The Steak of the Union

No, that is not a typo. Instead, it is awesome.

On Tuesday, I was one of the lucky few to win a free steak dinner at Morton's Steakhouse (at one of their DC locations), hosted by WMAL's Chris Plante, as we all watched President Obama's State of the Union speech.

Now, I'm not going to do an analysis of the speech itself. It's been done at least a thousand times over, even if you take out the rehashes that some people pass off as original analysis. I'm simply going to give my impression of the event. It's mostly summed up by the phrase "campaign speech."

President Obama isn't exactly at fault for this, of course. With the advent of television, the State of the Union speech has become less an address to Congress as a way for the President to address the people of the United States, and to do so in a way steeped in tradition and spectacle that catches attention.

It's important to stop and think about that, really. Everything that the President and those who came before him, going back through several different administrations, have said in these speeches have been mainly aimed at the citizens of the United States and occasionally people around the world, and not as part of an address to Congress itself. So why not just have a separate speech? Why has the Constitutionally-mandated State of the Union report (wherein the President is to "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient") become a spectacle more akin to the campaign trail?

Quite simply, the American people like the history of it. The pomp and ceremony signals to us not a great grand party -- or else we would have a very different style to the State of the Union -- but rather a history and tradition that marks the event as something important and necessary. We sit up and take notice at this in a way that even the President coming into our home town won't provide.

You see, when the President comes to our home town he's a man. A very important man, but just a man, representing mainly himself. A very few times during his term, however, such as at his Inauguration or at the State of the Union speech, he represents something more, something far greater. He is the President of the United States; a man, but reflecting in that moment every President that has come before him, every President that will come after, and every ideal that makes America strong. Few other nations can match the combined simplicity and majesty of this moment, leading many in the world to just shake their heads at those oddball Americans and their strange fascination with such things.

As I said, I don't want to go through President Obama's speech, because it's not important to talk about what he said. Well, of course, he certainly didn't say much of any note, but I'll leave it up to you to go find out what he said. It was somewhat underwhelming for me, and not just because the media built it up beforehand like I've never experienced before. I felt it was a letdown to the tradition of the State of the Union itself. Traditions are important; they give us stability and a framework on which to hang the new and unusual and deal with them in the most expedient manner. The State of the Union is one such tradition here in the United States, and I think President Obama could have done better. It was far from his worst speech, but that moment demands some of his best.

The Steak of the Union, however, was excellent. Morton's Steakhouse served us the tastiest salad I've ever had, a delicious crabcake, a perfectly tender steak, smooth and creamy mashed potatoes, steamed greens, and a choice of either double-chocolate mousse or a New York cheesecake. I had the latter, while my friend Jon had the former. I think neither of us were disappointed with our choice.

Chris Plant (himself a rather likable individual, as I can now attest) gave a quick analysis of the speech itself, and helped point out unfamiliar faces for those of us who don't watch TV or haven't otherwise memorized Congressional members' and secretaries' faces -- and, of course, cracked jokes.

I rather hope I can get an invite to this event in the future, should WMAL continue to hold it, but the odds of that are pretty slim. Of course, I thought that about me winning the contest this year as well. So who knows?

Mass Murder

Once again, I find myself forgoing the "fun" topics for something "important." On the one hand, I hope this doesn't become a habit. I don't want this blog to just be mostly downer posts. On the other, however, it's important to not avoid the difficult topics. When you avoid something just because it's an unpopular subject, you condone that act of sweeping things under the rug. It doesn't matter what it is; if it's important, it's worth talking about. If it's important, it's worth a moment's discomfort.

Today is January 22nd. It's my little sister's birthday. It's also "Roe Day," the 38th anniversary of the U. S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which claimed a Constitutional right for abortion.

I'm not going to go through an argument about when human life begins. I can do that, and I've never lost an argument on the subject. The closest I ever got to losing one, in fact, was with a Canadian druid who tried rewriting the dictionary while we debated. He wound up saying that since my argument made logical sense, logic itself must be rejected. (No, I'm not exaggerating for effect. He managed to throw me for a loop on that one.)

