by Doctor Science
Mister Doctor Science had the peroneus tendons on his left foot reconstructed on Friday. He'd managed to completely rupture the brevis tendon, and longus was in pretty bad shape. The surgeon was able to reconstruct them into a single useful tendon that is predicted to make it possible for Mr Dr to keep fencing.
For the next 6 weeks, though, he can't put any weight on that leg, so he's sitting at home in his Dad Chair trying not to go out of his mind with boredom. He can still do most of his work on his laptop, and he can read, but not-fencing leaves a *lot* of extra hours in the week. So, TV! -- streaming services, to be precise, we never had cable, we use FiOS for internet and went straight from broadcast TV to streaming. And we don't even watch much of that, usually.
At the suggestion of Youngest Science, we've started watching The Good Place, and it proves to be just as good as people were saying! No spoilers, please, we're only up to episode 7 or so. Youngest then wondered if he'd like Psych, so we watched the pilot of that and decided it's just not that good. All I know of Psych I got from fandom, which led me to believe that it would be funnier than it actually is.
We then tried him on Brooklyn Nine Nine, and he likes it a *lot*. Multiple actual LOLs were heard, a sign of unusual favor. So there's quite a bit of that available for the next weeks, along with finishing up our family re-watch of Babylon 5. He & I also recently finished watching Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which bears NO relationship to the books except the name, and is kind of a train wreck with some good characters and acting. I'm not sad to hear that it didn't get renewed, honestly.
Because of Surprise!Surgery, we didn't travel to my parents' place for the holidays (they're both in their 90s and no longer travel well). But we're having a Boxing Day dinner for 12 today, turkey with all the fixings, no present-giving except friendship.
How is your holiday-ing going? Open thread.
Just spent four nights in Placencia Belize now heading to a lodge just outside Sam Ignacio for another four. The 8 YO got a first taste of snorkeling and loved it, didn't hurt to have four large sea turtles and a dozen nurse sharks for him to look at.
Sorry about Mr. Dr. Doc.
Posted by: Ugh | December 26, 2017 at 01:59 PM
omg Ugh, that sounds like a PERFECT vacation. I don't know if I'd like the snorkeling or the bird-watching more.
Posted by: Doctor Science | December 26, 2017 at 02:37 PM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chevalier_D%27Eon
This was a lot of fun. Probably not available to stream.
The Good Place, we liked the first season a lot. We gave up after the first few episodes in season two, tho we may pick it up later. Binge watching can wear stuff out.
Psych was wonderful, though it ran too long.
Got some fresh sea scallops from my brother yesterday. Dinner tonight will be sublime.
Good luck to Mr DrS.
Posted by: Yama | December 26, 2017 at 04:36 PM
Medici Masters of Florence-story was patchy, music and art was great.
We are currently binging on The Vikings, watching that band of thugs wreak havoc. We will then rewatch The Last Kingdom (my wife is extremely pacifist, but she has Lady Slipper orchids in our garden named after Uthred and Hild. Its amazing what charasmatic actors can do for ones taste for violent escapism).
The second season of The Crown is out on Netflix; I believe it will pick up with the Suez Crisis. John Lithgow turned in a great performance as Churchill in the first season. This show seems aimed at boomer nostalgia/fascination with the royal family when we were all kids.
I am totally doing another Turkey soon, we can't get enough of that.
Happy Happy folks.
Posted by: Yama | December 26, 2017 at 05:31 PM
Vikings seems somewhat bloodthirsty compared to the fare Mr Dr S has been enjoying thus far ?
Chez moi, have been bingeing on the recently discovered delights of K drama over the holiday break. If you want utterly charming and genre-mixing romantic comedy, I can highly recommend Oh, My Ghost.
Posted by: Nigel | December 26, 2017 at 05:44 PM
A couple of other mystery series that might amuse:
- Death in Paradise, set in the Caribbean. Not sure how it compares to the Agatha Christie novels. Sometimes described, with reason, as a comedy.
- The Coroner, another detective series from the UK.
- Murdoch, a Canadian series set in Toronto circa 1900. Loved them enough to buy the DVDs.
Posted by: wj | December 26, 2017 at 07:02 PM
If you're looking for a light, humorous, obscure show, I can't recommend Norsemen(Vikingane) enough. It's only six episodes and is available on Netflix.
It's basically History's Vikings meets The Office.
It was shot in Norway for Norwegian television. Scenes with dialog were shot both in Norwegian and in English, so you can enjoy the show without subtitles or dubbing.
Posted by: Chuchundra | December 27, 2017 at 01:20 AM
According to wiki a second season of Norsemen has been shot already.
Posted by: Hartmut | December 27, 2017 at 03:53 AM
A case set for trial (diabolical judge set it to start on Dec 28) settled unexpectedly late last week, so I took off the entire holiday period. Devil Hen and I are at our place in Cedar Key with the pups for 9 days.
Not exactly a traditional Christmas setting, but I'll take it.
Apparently, sailing a kayak in circles is my idea of relaxing:
https://flic.kr/p/DgY7tF
https://flic.kr/p/21QULeE
https://flic.kr/p/21QUL87
It sounds like Mr. Dr. S's funny bone is similar to mine, so I'll suggest some stuff from down under that may not be on your radar:
What We Do in the Shadows is part mockumentary (e.g., Spinal Tap, Best in Show) and part satire of millennial Real World slackerdom, and part satire of the vampire craze. It's free on Amazon Prime at the moment.
If you find that you like the NZ humor (style not content), then check out Flight of the Conchords (start with the comedy special, then move on to the offbeat series). At one time it was on either Netflix or Amazon Prime, but you may need HBO Go to see them.
Posted by: Pollo de muerte | December 27, 2017 at 06:45 AM
"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
Looks great out there Pollo.
