fashion design is boring - a small dose of pontification

I recently came across a feature on a new fashion label that unintentionally encapsulated precisely what is wrong with fashion design as a profession today. Without naming names, the revelation comes by way of one of the label’s founders: “With women we are exploring many more categories, more of an emphasis on style and being relevant to what’s happening in fashion, whereas with men it’s extremely timeless.” And this, after the article describes the men’s collection as “t-shirts, woven shirts, knits, jackets and chinos in muted, low-key colours” that, according to the same founder, men “won’t get called out on.”

Heavens to Betsy, we wouldn’t want men to get called out for what they’re wearing.

The problem is the concept of timelessness. In some contexts, the concept of timelessness represents a universal quality, a consistent solution to a persistent design problem, an aesthetic that transcends cultural identification, an idea whose relevance endures over long periods of time. Yet timelessness can also be a manifestation of the status quo, a conceptual frost that favours the static over the dynamic. “Timeless” becomes more excuse than rationale, an apology (without acknowledging it as such) for failing, not to innovate, but to even attempt innovation.

This isn’t to say that women’s fashion is the product of innovative design in and of itself while men’s fashion is fundamentally stagnant. Although there’s no question that the most fun in fashion design is to be found in products for women –see Mohop shoes, or early United Nude designs, for example – fashion designers, as the quote above reveals, nevertheless tend to deploy a conservative hybrid of recycled imagination and reactivity. The relevance to what’s happening in fashion, what’s trending for women, is essentially an example of cyclical cannibalism. Designers resurrect and reinvent past trends in women’s fashion over and over again, with variations marketed as more than they are. Once in a while, they fly their freak flag with wild and admittedly imaginative designs, but so what? They’re typically too impractical and artsy for daily wear. Men don’t get trends, but quality craftsmanship for “timeless” styles, aka lazy design.

For fashion design to be innovative, let alone revolutionary, it should purposefully upset the established order of gendered stereotypes, reject the homogenizing effects of mass production in favor of bespoke artisanship, and genuinely challenge the tension between individuality and social identity manifested in how we choose to appear. It’s not enough for fashion design to question design objects. It must also question the process and reasoning of design itself.

Anything else is just the same old pursuit of commoditized novelty, gendered to favour women with imagination and men with timelessness.

some music wanders on purpose: thoughts on pink floyd's endless river and division bell

When The Division Bell was released in 1994, roughly at the beginning of my musical adventuring, my exposure to Pink Floyd had been more or less limited to The Wall. In comparison to that seminal rock album, one I’d unhesitatingly place as a 20th century masterpiece, The Division Bell seemed rather lacklustre. Tracks like A Great Day for Freedom recalled the melodic riffs I latched onto in the band…but then there were tracks that came across merely as soft and meandering. Prog rock, I thought, shouldn’t come across like soft jazz.

Over 20 years later, with a more evolved appreciation for music and greater knowledge of Pink Floyd’s word, the release of Endless River prompted me to return to The Division Bell and give it another listen. Surprise, surprise, the album doesn’t sound the same. While certainly not a landmark like The Wall, nor seminal like earlier albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and so on), The Division Bell is also far from “rubbish” as Roger Waters unkindly judges it. Liberated from the demands of aggressive ambition, the album’s relaxed demeanour feels today, quite simply, like having a seat in a studio filled with musicians at ease with each other.

As a parallel album in space if not entirely in time – the music was recorded during the Division Bell sessions but unreleased at the time – Endless River serves as epitaph in memory of Richard Wright, a coda to Division Bell, and a pensive epilogue, as it were, to a classic and essential band. Predictably, the critical consensus circles the verdict that this is the sort of music put out by rock ‘n rollers after their exile to the retirement home. Some reviewers tack away from this view, praising the album for what it is, while others reject it as a disappointing, sighing retread. In the “end,” only one’s own ears can tell which it is.

Arguing over the musicianship strikes me as a technical dead end. But artistically, it’s hard to refute the argument that the band has not been driven towards conceptual grandeur after The Wall, an impulse that exited stage left along with Roger Waters. Endless River, like The Division Bell, is hardly a tremor let alone an earthquake insofar as visionary music goes. But as a straight-up listening experience, music for the senses more so than the mind, Endless River benefits from a quality that Division Bell exhibits after one gets past its drive to be “about” something. By foregoing the conceptual burden of lyrics (except for the last track, Louder Than Words) in favour of riffs and jams, improvisations and musical quotations, the album is allowed to stand for itself. Like its title suggests, the music isn’t about a particular destination, or even a port of origin (unless you want to bring band politics and other contexts into play), but a quietly compelling journey by accomplished musicians limited only by one’s preconceptions and expectations. More ceremonious than a fade to black, Endless River is best enjoyed in a darkened room as a mind trip from the planetarium to outer space – just like The Division Bell, in the end.

