How being a Dad changes you,

But it was an emergency rush in 1985 for the film "My Little Pony: The Movie" that allowed Mr. Shin to start Akom Studio in Seoul. In only 10 weeks, his newly formed team of animators was able to create the 300,000 cells required for the 1986 film. "We all just worked nonstop," he said.
It was a bountiful time for animation. In 1994, the South Korean government finally recognized the economic potential of the industry and started to support it (a far cry from 1967, when the government labeled cartoons one of the "six evils" of Korean society).

There are several all too easy potshots to take about "My Little Pony: The Movie" but then I think about Dakota brushing the manes of her dolls and having them sing and talk about their careers as Mechanical Engineers and I have to pause. "My Little Pony" is just the benign affection of a little girl bestowed upon a pretty plastic pony. It's cheaper than a real pony and a whole lot less smelly.

Hooray for Hasbro.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): "we think the sound construction of the constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional."


The next time someone says to you:

1) "TELL ME WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION IT SAYS ________"

2) "WHO GAVE CONGRESS THE RIGHT TO________"

Answer:

1) Art I, Section 8 - right at the end where it says "Necessary and proper"

2) John Marshall


But if you want to argue

"The government has no business getting into this business of ________________"

and you can organize voter get Congress to repeals those laws, then you are absolutely correct, too.


But I, for one, sure am glad that we have a Federal government to clean up disasters and in particular, that we have FEMA.

Nothing so annoying as when your computer makes noise when you don't want it to...

Quick! Where's the "Shut the hell up" button on the Cheer's Boston website. My point on this post is this:

At what point does America conclude that "the Gang from Cheers" are a troupe of pathetic alcoholics and their jailers? At the conclusion of the show? After watching a Cheers marathon? When catching up with the Gang when they make special guest apperances on Fraiser?

No... I suspect that this sort of revisionism in history won't occur for decades. Mark my words (great expression) it will happen, and with a vengence (another great expression) and when it does Cheers will become as reviled as "Amos n' Andy," Mickey Rourke's character from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or the complete works of Charles Dickens. Once this happens, Cheers will become a symbol of all that is wrong and evil and excessive with whatever societal ill plagues that future America at the time when it villifies Cheers and at that point no one will see the humor any more.

Health

Thanks to GoogleNews, I now know that Coffee found to be high in health-giving antioxidants . If true, then I will live to be a billion frickin' years old!

Today I went to Target for DayQuill. Aparently this is now a pharmacy item, as it if its the middle of the night and I need cold medicine I need to go to a 24 hour pharmacy. Thanks a lot, meth-heads of ruining society yet some more.

This ranks up there with not being able to buy spray-paint for my Pinewood Derby racer in 4th grade. Actually, I'm happy with how that turned out. My dad and I came up with a wicked design. I would tell you about it, but then I would have to sue you.

I'm Virtually Home

I just visted the my elementary school with Google Earth. It was very upsetting. The four-square court is still there. And the swings and the back-stop. Someone is parked in the Principal's spot.

When I was at City University, my crypto-dualist pseudo-socialist philsophy teacher had a cartoon of Yassar Arafat, wearing a VR helmet proclaiming the quote in the title of this entry. I never thought the joke was the least bit funny.

Dinner by Chuy's, Entertainment by Dakota

So Monday night, we (me and the kids) met up with various friends (Kerry, Eric, John, Melissa's Friend Kat and family, the Darlingtons) to celebrate Melissa's birthday. A fun time was had by all, and Jason was quite happy to fill William's usual spot with cute smiles and messy eating (just kidding Will - Jason is a way neater eater than you).

And Dakota was her usual awesomeness. That girl is so smart, and so energetic, the she constantly amazes everyone, even herself I think, with her antics.

I can't even, three days later, think of what specifically made my hair curl and skin crawl, but I am sure other people can.

All I know is I Love my little girl, crazy/energetic fireball and all.

And it 2 years she can use the skating skills she is aquiring to play ice hockey. Surely THAT sport will tire her out, right?

If that's how they measure appropriateness, then I'm the King of England

I got into a big fight once at Interliant when I explained matter of factly that it was perfectly valid, logically, to have a false premise imply a false conclusion.

It wasn't really a big fight, the other person manage to sway the crowd that I knew absolutely nothing about logic. So I just shrugged and said, "Well apparently, that's a fact."

I also had an joke using a double-entendre (also known as a snotty pun) on "absolutely nothing" The pun was a Hegelian reference. The whole joke was ill-conceived. Its better just to describe it. There.

A. A. Milne, Scourge of William Li

"... Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie."

(Incidentally, I would have hated "30 days hath September / April May June and Novemember", too, but mainly because May has 31 days. And don't get me started on the "February has 28 years" bit. I like that we can come to the same conclusion for different reasons.)

No reason

Things that rhyme are often true
Elephants from Mars are blue.



There was a special class of rhyming wisdoms that I especially detested when growing up and that was the "No reason" rhymes that didn't rhyme either.

