My kids' Dad

Obsession the Movie

Just saw one of the best films about the threat of radical Islam. Called Obsession it is cogent and compelling. It paints a grim picture and explains why so many would refuse to accept an image which upsets their world of peace and ignorance.

One of the best moments of the film is how they show Neville Chamberlain signing a treaty with Hitler. The film provides ample evidence that the peace movements of today are just as misguided. We are right to desire peace and a world where love is the currency of life. Unfortunately the facts and my own years of experience and learning dash this hope. For those who may think I am being a pessimist I would ask you what you advice you would give the Jewish children who were told that the gas chambers were only showers. Truly without God's help we are in a worse predicament.

Despite this there is still an answer to the violence that is intended upon us. That answer is to grow in knowledge and develop strong relationships with our Muslim friends and neighbors. Building fear and suspicion will play into the extremists hands. There is a counter movement within Islam rejecting violence and terror and we need to understand and support it. So first we need to learn and this film is a good first step.

The official summary:

Obsession is a must see documentary about Radical Islam’s war against the west. Using images from Arab TV, rarely seen in the West, Obsession reveals an ‘insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination.  With the help of experts, including first-hand accounts from a former PLO terrorist, a Nazi youth commander, and the daughter of a martyred guerilla leader, the film shows, clearly, that the threat is real. A peaceful religion is being hijacked by a dangerous foe, who seeks to destroy the shared values we stand for.  The world should be very concerned.

We are the superior being

Since Blockbuster just raised rates on their programs we switched to Netflix for DVDs. We like the TotalAccess program where we could exchange the DVDs at our local store but we weren't about to spend more on our monthly fees. We discovered the Watch Instantly feature that streams some movies direct to our PC (Vista) and have been enjoying the new Dr. Who series (which airs on Sci-Fi Channel). This led me to track down this video from the KLF (Timelords) which the kids love:

DISCLAIMER: Although we love this video, we DO NOT endorse the indiscriminate extermination of Daleks.

Passover Epilogue

The family enjoyed Jesus Christ Superstar last Sunday. The show was entertaining and the family enjoyed the event. We waited after the show to talk to Ted Neeley and were not disappointed. He spent 10-15 minutes talking to us and was so gracious. He reminisced about the old venue I had worked at and chatted up each of the kids. Since it was Easter cast member had received Easter baskets with little goodies so some cast members also gave my kids some of those little edible peeps and some miracle bubbles. Now my kids can tell our rabbi that on Easter they talked to Jesus and were given gifts by the apostles.

I also rented the DVD The Pursuit of Happyness which deals with the lengths a father goes through to take care of his son. It is based upon a true story and uplifting. The other DVD I recently rented was Water which is about a 7 year old Hindu girl that is just married and then widowed and forced to spend her life as a widow. It is enjoyable and also makes for a pretty good companion film to Richard Attenborough's  Gandhi which was splendid, O Bapu!

Passover DVD Review

I have had the chance to watch a number of DVDs lately and several are worth mentioning.

Borat was a mix of rolling on the floor funny and boorish and insulting. One of the best scenes was on the subway when Cohen was confronting New Yorkers. The lowest point was when he visited someone's home and insults the host's graciousness. Hopefully it was staged and not genuine.

I stumbled across Conversations with God at a local Blockbuster and found it inspiring. The film is a biography of Neale Walsch who becomes homeless and dictates a series of books which reveal how anger against God can be turned into peace.

Then we received some free passes to see Peaceful Warrior which despite the lukewarm reviews was also quite good.This film is the story of Dan Millman who struggles to reach the Olympics as a gymnast during college. The essence is that in order to reach our potential we must discover ourselves. The movie is filled with meaningful observations, such as thinking something does not represent who we are but the action we take upon thoughts does. Another example is after Dan is told to abstain from drinking and partying he goes to a bar with his mentor who buys him a drink and lights up a cigar, the point he makes is that what is important is to be in control of your actions with full understanding and responsibility for those actions. There are quite a few humorous moments as well. The film is also an introduction into the series of books that teach the same philosophy.