Instead, I want to make a different point. You see, whether or not a child counts as a human being when inside the womb, the most ardent pro-abortionist admits that the eventual result, if an abortion is not performed, will be a human person. A thinking, breathing, growing, living human person.

By the most conservative estimate out there, more than 50 million human persons are missing from the world today as a sole consequence of Roe v. Wade.

I crunched some numbers. That is a huge number, after all. In the words of one famous dictator, a million deaths is a statistic, and this is fifty million. How can we wrap our heads around this?

Well, first of all, the entire combined population of the top ten largest cities in the United States is . . . wait for it . . . 24 million. Less than half. You could triple the size of the ten largest U. S. cities with the number of people that would have lived were it not for the legal manslaughter of more than fifty million children whose only crime was to be conceived at an inconvenient time.

Need another one? Let's just take our most populated city, New York. You could fill the Big Apple six times over with that many children. Think about it. Six New Yorks, and not a one of these residents would be over the age of 38. They wouldn't even be hitting their midlife crises yet.

The population of the entire United States is only 300 million. It would have been 350 million. One-seventh of our population is missing.

If we were to say that one-seventh of our population is denied health care, the left would be up in arms. Instead, they are denied health at all . . . and this is celebrated.

It's sickening.

If you don't agree, then ask yourself why we deny a person the right to life. Why do we say that a mother has the right of life and death over her child as long as he's inside her; but once he's been born she can't spank him when he misbehaves? The UN's declaration on "the Rights of the Child" lay out such things as a restriction on what a parent may and may not teach his or her children; but nowhere does it say that a child only gains these "rights" upon taking his first breath of air.

My little sister turns twenty-two today. She is a vibrant, healthy, successful young woman. She has a promising career and a loving boyfriend. You could look at her and imagine that she could do anything she wants.

You would never guess from looking at her that twenty-two years and one day ago she would have been declared a lifeless lump of tissue, with no right to that future existence. She was born in a third-world country, with no bright future ahead of her. Her mother chose to bring her into the world. My sister was orphaned soon afterwards, but was quickly adopted by an American family who loves her. We literally forget that she's not related to us by blood.

Where she was born, children were often seen merely as a burden, worth less than a farm animal; female children even more so. Here in the United States, we have institutionalized an even more horrendous practice: denied even the status of being human. The former is tragic; the latter is unconscionable.

Pro-lifers often talk about the potential loss of another Einsein or Bach or da Vinci, but I wonder about the ordinary folk. The bright, young, vibrant people who shape the world with every act they make and every day they live.

How many more like like my sister have we lost?

Legacy Program

Tron: Legacy: The movie that blockbuster sequels wish they could be.

This post is more than a little behind the times, but I had a few things to say about Tron: Legacy. First off, it’s really just an “okay” film. The story wasn’t that gripping. The characters didn’t have a lot of depth. The ending felt drawn out.

So why is it that blockbuster sequels are writhing in secret envy? I’m glad you asked, dear reader. Simply put, Tron: Legacy is the picture-perfect example of how to craft a sequel. It may have fallen short of the mark when it stands on its own, but as a sequel it shines.

Sequels usually fall into four categories.

• “The last movie did great. Let’s cash in with a sequel. Minion! Write something for the masses!” These usually just play off of the previous movie, as if expecting that a good movie is simply something staring certain characters and insider references.
• “I can do better than that last movie.” Someone involved with the movie (usually a producer or director rather than a scriptwriter) thinks he can top that last movie. Generally the movie ends up going in a completely different direction than the last installment. Sometimes that's a good thing, but generally you only make sequels of something that was a success the first time around.
• “I wish I had done that movie myself.” Similar to cashing in, the producer or director just wants to say he did an Insert-Name-Here movie. Unlike the one who tries to do it better, this guy usually doesn’t dismiss fan outrage as being uneducated, and usually tries listening to the fan base; however, it still likely lacks originality.
• And the worst sequel of all? “I want to publish my fanfic.” ’Nuff said.