not just another robo-remake; thoughts on Hollywood remakes and Robocop

It’s almost Pavlovian: Hollywood announces a remake (or reboot: the new lingo would have us think of film as technological products rather than artworks), and cultists sharpen their pitchforks, oil the torches, and storm Sunset Boulevard. But let’s be honest, shall we? Unbridled creativity, averse to anything but wholly original novelty, would quickly bankrupt the studios. Balancing the need to offer something new while drawing on proven successes to justify the economic investment makes it pointless to get upset when old favourites are remade. Instead, it might be less apoplectic to view remakes like musical compositions that offer variations on a theme. If you don’t like a variation, you can always go back to the original. Call me an optimist, but I’d argue that Hollywood remakes offer new generations of filmmakers the opportunity to revisit ideas from a new perspective. Some fail, but others, like Jose Padilha’s updated take on Robocop, succeed.

I’ll admit that I’m not particularly invested in Paul Verhoeven’s film, of which I’ve only retained one clear memory: a poor thug doused and melted by toxic waste, then decapitated and exploded by car collision. Reading reviews of the film, I’m reminded that the ultraviolence is supposed to play into a satire of some kind. But the scene’s unnecessary gruesomeness underlines the film’s cruelty rather than presents any sort of insightful black comedy. Good black comedy deflates the absurdity of our response to tragedy; only the trashy presents suffering in itself as entertainment value. (If only explicit sex was so gleefully cheered as gory violence; I’d rather watch people get blown than blown apart.)

Still, cheap and exploitative as it may be, exploding heads offer easier thrills than talking heads. Verhoeven’s film hews closer to the action movie formula, resulting in a film with undeniable momentum from beginning to end. By comparison, Padilha’s Robocop (scripted by Ed Neumeier , Michael Miner , Josh Zetumer, and Nick Schenk) is rather drowsy, livened up by a few action set pieces but mostly a cerebral affair. Far from being a critique of Padilha’s approach, however, the departure from action movie bombast requires a change in expectations. This new Robocop is not an 80s action film, or an attempt to approximate one, but rather a rare beast in the Hollywood menagerie: a thoughtful science-fiction film that is well-filmed, well-acted, and well-conceived, if a bit undercooked at times.

Rooted in the politics of drone warfare and the militarization of law enforcement, Padilha strives to offer a parable on the dehumanizing effects of wars waged by proxy, first by actual machines and, inevitably, via cyborg. An opening scene of pacified Tehran, in which citizens are subject to law enforcement by robots, sets the baseline. Puncturing American hypocrisy, the film deploys Samuel L. Jackson as a reactionary television personality to rail against the rejection of mega-corporation OCP’s law enforcement drones within the US while supporting their use abroad. Then OCP’s CEO Raymond Sellars, played with carefully calculated understatement by Michael Keaton, delivers the grand idea to exploit American fears for market share: restore the ghost in the machine, put a human spin on the robot.

Enter Alex Murphy, the victim of a bombing that leaves him little more than a head and lungs. Portrayed by Joel Kinneman, an up-and-coming actor whose superlative work on The Killing marks him as one to watch for, Murphy comes to embody the answer to the question of what happens when the distinction between human and machine, both physical and psychological, is blurred. In a bid to demonstrate the viability of a cyborg cop, Murphy has been transformed into a commodity. Although ostensibly intended to reassure a public wary of machines that lack consciences, the irony in Robocop is that Murphy can, for the most part, be programmed like a machine. (It’s worth noting that Robocop takes a more sophisticated view of cyborgs; the mere replacement of a limb isn’t enough to justify questioning a person’s human status. But what of the person whose entire personality and cognition is dependent on changeable machine hardware and software?)

The absence of graphic violence serves to highlight, not undermine, the overall commentary on sanitized violence. After all, what is drone warfare if not the cognitive dissonance of damaging an opponent without risking casualties of one’s own? An early training scene sees Robocop, complete with a sophisticated head’s-up display, gracefully dispatch robot drones in a sequence that recalls a video game. That scene is later repeated with the same clinical detachment, only with a warehouse full of live people. The parallel is striking; violence as video game, insulating the player/soldier from a visceral reality that might otherwise cause a crisis in conscience.

