The Invisible Counterpoint

I thought the review was well written, well argued, and made sense. Still I might go see the movie anyway just to see what all the hoo ha is about. But I have to say the tone of the comments is kind of creepy. The general message seems to be: How dare this reviewer not love a movie I adored or even dumber how dare this reviewer not love a movie other critics really liked--although that remains to be seen I think. Diversity of taste makes life reasonably interesting or so some of us like to think, apparently not too many in this crowd though. As for the tired all refrain that SZ hates all movies other critics love--just to be ornery apparently-- read her review of "The Kids Are All Right." It's a rave, thank heaven, because being independent of mind seems to be the worst of all possible sins. (LAFLEMM, response to post, Stephanie Zacharek, “Review: Is ‘Inception’ this year’s masterpiece? Dream on,” Movieline, 14 July 2010) To fans of this site, independence of mi...

This is a comedy about what might be considered an alternative family, if only its members didn’t suffer so acutely from the same doubts, temptations, insecurities and longings that people in nearly all families do. The Kids Are All Right is more universal than it is alternative, except in one sense: There’s nothing else on the contemporary movie landscape like it. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play Nic and Jules, a long-committed couple with two teenage children. Joni (Mia Wasikowska) is a National Merit Scholar about to head off to college; her younger brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson), is a kid who’s perhaps just on the cusp of being aimless (his mothers both worry that he may be hanging out with the wrong crowd), though all he’s really going through is the usual confused-teenager stuff. [. . .] The Kids Are All Right is certainly topical in light of the national gay-marriage debate. But this isn’t a picture that’s out to make points or delineate political issues; if a...

Authority-based, and feudal? James Surowiekci in his excellent book The Wisdom of Crowds points out how abysmal practicing economists (vs. just those who pontificate) are at actually predicting the market. He discusses how 90 percent of mutual-fund managers and 95 percent of bond managers (most of them with PhDs in economics) routinely and consistently underperform the market (page 33). (Andrew Leonard, “Economists to bloggers: shut up, fools,” Salon, 28 June 2010) I think economic phds are used to hearing this sort of criticism, backed up by terrific evidence, but still are unmoved in their sure knowledge that no one else other than them is to be trusted. I wonder if it's not just that they suspect the evidence against them is hogwash, but that they understand that measure of achievement mostly now rests not in later evidence, but in the particular manner in which one's role / duty is executed. You can't get at professional journalists, economic phds, simply by ...

So what are we making of the spill? Is the current criticism of Obama, his (emotional) distance, his seeming compliance with BP, 
sign that he is doing what we want of him: namely, demonstrate that those who express their desperation and huge need will largely be ignored? The spill is helping create what we most want: more and more of the desperate and despairing, to feel "it" (i.e., emotions associated with our own early
neglect) so we
don't have to. The spills "soiled" joins Afghanistan's "chewed"? He ignored the far left, and they screamed turncoat! He displeased the far right, and they tea-bagged. He seems remote at a time when some of the poorest (i.e., most needy) regions of the U.S. (the gulf region) are looking at apparent (at least) dissolution of a whole reason for existence. 
He's a keeper. Note: Originally posted at realpsychohistory (13 June 2010)

Marriage in the West isn’t doing very well because it’s in direct confrontation with the evolved reality of our species. What we argue in the book is that the best way to increase marital stability, which in the modern world is an important part of social stability, is to develop a more tolerant and realistic understanding of human sexuality and how human sexuality is being distorted by our modern conception of marriage. Certainly growing up in the '70s and '80s there were very few kids I knew whose parents weren’t divorced at least once. The economic, emotional, psychological cost of fractured relationships is a major problem in American society — with single mothers and single-parent families. [. . .] The advent of agriculture changed everything about human society, from sexuality to politics to economics to health to diet to exercise patterns to work-versus-rest patterns. It introduced the notion of property into sexuality. [. . .] When you have agriculture, men st...