather enlightened act. If we were to take the same approach, whom would we select? A few names come easily to mind:
- Duke Ellington
- Mark Twain
- The Wright Brothers
Whom would you add to the list?
Easy as ABC
Find out what happens when a forensic artist uses age progression techniques to determine how Michael Jackson would look had he passed on the plastic surgery.
Wouldn’t You Really Rather Have a Buick?
Is anyone else a little creeped out by the new Buick advertising campaign?
“Hi, I’m Harley Earl and I’ve risen from the dead to build you a great car.”