Particularly refreshing in the film’s speculative sci-fi is Gary Oldman’s as Dr. Norton, the scientist behind Murphy’s reconstruction. The trope would have presented him as an amoral eccentric, a willing puppet to anyone able to bankroll an obsession with going over the edge. Yet in Padilha’s vision, delivered with Oldman’s customary nuance, Dr. Norton is a conscientious man who carefully considers the implications of his work – and suffers a moral crisis as a result. This is just the sort of awareness that imbues Padilha’s revisioning of Robocop with intelligence and a sense of purpose. Where most reboots, notably film adaptation of vintage TV series, have failed on account of missing the essence of its inspiration, Padilha’s Robocop takes the core concept of Verhoeven’s film and offers enough new ideas to escape its shadow and validate the remake as a legitimate Hollywood effort.

a tale of two flops: the lone ranger and john carter (part 2)

Like The Lone Ranger, John Carter is a long-running narrative bookended by a framing story. In this case, the frame involves weary Confederate officer John Carter who apparently dies, leaving behind a journal for his nephew and heir (named Edgar Rice Burroughs, in a metafictional twist) to read. Along with the journal come instructions to keep watch over a tomb that can only be unlocked from the inside. From this, the film launches into its main tale of a man thrust onto the alien world of Mars where he finds himself embroiled with the Tharks, the planet’s four-armed native Martians and, later, in the middle of a civil war between two rival city-states. His Earth physiology gives him an advantaged of strength and speed in the Martian environment, making him a coveted player in the war’s machinations.

Directed by Andrew Stanton, the film is beautiful designed and presented, with all the majesty of an epic story. The good news is that unlike many other films that feature white protagonists wading into “alien” environments (such as Avatar), John Carter successfully avoids the trap of colonialist condescension. The hero might be pivotal in the plot’s balance of power, even idolized in some cases, but he is never deifiedThe Lone Ranger, the stand-ins for aboriginal cultures in John Carter (the aforementioned Tharks) are presented with a complexity that evokes admiration and bafflement in various degrees, both of which play into a nuanced and ultimately respectful cultural portrait. All in all, John Carter comes across like fantasy role-playing.
into a Messianic character. And unlike Native Americans in

So it’s not subtext or conceptualization that weighs John Carter down on Earth, but rather a struggle with the elements of craft. The film runs long at 132 minutes, which gives us enough time to appreciate the gorgeous production design but nevertheless can’t accommodate all the plot stuffed into the narrative by an overly ambitious script. Where John Carter should feel like a brisk pulp adventure, it feels instead like a languid travelogue from a guide who keeps on schedule by giving only the most rudimentary lessons on culture and history. The lead, Taylor Kitsch, isn’t a particular asset either. His generic appeal is just good enough for the material, not rousingly charismatic as one would hope from a heroic pulp adventurer. Less  to no framing story, and more (but zippier) time spent with the core narrative would have elevated the film to the exhilarating altitude this sort of epic calls for.

In the balance, John Carter’s shortcomings are the sort to differentiate a good film from a great one. It’s a good-enough film to tease the imagination, with enough fun in it to wish for the series to continue with a few relatively minor course-corrections. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen for reasons having to do with Hollywood economics. Nevertheless, unlike The Lone Ranger which is a fundamentally flawed film from conception to execution, John Carter has enough charm and substance to make it worth keeping in mind.

a tale of two flops: the lone ranger and john carter (part 1)

Disney’s aspiring blockbuster franchises John Carter and The Lone Ranger are generally dismissed as flops on account of failing to satisfy critics and, most importantly, the all-powerful Box Office. Finding only some sort of lingering life in rentals since their theatrical release, they failed to ignite fandom in spite of each proto-franchise having significant cultural cachet. So what happened? Were the films essential flops or merely victims of marketing hype? The answer, of course, is both…but not to the same degree in each film.

Let’s start with the Wild West. It’s not until the intricately choreographed climactic confrontation on fast-moving trains that The Lone Ranger achieves the buoyant irony-free mood of a heroic adventure. Of all the film’s action set pieces, Verbinsky’s directorial wit shines best in this sequence, naturally set to the tune of the William Tell Overture. Everything that precedes and follows it, however, is a tonally inconsistent narrative that understandably alienates the generations who grew up with the legendary character and fails to impress a new generation of potential fans.

Some of the film’s sour atmosphere emerges from elements like a needlessly gruesome villain, Cavendish, whose cannibalism feels like a cheap shortcut to establish the character’s malevolence. Granted, audiences seem to prefer the directness of horror to the subtlety of terror, but can’t it be enough for a character to be a murderer and thief? Are we so jaded that storytellers have to resort to lurid gimmicks? Forget the expression “jumping the shark” as a shorthand for derailing into nonsense. I propose “eating the heart” instead.

Supernatural overtones, even as the product of an unreliable narrator’s interpretation of events, are similarly contrived. Layering the supernatural onto Cavendish whom Tonto perceives as a Wendigo and John Reid, whose path to becoming the Lone Ranger is associated with a mystical white horse, comes across as a stunt to add sparkle to a mundane plot. At least with Pirates of the Caribbean, the fantasy elements played into a deliberate embrace of exuberant excess.