Tron: Legacy didn’t fall into either of these four categories. It was the picture-perfect sequel. It doesn’t depend on the original to be understood or enjoyed (though it has plenty of Easter eggs for those who know the original), it doesn’t just try to be the same as the original, it doesn’t take it in a radically different direction, and it certainly isn’t just fanfic.

“But, but, Mr. Bowman, isn’t every sequel basically fanfic?”

No, actually. Fanfic does have its place, don’t get me wrong; and I’ll put up a post sometime about how fanfic is actually a very useful tool to both the beginning and the seasoned writer. However, fanfic generally describes something that stays just short of a full-fledged, self-contained story. Fanfics also usually focus on some smaller aspect of the story (I’m looking at you, shippers) rather than the whole; then if that gets published, it’s the literary equivalent of sugar-free, caffeine-free Mountain Dew. Basically, what’s the point?

“But, but, Mr. Bowman, this movie didn’t have any of the cool nerdy moments of the original Tron!”

Ah, I see, you were just looking for a remake, not a sequel. Sorry, wrong movie for you.

About 99% of the original Tron’s “cool nerdy moments” were “Oh, wow! I’m in a computer!” If we spent time on that for a sequel, it would have been severely boring. We’ve seen that movie already. Sam Flynn has an initial period of adjustment, but not a copy of his father’s, such as the assumption that he’s dreaming. Sam, instead, has been prepared for this by his father’s childhood tales. Instead of reacting like it isn’t real and doesn’t recognize anything, Sam has a difficult time reacting because he does recognize the Grid. It’s the difference between what happens to the first guy to go through the fairy tale, and then being the guy who finds out the Fairyland he heard about at bedtime is real.

We also have a different viewpoint character. Sam is not his father. Kevin Flynn was happy-go-lucky; Sam is an orphaned, troubled, more-than-a-little-angsty-(but-fortunately-not-emo) young man. All his life, Sam has just wanted his father back. No one, not even his grandparents, could fill that void for him. He’s been trapped in the past, forever running from how everyone expects him to fill his father's shoes. He doesn't hate his father; he hates that he's the only one who seems to care about Kevin Flynn anymore. Over the course of the movie, Sam has a nice if somewhat predictable (and not very deep) character-arc from rebellious layabout to taking charge of his family legacy.

The movie is consequentially darker than the first. It’s not the original, but it also doesn’t go off in a radically different direction. Kevin Flynn hasn’t become a digital tyrant, though we see how the logical extension of his initial desires for the Grid would have (and has) resulted in it; nor has he created a hippy "do what you want" Grid where programs can live in digital brotherhood. Everything that happened is a natural extension of what we saw at the end of the original Tron.

The premise of the two movies is “know your limits.” Specifically in Legacy, it involves not believing you can create perfection. Kevin Flynn tries to create the perfect world, but what does he really create? It’s merely a copy of his own world. Even his entry point is a computerized version of his video arcade. Eventually, too late to stop his own creation, he discovers that he can’t create perfection because he himself isn’t capable of being perfect. Everything that he creates will be as flawed as himself. Even worse, his creations can't grow like he can. In fact, only one thing in the Grid, other than a User, has the capacity to grow and change.

Enter the isos. (Oh, yeah, spoiler warning. Run away now if you don’t want to read this.) Isomorphic life forms spontaneously spring into being because the “conditions were right.” I actually don’t mind this for the story; sure, it’s rather impossible for self-governing complexity to simply spring from nothing like that, but it’s important for that premise. Kevin Flynn tried to do better than nature/God; nature/God did better than Kevin Flynn. Kevin freely admits that the coding in these AI programs is “frankly, beyond me.” In fact, it is a humbling admission for him.

While at first I thought that the appearance of the isos was some sort of evolutionist argument, the rest of the film undermines that view. Rather, it goes back to an old sci-fi question: if we really managed to make true artificial intelligence, a computer that could learn and grow on its own, would it have a soul? While in real life I don't believe that it’s possible to create true AI, any more than I believe that aliens are theologically possible, both are conceits that I accept and enjoy in fiction.

Oh, and the same goes for the last moment of the film. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Hey, it makes as much sense as a Star Trek transporter. It’s stupid, but it’s not that hard to suspend your disbelief on that one point.