I think every kid hated "Children should be seen an not heard"

but I hated

"30 days hath September
April May June and Novemember
Except for February which has 29 on leap years which are years divisible by four otherwise it has 28 years and occasionally the international time-keeping community will add a second or a minute to the year so that time can match the rotation of the Earth."

Teachers would introduce this as "a good way to remember the months of the year"

I hated this one more than "i before e except after c or sounding like a such as in neighboor and weigh" as that one actually rhymes

Second of all -- hath? Speakth the modern tounge thou wench!

But the stunning the revelation was that my elementary school teachers didn't know why some months had thirty and some months had thirty one days --- except for the one teacher who did know and explained it --- That teacher was awesome.

I often compare the extreme difficultness of my wife's job as teacher versus my own teachers. I've come to two conclusions:

1. Teaching is hard.
2. Nevertheless, Rhyming is a totally lame cop-out solution to a "why?" question.

Don't Get rid of the WinXP Search Assistant aka "the dog"

Notice that even when explaining how to Get rid of the WinXP Search Assistant aka "the dog", people don't bring the venom like with Clippy

Here is an example of a greatly improved Human Factors designed. I like to imagine that they fired all the old Cog Sci majors and replaced them with new ones.

Coverage of counter protests

First look at this:

Son's death ended normal life for protest mom

What should immediately leap out at you, is that the only non-advertisement pictures are concerned with the counter-protests (protesting the people who are protesting the government). This should jump out at you because it is the title of this blog entry.

For a moment forget about how you feel about the substance of the position, because that is not what this entry is about.

The adversarial definition of political events has also constructed TV's notion of 'balance' in their coverage. If political events are constituted by two opposing forces, then TV's role as neutral observer, reporter and interrogator would seem to lie in the centre: holding the balance between two sides. This is, indeed, how TV's role has been interpreted in the coverage of domestic affairs...[digression omitted]...This central position enables the TV institution to appear both unbiased (in the sense of representing a 'possible compromise' between two positions) and common-sensical (in the sense of representing a 'possible compromise' between the two positions). This is TV's balancing act with balance....

John Ellis, Visible Fictions, 231-32 (1992 ed.).

Actually, Ellis wrote the above quote in 1982 and he was thinking about England and not America, but the lesson sticks: How much controversy is real controversy? For all the bemoaning of the loss of intelligent (as in: issues aren't all black and white) and honest (as in: the other side might change their position in good faith) debate, maybe intelligent and honest debate isn't happening because journalists assume that this would make for bad television.

The reason the Sheehan broke so big is because for a moment it broke through the characterization of the "two sides" of the "war" issue. BTW, I use the finger quotes because I feel that there are a spectrum of opinions and that there is more than one issue at play, but again... bad television. Anyway, if you remember when this story broke it was "Hey there is someone protesting the war who is just a normal Mom, and look! some Christian church groups are out there too" tone that trouble some underlying conceits that existed prior to the story breaking.

The underlying conceits prior to the story breaking were:

*People who are against the war are educated and therefore out of touch with reality, just like the nerds who you hated in elementary school.

*All Christians support the government's position on the war.

There was a tone of suprise and incongruity akin to the pundits reaction to the "Yo quiero Taco Bell" dog. [WARNING WARNING: Rhetorical flourishes alert, start distrusting the author of this blog entry now] Early articles were along the lines of, "this story challenges our half-baked monochrome rendering of the world and now nothing makes sense"

Maybe, as a result of the protest movement started by this poor woman who lost her oldest son, these insulting [WARNING WARNING: Ironic warning telling you how to think in a blog entry critical of news outlets telling you how to think] characterizations that happened in the name of selling news would evolve into rich and more human portraits of the people involved. No way!

Queue the follow-up stories: Turns out Ms Sheehan is a "life-long Democrat from California" and there are legions of high-school drop-out mullet-sporting reactionary dupes bleating their conviction that the president is the government and that God is American.

Over the next few weeks I expect that the various media outlets will "fill in the blanks" by fitting the "two sides" back into traditional characterizations until we go back to the simplistic "left" vs "right" dicotomy. Listen for the undercurrent of "well gang, that solves that mystery" This will be the tone of articles from media outlets of all stripes.


Okay here is my point (actually its two points)

Don't journalists watch other Television besides the news? It turns out the people are capable of absorbing lots of "almost scientific information" or in the alternative "totally fake laws of nature." What's more, we are able to follow extremely convoluted (if contrived) moral connudrums and take sophisticated positions on them and have a deep understanding of all the worlds problems in a very hazardous world where appearances are deceiving. People who watch TV "get it" and we're not talking about high-brow television, either.

Point #1: Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm sticking with the notion that whenever a news article treats its audience like a bunch of simpletons its because a simpleton wrote the story. [RED ALERT! RED ALERT!]

Is there no good journalism out there? Actually there is: entertainment journalism.