Finally we rented The Ten Commandments: The Musical since it seemed appropriate for the Passover holidays. The whole family enjoyed it and I thought the movie offered good perspective that is missing in more classic interpretations. This version really brings out the interpersonal struggle between Moses and Ramses who were like brothers for almost 40 years. The strength of this production is the exploration of the emotional side of the story. It made a great follow up to our Seder and the kids were able to take their understanding of the story to a greater depth.

As an encore our this little band of Jews is heading out (on Easter Sunday no less)  to see the touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar starring Ted Neeley. Around 30 years ago I worked on a production of the same musical with Ted Neely and Carl Anderson. I worked with Ted personally and I am looking forward to seeing him in his swan song tour of the show. The wife has never seen this iconic show and the kids will see another Passover Seder.

Vista Correction

In an earlier post I discussed the problems I was having burning DVDs from recorded programs in Windows Vista Media Center. I assumed the issue was either a Vista problem or a DVD firmware incompatibility. It turns out it was neither. A friend asked me to try to burn a copy of a recent History Channel program (Last Stand of the 300) and dropped off a blank DVD even though I warned him that I was having problems. To my surprise the episode burned to DVD without a problem.

After a bit of research it turns out that the fault was my blank DVD media. Even though I tried both DVD -R and DVD +R formats neither disc would work. I was using Playo media I had bought from Staples at the same time I bought the IOMagic DVD burner. It turns out that there are relatively few manufacturers of DVD media and not all media is compatible with all burners so it is recommended that you find media that is compatible with your burner and the players that will read it afterward.

Most brands of media are not actually manufactured by the companies selling them (Sony and Memorex sell media that is OEM'ed) and the higher quality producers are: Optodisc, Ritek or Ricoh, ProDisc, Mitsubishi Chemicals and Pioneer. In order to figure out which media you are actually using you can download a program such as DVD Identifier. It turns out that my Playo discs are actually Mitsubishi media and although the discs may be good quality they are not all that compatible with my burner. The disc that did work as a no name brand (Spin-X) which was a ProDisc media and worked quite well. It seems that burning DVDs suffer from a rather high rate of incompatibility (up to 30% with ReWriteable media) so the effect is quite noticeable. Some tables do exist for burner and media compatibility which may help but ultimately checking the actual media types is the best insurance for reliable burning.

For those looking for the latest firmware for the Lite-On SHW-160P6S (also IOMagic IDVD168DL) version PSOC dated Nov 15 2006 it can be found here. Oddly enough the LiteOn site only lists the older PS0B version and IOMagic has nothing at all to say about firmware. (Who knew Packard Bell was still around albeit in France/Belgium?)

3 films

CARS was a family treat. Pixar got back to family fare that we could all enjoy.

I also rented MirrorMask on DVD and found a real gem - highly stylized and thoughtful.

Even better yet is Johnny Cash's Hurt. Apparently a remake of a NIN work that Cash breathes his soul into. The DVD is only a few minutes long - wanting to make you watch it over and over. Johnny Cash has never been more awesome - here is a man that treats us to our vanity leaving us with all that really matters.

A Grizzly Story

After reading some remarkable reviews of Grizzly Man and catching much of it on Discovery Channel, I was very interested in renting the DVD. The film first appears to be a documentary about the misguided naturalist Timothy Treadwell who befriended grizzly bears in Alaska and was eaten alive in 2003 by one. As a local native points out, what Treadwell did was irresponsible in that he crossed the line that had been drawn 7,000 years ago between humans and grizzlies - that is to avoid one another and maintain a respect for the danger one another poses. Treadwell also claimed that he was protecting the bears but his death resulted in the doom of the bear that killed him. When Herzog samples the tape of Treadwell's last moments (along with his girlfriend's), Herzog advises one of Treadwell's surviving ex-girlfriends to destroy the tape and never view the coroner's photographic evidence - just the coroner's descriptions are enough to chill one to the bone.

