Obsidian Wings

I survived the blizzard of 2016...open thread!

by Ugh

And all I got was this lousy T-shirt, and snow shoveling back soreness, and 6 straight snow days for the elementary school student.  Whee!

In other news, best medical system in the world, baby!  Death panels!  This seems to kind of be a problem.  

If Trump wins the GOP nomination, does he pick Cruz as his Veep running mate?  I say yes, the ultimate f-you to everyone.  

On the permanent war front.  

On the bright side:  only 3 days until the Iowa Caucuses!  Open thread.

today's dose of reality

by russell

This popped up on Facebook today.  I thought it was really good, and worth sharing here.  So, here ya go!

America : the dysfunctional family that you never really recognize for what it is until you get some distance.  IMO, a quite useful analogy.

Hope all of you being visited by Jonas the Bumble are staying warm, dry, and safe!

Your End of DC Snowstorm Open Thread

by Ugh

The national weather service says the city of Washington DC (better known as "home of Ugh") can expect 24 inches of snow Friday afternoon through Sunday morning.  Golly, that seems to be a smidge more than a dusting.  Considering one inch of snow last night led to this and worse, this ought to be quite something.  

So I will be spending quality time inside my home this weekend, especially considering the 50MPH wind gusts would seem to prevent any sledding with the kids.

Your thread to share...anything and everything!  Stay warm.

The Down Ballot Impact -- Weekend Open Thread

by wj

There has been a lot of concern expressed by (and even more attributed to) the Republican "establishment" about the impact that a Trump candidacy might have on other Republican candidates on the ballot. And, increasingly, concerns of the same kind about a Cruz candidacy.

But now, the down-ballot impact concern is apparently spreading. “There’s definitely an elevated concern expressed in the cloakroom and members-only elevators, and other places, about the impact of a Sanders nomination on congressional candidates,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). This as the movements in the polls revive memories of 2008 for Hilary Clinton.

Of course, things get really interesting if both parties end up with nominees who might be expected to have a negative impact on the rest of their party's candidates. Do those impacts cancel out?

Fun times all around!

Tom Stoppard's "The Hard Problem"

by Doctor Science

The American premiere of Tom Stoppard's latest play, "The Hard Problem", is at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. We went last Saturday, and after we got back I looked up some reviews of the world premiere run in London. Most of them seem to have found it "slight", "lesser Stoppard", and to not have felt connected to the characters, or moved by them.

It's like we're not talking about the same play. I connected with (and recognized) the characters: insofar as they're two-dimensional, it's that of cubes seen head-on. Their depths are unexplored, left for fanfic writers, but I felt as though the depths were *there*. I don't know how much of the difference is due to the production, and how much is due to me seeing things the London reviewers overlooked, but it's very disconcerting.

Cutting here for a spoiler-laden review.

Final Obama SOTU Speechifying Open Thread

by Ugh

For your commenting pleasure.  I found some video from the future of his remarks here.  Oh my.  Enjoy!

Saudi Arabia

by liberal japonicus
Since the post which went off about Saudi Arabia disappeared over the blog event horizon, I'm making this a new post about this interesting article

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/prince-mohammed-bin-salman-naive-arrogant-saudi-prince-is-playing-with-fire-a6804481.html

At the end of last year the BND, the German intelligence agency, published a remarkable one-and-a-half-page memo saying that Saudi Arabia had adopted “an impulsive policy of intervention”. It portrayed Saudi defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the powerful 29-year-old favourite son of the ageing King Salman, who is suffering from dementia – as a political gambler who is destabilising the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.

Wonder if Hartmut might have some insight from the vernacular press.

The article closes with this, which I think is pretty on target

Oil states are almost impossible to reform and it is usually unwise to try. Such states should also avoid war if they want to stay in business, because people may not rise up against their rulers but they are certainly not prepared to die for them.

2016 is shaping up to be a helluva year...

How special effects eat characterization

by Doctor Science

In the Star Wars thread, Ugh commented:

Overall, I thought the movie would have been better with an additional 5-10 minutes of emotion/reactions/character development.

cleek replied:

i think so, too. but it was already over two hours. and i assume they probably cut out a lot of non-explodey stuff in order to squeeze in more explodey stuff.

I don't think this trend is mostly an artistic or marketing choice, even though that's what people in Hollywood usually say. I think "more explodey" is driven by the need to justify budgets, and by the individual interests of the people who have to do it.

I formed my theory during the years I was fannishly focused on Stargate Atlantis, then in production. Each episode was reviewed, analyzed, and deconstructed by fans (especially on Livejournal); many of them were also commented on by executive producer Joseph Mallozzi on his blog.

When asked to explain certain plot or characterization developments, Mallozzi would often say, "there was a nice scene between these characters, but we had to cut it for time." I noticed, after a while, that he *never* said "there was a nice fight sequence, but we had to cut it for time." Here's the theory I came up with:

Absolutely *nothing* is worse for a TV broadcast than dead air. The standard US "hour-long" TV drama needs to be exactly 43 minutes in length, so showrunners aim to have 44-48 minutes of episode-worthy footage, which can then be trimmed precisely to fit.

