Freedom, Justice, and Economics

Simply, straightforwardly, I appreciate and support BlogCatalog’s quarterly efforts to unify bloggers behind a meaningful social cause.  Today, November 10, with them I think of the plight of refugees.

For three reasons I was struck by the ads preceding a showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the George St Odeon in Oxford exactly one week ago. First, they began at exactly the time the show was listed to begin. I’m used to theaters that pitch to and entertain early arrivals, at least with a bit of movie trivia.

Second, the ads were abysmal. A week later I still feel the twisting in my stomach that I mostly had associated with Full House reruns. Most of the ads were bookended by an acknowledgment to some agency that had presumably bid for the right to the screen time and compiled the ads to show. If I were Odeon, I wouldn’t want to immiserate my consumers like that– I would want to keep control of the content.

Third, the ads went on for a full half hour despite (here’s the kicker) the fact that all tickets were for reserved seats. US theaters typically induce moviegoers to watch pre-movie ads by dangling the carrot of a better seat for the main feature. If you dare to try to arrive late and skip the ads, you may find yourself craning your neck from the front row. But next time I’ll know to buy my reserved seat ahead of time and confidently show up half an hour late.

All of this does provoke a question. I made the mistake of showing up on time because I don’t go to the movies all that often (though slightly more often than Professor Jones appears!). But how can this advertising structure persist?

• If typical moviegoers like the ads more than me, one would expect the ads to start before the film’s scheduled start time.
• Perhaps the ads are intended to be so bad as to cause people to wait in the lobby, where temptations of course abound. But then I don’t see why people with reserved seats would arrive on time.
• Or, more hopefully, perhaps the awful ads make the movies themselves seem better. Then with small costs for running the projector, the ads might begin only at the scheduled time, and people might come on time to watch them.

The third bullet is the only explanation that sticks for me so far– and it requires that British moviegoers prefer Indiana Jones preceded by half an hour of drivel to Indiana Jones alone.  Plausible?  Not impossible…

“Well, Native Americans were here before women.  [Women stare open-mouthed.]  No offense to women!”

Thomas Schelling’s voice resembles that of Ronald Reagan.

As the horror caused by Cyclone Nargis comes into sharper focus, I realized I had the nagging feeling that this storm was largely ignored by the press even as the enormity of its threat grew apparent. To assess the press’s attention, at 9:09pm GMT on Tuesday, May 6, I conducted this Google News search, using the Advanced news search tool, for all mentions of the pair of words “Myanmar” and “cyclone” over the past month.

Credit goes to the Hindu Business Line for the first journalistic mention of the cyclone, the only news story on April 27 to fit my search criteria. Bangladesh’s The Daily Star was the only publication to report on Nargis on April 28. Five hits match from April 29, of which two are irrelevant to Nargis. The three relevant hits came from the two sources already on the story and the Howrah News Service.

On April 30 the AFP, Thaindian.com, and Hindu Business Line had stories. Only six stories were published on May 1. My Google News search turned up 17 hits, finally including major Western sources like IHT and AP, on May 2. However, those stories blandly describe power outages and cancellations of plane flights in Yangon.

Little surprise, you might say: This New York Times graphic charts the time path of the storm along the Myanmar coast, and shows that the eye of the storm was not set to pass Yangon until 6:30am on May 3.

On August 27, 2005, 249 stories in the Google News archive came up in a search for Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in the early morning hours of August 29. On Saturday the 27th, the CNN Live Saturday transcript reads in part, “We begin with a nerve-racking wait along the central gulf coast. Just a couple of days from now a monster of a storm is expected to pound the region. Right now, hurricane Katrina is swirling in the warm gulf water as a Category 3 and it’s getting better[sic] and stronger.”

Yangon’s population of 6 million dwarfs New Orleans’; a disproportionate share of Myanmar’s population of 60 million live near the shore, in the Irrawady Delta, directly in Nargis’ path; Nargis was a Category 4 storm while Katrina (at the time of landfall) had weakened to Category 3; poorer construction standards meant scant protection for already much-embattled residents of Myanmar.

I do not mean to minimize the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, but rather to highlight most of the press’ blindness to the impending catastrophe of Cyclone Nargis. For the Burmese, cut off by a repressive regime, an outside clamor might have led to additional, live-saving precautions.

(Data, continued:   May 3, 40 hits; May 4, 140 hits; the most recent four hours, >1000 hits.)

I’ve needed the several weeks since the Friday, April 4, show to achieve sufficient composure to write about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s current incarnation of The Merchant of Venice in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play of course is inherently incendiary. I have nothing to contribute to the longstanding debate about whether the Bard was Anti-Semitic. But I left the Courtyard Theater that night horrified at this production’s choices, with only one possible source of redemption for it in sight (and, I fear, lost to near all the inattentive audience).

This production matter-of-factly illustrated every evil of a calculating Shylock. He was unfair and unsympathetic in his business dealings; he loved his daughter little, and his gold much; he would never share a table with a Gentile. Beyond the text, in the courtroom, when Shylock is about to use his knife to extract his pound of flesh, he perches above a prostrate Antonio who has his arms outstretched. This image, with Antonio as Christ, invokes the most pernicious of the historical calumnies against Jews.

After the lamb is saved, and Shylock’s level (pointed?) “Is it the law?” is answered affirmatively, the production lightly carries on to Portia’s and Nerissa’s practical joke and the standard comedic ending of multiple nuptials. Shylock appears again only in the musical reprise, interrupting a bit of the dancing to angrily twist arms with his new son-in-law.

What do director and cast hope to achieve with–what could be redemptive about– this portrayal of an irredeemable Shylock? My best speculation is that they wish to offend as thoroughly as Borat.

In contrast to John Peter of The Sunday Times, I didn’t find the production “sloppily directed,” but rather distressingly directed.  In contrast to Michael Billington of The Guardian, I found nothing to “enjoy” about this excruciating production. I’m not sure I could find anything enjoyable about any production of this play. But many wisely directed productions could give me leave to depart with faith in what humanity has learned, rather than fear about what it may have not.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, construction plans for a library were influenced by an unusual consideration: the shadow the building might cast. Established in 1876, the Morrow Plots are the longest continuous agricultural demonstration plots in the world. Since it would have been unfortunate to interfere with their sunlight, the UIUC library was built adjacent to them but out of the way–underground.

One of many disappointments I’ve had during the current administration is the dearth of principled resignations.  No small number of Bush appointees have left their posts, but most have wanted “more time with their families” rather than a fire of vitriol.

Two examples are particularly obvious.  Christine Todd Whitman was sidelined at EPA, reduced from Republican moderate stardom to whining “it’s my party, too” after playing chief apologist for anti-environment crusades.  And Colin Powell’s four years as Secretary of State were an extended exercise in quietly suffering humiliation.

Would that they and others departed with flourish, perhaps even with the words of this brilliant, unsigned Time magazine piece from the pre-Watergate Nixon era channeling Nathan Hale: “I am sorry that I have only one job to give for my country.”

your apartment building has a schedule for when each apartment’s occupants can use the laundry machines.

Though transit passengers have to go through immigration and customs at the Halifax Airport, all the rest more than made up:

• Going back through security, there was no line. I repeat this astonishing fact: I walked directly up to the x-ray machine.
• After going through security, I went through US immigration. How brilliant to run the checks before departure!
• Wi-fi is proudly supplied free by the airport.
• At the Spirit of the Maritimes pub they happily brewed my decaf coffee fresh. I write this from their high counter facing the runways and pines beyond, with mottled cotton-ball clouds drifting across half the sky, and bright blue in the other half, down to the distant mother-of-pearl horizon.