American Film Renaissance

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The American Film Renaissance festival came to Your Nation’s Capital last week. An attempt to break the left’s stranglehold on entertainment media, AFR features conservative and libertarian-themed films and filmakers.

My normal rul of thumb is that when you label yourself “The Conservative [ANYTHING]” you’ve already lost – as An American Carol is demonstrating in box offices right now. But AFR and similar film festivals are a little different; if nothing else, they serve to act as a place for conservative filmmakers to practice. Not all the films are politically themed, either.

I’ve attended a few of these, and admittedly it’s easy for less-than-stellar works to get a free pass because conservatives are just that thrilled to see something on a big screen that reflects their values. But this is still an important sandbox for conservative would-be entertainers – if just a few emerge making Hollwood-quality movies or TV shows, that will certainly help balance things out.

Collins to exuviate 24 little-used words

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The Collins English Dictionary is 86-ing 24 words from its version of English. Not to be oppugnant, but this decision vilipends our language.

Collins feels the caducity of these words is apodeictic. But this caliginosity can only serve to embrangle future generations — not to vaticinate, but I expect that when they come across these words but have no resource to find what they mean.

As keepers of our language, the Collins English Dictionary must behave with mansuetude when they make such decisions.

Hail Science!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Artist Jonathan Keats has built a “Temple of Science.” His inspiration was a discussion at an atheists’ conference about how science could replace religion.

It isn’t hard to find folks who believe science provides absolute truths to the universe and consider religion a crutch for the weak-minded. They obviously aren’t junkies of the History Channel’s “The Universe” series, which often talks about theory after theory being cast aside. One episode discusses how Albert Einstein believed the universe was static, even though his own theories and measurements indicated that it is expanding.

In other words, if you had 100 scientists on the deck of the Titanic, they may not all agree to get in a lifeboat. So if religion was banned and science took it’s place, the new world might not be as different as you think.

Entertainment 2.0

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I just found this article about an online variety show to promote the band Tally Hall. Warner Brothers’ offbeat promotion is an attempt to match modern media and the spirit of the Monkees. And good for them, because it seems like in today’s media environment, the bigger the company or cause is, the less likely they are to try new marketing and – more importantly – revenue models.

During my college days around the turn of the century, music downloads took off, and record companies attacked Napster. They should have realized that the black market sprang up because of some important consumer trends: sometimes people wanted to buy singles, rather than 13-song albums, and they wanted their media digitally. This was a new revenue model and a new market that iTunes eventually capitalized on; and now legal music downloading and internet radio sites exist. How badly do you think Sony, Universal, and other major labels wish they had thought of a download-based business model ten years ago?

The trend is starting to continue to video. Studios and television networks are quick to scour YouTube and pull unauthorized copies; anyone who has tried to share a Saturday Night Live sketch on Monday afternoon can attest to this. But now NBC and other networks and studios have been delivering web content though their own sites and through other sites like Hulu.

The beauty of capitalism is that factors such as the delivery of goods and services are ultimately dictated by the customer. Smart companies analyze those trends and find ways to take advantage of them.

Gaian dictator?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

“When will people learn: Democracy doesn’t work!” – Homer Simpson (a Barack Obama voter)

A bunch of scientists got together and determined that a single multi-billionaire could probably fund a project to combat climate change by spraying sulfur particles in the atmosphere. It is, of course, controversial even among scientist; some theorize that this “solution” may destroy the ozone layer. (“Egon, this reminds me of that time you tried to drill a hole in your head.”)

But beyond the technical challenges, talk turned to what practical issues would arise in building a global consensus for any such undertaking. As New Scientist correspondent Fred Pearce reported:

“Some enthusiasts for geo-engineering – or eco-hacking, as some have taken to calling it – said we might one day have to ignore democratic niceties in order to get the job done. “

Democratic processes are not “niceties” – they are government systems that prevent oppression.

Environmentalists may make the argument that Homer Simpson made – that ignoring the will of the people may be necessary to follow a path that promotes an overall good for mankind. But considering that they can’t even agree on which path that is, let’s not burn the Constitution just yet.

We’re losing the debates

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Sarah Palin and Joe Biden debated last night. Like millions of Americans, I made sure I was in front of a TV to tune into Pitt’s 26-21 upset of No. 10 South Florida.