Posted by: Yama | December 27, 2017 at 08:18 AM
we're watching The Crown, The Good Place, Vikings, Wormwood, Alias Grace and Turn. just finished Lady Dynamite and Rick & Morty.
watched a charming Turkish movie about the cats of Istanbul ("Kedi") last night. our cat Pepper watched it, too. she's never show any interest in the TV before, but she sat in front of it and stared at the cats for an hour last night.
Posted by: cleek | December 27, 2017 at 08:40 AM
we're watching The Crown, The Good Place, Vikings, Wormwood, Alias Grace and Turn. just finished Lady Dynamite and Rick & Morty.
watched a charming Turkish movie about the cats of Istanbul ("Kedi") last night. our cat Pepper watched it, too. she's never show any interest in the TV before, but she sat in front of it and stared at the cats for an hour last night.
Posted by: cleek | December 27, 2017 at 08:41 AM
After binging on the usual Netflix things for several months, my SO and I decided to actually start watching the thousand or so dvds/blurays that we mostly look at as they sit on the shelf.
Started last Friday with Kubrick. First up was my favorite Christmas movie, Eyes Wide Shut, then we went random. Clockwork Orange turned out to be last, and we couldn't finish it. Seen it 100 times, but for some reason the gleeful brutality really got to us this time. Couldn't make it passed the first rape. Trump effect?
Then it was on to Wenders and now Michael Mann, with a detour to Clooney's Good Bye and Good Luck because it makes a great double feature with The Insider. Binging movies by director is a very different experience than binging tv shows. I think it's making me more observant.
Posted by: john (not mccain) | December 27, 2017 at 10:48 AM
Clockwork Orange turned out to be last, and we couldn't finish it. Seen it 100 times, but for some reason the gleeful brutality really got to us this time. Couldn't make it passed the first rape. Trump effect?
Maybe just getting older and gaining more and more empathy along the way. That seems to be my experience.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | December 27, 2017 at 11:10 AM
cleek, I remember reading about that Turkish cat movie, and thinking it sounded very charming. I'll look out for it.
Re Yama's quote from wind in the willows: an all time great. Whenever I pass rabbits (or in fact pheasants) in a field, I often shout, in honour of the mole, "onion sauce, onion sauce!"
Posted by: Girl from the North Country | December 27, 2017 at 11:26 AM
Going through David Attenborough's BBC documentaries of 2015-2017 (Planet Earth II, The Hunt, Blue Planet II) on UK import DVDs.
Posted by: Hartmut | December 27, 2017 at 11:40 AM
Another encouraging story in US politics...
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/25/hugh-mccolls-last-great-investment-216162
Not everything is awful.
Posted by: Nigel | December 27, 2017 at 12:52 PM
Chuchundra:
That Norsemen series is *exactly* the sort of thing Mr Dr loves, we'll be checking it out!
Posted by: Doctor Science | December 27, 2017 at 02:48 PM
Nigel, that's a great article. And the last paragraph says it all.
Posted by: wj | December 27, 2017 at 03:49 PM
...recently discovered delights of K drama...
I, also, highly recommend K drama including Oh, My Ghost.
Two places, other than Netflix and Hulu, to watch K drama are Drama Fever and Viki.
Posted by: CharlesWT | December 27, 2017 at 05:36 PM
What's the timing on Mister Doctor Science's recovery? My fencing has dropped off to armory duty now and then. The SYC event here in Denver six weeks ago had more than 900 fencers from all over the country. Setting that one up was insane...
Posted by: Michael Cain | December 27, 2017 at 09:02 PM
Not everything is awful.
right on.
thank you, Nigel.
Posted by: russell | December 27, 2017 at 10:16 PM
Michael:
Another 5 weeks of no weight-bearing, then 6 weeks to 2 months in a boot.
And right at the start of the high school fencing season, too, which is normally extremely busy for him with reffing.
Yeah, that event *does* sound crazy. And holy cow, LOUD: reffing youth events, especially girls, often leaves him feeling pummeled by the screaming.
It reminds me of something I've heard about Comiket in Japan, which can have 200,000 attendees on a single day. There are areas for "girls' manga" and "boys' manga", characterized by a wall of sound (girls) versus a wall of smell (boys). Pick your poison.
Posted by: Doctor Science | December 28, 2017 at 08:22 AM
And therapy after that, no doubt, because ligaments and muscles react badly to not being stretched for three months.
I took a couple of acquaintances to a large-for-Colorado tournament (13 strips all in use) at the Air Force Academy this past fall. They were enamored of the bellowing male saber fencers. I told them that if they really wanted to be impressed, go back the next day for the women's events; nothing compares to a 16-year-old female saber fencer at full volume.
The previous year a smaller version of the 900-fencer event was held in a lovely new facility at one of the local county fairgrounds. It was designed for noise control and was remarkably quiet. This was a minor problem when setting up strips because you couldn't just yell to get someone's attention at 20 meters, you had to walk over there. It just ate up the screaming and bellowing, and the fencers pretty much gave up on those.
Posted by: Michael Cain | December 28, 2017 at 10:03 AM
It just ate up the screaming and bellowing, and the fencers pretty much gave up on those.
Which pretty much confirms (if anyone had any doubts) that the screaming isn't just emotions overcoming them.
Posted by: wj | December 28, 2017 at 11:43 AM
Gender Inequality in South Korea
Kinda curious about how people can watch k-drama (or listen to k-pop). My own opinion is the SK, among OECD countries, is simply the worst:horrible oppressive capitalism, inequality, sexism and misogyny, and the worst suicide rate in the world. This will not show up to the same extent in all their entertainment, but if it it does, will show up most in their mainstream mass entertainment, eg primetime tv.
I do watch SK movies, for example Train to Busan and The Handmaiden, but I also recognize the despair and pessimism even in such "resisting" material as Park's. Other ways the horrible social conditions show up are in sentimentalities directed at women audiences and heroic ultraviolence for men.
