Posts by Craig Ranapia
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The funniest thing about that shirt would be linking Britney's name to other 3. Bound to upset some serious old rockers, that would.
The really sick thing about it is that the infotainment-industrial complex wouldn't see the joke. Could you imagine what pictures of Suicide Barbie in a puddle of her own waste would fetch? And how many media outlets and websites would start wagging their fingers, as soon as they'd finished signing the cheque?
Added bonus: Who the hell knows what Chris 'Leave Britney Alone' Crocker will do? Just make sure you get your tasteful 'Leave Britney Alone' Tee 'n' thong set first.
Anyway, talking about early death as a great career move, has anyone ever read Idlewild by Mark Lawson? Rather nice piece of alternate history where Lee Harvery Oswald missed, Marilyn Munroe had a date with a stomach pump rather than immortality... and now its November 1993 and time hasn't been kind to either of them. He's reviled as the war-monger who escalated the war in Vietnam (Teddy died heroically trying to save a drowning woman after a car crash); and her latest comeback, at 67, might just work if she can keep the weight off and remember her lines.
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Terence:
OK, so you've shifted the goal posts to "a great technical economist" - grounds on which I've said twice I'm not really competent to pass judgment. Could you point me to any place where Krugman has been equally complimentary about Friedman's extensive writings on matter of public policy?
Sorry, I'm sure this is boring the crap out of everyone else -- but I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on Krugman's worth as a writer. But please stop it with the rather fatuous appeals to authority. As long as he keeps publishing on the op-ed page of the New York Times, he's going to have to suck it up and accept that even highly sceptical plebs like myself are going to look at his oracular wisdom.
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Terence wrote:
Craig: It’s not argument from authority it’s just good evidence that he is a very good economist.
OK, Terence, Milton Friedman was awarded the 1961 The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Sounds awfully impressive, but whether that's particularly sound evidence that he is "a very good economist" might be disputed by one or two people -- including Paul Kurgman himself.
As for your other comments, it would be more succinct if you’d just said that you personally don’t like him. You offer nothing of substance.
Oh, Mr. Wood, blow me. The op-ed page of The New York Times is not a peer-reviewed academic journal, and he's writing general commentary with a heavy political tinge. And "cranky" (as Russell puts it) is erring on the side of generosity. I'd also say tediously predictable, not particularly well-written or insightful exercises in preaching to the converted. Which fits the NYT op-ed page like a glove, but bores the shit out of me.
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For what it's worth Krugman is a Bates prize winner and a highly acclaimed economist. He was also right about George Bush. Right from the start. And a long time before almost anyone else in the punditocracy.
Terence:
I haven't read any of his academic work, and wouldn't be competent to assess it if I had. (I'd also be a little cautious about making an argument from authority citing prizes.) But en masse I've found his columns the rhetorical equivalent of a pair of finger-nails down the world's biggest blackboard. It's not as if political punditry is exactly under-stocked with the type.
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On the other hand (well it is economics, after all) here's Paul Krugman criticising Obama in favour of HRC and JE.
Oh, I thought it was more the general worthlessness of the New York Times op-ed colmnists. Hell, if they're trying to cut costs replacing that lot of dead weight with vintage Peanuts strips would be a good start. (Though I've got to admit that I like David Brooks who, along with George Will, seems to be the only high-profile conservative columnist nowadays who doesn't do a remarkably good impersonation of a flaming bag of bat-shit.)
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The actual phrase was "Move over you Welsh bastard," which is almost affectionate here, but a terrible thing to call a decent churchgoing boy from the valleys.
Heh... until you get 'em liquored up, and then you start hearing some words that aren't in The Bible or any hymnal I have any familiarity with. Perhaps I just keep low company.
And completely apropos of nothing, Heath Ledger dead at 28. Bugger -- twenty eight is far too young to die, full stop, let alone of a suspected overdose of sleeping pills.
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Much as I admire Obama's style, his "give everyone $250" policy is daft. It seems that everyone's solution involves cranking up the federal deficit some more, and worrying about inflation some other time.
Indeed. I'd pledge my vote to the first candidate on either side of the aisle who had the intellectual honesty (and political courage) to just stand up and say: I don't have a soundbite solution to a horrible and complex mess that is going to get worse before it gets better -- and anyone else who says differently is lying to you.
Then again, reality doesn't go down well in the primary process. McCain got hammered in Michigan for telling the truth that auto manufacturing jobs just won't "come back". Romney wins by pandering his arse off - promising the corporate welfare and federal subsidies to auto companies that used to give fiscal conservatives strokes.
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Does anyone else find the economic policy responses of not only the incumbent, but all the US presidential hopefuls unconvincing to the point of being delusional?
'Delusional' might be a bit harsh, Russell, then again there might be one or two of us who think politicians have economic Messiah complexes and delusions of influence with monotonous regularity.
Re the American government: once the Dems get the White House and firm control of the legislature, the adults will be in charge again.
Whatever... I'll just say the evidence from the Democrat-controlled Congress (both houses with workable majorities, Stephen) has been less than encouraging. But who knows, Viggo might want to celebrate his Oscar nomination with a candle-lit dinner with moi as well.
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Good bit of back-peddling there Craig
While Idiot/Savant and I disagree on a lot, he did come up with a serious and civil dissent that deserved to be responded to in the same spirit. You... not so much.
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A greater mystery is how voting for the Academy Awards happens.
How about network standards and practices? Battlestar Galactica exec. producer/head writer Ron Moore has noted the irony that while the network has been (often surprisingly) supportive of a show that is premised on the near-total genocide of the human race and get darker from there on in (from infanticide, through torture and rape of prisoners to suicide bombings and extra-judicial executions of collaborators) the one line the suits would budge on was two words. In BSG, you can poison your wife or throw someone out an airlock but never, ever call 'em a 'prick' or a 'pussy'.
And Tad Friend wrote a really interesting profile of David Lynch for The New Yorker back in 1999. The point where he realised Mulholland Drive wasn't going to be another Twin Peaks was when co-producers ABC and Disney insisted that characters who smoked should have 'a hacking cough'. Put a gun to a woman's head, David, but she better not be sucking a butt at the time - 'cause that would be wrong.
Feh, at least BSG is still a damn good show, and David Lynch got arguably the best film of his career out of the whole debacle. But I've got to wonder how many other people just give up.
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