Vernon Lee

You've Summoned the Fail Whale

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Stephen Fry on Self-Pity

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:25:00 +0000

The quotation below begin at 3:52:

STEPHEN FRY: Certainly the most destructive vice, if you like, that a person can have - more than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self-pity. I think self-pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have, and the most destructive.

It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred - and I think actually hatred’s a subset of self-pity, not the other way round - it destroys everything around it except itself. Self-pity will destroy relationships, it will destroy anything that’s good, it will fulfill all the prophesies it makes and leave only itself.

And it’s so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is under-appreciated, and that if only one had had a chance of this or only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better. You would be happy if only this. That one is unlucky. All those things - and some of them may well even be true - but to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.

I think it’s one of these things we find unattractive about the American culture, a culture which I find mostly extremely attractive, and I like Americans and I love being in America. But just occasionally there’ll be some example of the absolutely ravening self-pity that they are capable of. And you see it in their talk shows. It’s an appalling spectacle and it’s so self-destructive. I always wanted once to publish a self-help book saying “How to be Happy”, by Stephen Fry. Guaranteed success. And people buy this huge book and it’s all blank pages and the first page would just say, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings.” And that’s what the book would be, and it would be true.

And it sounds like, ‘Oh, that’s so simple.’ Because it’s not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s bloody hard. Cause we do feel sorry for ourselves. It’s what Genesis is all about.

MARK LAWSON: The book of the bible, not the rock group?

STEPHEN FRY: Oh yes! Maybe. I don’t know!

The entire 5-part series is worth tuning into. (You've just viewed Part 2; find Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 & 5.)

What a Night It Was

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:03:00 +0000

My Polling Place

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:29:00 +0000

9:05 AM:

Superman Goes to the Supermarket

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:50:00 +0000

More Acorn

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Courtesy of Brave New Films:

My Friends!

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:22:00 +0000

Batman:The Penguin::Obama:McCain

Yes We Carve

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:03:00 +0000

The Obama campaign's ingenuity has frequently amazed.

Today, it delights:

Share your Barack O'Lantern pics at the Yes We Carve site.

Acorn

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:18:00 +0000

A nice succinct refutation of the ACORN accusation by Matt Yglesias:

I find that an awful lot of problems are caused by people’s inability to understand things like error rates and big numbers. If a pharmaceutical company came out with a new anti-depression drug and gave it to a million people suffering from depression, of whom 970,000 were helped you wouldn’t turn around and conclude that the company was perpetrating a deliberate fraud based on the fact that “tens of thousands” of patients got no relief. You’d say that the medicine was helpful in 97 percent of the indicated cases. ACORN is trying — and succeeding — in an effort to register a lot of new voters.

There’s simply no way to gather over one million new voter registration forms without some of the forms having been filled out with bogus information. You could ask the group to automatically toss out the obviously wrong ones — some guy saying he’s Tony Romo, someone else saying he’s Mickey Mouse — but the law requires them to hand all the forms in to prevent them from tossing out forms filled out by people who say they want to register Republican. Consequently, if you go out and register over a million voters you’ll wind up with a lot of bad forms being submitted. But just as 30,000 is a lot of people and also only a very small fraction of one million people, when you’re talking about registering over a million new voters you’d need orders of magnitude more bad forms to constitute real evidence of a systematic fraud campaign.

McCain Declines To Condemn Obama-Osama Comparison

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:11:00 +0000

Try watching this with the sound off.

Attention cable news bookers:

Get Paul Ekman on your shows to explain what the grimacing signifies.

One preliminary guess: it has something to do with anger.

Congratulations

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:25:00 +0000

to this year's Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Paul Krugman:

Mr. Krugman received the award for his work on international trade and economic geography. In particular, the prize committee lauded his work for “having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.” He has developed models that explain observed patterns of trade between countries, as well as what goods are produced where and why. Traditional trade theory assumes that countries are different and will exchange different kinds of goods with each other; Mr. Krugman’s theories have explained why worldwide trade is dominated by a few countries that are similar to each other, and why some countries might import the same kinds of goods that it exports.

Snausages

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:28:00 +0000

I laughed so hard my face hurts.

To Tell the Truth

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:52:00 +0000

A bit of chat between Matt Welch, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, and Will Wilkinson. The topic is how McCain creates and maintains the impression of candor.