The director, Werner Herzog demonstrates again what a master filmmaker he truly is. Herzog also created the film that Treadwell never made by editing hundreds of hours of footage into a film that tells the story Treadwell would have himself made. But Herzog does not allow the audience to be seduced into the sentimentalism that caused Treadwell's death - Herzog indeed interrupts Treadwell's narration and explicitly disagrees with the notion that animals and humans can live in a harmonious relationship and indeed shows the fact that the worlds of humans and bears are separate and there is little room for the intersection of the two.

The extended on the DVD is even more remarkable as Herzog demonstrates his depth of understanding as the soundtrack is scored. One of the engineers asks whether he wants the music as background music and Herzog declares that he never has background music in his films. Herzog coaxes out a sound quality that Treadwell would certainly have been proud of - a haunting and poignant score. Yet again, Herzog won't allow us to be lulled into fantasy - when Treadwell is seen wading into a river with a large grizzly Herzog tells his cellist that he wants a strange sound - it is really a perverse sound that shows the perversity of a man reaching out to pet a grizzly bear. And in other scenes, such as one where two grizzlies are fighting - or one where a cub dismembered by an adult bear the music takes on an atonal quality. Indeed we see a pianist applying sheet metal screws and paperclips to his piano strings to produce a sound that reveals that nature is not 'harmonious'.

By the end of the film Treadwell can be seen as both a passionate man and one who is deeply troubled and a victim of his own imagination. Herzog allows us to feel sympathy and pathos for this tragic figure - a man who knew the fate that awaited him but couldn't resist.

In a completely different vein - my kids also managed to get me to take them to see The Chronicles of Narnia - a film I really didn't want to see since I suspected that Disney was no longer capable of creating a film with soul, as well as my doubt that this nice C.S. Lewis work was really something that would benefit by being adapted to the big screen. (His other works certainly seem better candidates.) My kids were not disappointed - they really enjoyed the talking animals.

Pedophiles and Brazil

Great - recent research shows an disturbing increase in child pornography and the related abuse of children. Apparently people that are inclined to enjoy such sick behavior have been less reluctant to indulge themselves due to the perceived anonymity of the Internet (along with ability to easily gravitate towards one another). Some also speculate that some who indulge in 'plain' online pornography then escalate towards more and more perversity.

Luckily law enforcement has been aggressively pursuing those who traffic in child porn and those who download it. This brings me to Google (the 'do no harm' company) which has vowed to vigorously oppose a Justice Department legal motion to disclose information about consumer web searches. I guess protecting pedophiles trumps protecting children... thanks Google! [WSJ link]  This has nothing to do with protecting our privacy - the order doesn't seek personally identifying information such as user IP addresses - just the patterns that Google is seeing in searches submitted. MSN, Yahoo and AOL disclosed that they did honor the subpoena so at least some companies are responsible!

This is the same information that should be used to detect other criminal activity. It seems that we hear anti-war advocates declare that we need good intelligence to prevent terrorist acts, but then we hear privacy advocates declare that the government shouldn't be prying into our lives and collecting information. So I guess the optimal solution is to stick our heads in the sand.

Actually, this may be the message of the movie Brazil, having just watched the extended version and its complete commentary by Terry Gilliam. Despite enjoying this film, Gilliam has a love/hate relationship with the U.S. - despising the shallowness he observes in Hollywood, yet failing to discover the rest of the country that is far from shallow.

Terrorism, Indifference and Intransigence

There is a terrific DVD available for rent called Paper Clips which poignantly describes how a rural Tennessee Middle School engages in a project to instill a sense of diversity by teaching kids about the Holocaust. They never expected to affect so much of the life of the town, gain such a deep appreciation of the lives affected and the international involvement they earned. The lesson learned was the need to fight indifference and intolerance. A beautiful scene was the admission by a couple of Washington Post reporters that they had to get past their own deeply seated prejudices against rural southerners and discovering the love that filled their souls.