Japan is only slightly socially better but I also find their primetime tv and mass audience movies utterly unbearable. The anime I watch is the fringe of a fringe of a fringe aimed directly at young people who define themselves as outsiders and rebels, knowing they will have to grow up and sell out or suffer. Much like the French and Czech New Waves, and 70s American directors, it has its problems.
But it isn't for the most part about comforting and reinforcing or providing safe escapes from the neoliberal sexist hegemony.
And of course is intentionally visually and formally challenging, forcing a conscious decision to stay and engage.
I suppose I could watch and fisk something like O My Ghost or an American "liberal" miniseries, but life is too short to watch conservative media.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 28, 2017 at 02:45 PM
FWIW, the series I admired enjoyed most from last season were "Land of the Lustrous" and "Girl's Last Tour" both of which can be checked out with a 7-day free trial from Amazon Anime Strike.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 28, 2017 at 03:01 PM
My own opinion is the SK, among OECD countries, is simply the worst:horrible oppressive capitalism, inequality, sexism and misogyny, and the worst suicide rate in the world.
Just out of curiosity, which OEDC (or other) country do you consider the best? And does it rise to good, or is it merely "least bad"?
Posted by: wj | December 28, 2017 at 03:24 PM
Denmark and Norway
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 28, 2017 at 06:06 PM
wj: do you have to have "lived in that country" to rate it as "best"? Because just quoting some survey result doesn't seem like we're making a value-added comment.
But if our "best" is based on individual experience, it'll be an individual preference. I'm sure you can have a great experience in a shithole country, and a shit experience in a great country.
I vote for the Empire of Hawai'i.
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 28, 2017 at 07:01 PM
I'll pass on the 'what I like is better than what you like' game, but
My own opinion is the SK, among OECD countries, is simply the worst:horrible oppressive capitalism, inequality, sexism and misogyny, and the worst suicide rate in the world.
I'm not sure why this is surprising. Richard Rubenstein in The Cunning of History points out that it was the Germans who, as latecomers to the whole Western intellectual game, took all of it to its logical conclusion. It is always the coverted who have the greatest fervor and it is no surprise that SK and Japan, latecomers themselves, would exhibit some of the worst tendencies of the West. I don't want to deny their agency, but they are, in some ways, simply mirrors of the West.
This NYTimes article shows another example of chasing the West
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest-deaths.html
Climbing Everest is an expensive endeavor, something to be both bought and earned. Many climbers are middle-aged Westerners — doctors, lawyers and other professionals — with the kind of wealth that the group from India could not fathom. Some spend $100,000 to ensure the best guides, service and safety.
These four climbers measured monthly salaries in the hundreds of dollars. They borrowed money and sold off possessions simply for a chance. They cut costs and corners, because otherwise Everest was completely out of reach.
Ghosh shared an apartment with eight members of his extended family. Paresh Nath, 58, was a one-handed tailor who barely scraped by with his wife and young son. Subhas Paul, 44, drove a small-goods truck and used his father’s pension to pay for his Everest attempt. Hazra was a nurse, married and raising a son.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 28, 2017 at 07:42 PM
slightly different tack...
a similar, but different, cake case than the one the SCOTUS is hearing was decided against the bakers. the ruling says:
Posted by: cleek | December 28, 2017 at 07:55 PM
@cleek: so, if RWNJ bakers want to prevail against the Gey Agenda, they just need to make their cakes inedible.
Following in the footsteps of many multinational 'food' companies, I guess.
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 28, 2017 at 08:00 PM
The South Koreans have done rather well, given, within living memory, the severe low point they started from. It was only in the '60s that their standard of living started to diverge in a positive direction from that of North Korea.
Posted by: CharlesWT | December 28, 2017 at 08:07 PM
To be more specific, I feel a lack of the political, defined very broadly, in SK movies. Part of it is their post-war history of being in a near war condition, and of course the US semi-occupation, but there is hardly a sense of what a Left could even in be in SK. This is a very right wing or "liberal" country, with not even the memory of a Marxist fringe as Japan has. Conservatism is completely internalized, and social resistance unimaginable.
This as I remember plays out in the lack of a "social." South Korea feels to me like a very cold and cruel country, with lots of social obligations but little social solidarity or support. Not talking about the welfare system. Everyone for themselves.
All that is left is the interpersonal, and the hopes and nightmares revolve around interactions with other individuals. The fear of an oppressive gov't or system is rarely talked about, and I think rarely thought about.
So it isn't the system sucks, it is we suck, people suck, and the isolation, loneliness, despair and depression are palpable. As I said escapism is gotten through romance and violence, but in the artier stuff, the drinking and and withdrawal and sadness are nearly unbearable. The Handmaiden ending, you and I defeated those two and escape, just the two of us, there is nothing else is typical.
The reason this counts more is the brains, talent and art shown...SK makes very great well-crafted movies, serving horrific neoliberal individualist mentalities.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 28, 2017 at 08:50 PM
South Korea feels to me like a very cold and cruel country, with lots of social obligations but little social solidarity or support.
You know, in 1973, the person who won 45% of the vote and lost the election by 900,000 votes was kidnapped and about to be drowned without the intervention of the US and Japan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/world/asia/24iht-korea.1.8031030.html
Kim was elected president in 1997, making him the first South Korean opposition leader to come to power. emphasis mine.
