Avatar is being billed must-see as the most expensive movie ever made.
As the actual production costs are not, for the genre, unusually excessive, it appears -- if the billing it to be believed -- that it is the marketing budget that broke records.
One wonders why with a film promising a revolutionarily magical viewing experience and fawningly reviewed by the best critics requires record-setting marketing.
Not all the buzz has been positive. Following South Park, many have derided the film as "Dances With Smurfs". The Independant sees the film as an "allegory of US adventurism in the Middle East". One conservative blogger crudely, labels the film "Liberal Porn of Doe-eyed nature lovers killing Marines," another simply questions "drawing the audience to cheer the brutal deaths of Americans."
Avatar's opening weekend -- hurt by an east coast snow storm -- appears to roughly track that of the awfully reviewed 2012, with relatively mediocre domestic revenue supplemented by strong performance overseas (where, presumably, fewer people have qualms cheering the brutal deaths of Americans).
The performance of Sherlock Holmes, which opens this friday, may provide a rough baseline to calculate how much 20th Century Fox and James Cameron cost themselves by injecting divisive politics into their blockbuster movie.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Fourth and Two
Bill Belichek widely admired (or, depending on one’s perspective, reviled) as a cold-hearted football coaching genius, was widely attacked for, against conventional wisdom, choosing to go for a fourth and two from his own 29 and losing the game. Two New York Times blogs (here and here) defend the decision, calculating that he made the statistically correct decision for the team, if not for his career. Bill Simmons undermines that statistical argument by noting that the assumed odds of making a fourth and two are meaningfully different than converting a two point conversion.
Given the ultimate fuzziness of the statistical argument, whether one condemns or defends Belichek’s choice would seem to reduce, more or less, to whether one prefers to defer to, or align with, the genius coach or the accepted practice.
It is worth understanding that beneath the presented alternatives lie divergent sets of values. The accepted practice, in the end, argues that the Patriots should not have beaten themselves. If Indy was able to drive seventy yards in two minutes for the touchdown, they deserved the win. To this way of thinking, the job of a coach is not as much to directly give his team the best chance of winning, as it is to put the best team on the field. Belichek supporters disregard the testimony of former players – since, to some degree, supported by the Patriots subsequent performance -- that Belichek’s choice came at the expense of the product-on-the-field.
In the end, Belicheck likely did not have finely tuned statistical analysis on hand. The call more likely came from his gut. As he described it, he saw a chance to win and took it.
Given the ultimate fuzziness of the statistical argument, whether one condemns or defends Belichek’s choice would seem to reduce, more or less, to whether one prefers to defer to, or align with, the genius coach or the accepted practice.
It is worth understanding that beneath the presented alternatives lie divergent sets of values. The accepted practice, in the end, argues that the Patriots should not have beaten themselves. If Indy was able to drive seventy yards in two minutes for the touchdown, they deserved the win. To this way of thinking, the job of a coach is not as much to directly give his team the best chance of winning, as it is to put the best team on the field. Belichek supporters disregard the testimony of former players – since, to some degree, supported by the Patriots subsequent performance -- that Belichek’s choice came at the expense of the product-on-the-field.
In the end, Belicheck likely did not have finely tuned statistical analysis on hand. The call more likely came from his gut. As he described it, he saw a chance to win and took it.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
2012
The political foolishness of the common Conservative tendency to tar anyone to one's left with a common brush is more and more apparent.
While we do seem to have on the right a more defined topology of competing views -- witness the more idealogical difference between, for example, McCain and Huckabee, compared to that between Obama and Hillary -- there does appear to be at least one increasingly sharp division on the left.
The root of this division is the natural tendency of power to seek more power, which in politics results in the governing party seeking to expand the power of government. The greatest example of this is how the party of Ronald Reagan became the party of W Bush.
For all the efforts made, big government conservatism was always ill fitting and mostly shucked once Republicans lost power.
On the left, however, there is a strong core -- perhaps up to 15% of the electorate -- of, for lack of a better label, Socialists, who ideologically support an ever-expanding government. In the other corner of the left are -- again, for lack of a better label -- Liberals who believe that Government ought be part of the solution to national problems, but who also share, to some degree, with conservatives, belief in the traditional classically liberal American values.
With Obama's election, the "Socialists" are in now power and the "Liberals" appear to be slowly getting squeamish.
The earliest manifestation of this was, perhaps, Joe Lieberman's excommunication. Lieberman, who volunteered for Bobby Kennedy and freedom summer, remains very much a traditional Liberal. In his principled opposition to the current push for socialized medicine he expressed a very Liberal creed: "Sometimes the private sector does things that are wrong, and when they do, you regulate—sometimes you litigate, But never in the history of America ... have we tried to keep one industry honest by having government go into that business to compete with the industry."
Another illustration is Jon Stewart's antipathy towards the groupthink that increasingly appears to be part of global warming science -- intellectual integrity and independence is a core value of the Liberal, but not Socialist, left.
In an editorial today, the Times stated unambiguously its common-sense position that a bank that is too big too fail ought not be allowed to exist. The Socialists in power prefer, instead, to expand the power of government further by entrenching and controlling the largest firms.
In the 2012 elections, Republicans will have the option of nominating a staunch conservative who in the best of circumstances could win less than 55% of the vote. Democrats, then, would likely continue to respond with (stealth) Socialist candidates and our politics would continue to be played in the red zone.
I pray -- though am not optimistic -- that Republicans will find the wisdom to choose a principled moderate who can remind Liberals of our shared values. Such a candidate could hope to win upwards 60% of the vote, with meaningful coattails, presenting Democrats with the choice of marginalizing their Socialists or facing political irrelevance.
