Obsidian Wings

Pretty as a picture

by Doctor Science

Part of the fannish web blew up this week because of an interview with Lino Disalvo about Disney's upcoming animated movie, Frozen. One thing that's different about Frozen is that there are two female leads in the "Princess" position (critical for Disney marketing purposes), Elsa and Anne. Disalvo said:

Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, 'cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they're very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they're very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they're echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna (Kristen Bell) being angry."

Many people have taken serious umbrage at the implication that animating girls is *hard* because they all look alike, or something -- especially given that the two female leads in Frozen look a *lot* like Rapunzel from Tangled:

The animated gif at the top was made by tumblr user moopflop, as part of a very wide-ranging discussion. I slowed it down and made it smaller for display here. The three comparison images were assembled by me.

I had the feeling that Disalvo was trying to say something specific that he couldn't articulate, so I asked for help. A reader who's a professional animator explained:

What he's trying to say is, in every Disney movie I can think of, all of the women are very contained and "pretty." It's more how seriously you want the audience to read the character.

Your Malcolm Gladwell open friday thread

by liberal japonicus

Gladwell is clever, but this is cleverer. Discuss.

Who negotiates with terrorists? Heroes.

by Doctor Science

At this point, all Democrats and a sprinkling of Republicans call the House GOP's threat to not raise the debt ceiling "hostage-taking" or indeed "economic terrorism". When Obama absolutely refuses to negotiate about the debt ceiling, then, we think "that's right, we don't negotiate with terrorists" and nod firmly.

Breaching the debt ceiling would mean defaulting on the US's obligations. It's not about refusing to run up more debt, it's about refusing to pay debts we're already run up. The results would likely be catastrophic, for the US and for the rest of the world.

The Death of Samson, by Gustave Doré. Collapsing the ceiling, no matter how righteously, may not be the best long-term planning.

Obama *did* negotiate with Republicans to avert a 2011 debt ceiling breach, but it was really ugly. He seems to have hoped that it was a one-time thing, but Republicans clearly didn't feel that way.:

[Senator (R-KY) Mitch] McConnell said he could imagine doing this again.

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” he said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.”

Now the Republicans have taken the same hostage, again -- as could have been predicted by anyone who'd ever heard of Danegeld.

The thing is, though we may say "don't negotiate with terrorists", that's complete (and dangerous) bull. If someone takes hostages, *of course* you talk with them. You negotiate because calming the situation and getting the hostages out alive is far more important than "standing firm".

What Orwell got wrong

by Doctor Science

In September 2012, Paul Krugman observed that Mitt Romney's talk about "the 47%" being "lucky duckies" was precisely the sort of thing on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh:

The “lucky ducky” trope is clearly, obviously nonsense; equally obviously, it was originally created in an effort to dupe people who didn’t know better. It was and is what Orwell called “prolefeed”, junk aimed at the ignorant masses (ignorant by design), the people who are ready to believe at a moment’s notice that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

In Orwell’s vision, however, the Party – and especially the Inner Party – wasn’t supposed to consume this same tripe. It was supposed to understand the true Party agenda and vision (a boot stomping on a human face forever).

The most surprising thing to me about the 2012 election results was that Romney and his people really seem to have thought they would win, as did Karl Rove and the gang at the Ministry of Truth aka Fox News. It became overwhelmingly clear to me at that point that there is no difference between the GOP proles and the Inner Party: both get the prolefeed, both buy into it, both have always been at war with Eastasia.

What Orwell got wrong is thinking that the Inner Party would have better knowledge, especially of history, than the proles. Doublethink works MUCH better when you don't have actual knowledge to muck it up. In a real life MiniTrue, history is bunk for *everyone*, there is no secret true knowledge at the center of the conspiracy.

Right after the 2012 election, Speaker John Boehner himself called Obamacare "the law of the land". As Congress' "local paper" The Hill says:

Republican lawmakers, of course, do know that Obamacare is a law, not a bill

-- they just keep calling it a "bill" to make it sound unsettled, something they can oppose and even undermine without betraying their oaths of office.

