logictortured.com Blog

Ignoring local news will not save the newspaper industry

One would think that local newspapers could attempt to save themselves by focusing on local news. No one outside the community would cover it. So my local newspaper would have a lock on it.

However, my local newspaper took a different approach. It has attempted to solve the problem by firing (letting go, downsizing, restructuring, etc) most of its experienced reporters. So right now there apparently isn’t a single reporter who covers the courts. So when a jury came back guilty of 2nd degree murder last Friday against a defendant, there was no one to cover the story. So it went unreported and remains unreported for who knows how long.

Who does my local paper think will cover a murder conviction? The Associated Press? Reuters? UPI? Nope. A local murder is mostly a local concern. But, even a murder is not a big enough concern for my local paper. Nope, my local paper is too concerned with local senior centers that are to receive restroom renovations. Or the story about some nobody that just happens to have “ties from Flint” who is taking over as plaint manager of a factory in Louisiana.

Yes, those puff pieces are more important than news about a murder conviction. I guess I can’t speak for everyone, but never in my life have I ever read a newspaper for asinine puff pieces. I read a newspaper for news!

Is it any wonder that no one is reading newspapers anymore?

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Paying for healthcare is not like buying a new pair of pants

I was watching a freemarketeer on some news show last night. He was totally against any healthcare reform. He was even against health insurance. His point was that because we the consumers do not directly pay for healthcare, there is no market incentive to drive down prices.

In other words, when you go for a checkup, because you’re not paying for it directly, you don’t look at the bill and say, “This is too high. I’m going to find a cheaper doctor.”

To drive his point home the freemarketeer rhetorically asked something along the lines of,

Why is it that healthcare is the only service we do not directly pay for ourselves? We pay for our own groceries. Our own cars. Our own clothes. But for some reason we expect someone else to pay for our healthcare.

His arguments are about as pro free market as you can get. It sounds so simple. Let’s solve the entire healthcare crisis by treating it like going to the mall. Everyone will be happy, we’ll get the exact care we need, and prices will be lower than ever.

It might sound simple, but that’s only because it’s complete hogwash.

We don’t completely pay for anything directly:

Healthcare is not the only service or product we do not directly pay for. When was the last time you directly paid for a road? A military airplane? The police who drives by your house? His police car? A fireman’s salary? That airport across town? Your public education?

You don’t even pay directly and completely for your groceries due to farm subsidies.

Did you go to a state university? You may have paid a tuition, but it was highly subsidized.

Which also means all of that college basketball and football you watch is also not directly paid for by you.

Heck, that local NFL football stadium was also likely paid for by public subsidies. So when you watch those millionaires play football, you’re not directly paying for that either.

Even oil companies, despite earning billions in profits, still get government subsidies to drill for oil and such.

Heck, I have to wonder if there is any product or service in the US that is not subsidized in at least some small way.

So healthcare is not the only service we expect other people to pay for. We expect the government and the private sector to subsidize and spread costs over large groups. Expecting the same for healthcare is no different.

Healthcare is catastrophic and unpredictable:

And even if we did pay for groceries and cars directly, which we don’t, the freemarketeer is still wrong that we should pay for healthcare directly. That’s because healthcare is catastrophic and unpredictable.

When we do our weekly shopping, we’re not suddenly faced with $65k bill for peas that simply has to be paid. When we buy a $30K car, we do so after fully researching our finances and either saving for it or obtaining a loan. The dealer doesn’t show up one day demanding payment for a car we neither want nor need.

Catastrophic and unpredictable events have always been paid publicly by the government, e.g., military, police, firefighters. Or privately by insurance, e.g., automobile, fire, healthcare or by organizations such as the Red Cross.

Of course some will argue that we should simply save a portion of our income, 40% believe it or not, just in case a medical emergency occurs.

However, relying on savings to pay for healthcare would simply not work. How would savings help a 21 year old guy who was diagnosed with cancer? Is he just supposed to die because he didn’t live long enough to save money? Of course not.

Here’s the main difference between healthcare and clothes, cars, and to an extent, even groceries. We choose to buy clothes. Accordingly, we can decline to buy when we are unable to afford them. However, there is no choice when it comes to healthcare. We cannot say to our son,

Timmy, money’s a little tight this week. We’re going to have to skip a few chemo treatments until I build up some more savings. No problem, right?

Even with groceries we can buy a cheaper brand or grow our own. Heck, we can save money by eating less. (Lord knows we should!) However, you cannot scrimp on chemo treatments for your son. There’s simply no generic alternative.