This is by no means the worse of the script’s tendency to overcomplicate its narrative to the point of unraveling the film. Not content with a simple origin story, a comic element is added by conceiving John Reid as a bumbling city slicker who has to grow, with Tonto’s aid, into the role of heroic masked ranger.  A story rooted in the blurring line between personal revenge and genuine justice, as John is prompted to avenge his brother’s grisly death at Cavendish’s hands, is magnified by a larger plot involving that perennial Wild West villain, the megalomaniacal railroad company executive. And all of that is presented through a framing story in which an aged Tonto tells the story to an enthralled but skeptical young boy, a device that injects uncertainty into the narrative on account of Tonto’s  questionable reliability. It’s all too much, and the film groans with the juxtaposition of narrative themes, storytelling gimmicks, and ideas of all kinds.

Astonishingly, narrative bloat isn’t the film’s greatest shortcoming. As Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End proved, a film can be marvelously entertaining even as it falls apart from the attempt to cram too much into it. Rather, it is the film’s treatment of Native Americans in general and Tonto in particular that makes it a source of queasiness. The good news is that Native Americans aren’t presented as savages in need of civilization, or with the condescending reverence typically deployed in an attempt to counteract negative stereotypes. Yet their role in the film is arguably just as problematic: they serve as victims for the slaughter and, by extension, objects of pity. While the genocidal campaign against Native Americans is a decisive facet of early American life, surely this isn’t the only defining aspect of a people.

Similarly, while I have no objection to the use of tragedy to propel a character forward, as the film does with Tonto, I do question the filmmakers’ conception of the character. In the main narrative, he is portrayed as eccentric and unhinged, but is simultaneously too tragic to be comic relief and too quirky to be dramatically authentic. In other words, this is character that lacks dignity, being alternative a source of amusement and a source of pity. The framing story is even less charitable, presenting us with an old man displaced from this culture and reduced to a prop in a travelling exhibit. Despondent and doddering, with an uncertain relationship to reality, this Tonto merely evokes sadness. What the heck kind of movie is The Lone Ranger, then, that leaves audiences with a downer?

Next up: John Carter

the vio-lens of film

Ryan Gosling's new film Only God Forgives, currently screening at Cannes, was apparently booed. But that's not the interesting bit. This is, from an article at the Toronto Star:

The gore quotient in the film is high even for Winding Refn. It includes eye gouging, head piercing and an appalling act of desecration of a body that can’t be described here, other than to say it might well have sent Sigmund Freud calling for his mommy.
...

Winding Refn made no apologies for any of this, and actually seemed to revel in it all at the press conference. Peering imperiously through his black glasses, he chided a British female journalist for bringing up the topic of movie violence: “You sound like my mother!”

“Art is an act of violence,” he continued. “Art is about penetration. … I approach things very much like a pornographer. It’s about what arouses me. And certain things turn me on more than other stuff, and I can’t supress [sic] that. … I have surely a fetish for violent emotion and violent images and I can’t explain where it comes from.”

Setting aside the fact that art is not about penetration - how very patriarchal and phallocentric of Refn to believe so - and that art is most certainly not an act of violence, however one might debate the nuances of the equivocation, at least he is honest about his relationship to film violence. This is more than can be said for most, who insist on dressing up their fetish with all kinds of rationales without acknowledging the underlying impulse.

a crash course in corporate profiteering

Strictly in pop-political terms, it seems as if conservatives are generally in favor of corporations but suspicious of government (aka the deregulated "free market"), while liberals are suspicious of corporations but in favor of government. Although the evils of government are easy to list, it is often too easy to forget the good that government can do, such as roads and social safety nets. Nevertheless, the ability of the private sector to fulfill the public-good functions of government is a powerful ideology. And that ideology fails to take in account situations such this one, recently reported by the Associated Press:

AP IMPACT: Cars made in Brazil are deadly

It seems that Brazil has four times the fatalities in passenger car accidents than the US, and the problem is "the cars themselves, produced with weaker welds, scant safety features and inferior materials compared to similar models manufactured for U.S. and European consumers, say experts and engineers inside the industry. Four of Brazil's five bestselling cars failed their independent crash tests."

Carmakers, of course, claim their cars meet Brazilian safety laws, although "the country's few safety activists perceive a deadly double standard, with automakers earning more money from selling cars that offer drivers fewer safeguards." They might, indeed, be following the law...and if that law happens to result in considerably less safety than, say, US law...well, tough luck for Brazilian drivers, right? Caveat emptor.