Point #2: Put down (INSERT NAME OF VERY SERIOUS NEWS MAGAZINE HERE) and pick up "Entertainment weekly" [outrageous punchline phrase here]



Okay... I sabotagued my own points. Why did I do that? [I'll never tire of this rheotrical construct, I think its called anagnorsis, except that's a dramatic concept and I'm looking for the rhetorical equivalent construction] Because originally, I had put down "The Washington Post" when I stopped and realized "Hey, Libby Copeland, writes for the Washington Post and what she has to say is generally both highly accessible and deeply nuanced."

In fact, picking on Journalists is like picking on IT people: not fair because its often times a hopeless situation that wasn't their doing. Moreover, to characterize all journalists as being the same in their tendancy to create simple characterizations of peoples and issues would be deeply hypocrtical.

So what?

Well... My professor was characterizing the nature of television as creating simplistic dicotomies. I believe that his observation was asute but that he is wrong in his conviction that this is a necessary characterization of television because actual fictions managed to be complex.

So I went narrower and said that only journalists create simple dictomies as a result of their own inability to see their audience in non-simple ways. But I thought of someone who went to my High School who actually writes really great stuff and had to take it all back. Not just because of her, but because I then thought of about 25 journalists who I read on a regular basis who I would also write honestly and engagingly, but its tedious to have to write down their names and then find links to example articles by them and anyway it doesn't further the point to do so. Wow this paragraph is getting long.

Then I realized that I was engaging in the same sort of characterization that I was critizing and felt really bad.

So that leaves us with my favorite type of point: further proof of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. (BTW, Wikipedia is really interesting)

Characterization is easy to do and is superfically persuasive. As such, it tends to pervade lots of texts both intentionally or not. Wow! That's a lot of writing for such a trite and facile point. Okay: Let me also add "Its nice to be important but its important to be nice" and "if you swallow a water melon seed, a watermelon vine will grow out of the top of your head". Great. Post.

um, what?

Not sure I remember that movie Will. But if you say we watched it, then I am sure we did.

***

For those of you following along at home, I got the results of my thyroid scans. As of now, everything is fine. Well, I still have to take the thyroid hormones every day, and we are still trying to determine the optimal dose of that. But the nodes on my thyroid seem to all be "hot" which means they are working (really not very well, it appears, but functioning nonetheless), which means they have a function. If they had been cold, I would have had a biopsy, and go from there as to what surgery needed to be done. So for now, all is good, in terms of no surgery, but I am being referred to an endocrinologist, who will most likely assess me every so often to make sure all is well.

***

School started today for us teacher types. Tomorrow we have a lecture at one of the high schools, and they have asked us to wear our school colors. Does this make it a pep rally?

Here's a typical "This is why I don't like William Li" joke

She's the Sheriff and He's the Mayor. They're the local government.

But I'm not joking. Although I haven't seen "Desparate Houswives" or "Weeds" or the remake of "The Stepford Wives" or blah blah blah. I already saw this movie in 1957 (ok it was on cable, but Louren saw it too so it really happened) it was called "No Down Payment" and I watched it because Tony Randall was in it. I get the feeling I've blogged about this before... no matter. This is a great movie before my Property Final. Its all about Real Covenants and zoning and Deed of Trust Security Instruments and Usurious financing and so on.

I would like to see a version of "The West Wing" style or "Law & Order" style process drama take on a functional suburban edge city, focusing on the three branches of government and how they deal with Urban Planing, Plat Approvals, Tax abatements, Emergency Services, Municipal bond issuances, interaction with Neighbor cities, interaction with State, and county. And extremely limited power...

That would be a great show. I can envision an entire three-episode story arch that shuttles back and forth between the office of the tax-collector assessort and the appeal to the full-panel oversight commitee (the mayor, city manager, and city council, the board commisioners) for the city Board of Adjustors that ultimately turns on whether the developers orginal grant conveyed a defeasable fee and if so was it determinable or subject to condition precedent because if it were the former than equitable title might have passed prior to the expiration of the tax assesment grace period unless the possesory interest didn't convey until resolution of the pendancy of the action to Quiet Title by the adverse possessorts. In the exciting third episode, the judge would decide to take the motion for summary judgment under advisement but deny the motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction because the sovereign immunity exception did apply based on an obsure resolution passed in episode one of the series!


Ok... going out for coffee.

Dakota and the Canadians

Dakota: Mommy, I saw a Canadian today.

Louren: Really? What's a Canadian?

Dakota: Mommy, you know. They are kinda like a lizard, and they can be green.
But sometimes they change their colors.

Louren: Oh! Those Canadians.

*****

I just didn't have the heart to tell her the real word was chameleon. Plus, this is a way better definition, to me, of what a Canadian is.

*****

School starts on Wednesday for me (just in time for me to no longer be radioactive). We get kids the following Tuesday.

Summer in Texas. Short, hot and sweaty. I am sure there is some analogy to be made there, but I am too tired.