Complaining about what South Korea feels like without acknowledging their history, a history that the West had a big hand in, seems a bit off, especially through the lens of their movie industry, an industry that is having to deal with political pressure
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/740553.html
Such suspicions are the result of a dispute that began during the 19th festival in 2014 over the screening of “The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol” (also called “Diving Bell”) a film that dealt with the Sewol tragedy. This dispute culminated in the city of Busan dismissing Lee Yong-gwan, the festival’s executive chair, and filing a complaint with the public prosecutors.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 28, 2017 at 09:34 PM
Never been to East Asia but my impression of Korean movies is that they are East Asia squared, i.e. exaggerating the trademarks of Japanese and Chinese cinema. And (like btw Russia in the silent film era*) they seem to dislike happy endings per se (with even the nominally happy ones rather distorted). If they in any way reflect the society, it does not bode well. Cruel oppression, mistreatment of women (mind/soul even more than body) etc. No one tops Japanese movie violence at its extreme end but the average seems to be a good deal higher in Korea.
Again that is a purely subjective impression based on films that reached the German market.
*There was a small industry of reshooting unhappy endings for movies imported from the West (that is not a joke!)
Posted by: Hartmut | December 29, 2017 at 04:09 AM
Bob, please do try fisking Oh, My Ghost. I'd be most entertained.
(And I'll pass over the mild irony of your adopting that term...)
The fear of an oppressive gov't or system is rarely talked about, and I think rarely thought about...
How much recent Korean drama have you watched ? That seems to be diametrically opposed to reality. And it seems rather extraordinary to pass over the fact that they successfully impeached a president....
Sometimes it seems as though you would not approve of any social change which does not involve burning everything down - an approach which has not been conspicuously successful historically.
Posted by: Nigel | December 29, 2017 at 12:34 PM
Sometimes it seems as though you would not approve of any social change which does not involve burning everything down - an approach which has not been conspicuously successful historically.
In short, making the perfect the enemy of the good tends to result in a victory for the bad.
Posted by: wj | December 29, 2017 at 12:47 PM
I'm not sure about this, but I don't think that Asian films in general and Japanese films in particular are a very accurate reflection of Japanese society. For example, when I first came here (30 years ago), there were tons of horror flicks that vied with making the most over the top blood and gore. I had students and Japanese acquaintances who liked them because they were so over the top.
My feeling is that the notion that films are an accurate reflection of society is something that is a very Western approach to film, and a Japanese/Asian approach is that film is supposed to be unrealistic and is treated as such. Which is fortunate because, as Hartmut says, cruel oppression and mistreatment of women is the norm. This is not to say that everything is great, I think that there is a great deal of problems, but the movies heighten them not because they want to be more realistic, but because they want to be more unrealistic.
There's a joke I like about realism that has a person going to Picasso and complaining how his paintings are totally unrealistic and how they don't look anything like the person he is painting and Picasso asks him if he has something that looks like his wife and the guy pulls out a photo and says 'this is exactly what my wife looks like' and Picasso says 'my, your wife has a very small head'.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 29, 2017 at 12:58 PM
on tuesday i made a stuffed 16-lb turkey. I decided to use the Convection Bake feature on my oven, which i hadn't really used much before. I put the turkey in a v-rack in a large broiling pan, rack at the next-to-bottom position (which puts the turkey in the center of the oven).
when the center of the stuffing reached 160 F, I took it out. The breast & wings were completely cooked, but the back, the thighs, (and the very lowest part of the stuffing) were very undercooked. The carver cut off the white meat & the legs, took out the stuffing, then we turned the remains upside down and stuck them back in the oven
wth, convection oven? is this a common kind of convection thing, or is something in my oven not working?
in our oven from a house ago there were 3 settings: regular, convection, convection-plus (which did both). Convection-plus was SUPER, i hoped just-plain-convection would be more like that.
Posted by: Doctor Science | December 29, 2017 at 02:19 PM
Of course, bob mcm's perfect is very few others' version of same.
Posted by: Girl from the North Country | December 29, 2017 at 02:19 PM
"When "Gangnam Style" by Psy hit YouTube like a tsunami, many people were surprised to discover how popular Korean music and dramas are in America and outside of Korea.
...
The Korean entertainment industry is booming right now. The global audience for Korean music and Korean television is exploding across Asia and is even spreading to Europe and North America."
Why Korean Dramas Are Popular
Posted by: CharlesWT | December 29, 2017 at 02:39 PM
"Denmark and Norway"
Good examples. Of course the Danes play chess with Death and Norway has an abundance of this stuff called 'oil'.
We could certainly do a lot better. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever figure it out.
Posted by: bobbyp | December 29, 2017 at 03:02 PM
I think that there is a great deal of problems, but the movies heighten them not because they want to be more realistic, but because they want to be more unrealistic.
Here you kinda contradict yourself. Flims and media are usually not completely mimetic or realistic, but they do reflect or represent fantasies, desires and/or nightmares of the producers and/or audiences in ways that are interpretable and perhaps explanatory.
Actors are more attractive than average for reasons. Buster Keaton and John Wayne are popular for reasons. Romance and zombies sell because. The iconic and iconographic nature of anime is in one part technical (hard to draw dirt) but not coincidentally intentional and powerful (astro boy is universal)
Anyway, the consuming of entertainment is a mass or niche behavior, and says at least as much about people as Facebook and twitter, and often more than we like to admit publicly.
For example, when I first came here (30 years ago), there were tons of horror flicks
As a completist, I have been running through those over the last couple months. Guinea Pig is mostly kids playing with new plastic tools, but the All Night Long series has nihilistic merit. "World Celluloid Massacre" is my critical review site for extreme movies.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 29, 2017 at 03:47 PM
I followed this link to a piece in the American Spectator about Prince Harry's interview of Obama on the BBC. Isn't it fascinating when the far left and the far right have almost identical attitudes?
https://spectator.org/the-prince-and-the-community-organizer/
Posted by: Girl from the North Country | December 29, 2017 at 04:17 PM
Of course, that's the "old" version of the far right...
Posted by: Girl from the North Country | December 29, 2017 at 04:41 PM
i almost made it through the first sentence.
Posted by: cleek | December 29, 2017 at 05:03 PM
"Of course, that's the "old" version of the far right..."
Not to be confused with the "Alte Reich", of course.