The lesson is that, when left to their own initiative, it is all-too-easy for corporations to choose profit above people and the environment. Examples such as this highlights the fact that corporate authority is something to be wary of just as much as government authority, a position that ultimately rejects the doctrinal positions of both pop-conservatism and pop-liberalism, as well as refutes libertarianism as fundamentally misguided (read: fatally flawed) anarcho-capitalism. Ultimately, the problem is an age-old conundrum. Just as there is good governance and bad governance (in the moral sense), there is good business and bad business. The difference between the good and the bad is, of course, people.

Can Baggers Be Choosers? (at TFPO)

Culver City's City Council will vote on Monday on whether or not to ban plastic bags. Naturally, it has created quite the debate. Here's a round-up of op-ed pieces at The Front Page Online, culminating in my own contribution:

• Plastic Bag Bans Are Killing Californians, It Says Here by John Kuechle
• It’s in the Bag – That Is What City Hopes Plastic Bag Ban Is and Hopefully, the City Council Will Be as Wise as San Clemente’s by TFPO's editor, Ari Noonan
• Single-use Plastic Bag Is Far More Practical by Goran Eriksson

And mine:

If nothing else, the proposed ban on plastic bags has ignited a much-needed public discussion on our environmental impact, with a focus on two issues: Public health and resource management. The most pressing question that arises is this: Do you wash your underwear?

Read the rest here:  Can Baggers Be Choosers?

What do you think? To ban or not to ban?

a debate that's out of (gun) control (at TFPO)

A topic so big, it took two parts for me to (barely) scratch the surface.

Part 1

In discussing gun rights and gun control, let’s begin with a clarification: While gun bans can be elements of gun control policy, the reverse isn't necessarily true. Gun control is, by definition, a set of policies intended to manage the ownership and use of firearms. Inconveniently, perhaps, for gun rights ideologues, the very idea of gun control begins the moment we...

Part 2

Another understandable, albeit less reasonable, concern on the part of the gun lobby is the worry that arises from requiring universal background checks, an idea that strikes gun rights advocates like the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre as equivalent to a gun registry. If the government knows who has guns, the argument goes, they will know where to go to confiscate those guns. But let’s consider the conceptual difference between a universal background check and a gun registry...

tragedy, history, repeat

The massacre in Connecticut should require no adjectives to describe its obvious moral terror, and a preface to my comments I will categorically declare my sympathy and compassion with the grieving families of Newtown. With that , however, I must take issue with the reaction of people who have no direct connection to the unequivocally saddening tragedy, beginning with the hypocrisy of people who scarcely seem to muster any outrage when this sort of thing happens elsewhere in the world. My objection stems from the various people I've encountered who expressed their heartbreak and emotional devastation at the event. Violent tragedies happens on a regular basis around the world; why does this one merit special emotional upheaval? I'm not suggesting apathy or indifference. I'm merely pointint out the moral deficiency of selective empathy. How many, I wonder, were ravaged by Anders Breivik's numerically worse massacre in Norway, an unconscionable crime that seems to share similar characteristic as the crime in Newtown? How many people give thought to the victims of the Assad regime in Syria, or the victims of violence in Afghanistan? At the heart of our reaction to the tragedy are questionable assumptions.

First is the notion that the loss of children's lives is a special class of egregious crime. Yet, do we not all have our lives ahead of us? Why is it more tragic for society to lose a child than an adult? The supervaluation of children leads to a corresponding devaluation of adults, whose lives are somehow perceived as less precious. If we value life, should we not reject such agist moralism? Why should the experience and, hopefully, wisdom of age be any less a loss to the world than the potential of youth?

Second, in a fearful, reactionary society that confuses being armed with being secure, the notion of a rational discussion of the place of guns in society is all but hopelessly muddled. Blame goes to the NRA, of course, and its relentless grip on policy. But , crucially, the problem is one of the reasoning error that equivocates gun control with gun bans. How many times does it have to be explained that the purpose of gun control is not to deprive responsible individuals of weapons to defend themselves or to hunt, but to balance 2nd amendment rights with the need for social safety and preserving the public good? The 9th amendment, it's worth remembering, states that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” And surely the right to enact public safety policies by supporting responsible gun ownership falls within the realm of other rights “retained by the people.” We have technology to aid law enforcement, such as etching serial numbers on bullet to help track the chain of ownership. We can implement policies to reduce the likelihood of irresponsible gun owners – whether criminal, pathological, or psychologically troubled – from coming into possession of weapons. We can hold gun manufacturers, those crime profiteers, accountable for manufacturing and selling their weapons without discrimination. We can point the finger to the NRA, which is not a voice for sane gun ownership but a smut peddler of gun fetishism. And, of course, we can turn our attention towards achieving the social justice and benevolence that reduces the likelihood of people turning their suffering into acts of evil.