Welch draws an apt parallel between a 20-something guy who acts like a jerk and then readily admits each transgression. His admissions zero out the balance on his jerk account. His admissions are a great way for him to get laid. His admissions promise nothing of his future behavior.

It's fair to say that reporters meet McCain's faux honesty with relief. It is tedious to tussling with politicians about plainly evident truth, facts in the public record, etc. It must be a relief to have a conversation with John McCain in one of his truthiness moments: he'll come out and just admit whatever the bad thing is. Now see how easy that was? See at what this attitude frees up: lots of time! Bonhomie!

But the greater point is that we in the Post-Truth Era react with gratitude when someone isn't straight-up lying to us. Sad.

Ode to Sean Hannity

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:59:00 +0000

A little gem from John Cleese:

Ode to Sean Hannity

by John Cleese

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

Obama Buys 30-Minute Ad Spot

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:27:00 +0000

This is quite the development:

Barack Obama has purchased a half-hour of airtime on CBS, sources confirm.

The Obama campaign will air a half-hour primetime special on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. Sources say the Obama camp is also near a deal with NBC and Fox.

The first version of this I heard had the ad buy occurring next week - instead of the accurate date of the Wednesday prior to the election.

I wonder what the campaign will use the time for?

If I were a media strategist for the Obama campaign, I would use the time to do a fireside chat with America about the economy.

Something that's been missing, I think, is a comprehensive explanation for precisely what went wrong when, and how we're going to get through this mess. I'd like to see a Perot-style explanation complete with charts, graphs and timelines. Until this point, we've been rushed to sign a $700 billion check - and because it has not stanched the bleeding as expected, many of us are wondering how many guns will be pointed out our heads in the near future. The commercial could feature a roundtable with respected financiers - Warren Buffet, Robert Rubin - explaining what our priorities are for immediate action, what the government can do, and what our expectations as citizens should be.

The message would be: This is what we plan to do for you. (And the underlying, unspoken theme: We will speak to the American public as adults.)

One thing is certain: the McCain campaign will be desperate to discover what the Obama campaign plans to use the time for.

I wouldn't advise Obama to use the time to talk about the ugliness of the campaign or counter the lies McCain, Palin & their surrogates have been spewing on the campaign trail. But just the thought that they could might make McCain's surrogates think twice about what they do between now and then.

UPDATE: Michael Scherer offered this reflection after the last Presidential debate, at Swampland:

Neither candidate has the courage to speak straight with the American people about our nation’s fiscal problems. Asked about the financial crisis, McCain talked about energy independence, hitting the same talking points he used in July. Obama talked about the need to give tax cuts to the middle class, and expand spending programs, a proposal he put forward last year. Both men have proposed policies that will lead to an increase in the deficit, according to independent analysts, even without a dramatic economic downturn, which looks increasingly inevitable. Neither man has shown any clear intention to tell Americans to face head on the hard economic times that await us. This is politics. The candidates are playing it safe, not telling voters anything they don’t want to hear. They choose to demagogue Wall Street instead. Let’s just pray that after the election, the winner drops this politicking and becomes the bold, honest leader both men claim to be. The nation will need it.

I agree.

Debate II

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:16:00 +0000

The second Presidential debate was quite interesting to see: McCain scored fairly well in some areas with both men and women, but with some of the answers the dials in women's hands went up to the very highest score and just stayed there throughout the answer. Quite surprising.

In the first few moments of post-debate analysis I caught, David Gergen mentioned the moment where McCain pointed at Obama and referred to him as "that one" - and I think correctly pointed out that that was a moment viewers and voters will remember. I think the first commentator to bring it up was Jeffrey Toobin; Bill Bennett disagreed.

While I have gotten used to pundits saying the townhall environment generaly favors McCain, I'm not so sure - at least when Obama is also in the room. McCain's stiffness and limited range of motion - a cause not just of age but also of his injuries from torture in Vietnam - made him seem like Frankenstein to me.

Plus, I had the volume up in the office and watched by myself, and each speaker's vocal patterns and breathing rhythms came across with a clarity those watching in a loud, boisterous group (as in my first debate-viewing group) may not have heard. McCain had some odd, raspy breathing patterns that sounded like he was trying to catch his breath.