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 29, 2017 at 05:06 PM
The spectator article is good, and made me laugh.
The center sees the extremes as similar. Shock. There are of course so many more ways to be unfashionable than fashionable, but the center by definition sees everything else as simply "not like us." Part of this is seeing those excluded as not inclusive enough.
The alienated take inordinate pride in being "not like them" for some meaning of "them" that tends toward a majority, if not a totality.
But Obama complaining about traffic on the way to meeting Prince Harry is funny.
President Obama suggests Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party is 'disintegrating' and has lost touch with 'fact and reality'
With Harry, against Corbyn. That is who Obama is, who he was all along, and the meaning of his regime and policies. Grifter.
"Worst President Ever" is a title he has only recently lost.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 29, 2017 at 05:17 PM
Honestly, it's too easy....
Posted by: Girl from the North Country | December 29, 2017 at 05:48 PM
The alienated take inordinate pride in being "not like them"
Heh.
But "inordinate"? "Smug" or "justifiable" -- pick one, bob.
Anyway, interesting that Obama was apparently a worse president than Dubya. Nice to learn what "the alienated" mean by "worst".
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | December 29, 2017 at 05:50 PM
I followed this link to a piece in the American Spectator about Prince Harry's interview of Obama on the BBC.
Haters gotta hate.
Posted by: russell | December 29, 2017 at 06:17 PM
Here you kinda contradict yourself. Flims and media are usually not completely mimetic or realistic, but they do reflect or represent fantasies, desires and/or nightmares of the producers and/or audiences in ways that are interpretable and perhaps explanatory.
Yes and a Korean audience is probably going to view it more meaningful because the way to tug on a South Korean's heartstrings is to have an ending suggesting that it is all social obligations and no solidarity. But that doesn't mean SK is
a very cold and cruel country, with lots of social obligations but little social solidarity or support.
Analyzing SK dramas from a Western viewpoint might get you some interesting insights, but it can also lead you down the wrong path just as often.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 29, 2017 at 06:22 PM
interesting that Obama was apparently a worse president than Dubya. Nice to learn what "the alienated" mean by "worst".
But Dubya was a rich white guy. So, low expectations.
Whereas Obama was a black man -- so it was infuriating to the ideologically blinkered that he turned out to be a center-right politician. I mean, how dare he not be a radical liberal (if not a socialist)??? Bertayal!!!
Just another place where the far left and the far right turn out to agree on something. ;-)
Posted by: wj | December 29, 2017 at 06:25 PM
But "inordinate"? "Smug" or "justifiable" -- pick one, bob.
In all modesty, it comes too naturally.
...ideologically blinkered that he turned out to be a center-right politician.
Well, his fans have apparently moved in their judgements of Obama from "center-left" to "center-right" so I can look forward to further movement in the same direction. Then we can talk about blinkers.
The level and quality of his duplicity, and the wishful thinking and cognitive dissonance of his fans, drove mad and destroyed my Party of fifty years.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 29, 2017 at 07:04 PM
his fans have apparently moved in their judgements of Obama from "center-left" to "center-right" so I can look forward to further movement in the same direction.
You might want to think about the difference between having a consensus view shift and individuals having their individual views shift. Obviously the former involves some people's views changing. But not necessarily everybody's views.
For myself, I thought Obama was, overall, center-right from approximately 2008. And nothing I have seen since has changed that view. It may be blinkered, but it's based on what he has said and done.
Posted by: wj | December 29, 2017 at 07:11 PM
There were specific reasons why some lefties and some righties disliked Obama where they were in agreement with each other. There are other areas where the criticisms are quite different. Some lefties, for instance, cruticized Obama for his switch to austerity talk and for wanting a grand bargain with the Republicans. Fortunately they were too eager to see him fail to strike any sort of bargain. I haven’t seen too many criticisms from the right saying that Obama was too quick to worry about the stupid deficit. Obama was center right on that issue.
On foreign policy, there is a subset of conservatives with little influence who side with lefties with similarly low levels of influence who are intensely critical of our love for violent interventions despite their record of catastrophic failure. I don’t agree with Bob’s apparent desire to see a violent revolution here, but centrists seem thrilled to support violent overthrows of governments elsewhere. And of course there is the endless hypocrisy. Pictures of destroyed neighborhoods in Mosul and Gaza and Yemen look the same as in Aleppo, but the language used about the perpetrators is different.
Posted by: Donald | December 29, 2017 at 07:51 PM
wj: agree 100% on Obama's positioning. Lots of "motivated reasoning" on left and right to think otherwise.
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 29, 2017 at 09:29 PM
his fans have apparently moved in their judgements of Obama from "center-left" to "center-right"
in the context of the last 40 years of US politics, center-left. in a broader context - historically or globally - center-right.
all a question of perspective.
i figured obama to be, approximately, this generation's eisenhower. i stand by that.
The level and quality of his duplicity
i figure the office of POTUS to be, ethically and spiritually, one of the more harrowing experiences available to human beings. i'm amazed anyone emerges from it with all their marbles more or less intact, let alone with unsullied virtue. i do not demand or expect people in that office to be unfailingly candid, transparent, and forthright in every statement and action.
i expect the POTUS to faithfully execute the laws of the nation, uphold the constitution, be a reasonably effective public spokesperson for the interests of the nation, and run a good executive shop. that's the gig.
there has never been, nor will there ever be, anyone holding that office who meets your standards of purity.
Posted by: russell | December 29, 2017 at 10:31 PM
in the context of the last 40 years of US politics, center-left. in a broader context - historically or globally - center-right.
And for "historically" you don't really have to go back more than the 20 years before that.
Nobody can argue (at least not convincingly) that Eisenhower or Nixon were center-left -- let alone liberal. But did we see Obama doing anything like creating the EPA? (Obamacare was minor by comparison.) Or like sending the 82nd Airborne into a state capital to enforce a Supreme Court decision? Ha! And the mind boggles trying to imagine how the Republicans would have reacted if he had.