This “savings plan” gets worse. The average family income is about $50K. Let’s assume the impossible. You manage to set aside 40% of your income for unforeseen healthcare issues. (Of course you’ll also have to save 30% in case your house burns down, there’s a flood, hurricane, or whatnot. Plus 10% in case your car breaks down unexpectedly. I’m sure in the end you might have a few pennies to spend on food and a mortgage.)

Anyway, let’s assume you’ll need at least a quarter million dollars per each person in your family in case of catastrophic healthcare emergencies. The average family has five members. So you’ll need to save up $1.25 million to cover everyone in your family. By saving $20K per year, that means the average family will have to save for 62.5 years. So if you start your family when you’re 25 years old, you won’t be able to get catastrophically sick or injured until you’re 87.5 years old. Yeah, that’s a plan!

There are market controls on healthcare costs:

What I find most hilarious is the freemarketeer’s argument that insurance companies and the government have no control over costs when it comes to healthcare. What he’s conveniently ignoring is that insurers and the government do keep strict control over healthcare costs. Procedures have to cost no more than a specified amount before either the insurer or the government will pay. The healthcare industry does not set healthcare prices, the insurance industry and the government does.

Think about it this way. If a physician could charge anything he wanted for a procedure, why doesn’t he? If there was absolutely no control over what he could charge, then why aren’t mere office visits charged to the insurer or Medicaid for a trillion dollars? Under the freemarketeer’s theory, that could happen and mysteriously nothing could be done about it. He strongly argued that unless we pay directly for healthcare, there are no market controls on price. Yet, there clearly are such controls. Mmmm… I wonder where they come from?

Update – 9/2/09: I just came across an article on Slate about how medical prices are set. It’s actually quite disturbing.

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The truth behind the Birthers movement

I’ve been thinking about the Birthers movement. Despite all evidence to the contrary and despite having no evidence in support of their position, the Birthers movement continues. I have to ask “why”.

As rational people we tend to think of issues in a rational manner. We think, “Why the frick do the Birthers keeping making the argument that Obama is not a citizen?! His citizenship has been proven as a matter of fact and law and they offer no proof otherwise.”

The problem is that we cannot think about the Birthers rationally. Racism is not rational. And that’s exactly what the Birthers movement is really about. It’s simply about the fact that some white racists refuse to admit that we have a black president.

If there was not the imaginary issue about Obama’s citizenship, it would have been something else. These racists fricks would have claimed there was voting fraud. That the elite liberal media paved the way for his election. That the electoral college is somehow fundamentally flawed. That he really is Muslim and his election was a part of some vast Islamic conspiracy. Etc., etc., etc….

It simply does not matter whether there would be any evidence to support any of these. Racists do not need evidence. They never have and never will. Racism derives from emotion not reason.

So this Birthers problem is really just a symptom of a much larger problem. And this problem will exist for as long as Obama holds a public office.

This can be seen in the “socialist” tag given to Obama. Of course Obama is not a socialist, as I’ve written about previously. But calling Obama a socialist is just another way of saying that he’s not a real American, thus, he’s not really our President.

What really bothers me is that the mainstream media gives airtime to these fricks. Once Obama’s official birth certificate was presented the issue should have been dropped. And of course when two local newspapers had notices of Obama’s birth in Hawaii, it really should have been dropped. At that point it should have been apparent to everyone that the Birthers movement was nothing more than a bunch of racist fricks. But yet quite sadly, it continues.

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Why Americans suck at hard science

I just read a posting at Tech Dirt about how fewer foreigners are coming to grad schools in the US. It’s common knowledge that many of our nations physicians and engineers are foreign born. Most people lay the blame on our public schools for not sufficiently preparing our children. Some blame the religious right for being anti-science. I disagree as to both. I think the reason our children are not obtaining degrees in hard sciences has to do with our culture.

In our culture we claim to praise education. We as parents want and expect our kids to obtain a college education. However, we have a very laissez faire attitude towards it. We look down at cultures where parents determine in middle school that their kids will become physicians. We exclaim, “How can you determine your child’s entire future when he’s only 11 years old?!”

Hard sciences are called “hard” for a reason. They’re hard. The problem with our hands off approach is that someone cannot simply decide at age 18 to be a doctor or go to MIT without a sufficient background to make it possible. If you want to work at NASA as a physicist, you need a very strong background in mathematics going back into middle school, probably even earlier.

So the problem is that we want our kids to be educated. However, because we leave the choice to them and don’t prepare them adequately, we are denying them opportunities.

What is strange is that we have no problem with preparing our children for careers in sports or entertainment. I know an attorney who built an NBA compliant basketball court in his backyard because his two boys will be in the NBA. And of course we’re all familiar with moms who drag their children to screen tests, photo shoots, and beauty contests hoping to make their kids a star one day. Heck, if it can work for a no-talent retard like Brittany Spears, you’d think it could work for anyone.