Are they being liars and/or hypocrites? Not *exactly* - this is doublethink. They believe both that they are upholding the law, of which Obamacare is an example, *and* that Obamacare isn't really a law, but a bill with delusions of grandeur. They can take an oath to uphold the Constitution and work for the good of the people and government, and also plot to undermine the law and destroy the government because their side didn't win an election.

What Orwell got wrong is that the Inner Party's vision of the future would be "a boot, comforting and being upheld by a loving human face, forever." And they would see nothing in this to which *anyone* could reasonably object.

For some relief, a picture of actual lucky duckies. These are Common Mergansers, getting a ride with mom. Photo by Big Lug.

Dept. of And Now For Something Completely Different: The Mystery of Neckbeards

by Doctor Science

Andrew Sullivan looks at Thoreau:

Despite his distaste for fashion, Thoreau did have some flair — if you could call it that. In the winter of 1855, Thoreau grew a neckbeard, which he claimed was for protection against "throat colds," but also, he insisted, was quite popular with the ladies. Fellow author and Concord resident Louisa May Alcott reportedly pointed out the impossibility of this, mentioning to Emerson that Thoreau's neckbeard "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity."

Thoreau in 1856. [x]

Thoreau wasn't the only 19th-century male with this strange delusion: one of the first to come to my mind was John C. Calhoun, from his "crazy-eyed proto-Confederate" period:

John C. Calhoun, 1849. In his case, it's possible the neckbeard was cushioning his neck against tight starched collars -- not a problem for Thoreau, a notorious slob. [x].

But it wasn't till I googled about that I found the greatest neckbeard-wearer of them all, Horace Greeley:

From a stereo photo taken during the Civil War (1860-65).

A *flowing* neckbeard, that's really special and almost fascinating.

But what I don't understand is why some men persist in wearing neckbeards *today*. The above gentlemen were bearding in the era of the aptly-named cut-throat razor, and I could see why someone with an unsteady or uncertain hand might decide to try a neckbeard instead of flirting with danger. Although I agree with Louisa May Alcott, the chances that this would help them flirt with *women* were no better than minute.

I surveyed the men I had handy, and they all agreed that neck-shaving isn't difficult or risky at all with a safety razor, and it's trivial with an electric razor. None of them could explain neckbeards, or the kind of growth some guys had in college: a beardless face, but with hair growing downward from the underside of the jaw -- it always reminded me of algae or something growing beneath an overhang.

So, what do you male people here think about neckbeards? Do they make sense to you? If they were a fashion of sorts in the mid-19th century, could they come back again? What a horrible thought. Recount hilarious tales of facial hair mistakes of your youth, and point me to other notable neckbeards in history and art.

A metaphorical question

by liberal japonicus

Or maybe a metaphor[ical] question. I was recently working through a book on metaphor with a student, and the author asserted that Shakespeare's metaphor, 'all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players', from As You Like It that the metaphor had a much longer history before Shakespeare used it, but provided no references or examples. Knowing the depth and breadth of knowledge around these parts, is anyone aware of this kind of metaphor pre-Shakespeare? I suppose that Plato's the parable of the cave is in some sense similar, and maybe the problems Jesus had with the Pharisees could be placed in that notion of private behaviour not matching up with public presentation. but other than that, I'm coming up blank.

Any comments drawing a linkage between this metaphor and the current budget impasse will be hunted down like a rabid dog and shot. Smileys all around.

note: and as soon as I hit post, I was cleaning up and clicked on the Wikipedia link for hypocrisy and found this

Whereas hypokrisis applied to any sort of public performance (including the art of rhetoric), hypokrites was a technical term for a stage actor and was not considered an appropriate role for a public figure. In Athens in the 4th century BC, for example, the great orator Demosthenes ridiculed his rival Aeschines, who had been a successful actor before taking up politics, as a hypocrites whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician. This negative view of the hypokrites, perhaps combined with the Roman disdain for actors, later shaded into the originally neutral hypokrisis. It is this later sense ofhypokrisis as "play-acting", i.e., the assumption of a counterfeit persona, that gives the modern word hypocrisy its negative connotation.