The President said, “We can't tolerate this anymore.” I ask: why did we tolerate it at all? An argument can be made to ban guns, particularly their manufacture. After all, it is a mathematical fact that criminals and terrorists, not to forget ordinary individuals involved in domestic disputes, will have fewer opportunities to perpetrate gun violence if there are fewer guns in existence. Nevertheless, in deference to the possibility that some situations legitimately warrant private gun ownership (and, of course, the 2nd Amendment), I would not advocate for a total ban. Restrictions, however, are another matter. No military weapons for private citizens, for example. Limits on the number of firearms and ammunition an individual can possess. Stronger background checks. None of these are revolutionary ideas, except to the radicals of the NRA.

Will history repeat itself? It remains to be seen whether the grief engendered by this tragedy will cascade into definitive action.

thoughts on the bank of Apple's money problem

Pity poor Apple; the company has a $100 billion stockpile of cash that it only now has figured out what to do with now that Tim Cook is CEO - pay out dividends and buy back stocks over a three-year period. From the LA Times:

The company said it will pay shareholders $2.65 per share each quarter beginning in Apple's fiscal fourth quarter, which starts July 1. The company said it hopes the dividend will make Apple stock a more attractive investment to wider base of investors, including those looking to make regular income from owning the stock.
...
In a conference call with investors this morning, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company would spend $10 billion on a three-year stock repurchase program. Apple is buying back shares largely to be able to award more stock to its employees without diluting the value of existing shares, which happens when a company slices itself into a larger number of smaller shares.

The company said it would spend about $45 billion on the combined initiatives over the next three years.

Good news, then, for those people who want to make money without working for it - "those looking to make regular income from owning the stock." Apple's got your bank account covered. And what of the other $55 billion? No mention of that.


While the business news is abuzz with talk of dividends, the real issue goes unexamined; how did Apple amass such a large cash stockpile in the first place? Being stingy to investors is one answer. Apparently, Apple hasn't issued a dividend payment in more than a decade according to Yahoo!Finance. But let's consider alternative explanations, beginning with the following reminder:


profit = price - cost


Alternative 1: Apple's massive profits arise from a cost that is too low relative to what its products sell for, which means that the manufacturers are being short-changed ("exploited" in revolutionary-speak). Considering that Apple has succeeded in selling pricey products, it seems reasonable to conclude that customers at least tacitly accept that the high prices reflect the high value of the products. I'd argue that Apple depends, in part, on the high prices to drive the impression of a premium brand, raising the question of whether the market would rate Apple so highly if it offered dirt-cheap products.


Alternative 2: The manufacturers are reasonably paid, and it is the price that is too high relative to the cost. In this case, it means that Apple customers are being overcharged for the products they buy. Cue Steve Jobs real marketing genius; persuading people to dish out more money than they should for products they don't really need.


The overall conclusion is: whether Apple is scrooging investors, underpaying manufacturers, or overcharging customers, its $100 billion of stockpiled cash is the result of an exploitative business strategy, aided and abetted by an uncritical customer base susceptible to hype. Some would gush about how that makes Apple a capitalist success story. I'd argue that by extracting considerably more money from the economy than it puts in, it makes Apple the poster child of exactly what's wrong with our capitalist economy and consumerist culture.

dear dead person: you sucked and we’re better off without you

There’s an aphorism in Alice: Madness Returns that seems particularly apropos about this piece by Matt Taibi on the death of pop-conservative agent provocateur Andrew Breitbart: If we can speak ill of the living, why not the dead? It’s almost absurd to consider the taboo erected against a person once they’re dead, as if somehow being critical, if not celebratory, would do some incredible harm to the deceased. I’m not sure how, exactly; the dead are beyond the influence of the living, beyond offense, beyond hurt. Yet it is perfectly acceptable to be vile towards living beings, when the choice between civility and barbarity really does make all the difference. So when Matt Taibi dishes out scorn and grudging praise on the occasion of Andrew Breitbart's death, while calling out his vitriolic critics for conveniently neglecting Breitbart’s scatological treatment of Ted Kennedy’s death, he neatly illustrates how death is used as an inoculation against criticism.


Here’s the thing: all our funerary rituals, all our eulogies, all our obituaries – these are for our benefit. They are the means by which we grapple with the great inescapable, and they say more about us than they could about the dead.  Although I think it is distasteful to be rude and crass towards the death, it’s only because I think it’s distasteful to be rude and crass towards the living. Certainly, impolite displays to hostilities are not respectful gestures – towards those who mourn the deceased. But while civility should be maintained and compassion should be nurtured in all that we say and do, that doesn’t mean mollycoddling a person’s legacy once they have passed away, or expressing insincere grief over their death. In other words, feel free to say about the dead whatever you’d say about the living.

nixon's choice

Sex In the City star Cynthia Nixon recently gave the hornet’s nest a swift kick in the wasp when she was quoted in a New York Times Sunday Magazine profile:

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

When that didn’t go over well, she issued a clarification in the Advocate:

My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can't and shouldn't be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify:

While I don't often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have 'chosen' is to be in a gay relationship.