Posted by: wj | December 29, 2017 at 11:25 PM
Obamacare, is way left of the
EPA, it's a flight of fancy to pretend his behind the scenes regulatory changes were much short of Berniedom. And he does believe Bernie is pretty centrist. Obama us not quite as far left as Pelosi, thzts the oy person hes to the right of.
Posted by: Marty | December 30, 2017 at 12:16 AM
Or whatever I meant to type
Posted by: Marty | December 30, 2017 at 12:26 AM
Obamacare, is way left of the EPA
I'm having trouble seeing that. The EPA touches an enormous number of industries, and imposes constraints on how they work in enormous detail. Obamacare only touches medical insurance, and it's constraints are pretty limited:
- no rejections for pre-existing conditions
- penalties for not being insured
being the big ones. Even the Medicaid expansion is optional. (All of which is not surprising, since the design came out of a conservative think tank.)
How do you figure that the EPA is more conservative?
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 12:32 AM
The Obamacare/EPA argument is a false dichotomy, I think.
The EPA was pretty activist under his administration.
But yes, I'd agree he was a disappointingly cautious president domestically - particularly in the first couple of years when he had a narrow majority in Congress.
Posted by: Nigel | December 30, 2017 at 03:23 AM
Obamacare, is way left of the EPA
and way, way, way to the right of Truman's proposals ca. 1945.
Posted by: russell | December 30, 2017 at 05:05 AM
While perhaps the ACA was less ambitious than some of Trumans Fair Deal proposals, you cant really say the underlying policy was much different, or "to the right".
Lots of Obama's priorities were really right out of the Fair Deal playbook. One challenge I will concede he had was there is an ever dwindling set of rational liberal planks to run since most of those from the late 40s through the mid 60s were made into law. So all liberals, he being one, have to choose between the issues that are realistically left and seeming like Don Quixote. The country as a whole has moved so fat left since 1948 that even Trump looks right wing.
Posted by: Marty | December 30, 2017 at 08:16 AM
your periodic reminder that the GOP is a cult: Bannon tells us that Breitbart covered (nay, covered for) Roy Moore the way it did in order to try to prevent the media from establishing a baseline for sexual assault that would ... wait for it ... affect President Trump.
--
my 2 minute theory: Obama's position is easily calculated by taking your own left/right position and negating it. if you are close to the center, your estimation of Obama's position will be close to the center, but just on the other side of the 'center' point. if you're far right, you'll see Obama as far left. if you're far left, you'll see him as far-right.
which probably means he was precisely in the middle.
Posted by: cleek | December 30, 2017 at 08:32 AM
you cant really say the underlying policy was much different, or "to the right".
truman's fair deal health plan was national single payer. the ACA is, quite specifically, not.
cleek has it right at 8:32.
Trump looks right wing
only kinda-sorta. more accurately, trump looks banana republic.
Posted by: russell | December 30, 2017 at 09:10 AM
The country as a whole has moved so fat left since 1948 that even Trump looks right wing.
The country has changed a lot politically and socially, and, as a whole, in no particular direction that anyone can say definitively. It’s a mish-mash of change, some things becoming harder to define within a left/right dichotomy.
Trump mostly looks authoritarian, and clueless about how our system of government is supposed to work. Still, he’s managed to embrace most of the Republican positions established over the last 30 or so years since coming into office.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | December 30, 2017 at 10:56 AM
hsh: The country has changed a lot politically and socially, and, as a whole, in no particular direction that anyone can say definitively.
The following all seem like clearly Leftward changes to me:
Abolition of Jim Crow
Sexual liberation
Medicare and Medicaid
Environmental regulation
The following, I would call Rightward changes:
Flattening of the income tax
Weakening of unions
Warmaking delegated to POTUS
Some people complain that the US has "moved to the Left" since WW2. Maybe they are appalled by some or all of the items on the first list. Maybe their complaint is that the second list is too short. Maybe I missed something on one list or the other.
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | December 30, 2017 at 01:15 PM
Environmental regulation is seen as left(ish) to-day. Looking at the first implemented ones in the past (e.g. the British ones against the pollution of the Thames) it was once something conservative and (unlike to-day and contrary to (modern)conservative claims) also meant as a weapon (against the classic liberals behind the industrial revolution).
The (offically left) communist countries often put western polluters to shame by exceeding them by a wide margin (hey, how can a burning river in the US compete with one in the USSR that will kill anyone merely standing at its banks for half an hour due to runoff from the nuclear waste dump lake farther up?).
And the German welfare state was the brain-child of arch-reactionary Bismarck hoping to postpone the revolution by peaceful means (which naturally led to claims that ol' Otto was actually a commie).
Posted by: Hartmut | December 30, 2017 at 01:40 PM
Maybe I missed something on one list or the other.
Deregulation and enabling of global finance. But otherwise a good comment. Positions have become complicated, or mix of ideologies new under neoliberalism. Obviously Obama is quite "Left" on some issues compared to Roy Moore, but "Right" compared to the Pecora Commission. I doubt even my worst enemies here believe I want to weaken gay rights or limit abortion.
A little Marx, from today's reading of Hayden White:
I would argue that children are slaves to their parents, with their purpose being entertainment. People do spend much money and effort on entertainment.
I actually consider most current 3rd wave feminists way to my right, and right-wing compared to the socialist second wave.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 30, 2017 at 02:01 PM
I doubt even my worst enemies here ...
Come off it, Bob! There are lots of folks here who disagree with you on various topics.** But "enemies"? That's the sort of over-the-top rhetoric which is driving much of our current political disfunction. (Which you may approve of, as a driver for revolution. But that's a different argument.) It's possible to disagree with someone, without them being an enemy. Really.