While we do seem to have on the right a more defined topology of competing views -- witness the more idealogical difference between, for example, McCain and Huckabee, compared to that between Obama and Hillary -- there does appear to be at least one increasingly sharp division on the left.
The root of this division is the natural tendency of power to seek more power, which in politics results in the governing party seeking to expand the power of government. The greatest example of this is how the party of Ronald Reagan became the party of W Bush.
For all the efforts made, big government conservatism was always ill fitting and mostly shucked once Republicans lost power.
On the left, however, there is a strong core -- perhaps up to 15% of the electorate -- of, for lack of a better label, Socialists, who ideologically support an ever-expanding government. In the other corner of the left are -- again, for lack of a better label -- Liberals who believe that Government ought be part of the solution to national problems, but who also share, to some degree, with conservatives, belief in the traditional classically liberal American values.
With Obama's election, the "Socialists" are in now power and the "Liberals" appear to be slowly getting squeamish.
The earliest manifestation of this was, perhaps, Joe Lieberman's excommunication. Lieberman, who volunteered for Bobby Kennedy and freedom summer, remains very much a traditional Liberal. In his principled opposition to the current push for socialized medicine he expressed a very Liberal creed: "Sometimes the private sector does things that are wrong, and when they do, you regulate—sometimes you litigate, But never in the history of America ... have we tried to keep one industry honest by having government go into that business to compete with the industry."
Another illustration is Jon Stewart's antipathy towards the groupthink that increasingly appears to be part of global warming science -- intellectual integrity and independence is a core value of the Liberal, but not Socialist, left.
In an editorial today, the Times stated unambiguously its common-sense position that a bank that is too big too fail ought not be allowed to exist. The Socialists in power prefer, instead, to expand the power of government further by entrenching and controlling the largest firms.
In the 2012 elections, Republicans will have the option of nominating a staunch conservative who in the best of circumstances could win less than 55% of the vote. Democrats, then, would likely continue to respond with (stealth) Socialist candidates and our politics would continue to be played in the red zone.
I pray -- though am not optimistic -- that Republicans will find the wisdom to choose a principled moderate who can remind Liberals of our shared values. Such a candidate could hope to win upwards 60% of the vote, with meaningful coattails, presenting Democrats with the choice of marginalizing their Socialists or facing political irrelevance.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Shared Intentionality
From the Science Times: We May Be Born With an Urge to Help
The article opens by claiming biologists are overturning dour traditional -- that of philosophers, theologians, and parents -- notions of human nature. They have found that human children are naturally more helpful, co-operative and social than chimpanzees.
The article centers on a book by a Dr Tomasello who teaches that children develop "shared intentionality", described as the propensity to abide by, and enforce, social norms, which he believes parents ought reinforce. To Dr Tomasello -- a co-director of an institute for evolutionary anthropology -- shared intentionality evolved very early on -- it is handy when hunting -- and is a foundation of human culture.
The article then quotes one Dr. de Waal, a primatologist, who teaches that humans are naturally empathetic -- only psychopaths are not -- and therefore the humaneness of societies is, thankfully, ground in biology, not "the whims of politics, culture or religion."
The article notes (in an apparent non sequitur) that "experiments have shown that people will reject unfair distributions of money even it means they receive nothing" and, more relevantly, is fair enough to acknowledge that social norms may, in part, be enforced negatively and that warfare is also an expression of this human capacity for co-operation. It concludes with one final lesson from Dr. Tomasello that "we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time."
This final lesson is, of course, very consistent with the traditional teachings that the article claimed biologists were overturning.
Above all, the article is wonderfully self-referencing. Enforced social norms apply as much to thought as to behavior. Without them, those who easily imagine the roots of human nature as adapted to prehistoric lifestyles would have less difficulty understating how our traditional political, cultural and religious structures might be adapted to human nature (and, in turn, human nature to them). More-over, if there is, here, a new way of thinking upending previously established norms, it is brought about by people raised to rebel against any naturally developed shared intentionality.
The article opens by claiming biologists are overturning dour traditional -- that of philosophers, theologians, and parents -- notions of human nature. They have found that human children are naturally more helpful, co-operative and social than chimpanzees.
The article centers on a book by a Dr Tomasello who teaches that children develop "shared intentionality", described as the propensity to abide by, and enforce, social norms, which he believes parents ought reinforce. To Dr Tomasello -- a co-director of an institute for evolutionary anthropology -- shared intentionality evolved very early on -- it is handy when hunting -- and is a foundation of human culture.
The article then quotes one Dr. de Waal, a primatologist, who teaches that humans are naturally empathetic -- only psychopaths are not -- and therefore the humaneness of societies is, thankfully, ground in biology, not "the whims of politics, culture or religion."
The article notes (in an apparent non sequitur) that "experiments have shown that people will reject unfair distributions of money even it means they receive nothing" and, more relevantly, is fair enough to acknowledge that social norms may, in part, be enforced negatively and that warfare is also an expression of this human capacity for co-operation. It concludes with one final lesson from Dr. Tomasello that "we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time."
This final lesson is, of course, very consistent with the traditional teachings that the article claimed biologists were overturning.
Above all, the article is wonderfully self-referencing. Enforced social norms apply as much to thought as to behavior. Without them, those who easily imagine the roots of human nature as adapted to prehistoric lifestyles would have less difficulty understating how our traditional political, cultural and religious structures might be adapted to human nature (and, in turn, human nature to them). More-over, if there is, here, a new way of thinking upending previously established norms, it is brought about by people raised to rebel against any naturally developed shared intentionality.
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