The mention of indifference reminds me how valuable passion is when coupled with compassion. And how tolerance often is redefined as a mediocre paste of politically correct postures rather than a true acceptance of those who have different views and practices. A common occurrence of this is the self proclaimed position of the Left as protectors of freedom (ACLU) while deriding people that profess faith in a religion.

Earlier I enjoyed some terrific BookTV discussions.

What Motivates Terrorists? was the joint discussion of two different book authors, Albert Borowitz and Marc Sageman. Dr. Sageman had extensively researched the backgrounds of hundreds of terrorists to determine what the common patterns are.

In a nutshell he found that terrorists are young men (late 20's); living in the Diaspora; attend radical Mosques (for the sake of social contact); are secular; are well educated; from an upper middle class background and are not crazy but function as a small cadre of tight friends that disengage from the larger society around them and seek to be accepted by their close friends.

The corollary is that terrorism is not motivated by poverty (poverty does not breed terrorism but is often used as an excuse); being brainwashed (madrassas don't play much of a role); by normative religious beliefs (a large percentage of terrorists were being influenced by a few well known radical Mosques); or by sex (70 virgins theory).

Sageman also observed the recent French riots being driven by 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants who are unable to integrate into European society and face a lack of opportunity. He pointed out that normally these disaffected youth would have been drawn into the Leftist movements, but with the demise of communism this is no longer a viable avenue. He pointed out how the U.S. is still the land of opportunity where regardless of background people can still have hope for a future.

Israel and Palestine After Disengagement debate featuring Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky was interesting if not predictable in that Dershowitz mopped up Chomsky. The debate can be caught here. Chomsky simply couldn't defend his position without dissembling. The most revealing exchange was after a question from the audience posed whether Chomsky would accept a peace solution developed by the Israeli and Palestinian people that was not similar to Chomsky's choice. He hemmed, he hawed, he basically avoided an answer - validating that the only 'right' answer was his answer. Dershowitz on the other hand proved that he saw peace in a win-win light and had taken up the challenge of the debate to not get stuck on historical citations and imagine a future of possibilities.

Precolumbian Geography

Holidays are a great time to indulge in my vice of watching BookTV, today I have so far caught two of several very intriguing presentations.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann is a discussion about the forgotten civilizations of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. Mann refutes the notion that the Amazon is fragile and virgin, but that perhaps as many as 100 million indigenous peoples lived throughout the Amazon basin at any time within the last several thousand years. He shows evidence of the aggressive land management techniques used to tame these now wild places and how the civilizations were quickly laid waste by disease as Europeans engaged in trade with these civilizations. Mann also notes that the lack of available domesticable animals led to culture that had little resistance to disease since the great pandemics have typically been the result of disease mutations where the sicknesses have jumped from an animal species to human.

Mann also describes the diversity of cultures within the Americas, the Incas were very centralized and rigid - whereas tribes in the North East of North America were libertarian in nature.

Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America -- Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism by Harm de Blij is a powerful discussion of the impact of geography upon human fate. He tries to show us that despite all of the debate today we are living in a golden age.

Harm de Blij warns us of the coming global cooling and that he has great faith in the ability of the Earth to recover from most types of events whether human induced or through some externality such as an asteroid. He states simply that climate change has been part of the planet's life for 460 million years and that we are in the middle of a 35 million year ice age, which in the last 450,000 years features 4 periods of global warming (called interglacials) lasting each around 10,000 years separated by glaciations (cooling periods) of around 100,000 years each. The current warming period has lasted 13,000 years so we are due for a sudden and prolonged cooling period.

But Harm de Blij is also brilliant as he discusses topics such as the spread of global terrorism, which he states is fostered by failed nation-states and inaccessible terrain (such as the Pakistani mountain ranges). Just like Tom Barnett, he warns of the spread of terrorism into sub Saharan Africa due to these conditions.

Better stock up on blankets.