For all the howling protest by an offended LGBT community worried that Nixon’s comments cede ground on the biological inevitability of sexual orientation and, consequently, fuels the anti-LGBT crusade, a crucial ethical consideration is missing. And that consideration is the moral status of homosexual/lesbian sex. 


Attempts to reduce the question to biology to a large extent mask the issue, although the argument is persuasive. If sexual orientation isn’t a matter of choice, then it’s unfair to condemn someone for something that’s not in their control to change. It’s an argument, incidentally, that doesn’t necessarily lead to celebrating expressions of sexual orientation, or other contentious characteristic. After all, we could argue that psychopathy is not a product of choice, yet we would not encourage its expression nor fail to restrain psychopathic individuals. In any case, the science does suggest a biological basis, raising the issue of sexual fluidity (cue Dr. Kinsey), but it all seems rather fuzzy.


Yet the fact that everything about us, including sexual orientation, results from the intersection and overlap of biology and culture doesn’t tell us anything about the morality of homosexual, or heterosexual for that matter,  sex itself.


Consider that if a man gets into a boxing ring with another man, we judge nothing immoral in the fact that they hit, even bloody, each other. Or if a person goes to the physical therapist, there’s nothing immoral in his/her being touched, massaged, and exercised. Why? Because these are consensual activities. Without getting into an academic discussion of ethics, we can keep things simple by recognizing that moral judgments must take into account harm and consent in determining what is moral and immoral. Where there is consent, there usually isn’t harm, and what constitutes harm can in some situations be open to interpretation. In S&M, for example, or combat sports like boxing, pain and minor injuries aren’t typically interpreted as harm, whereas a mugger’s assault with a knife or gun would unquestionably be seen as harmful. Another example is how consent is a key distinction between sex and rape.


On the morality of gay people being attracted to each other, and acting on that attraction through sex and/or a loving relationship, the moral reasoning is this: If there is consent, and no violence is involved, then there is no basis for making an argument that homosexuality is harmful and, by extension, immoral. So if there’s nothing wrong with being gay, what does it matter if it’s by choice or biology?

ritual of attrition

With every presidential election comes a familiar spectacle we might call the Ritual of Attrition: the presidential primaries. As the marathon begins, a crowd of candidates hoping to reach the exalted status of presidential nominee presents primary votes with a buffet of choices. But the way in which the primary system is organized, with each state voting in its turn, means that as the campaigning sorts out the hard corns from the fluffy popped kernels the last states to vote have the least amount of choice. That’s certainly a complaint I’ve heard during the Democrat’s primary process in 2008, when the field was narrowed to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Progressive voters holding on to the hope of giving Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel a shot at the general election once again watched those hopes get tossed over the cliff.

And so it is with this year’s Republican primary process, which has been entertaining for its desperate flirtation with implausible candidates as an alternative to Mitt Romney. Although the argument could be made that the primary process is a good crucible from which only the least damaged candidates will emerge, its sequential nature presents a strangely comical irony: a process ostensibly linked to democracy is itself undemocratic. Nevermind that the process is in many respects unfair to the candidates, who are forced to amass and spend fortunes just to spin the wheel of voter preferences. The voters themselves have unequal opportunities to vote for their preferred candidates. One could even suggest that voters end up being manipulated by the party establishment into voting for the safe, mainstream, corporate-stamped candidates.

Given the absence of popular Republicans like Jeb Bush and the self-destruction of the potentially credible Rick Perry (credible to Republicans, that is), the only alternatives to Mitt Romney – a political chameleon who threw his state of Massachussets under the campaign bus in his bid to remake himself an orthodox conservative – flamed-out. The remains include Rick Santorum, who seems to be a more genuine conservative, and Ron Paul whose quirky libertarianism puts him at odds with establishment Republicans. Of course, there’s the volatile, luggage-heavy Newt Gingrich, whose prospective candidacy delights Democratic strategists looking for an exciting match-up. Certainly, the presidential race would be more interesting if President Obama was pitted against former Speaker of the House Gingrich. Mitt Romney, the John Kerry of the Republican party minus the reasonably consistent ideological stance, is bland enough to bring tears to the eyes.

But I digress: it seems that Romney – safe, wealthy Romney – or perhaps Gingrich, the so-called GOP icon – are the candidates Republican voters will be expected to choose from, just as Democrats had to choose between newcomer Obama and luggage-heavy icon Hillary Clinton.