** For example, the nonsensical assertion that children are some kind of slaves. Certainly it is possible to treat children that way. But, at least in this culture (and in most other current cultures) doing so would be both highly exceptional and seriously disapproved of by society at large.
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 02:20 PM
...children are some kind of slaves.
Hmmm...I thought they were pets...
Posted by: CharlesWT | December 30, 2017 at 02:27 PM
Charles, I think it's more the converse: some people treat their pets like (real) children.
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 02:34 PM
Marx does use "slaves" broadly:"the power of disposing the labor power of others." For instance, dispossessed wage-labour needing sustenance. I wonder if I would get the same pushback in saying that women are slaves to their husbands. And I did note that entertainment and pleasing were exploitable labour.
Marx's goal was to make exiting a labour relationship easy and essentially cost-free to the labourer. All else is an exploitative power relation = slavery. If you want to claim that slavery is limited to a de jure relationship enforced by the state, that's almost libertarian in the obfuscation of private power, and ignores state support and enforcement of family relations.
Looked up It Takes a Village for grins. Ghost-written and uncredited? Jesus.
Wiki:"which translates as 'A child belongs not to one parent or home.' In Kijita (Wajita) there is a proverb which says 'Omwana ni wa bhone,' meaning regardless of a child's biological parent(s) its upbringing belongs to the community."
Clinton largely pushed for community support, which is only a baby step. I want to end all parental power.
Wiki:"Senator Rick Santorum wrote a rebuke to the book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good."
Good to see y'all form coalitions and find allies. I'm agin families.
(Just fussing ron a bored cold satday.)
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 30, 2017 at 03:41 PM
I think there is a problem due to your focus (to put it gently) on power. That is, on the rights that one party has with respect to another.
But the reality is that the relationship involves both rights and responsibilities. I find that focus on rights reminiscent of my peers' focus, when we were teenagers, on the (adult) rights that they wanted. Whereas being an adult, or a parent, is primarily about responsibilities. Ignoring that gives a very distorted view of what is going on.
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 03:57 PM
Doctor S.,
My understanding is that a "convection bake" setting sets the temperature at something less than what you specify on the controls. This is, I think, because it assumes you are actually baking, and with convection you need lower temperatures than those specified in recipes. The oven assumes you are entering a non-convection temperature.
This may have had something to do with your problem.
My own oven has a "convection roast" setting as well as "convection bake." I believe this setting also uses convection, but the temperature is not adjusted from what you specify.
Posted by: byomtov | December 30, 2017 at 04:09 PM
byomtov:
OK, so at last I RTFMed. Turns out "Convection Bake" in this oven is specifically for *multi-rack* cooking, and primarily heats from the back unit. Roasting really needs the regular bake setting, which heats primarily from the bottom.
I don't seem to be able to use the convection circulating fan while heating from the bottom.
Posted by: Doctor Science | December 30, 2017 at 04:59 PM
Bob doesn't know what he's talking about, here are two great websites about Korean cinema:
http://www.koreanfilm.org/
http://www.modernkoreancinema.com/
My favorites (but my knowledge is pretty limited):
Memories of Murder
Oldboy
The Chaser
A Tale of Two Sisters
The Host
Mother
The Yellow Sea
I Saw the Devil
The Wailing
A Bittersweet Life
Posted by: novakant | December 30, 2017 at 05:11 PM
Use those sites, seen all those movies, and many more. Is there one on your list that is not in total depressing and despairing about man's inhumanity to man (or woman)? (Host, maybe but Yellow Sea is a misanthropic nightmare) In how many of those is the system primarily to blame, rather than interpersonal indifference, cruelty, and sadism? Crooked cops, gov't and corporations are central to many cinemas, directly or metaphorically; in Korea, it is about individuals.
C/mon where's My Sassy Girl?
wj:"Hell, them fieldhands are a yuuuuge responsibility. Cost thousands to buy, haveta provide food, housing, clothes work, churchin, overseeing, and lots and lots of discipline. And they never pick their weight in cotton. Wherever would they be without me? Yankees always just see one side, and never grant all that I do for my people. I luve them, and protect them."
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 30, 2017 at 05:42 PM
Environmental regulation is seen as left(ish) to-day. Looking at the first implemented ones in the past (e.g. the British ones against the pollution of the Thames) it was once something conservative...
Curiously, Margaret Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to get global warming....
Posted by: Nigel | December 30, 2017 at 06:03 PM
Crooked cops, gov't and corporations are central to many cinemas, directly or metaphorically; in Korea, it is about individuals...
From my (thus far limited) experience of Korean movies/TV, that's utter hogwash... speaking of which, go see Okja.
Crooked cops, government and corporations - and the combination of all three - are a recurring trope of current Korean TV.
Posted by: Nigel | December 30, 2017 at 06:06 PM
Have yet to see the Wailing; and confused The Yellow Sea with the one about the fishing trawler and illegal immigrants whose title escapes me.
Wouldn't recommend Hong Sang-soo to one with that list.
You want a recommendation though? Taebaek Mountains was a good political movie about the immediate years after WWII in Korea. Im Kwon-taek was considered establishment oldhat to the New Wave but he made a bunch of good liberal movies. Much like Kinoshita in Japan.
Let me see:
Castaway on the Moon
Musa
Kim Ki-duk is risky, but 3-Iron can be recommended
The Good the Bad and the Weird
Chang Dong-Lee is a must
Jeong-boom Lee, esp Man From Nowhere
Jin-ho Hur makes sophisticated non-schmalzy romances
...
The question in presentation is if it is particular bad or good dudes or women cops, corp executives or gov't officials that are the problem, or is it the police in general, gov't, or business as systems that are the problem. Conversely, is it the usual rogue cop lawyer social worker bucking his superiors and fighting the good fight or is a group or community?