The two candidates did both frequently backtrack to correct things the other said. Neither scored particiularly well when doing this initially. But it'll be interesting to see what advantages ultimately accrued to each in that overall, takeaway score: toughtness, and puttin gforth a stronger version of each candidate's record and vision.

The questions were excellent. Whether healthcare should be a commodity; what they don't know now and how they planned to learn it; how our financil situation will affect our ability to intervene abroad; what the bailout does for average people like me -- all good stuff. Brokaw's question about whether healthcare is a right, responsibility or a privilege was very good, and I think each candidate answered the questions well according to his philosophy and plan. I think McCain struck a bit of a false note when he asked whether Obama had answered the question of fines: it seemed a bit out of place after Obama's peroration about the health care industry as a whole.

Also, Obama's statement - in direct response to what could have seemed a reasonable-sounding statement by McCain (Why not be able to shop for healthcare whatever state it's offered in?) was excellent. Obama correctly pointed out a parallel with the banking industry clustering in Delaware because that's where the most favorable laws are w/r/t banks, and the same thing would happen with healthcare. Of course, Obama's running mate is from Delaware - often referred to in the blogosphere as Biden/D-MBNA, a point Obama's detractors are sure to make.

Secession

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:51:00 +0000

This should be disqualifying.

(IOKIYAR applies, naturally.)

Reached Bottom. Starting to Dig.

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:11:00 +0000

This...

is why McCain will be running exclusively negative ads.

With less than a month to election day, McCain's running out of time to shift course.

But this...

... is why McCain's 11th-hour character attacks are unlikely to work.

Save Us From These Creeps

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:03:00 +0000

A very effective video from the Humane Society, which is endorsing a candidate for President for the first time this year.

No, they're not endorsing McCain/Palin.

After watching this video, you'll see why.

I can't imagine calling this "hunting".

When I see inhuman treatment of either human beings or animals, I shudder to think about what happens to the person administering cruelty or torture.

And to the rest of us who have to deal with them.

Leadership

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:43:00 +0000

A story in the NY Times Magazine this weekend about 14-year House veteran Tom Davis's estrangement from his own party.

As for Bush, Davis long ago lost faith. “He’s a disappointment,” Davis said. “How else do you say it?” In his view, Bush grew isolated and surrounded himself with people who made bad decisions. The president, he lamented, failed to effectively tackle a rising deficit, Medicare and Social Security. He rose to the occasion after terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, but not after Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast. “I would vote for him again against John Kerry; that’s not an issue,” Davis said. “But I’m disappointed just in terms of his stewardship. I wrote the Katrina report. Just the fact that he wasn’t down there the next day and he flew over it in Air Force One to get a view of it — that, to me, is not leadership.”

I do not think that word means what he thinks it does.

Comedy

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:54:00 +0000

Dave Weigel reviews An American Carol:

Is it funny? It depends. Zucker funs around with Hitler by recycling a gag from his worst political ad, in which a James Baker III lookalike did the bidding of a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lookalike. There is a truly disturbing scene involving Leslie Nielsen and human dismemberment that might have gotten a chuckle at Ed Gein’s house. There are a few jokes that connect, though, and that puts An American Carol miles ahead of Fox’s short-lived “The Half Hour News Hour.”

It doesn’t put it in league with the great liberal comedy. There’s a reason for that, as TV critics point out every time a conservative comedy or skit fails. Political comedy mocks authority. Conservative comedy in the Age of Bush venerates authority. The “heavies” that corrupt Malone and (temporarily) ruin the lives of his conservative extended family are powerless, silly activists. Malone simply gets slapped around a bit and decides the establishment was right. If you transported Zucker back to 1978 and pitched him Animal House, he’d direct Niedermeyer: Man of Iron.

Get Me Research

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Wonder if some insurance expert has a run-down on how much John McCain's health care coverage would cost if he had to buy on the open market?

Lil O'Reilly

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:17:00 +0000

http://view.break.com/581294 - Watch more free videos

Hilarious.

Palin/Bush Mashup

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:59:00 +0000

Be sure to watch through to the end.

Wink wink!

Gotcha!

vernonlee_2000@yahoo.com (Vernon Lee) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:22:00 +0000