There’s one more thing that I’ll spoil slightly for those who haven’t seen the film. It seems as though the entire Grid is destroyed in the final moments, as Kevin Flynn uses his administrator powers to . . . well, it's not necessary to describe what he does. You know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen it. As a result, the randomly-collected digital junk around the portal is wiped out, and the last thing we see of the Grid is the Sea of Simulation, its waves the only sound we hear.

Well, the very fact that the Sea is still there shows that the Grid isn’t completely wiped. In a flashback, we saw CLU’s creation; he was the first thing that Kevin had made when he began working on the Grid. The Grid was, literally, a grid of lines, vaguely like a Next Generation holodeck. The fact that the Sea of Simulation was still there after the explosion shows that something was still left.

Remember the age-old rule: if you don’t see a body, assume death didn’t happen. We didn’t see the city get destroyed. Sam was putting something on his external hard drive at the end, so odds are it wasn’t just his father’s thirty-year-old notes.

So, final ratings:

Story: 5/10

Movie Experience: 8/10

As a Sequel: 8/10

Music: 10/10

Oh, yeah, the music. Love. That. Music. It is one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever encountered, especially as background music while I work. I wasn’t expecting that, since I don’t really care for Daft Punk. Well, it isn’t a Daft Punk album; it’s a genuine movie soundtrack that happens to be composed by Daft Punk. Try it out. If you want to sample it, I made a YouTube playlist for your (well, my) convenience.

He Used the Wrong Box

There's an old joke about politics in the United States of America. "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of freedom: Soap. Ballot. Jury. Ammo. Use in that order." Normally, this is a pretty funny little joke.

Yesterday, someone forgot the order.

It wasn't funny.

I hadn't expected my second blog post to be about something serious, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't cover this. I'd rather be humorous, or educational, or preferably both. Yet I sit here and think that the best thing, really, is to write about what's important. Right now, I can't think of anything more important to write about.

Reports are still conflicting about the shooting that took place yesterday -- Saturday the 8th, January, 2011 -- just outside Tuscon, Arizona. Some people have different numbers for who was hurt in the shooting. We all know, now, about U. S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head and, despite previous reports to the contrary, is recovering at University Medical Center in Tuscon. From the reports we're getting of this woman (whom I never heard of before this shooting and rather regret that fact, as she sounds like a politician I can actually stand), I am sure she'd want to make this tired old joke, and so I will for her: "The reports of my death were greatly exaggerated."

Unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky.

Chief Judge John Roll, of the U. S. District Court of Arizona, did not survive being shot. Neither did a nine-year-old girl named Christina Taylor Green or four other people. More than a dozen more were wounded, four of them still in critical condition.

The gunman was Jared Loughner (or possibly Laughner, the news reports' spelling differs), who is a 22-year-old resident of Tuscon, with a short record that includes drugs; he apparently had some time in the U. S. Army, but was rejected as "unqualified." His motives remain unclear according to authorities, and a detailed investigation involving the Pima County Sheriff's Department (which has jurisdiction), the Tuscon Police Department, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the FBI, and the Capitol Police is ongoing.

One thing I'm leaving out is the word "alleged." I rather dislike the term when it comes to a crime like this. Despite the fact that the police are looking for an accomplice, it seems fairly obvious that Loughner was involved. It was certainly obvious to the people -- simple, ordinary citizens who leaped into action -- who took him down before police arrived on the scene. These eyewitnesses, some of them definite heroes, all seem to agree that Loughner shot Rep. Giffords first before moving on to the judge and the crowd itself.

There's another thing I'm leaving out: politics. Have you noticed that I didn't mention which political party Giffords belongs to? That's because it's not necessary. Not now, at least. I'll leave the politicizing up to the media outlets on both sides of the aisle who have already started looking for ways to blame their enemies. They're so good at that. Who am I to think I can do better? Politics almost certainly did play a role in this tragedy, but there's time to hash that out later.

Lots of time. Time that some people will never share with us.