It is in a way basic to the structure of live action video to focus on individuals, which as actors are real people, as problems and solutions.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | December 30, 2017 at 06:29 PM
A little reverse flow of culture:
What ‘The Good Doctor’ Means for Diversity in Television: As the first Korean drama to be remade for American television, the show proves that a series can be bigger than its entertainment value.
Posted by: CharlesWT | December 30, 2017 at 06:58 PM
"Hell, them fieldhands are a yuuuuge responsibility. Cost thousands to buy, haveta provide food, housing, clothes work, churchin, overseeing, and lots and lots of discipline. And they never pick their weight in cotton. Wherever would they be without me? Yankees always just see one side, and never grant all that I do for my people. I luve them, and protect them."
I begin to see where the problem lies. See, here's the thing about responsibility. You have responsibilities towards other people. Not towards your own property. (And calling your property "my people" doesn't change the fact that they were just property.) You maintain your property for your own benefit, not because you feel a responsibility towards.
But perhaps you have a problem with the concept of relationships that are not merely an exercise in power, or people who don't fall into the neat binary categories of exploiter and exploited. Believe it or not, most of us have numerous relationships which don't follow that paradigm.
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 07:04 PM
...question in presentation is if it is particular bad or good dudes or women cops, corp executives or gov't officials that are the problem, or is it the police in general, gov't, or business as systems that are the problem
Given that the economically dominant chaebol are still family dominated, that is perhaps a distinction without a difference.
Posted by: Nigel | December 30, 2017 at 07:05 PM
Bob, it occurs to me that I've gotten a bit intemperate. Apologies.
The problem is that you put me so much in mind of a lot of folks I knew as a student at Berkeley in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were so wedded to their ideology, so sure it gave them all the answers. While at the same time constantly demonstrating that they had zero knowledge or experience in the real world and how it worked. They knew all about how "workers" thought and felt, without every having actually talked to one.
That level of ignorance may or may not describe you. But that's the button that your assertions keep pushing.
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 09:59 PM
Enjoying the thread. Pardon the (likely) hit n run but...
wj: those under the trance of the mainstream/capitalist/liberal ideology have the privelege of presuming that their "real world experience" and their "actual talking" is free of ideology. But look closely! (It'll break the trance). All so called "experience" beyond a very low threshold of immediacy is ideological/socially constructed. "Actual talking" is similarly bound up in constructed meanings and interpretations.
It was/is the radicals who are trying to describe water to the fish.
Posted by: b9n10nt | December 30, 2017 at 10:29 PM
Except that some of us contesting their description of water aren't fish. More like diving birds (to stick to the analogy): people who are familiar with both the environment being described and with another, rather different, environment. We have looked closely . . something the ideologues, at least in my experience, avoid like the plague. Because, as you say, looking closely might break the trance.
Posted by: wj | December 30, 2017 at 10:50 PM
To answer bob's point more directly, rather than retreating to talk of ideologies and social constructs, the collective is likely to be every bit as oppressive as the family. And few families sink to the depths of (for example) the Khmer Rouge and Year Zero.
I'll stick with being a pluralist.
Posted by: Nigel | December 31, 2017 at 01:19 AM
I note that South Korea has single payer healthcare, and ranks first in the world for universal healthcare access....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_South_Korea
The change to that from a fragmented and inequitable insurance system is relatively recent (and democracy itself only goes back to the events of 1988). Seeing South Korea as some kind of society in stasis seems to me fundamentally misconceived.
Posted by: Nigel | December 31, 2017 at 01:49 AM
As for children as slaves, it is a common position of the religious Right in the US that children are the property of their parents and that the state has no rights at all interfering with that. In particular this concerns bodily violence towards the kids (for some up to and including killing them in cases prescribed by the Bible).
[snark]I assume that they are all pro-life. Life is sacred until birth as we all know[/snark]
Posted by: Hartmut | December 31, 2017 at 03:25 AM
"it is a common position of the religious Right in the US that children are the property of their parents and that the state has no rights at all interfering with that. In particular this concerns bodily violence towards the kids (for some up to and including killing them in cases prescribed by the Bible)."
I suppose you can argue about the definition of common, I have never known a single person who took the position that it's all right to kill ones children for any reason at all. I am sure you can come up with someone somewhere that believes this, but it is not common among the "religious right".
Posted by: Marty | December 31, 2017 at 06:10 AM
A very happy new year to all of you without exception. Let's hope that 2018 will be an improvement on 2017 (a person can hope, after all).
Posted by: Girl from the North Country | December 31, 2017 at 08:11 AM
frame by frame
death by drowning
in your own
analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqBGn8gYSTY
Posted by: cleek | December 31, 2017 at 08:23 AM
Wasn't there a case, a year or two ago in the US South, of a "deeply religious" couple SELLING their kids to some other person in their church?
And it only came to light because of the subsequent sexual abuse.
Why, yes, they were all GOPers, why do you ask?
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 31, 2017 at 10:00 AM
I suppose you can argue about the definition of common
i believe the "kill your kids" cohort was limited to "some". which is still a pretty remarkable stretch. i.e., not true.
short of the killing thing, it doesn't seem far off.
Posted by: russell | December 31, 2017 at 10:28 AM
A quick google search yields several cases of parents 'disciplining' children to death with 'To Train Up a Child' found in their household. A crackpot like Gary North wants to punish 'children that curse their parents' with death by stoning (biblical and cheap). I found a link (which I did not follow) to a theological discussion on whether a mother was (theologically) justified to kill her two children to save them from Hell.
No doubt this is not a majority view even among very conservative US Christians but a few both have it* and a megaphone to spread it. Without any doubt a majority of conservative evangelical Christians is in favor of corporal punishment as a parental right (or even duty).
*I guess 'condoning' (death) would be the legal term ('billigend in Kauf nehmen' in German).
Posted by: Hartmut | December 31, 2017 at 12:09 PM