In cases of sports and entertainment we recognize that someone cannot simply join the NFL at the age of 18, without any background. We also recognize an 18 year old getting an acting job in a movie would be helped by having a professional acting background. But for some reason we do not recognize that need when it comes to being a physician. Suddenly we think that letting our kids float willy-nilly through middle and high school will prepare them for anything they want to do in life. And of course it doesn’t. Instead of pre-med they go pre-law or even worse, pre-MBA.

I’m not offering a solution. I certainly do not have the force of will to determine that my six year old daughter will become an MD. I’m just pointing out that placing the blame at our schools or to right wing fanatics won’t solve anything either.

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We are the enemies of the RIAA, let's hope we win the war!

We all know about the RIAA’s legal onslaught against its fans, suing people who download and share music.

In a related situation, Canadian copyright organization Access Copyright had this strangely paranoid thing to say about its customers:

It’s a simple fact that users outnumber us. But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the internet and social networks to their advantage, there’s a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter.

It seems bizarre to treat your customers as enemies. To sue them for loving your music. To think of them in “us versus them” terms. Why can’t the copyright industry get along with its customers?

The reason is that the copyright industry doesn’t really have customers. And because we’re not customers, the copyright industry exists solely because the government forces us to pay. And lastly, if the copyright industry gets its way, copyright will eventually trump our rights guarantied by the United States Constitution. if I’ll explain all that in a bit.

Copyrights are not property:

Someone will argue that the RIAA and Access Copyright are forced to treat some customers as the enemy because the users are stealing their content. Some might analogize that the RIAA suing a customer for stealing music is no different from Wal-Mart having a shoplifter arrested.

Of course the problem with the argument and analogy is that copyright infringement is not theft. The United States Supreme Court specifically held that in Dowling V. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985). It’s going to take some time, but I have to explain this to better explain my point.

First, copyright is not a property right. Copyrights and patents are government granted monopolies. These monopolies are granted by the United States Constitution in Article I § 8.

The Congress shall have Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

If copyrights and patents were property rights, there would simply be no purpose served by Article I § 8.

Property rights are a part of those “unalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. In other words, property rights are not given by the government, they exist naturally. So the purpose of government is not to give property rights, but to protect them. That was why Article I § 8 was included in the Constitution. Without it, the monopolies given for copyright and patents would not and could not exist.

Second, here’s a fantastic quote from one of the founding fathers explaining my second point:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. — Thomas Jefferson

What Jefferson is saying is that unlike property, ideas can be shared without depriving anyone. And because ideas can be shared, and because ideas are useful, they should be shared.

Imagine if I stole your car. You’d be unable to use it, sell it, or lease it. You’d be deprived of your property.

However, imagine that I somehow made an exact copy of your car. You could still use your car, sell it, and lease it. You’d not be deprived at all. We’d both benefit from the cars.

That’s analogous to copyright and patents. There is no deprivation when a song is downloaded. The holder of the copyright still has every right and ability to use, sell, or lease the song. Of course he might be deprived a sale. And that’s exactly why infringing is illegal under the law. But merely being illegal does not make it theft.

Anyone still reading might wonder why I spent so much time talking about property rights. I could have just cited the United States Supreme Court case and been done with it. But I had to fully explain the issue before explaining my next point.

Copyrights do not exist in a free market:

When you buy property, the physical kind, not the imaginary kind, you do so mostly because the property is scarce. You don’t buy air, because currently there is enough to go around. If you go to the store to buy Pepsi, you probably won’t buy any if the store owner is giving it away. Markets exist because of scarcity. Prices are set by the demand and scarcity of the product. My shit might by relatively scarce, but there is no demand, so the price is zero. Diamonds are scarce due to a cartel and are in high demand due to advertising, so the prices are high.

However, the artificial scarcity and sale of copyrighted material is not natural. It’s fake. It’s a legal fiction enacted to create a market where one does not naturally exist.

We did not recognize this back when we bought our music on vinyl and plastic discs. Back then the labels, the distributors and retailers provided a reasonably efficient system of distributing music. It was cheaper and more efficient to simply buy an LP rather than copy an LP onto a cassette from your friend’s LP collection.

We only recognized how artificial the scarcity of copyrighted materials is when the internet came around. Suddenly everyone on the planet could download the same song with minimal costs. We all thought, “Why am I spending nearly 20 bucks for a CD when I can download the handful of songs I like for nothing?”

And here’s the deal. We were spending 20 bucks on a CD not because a free and open market demanded that price. It was because the government mandated that price by giving the labels nearly complete control over the music via very strong monopolies.

In other words, it took the internet to make us realize that we’re not customers of the labels by choice, we’re customers by government fiat.