The explain it to my daughter Friday Open thread

by liberal japonicus

This may be a really really bad idea, but here goes.

In the film Philadelphia, one of the lines is 'explain it to me like I'm a four year old'. Well, my jhs daughter asked last night why they are shutting down the government. Imagine, if you will, a bright, bilingual jhs student with absolute minimal exposure to the MSM. I'm not sure if this corresponds precisely to what she has been getting, but this Japan Times article (from the WashPo) seems to get at the overseas sense of what is going on.

Please spare me the exegesis of the other articles in the Post about the shutdown, I assume that because the JT editor chose this as the piece, it roughly stands for the opinion here. Also bear in mind that this sort of story is not only something that seems to appear only once every two or three days, but is also below stories titled "U.S., Japan to update defense rules in 2014" and "Kerry, Hagel visit Chidorigafuchi to diminish Yasukuni". My own take is that it is like the embarassing couple in the restaurant having an argument over various household decisions where everyone else in the restaurant looks down at the soup and pretends it doesn't exist.

So your mission, if you decide to accept it, is to craft an explanation that could be understood by my daughter, with the much more strictly drawn lines that would be associated with a father who is not planning on letting the apple of his eye get married until she is in her late 30's (I keeeed, I keeeeeeed!) If you are able to do this, the blog will probably self-destruct. Have at it.

Ezra Klein's unanswered question

by Doctor Science

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post's Wonkblog just interviewed Robert Costa, Washington Editor of the conservative flagship National Review, about John Boehner's strategy in the shutdown/Obamacare circus and why he doesn't just ditch the hard right. Along the way, Costa said:

... many of these members [of Congress] now live in the conservative world of talk radio and tea party conventions and Fox News invitations. And so the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire. The members begin to believe they can achieve things in divided government that most objective observers would believe is impossible. Leaders are dealing with these expectations that wouldn't exist in a normal environment.

This IMHO is one of the driving forces behind Reality Politics: the fact that it is broadcast, that it plays well -- and continuously -- on TV. Anyway, Ezra then asked the big question:

Why does that happen, though? It would absolutely be possible for liberal members to cocoon themselves in a network of liberal Web sites and liberal cable news shows and liberal activists. But in the end, liberal members of Congress end up agreeing to broadly conventional definitions of what is and isn’t politically realistic. So how do House Republicans end up convincing themselves of unrealistic plans, particularly when they’ve seen them fail before, and when respected voices in the Republican and even conservative establishment are warning against them?

Costa replied that "When you get the members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions", but this doesn't actually answer Ezra's question.

As Ezra said, liberals have our own cocoon, but that doesn't drive Democratic Congresspeople into cycles of increasing wackiness. What is it about the Republican cocoon that *does*? And, very importantly for all of us, how do we get them to stop and focus on the actual job of government?

I'm thinking it's a couple of things. First of all, conservative Reality Politics pays *really well*, much better than any liberal equivalent would. Fox News is extremely profitable; Air America went bankrupt. If you look at Amazon's "Conservatism and Liberalism" best-sellers list, it's mostly conservatives. As I write, Amazon's overall best-sellers list is topped by Bill O'Reilly, with Rush Limbaugh's children's book (wtf) in 5th place.

I've just spent hours writing and deleting any number of theories about why the conservative bubble seems so hard to break out of, besides the money. It's got to have something to do with the value conservatives place on in-group loyalty, but that's probably not enough.

After the 2012 election, I argued that it should be comparatively easy for conservatives to change their policy goals because their information bubble is so centralized. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes

could get Republicans to change -- not by saying "change", of course, but by staking out a new position and saying over and over again that it's what they believed all along. "We have always been worried about global warming", "we have always wanted universal health care" -- I don't see why these should be any more difficult than "we have always been opposed to abortion" or "we have always liked MLK".

But Ailes and Murdoch are in the bubble, themselves: they can't focus on realistic policy goals any more than any other Republicans can, their information is no better.

I don't have enough of a gut feel for how the conservative bubble works to see a way to pop it, at least from time to time -- enough for even GOP Congresspeople to actually do some productive work.

One of the most popular shutdown tweets, from Chris Hall.