Artistically, the decision about what to edit out would be based on things like what scenes are necessary for story flow, for characterization, for making sure the plot hangs together. In reality, I believe the process is heavily influenced by how expensive different minutes of footage are to produce.

FX ("effects" of all sorts, including stunts, CGI, explosions, fight and chase scenes, etc.) are *extremely* expensive compared to scenes with only actors. This is especially true for TV shows, where a scene between salaried actors on an established set can be done almost "for free", but I expect it's true for movies, too, just scaled up. Either way, I guess a minute of FX on screen costs at least 20-50 times as much as a human-only minute, and may well be 100x as expensive, or more. And that means that the budget for the 43-minute episode as will be dominated by the cost of 2, 5, or 10 minutes of FX.

So, if you're a showrunner or editor who has to cut 47 minutes of footage down to 43, which 4 minutes are going to go? If you have to cut an entire scene, there's no way it will be one with a lot of FX, because then the people who control your purse strings will wonder where the money went and think maybe you don't need as big a budget after all. And since money is power, this would clearly be a catastrophe for you, personally.

Obviously the time constraints on movies aren't nearly as tight, but AFAICT the budget pressures are just as bad. Consider, for example, Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Among the scenes cut for theatrical release were ones explaining about Thror (Thorin's grandfather), his Dwarf-Ring, and his fate. This is actually a major driving force behind the plot of The Hobbit, and a connection between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

What was left in? An orc-chase scene outside of Rivendell that just goes on and on. It barely advances the plot, but it must have cost a lot to film, so it stayed.

Even if your intention as a director or showrunner is to "just tell a story", the fact that you can't edit out a FX scene once you've filmed it, unlike character-focused scenes, means that the FX ends up being the defining ingredient and other stuff gets rearranged to fit around it. This is not, in fact, how you tell a good story -- but it can be how you have a lucrative career.

Hmmm. I think I'm going to look at the Michael Bay data again. I wonder what the graph of return-on-investment against explosions would be for his movies. Anyone who feels like counting explosions in "Pain and Gain" and "Transformers: Age of Extinction", let me know.

The Burning of the ‘Royal James’ at the Battle of Solebay, by Willem van de Velde the Younger.

Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, by Peter Lely. Montagu was killed in the burning of the Royal James. For painters as for writers, action scenes without faces are not as difficult (nor, usually, as lucrative) as depictions of human faces and hearts.

oregon

by russell

The occupation of a wildlife park building by self-appointed patriots in Burns OR raises a lot of questions for me.  Not about the folks involved, IMO they're a crew of buffoons - the 'patriotic' version of Moe, Larry, and Curly - and the less attention given them the better.

The questions I have are about the nominal motivation for their actions, because I think that resonates with a much broader set of folks than this specific band of sovereign citizen brothers.

How did the feds come to own so much land in the west?

Why is it good, or bad, that the feds do own so much land?

Is it a matter of public vs private ownership per se, or is the problem one of federal vs local control?  That is, if the various states owned the land, rather than the feds, would that be OK, or would it be equally objectionable?

A lot of the land is arguably of limited use, other than the uses that are made of it currently, under federal control.  Logging, mining, grazing, or in some cases no use at all.  There are sections of the great basin that are, frankly, not suitable for human habitation, other than perhaps by hermits.  Why is it bad for those lands to be publicly owned and managed?

What would happen to that land if it was turned over to private ownership and management?  Or, to public ownership at a local level?

The Bundys say their goal is to 'get loggers back to logging and ranchers back to ranching'.  In fact, the Malheur area was available to ranchers for grazing, at a favorable price, but even recognizing that some federal land is off limits for those purposes, why is that bad?

Shorter me : why is it bad for large areas of land to be held and managed by the public?  Is it only bad if its the feds?  Or is it bad per se?

Sometime commenter Michael Cain has written a lot about this on his own blog, I invite him specifically to weigh in if he is so inclined.

You Knew It Had to Come

by wj

But so soon?

It appears that Senator Cruz' campaign is gaining enough ground to worry Mr Trump. How do we tell? Because Trump has come out saying that "the party might face a legal headache if it nominates Cruz." Specifically, "“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’" while the courts make a decision on the subject.

It's no secret that Cruz is a US citizen who happens to have been born in Canada. He's a citizen by birth because his parents were US citizens. Just as Senator McCain is a citizen, even though he was born in Panama. (And just as Obama would be a US citizen by birth, no matter where he was born.)

But apparently Trump is concerned enough that Cruz might cut into his support that he felt it worthwhile to return to a favorite theme. For those who have argued that the whole carrying on around Obama had nothing to do with his race, consider: last month Trunmp was in Iowa saying "not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba." Sounds as if Cruz, like Obama, just isn't white enough for him -- or at least Trump thinks a lot of his supporters will feel that way.