What made the football game more interesting was that even though I was rooting for Pitt, I didn’t have any idea what either side was going to do – much less what the outcome would be. If you’ve made up your mind on a candidate, chances are the debate won’t change your mind. Worse yet, if you’ve followed the race to this point – and it has been a very long race to this point – you have a good idea of what each veep candidate will say in advance.

Early in the third quarter of the football game, Pitt tried a fake punt. It came from out of nowhere. What would the equivalent of a fake punt be in a Presidential or Vice Presidential debate? Joe Biden calling for free market solutions to the financial crisis? Sarah Palin accepting Hugh Hefner’s offer?

Debates have become microcosms of the campaigns – in other words, scripted personality contests that only happen every four years. And for the campaigns, that’s the right move, because they have such a finite amount of time to discuss issues and ideas. The American people are stuck voting for candidates based on personality rather than ideas.

Debates would be more useful if they were more frequent. In addition to holding a handful of candidates’ debates just before an election, it might be fun to see monthly or weekly debates between conservatives and liberals on various issues. At the risk of dating myself, this worked well about 15 years ago, when Ross Perot and then-thin Vice President Al Gore debated NAFTA on Larry King Live.

I’d like to see an hour long debate between MoveOn.org and the Heritage Foundation about whether we should replace our income tax with a national sales tax. I’d like to see the AFL-CIO debate National Right to Work over the proposal to remove secret ballots from union elections.

This isn’t going to turn our Presidential election into forums of philosophy, but it might help engage people more in the political process. And, let’s be honest, those 24-hour-a-day news channels don’t have enough news as it is. This would help them kill an hour or so a week.

Daily Kos: Earmarks are OK!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The rhetorical gymnasts at DailyKos are hard at work “taking the steam out of John McCain’s anti-earmark crusade.” Their two-pronged approach has two key points:

1. Earmarks don’t cost that much.
2. Earmarks pay for good things!

It’s not pointing out earmarks that McCain has supported, or rooting out hypocrisy in McCain’s position. They actually like earmarks (for the purposes of the 2008 Presidential campaign).

For the first point, DailyKos draws the analogy of a worker who makes $30,000 per year and carries $90,000 debt, approximately the ratio the country is in. Under this scale, the worker would spend $150 in earmarks – not enough to dent the debt. Thus, according to Kos, earmarks don’t cost that much.

On the other hand, I’d advise the worker that throwing around money and spending wastefully is probably the type of behavior that led to the $90,000 in debt.

And of course DailyKos advises it’s readers to highlight earmarks that do good things and were sponsored by Obama. Setting aside that it’s probably a bad idea to highlight their candidate’s record of supporting earmarks, is the point of reforming earmarks really about the outcome? If our government was spending money on the Monroe County Office of Puppy Punching, I doubt earmarks would be an issue.

Earmarks are bad because it’s taxpayer money – yours and mine – going to a project so a Congressman or Senator can buy their constituents’ votes. And regardless of DailyKos’s moral relativism, that’s wrong.

Don’t call us, we’ll call you

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

It looks like the Senate will vote to approve the Wall Street bailout that failed the House earlier this week – despite intense constituent disapproval.

Public disapproval of the proposed bailout was so high, in fact, that the House website crashed under the weight of the public response: those who tried to email their Congressman got an error message about high volume. Their solution was to limit the number of emails constituents could send in.

That’s not a typo – Congress really told America, “Hey! Pipe down!”

It’s easy to blame Capitol Hill’s 1970s-era staffing structure for making Congressional offices amazingly ill-equipped to handle high volumes of electronic constituent communication. But as the internet becomes the easiest and most convenient way for most people to get in touch with their elected representatives, this may just be a scam to drum up business for the post office.

Drinking our milkshake

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it, the Congressional ban on offshore oil and gas drilling disappeared about 15 hours ago. Democrats decided to let the ban expire last week.

It was shrewd. There will be no policy change – given all the regulatory and procedural hoops companies who want to drill will have to jump through, it could be years before the first drill bit pierces the ground. And, as many Democrats are hoping, that will be long after the Obama administration works with larger Democrat majorities in the next Congress to “fix” offshore guidelines.