Instead, I want to focus on the people involved. My prayers go out to everyone touched by this event, starting with Christina, and the parents of this nine-year-old girl who now have to bury their daughter. I find myself wanting to know about her. I know who Giffords is. I know who Roll was. I don't know about the others. I don't know who they were. And I don't know who Christina would have been, had Loughner not set out one Saturday morning with a gun in his hand and murder in his heart.

And let's also take a closer look at what Loughner did. Not who he is, but what he did. We're so quick to label this sort of crime as the product of a deranged mind. I can't tell you how many times I've heard and read that word in the reports since the attack; deranged, or disturbed, or some other "safe" term that boils down to mental illness. Because, you see, obviously only the insane could commit such an attack. I've heard this with James Lee, the bomber at the Discovery Channel Building in Silver Spring, Maryland, three miles from where I sit right now. I've heard this with Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. I've heard it with Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter. Lately, these seem to be the terms of choice about Hitler and other tyrants of history. Maybe they were all insane, but that's no excuse to forget or ignore another important word to describe this act, and the choice that lay behind it.

Evil.

Evil exists, my friends. Never forget that. To ignore it, to simply dismiss it as the product of mental illness, is to ignore free choice and excuse any wrongful behavior. It also precludes any isolated event; one can make a wrong choice that is evil, and later recognize the fact, recant the act, and work to make amends. The mentally ill cannot have that same self-reflection. They are not responsible. They cannot be blamed. They can only be excused. Their evil becomes coddled, uncorrected, allowed to grow and spread. Some who do evil are insane. Some who are insane do evil. The two, however, do not go hand in hand.

Evil is about choice. Choices were made at Auschwitz, at Columbine, at Ford's Theater in DC, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. A choice was also made in a Safeway parking lot in Casas Adobes, AZ, at 10 AM yesterday.

Sometimes, evil is just evil. Never be afraid to say it.

Never let its victims' cries become silenced by fear of a word.

Phyllis Scheck, 79 years old.

Dorothy Murray, 76 years old. Married 64 years; mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.

Dorwin Stoddard, 76 years old. Pastor.

John Roll, 63 years old. Judge, husband, father, grandfather.

Gabriel Zimmerman, 30 years old. Congressional staffer, engaged to be married.

Christina Taylor Greene, 9 years old. Fascinated by politics and the only girl on the baseball team. Born on September 11th, 2001. Click here to know more about Christina.

Please take a moment. Don't dismiss this event as anything other than evil. Lay blame later to your heart's content; but for now just remember these names. We'll forget them soon enough. The country will move on. We'll all move on to other things. But when something jogs your memory, remember that evil exists. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

---

EDIT: A friend of mine who read this post gave me the above link for Christina Greene. Thank you, Alicia.

You Are Now Entering ... the Obsidian Zone.

It's time to kick off the inaugural post of The Obsidian Tower Intellectual! Did I time it for January 1st deliberately? Indeed I did. Is this a "New Year's Resolution"? Absolutely not. I find yearly resolutions to be a joke, personally. If you're going to do it, you should do it regardless of the day, or whether it's a social custom to publicly declare one's intent to "improve" one's self at the same moment you switch out your Far Side calendar for a Dilbert one.

The truth is that I decided to start up this blog in the middle of December, and didn't have time with all the Christmas preparations. I figured a couple extra days would be worth not having maybe two "2010" posts hanging like an afterthought on my archive calendar. So, not a resolution. If anything, it's a touch of OCD.

So what is an "obsidian tower" intellectual? The phrase "ivory tower" has, of course, a negative connotation. It denotes something shining and pure, but because of its removal from society (and its impracticality -- ever try building anything out of ivory?) rather than because it really is something to look up to. I call myself an obsidian tower intellectual because I want to show that there are more ways of being an intellectual or an academic than being part of the Ivory League.

(Also, as you can note, I'm not above bad, bad puns. Which brings up a question: is there such a thing as a good pun?)

What will be covered in this blog? Quite a lot of it will center around literature and art, but due to the nature of my interests this will delve quite a bit into history and philosophy, and consequentially dip into politics and religion on occasion.

Well. Let's see how things go.

Geronimo!