It’s all enough to think that democracy is wasted on a republic.

is there a doctor in the house? thoughts on Doctor Who series 5

At long last, I've seen the fifth series of Doctor Who in which Matt Smith takes over the role from the the marvelous David Tennant. A few thoughts:

• Smith is perfect in the role of the Doctor; energetic, adventurous, quirky. In some ways, he's like an early Tennant minus the undercurrent of melancholia. It will be interesting to see how he evolves as a character. Tennant's Doctor became increasingly megalomaniacial and despairing, just as he raged against his own passing (a rather strange sentiment for a Time Lord, really, given the fact that they regenerate). Will Smith's Doctor become a similarly complex figure? I'm eager to find out.
• I'm not too crazy about Amy Pond. Karen Gillan is certainly a fine and pretty actress, but Amy just isn't all that strong a companion. She has none of the deep feeling of Rose Tyler, nor does she have Donna Noble's headstrong capacity to serve as a check on the Doctor. The fact that she wants to get off on the Doctor is particularly irritating, especially given the fact that all of the new series Doctors' female companions, except for Donna, come to have romantic feelings. Is this really the only dynamic possible between the Doctor and his female companions? Never mind that Amy is also very quick to cheat on her fiancé, despite being committed to marrying him; this is called kissing out of both sides of one's mouth. The point is this; why must relationships always be romantic? Donna proved that platonic works very well.
• Speaking of Amy's fiancé, Rory Williams is an immensely likeable character who showed more promise than Amy Pond and was cruelly abused by Moffat and his writers. Here's a character whose looks are mocked by the Doctor, who refers to him by making the gesture of a long nose, and whose intelligence is obscured. At least he's not cowardly the way Mickey was when fisrt introduced. Could the series have done more with a character who enters the TARDIS and, instead of the usual "Oh, it's bigger on the inside," displays some understanding of what's going based on his readings of theoretical physics? Sure. But at least we can admire Rory's deep and abiding love for Amy, even if it's not clear that his passion is reciprocated.
• That the series will move on with a married couple as the Doctor's companion is encouraging. I would still like to see a male companion, however - a platonic friend who is intelligent and resourceful on his own, and capable of keeping the Doctor on his toes. I'd say a Doctor Watson to a Holmes, but I'm thinkin more of an Enkidu to a Gilgamesh. Nevertheless, a married couple is a good move away from the romantic female companion formula.
• Writing-wise, Steven Moffat has so far mercifully spared us Russell T. Davies' worse tendencies - soppy writing and plot holes big enough to ram through some really really big thing. Well, kind of. Moffat certainly handles high concepts better than Davies, and he and his writers have delivered some very entertaining stories. The final episode can't help but implode by the sheer nonsense of the convoluted plot, but hey, Moffat has some good ideas, juggles the time travel in suitably knotty ways, and makes it all implausibly fun. And River Song? Brilliant. Demerit points, however, go to Mark Gatiss for Victory of the Daleks, a goofy World War II episode in which a few Daleks, who of course survived the whole Davros-destroys-reality fiasco, trick the Doctor into rebooting the Dalek race. Okay, fine. Time Lords rot away in the time-locked Time War, but Daleks go on. That's the way it goes. How annoying is it, though, to be presented with this kind of scenario: five minutes to either defuse a bomb that will destroy the Earth or prevent the Daleks from respawning. Gee, if only the Doctor had a time machine - then he could do both! Oh, wait...I don't know whose sillier, Gatiss for sacrificing story integrity in favour of a mock-dramatic moment, or me for expecting some story integrity in the first place.
• Of course, expecting storytelling rigour from Doctor Who is a bit like expecting a dead comic book character to stay dead. I'll let Terry Pratchett introduce my beef with Doctor Who. Then I'll let Neil Gaiman have his rebuttal. Then I'll carefully move away from the man with the pointy hat, magic wand, and great puffs of fairy dust, and get closer to the man with the physics manual. Look, Doctor Who is great fun and always enjoyable to watch. But let's be honest; they do make things up as they go along, they invent technobabble solutions out of thin air to resolve problems, and no villain is ever really dead. In other words, it's science-fantasy without rules and thus without any real drama beyond the temporary rush of adrenaline. And why is that for all that the Doctor goes on about how wonderful the universe is, we almost never see GOOD aliens doing GOOD things? Hmmm?

Ah, well. It's all in good fun despite the shortcomings, and in that spirit I can't wait to see what's next.

Obama, You Socialist Tyrant, Please Lead Us! : THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

Although my column, The Recreational Nihilist, has ended, I can't resist the occasional urge to share an opinion.

Here’s a puzzler. On one side: The Tea Party, Republicans, and what David Frum cleverly labeled the conservative entertainment industry. On the other: A nation experiencing systemic shock from the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. What happens when the two meet?

Go to The Front Page Online to read the rest of...

Obama, You Socialist Tyrant, Please Lead Us!