To hammer my point here‘s an argument by copyright supporter Ben Sheffner about why we should pay for copyrighted product:

So everyone wants the product — but too many don’t want to pay for it. Hell, I don’t want to pay for it. I would love it if I could get all the movies and music I want for free. And I would love it if I could get all the BMWs, houses in the hills, and meals at Urasawa I want for free as well. But of course I realize I can’t.

He says “I can’t” but that’s simply not true. We can and we are. The reason I can’t make an exact copy of your car out of thin air is because it’s impossible. But everyone on this planet can have a copy of a song. Once again, there simply is no scarcity with copyrighted material. And the sole reason a market exists is because the government creates artificial scarcity by giving monopolies. The only real reason we can’t get songs for free is because the government created a law that says so.

The RIAA and Access Copyright understand that. That’s why they treat their customers like the enemy. Because they realize that we’re not really customers.

They’re also used to treating us like shit. Because for the past several decades we’ve only paid because we had too. The music industry did not have to give us a reason to buy, the government took care of that for them.

Freedom or totalitarianism:

However, now the music industry is faced with a situation where there is no longer any artificial scarcity. They’re faced with a situation where selling music on plastic is an utterly inefficient system of distribution. They’re faced with a situation where the current laws cannot help them.

So they’re faced with either moving their business model into the future and giving us a reason to spend money or with living in the past and having new laws created to protect a business model that is no longer relevant. It’s not surprising they’ve chosen the latter.

But I’ll go on record now to say that it won’t work. As I’ve written about previously, the reason there is so much copyright infringement going on right now has nothing to do with our failing morals or with the internet, it’s because copyright law has been expanded to such an extent that it’s nearly impossible to go a single day without accidentally and unintentionally infringing a copyright. And yet the copyright industry wants to makes these laws tougher?!

The only way the copyright industry could win this battle is if our country is turned into a totalitarian system of government. Where every bit of data and every expressed thought is analyzed by the government in order to protect the monopolies of the copyright industry.

Of course I might be wrong that the copyright industry will fail to turn our government into a totalitarian form of government. Right now our basic freedoms are being destroyed to protect the copyright industry.

You might have heard about the three strikes laws the copyright industry wants passed. These laws would force ISPs to kick users off the net who have been accused three times of copyright infringement. The copyright industry is adamant that due process is too time consuming. Which means that proof of the infringement is not necessary, merely the accusations are sufficient.

So the RIAA wants you kicked off the net for three unsupported accusations of copyright infringement. That’s three songs. The songs sell for a buck on Amazon and iTunes. So for a mere three bucks the RIAA wants you banned from the net for eternity.

Let’s imagine a different law. Let’s imagine that the banking industry gets fed up with people stealing pens out of their lobbies. These pens are expensive, a buck each. Imagine that a law is enacted stating that any person accused by a bank of stealing three pens is banned from the entire banking industry for the rest of his or her life.

Does anyone think such a law has any chance to be passed? Does anyone seriously think that such a law makes sense? Of course it would not and of course it does not. But in the crazy world of copyrights, people actually take the proposed three strikes law seriously.

If eliminating due process isn’t enough, it gets worse. The copyright industry has actually convinced judges to ban books. Yes, in America. The land of the free. Where the Bill of Rights says that the government shall make “no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” In this country copyright now trumps the First Amendment.

And here’s one last example. We’re all outraged over large jury verdicts in tort cases. Such as the infamous McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit where someone was awarded nearly three million dollars because the coffee she had between her legs spilled and burned her. Because of verdicts such as that, laws were passed placing caps on damages to keep plaintiffs from receiving windfalls for their injuries.

In my state, for example, people who are injured in automobile accidents cases can only sue for economic damages. Which is another way of saying actual damages. In other words, you can only recover for lost wages and medical expenses.

In my state people suing for medical malpractice can recover no more than $349,700 in non-economic damages. This includes death. So if a doctor slowly and painfully kills your mother through malpractice, the most her estate can get for pain and suffering is $349,700.

While some think that these caps are unfair, we generally support them because we also do not like greed. We realize that justice is about making someone whole, not giving someone a windfall. In only rare circumstances, where the behavior of the defendant shocks the conscience of the community can a plaintiff recover punitive damages. And in that case, you can only get treble damages, i.e., three times your award. (I want to stress that punitive damages are very rare. First, you cannot even request them in automobile accident, malpractice, or contract cases. Second, proving a situation that shocks the conscious of the community is a very high burden. For example, my state’s appellate court has determined that a woman being raped by an employee with a propensity to rape is not worthy of punitive damages. Apparently, rape no longer shocks the conscience of my state.)

In the criminal realm, my state requires that criminal defendants pay restitution. But, no matter how heinous the crime, the defendant can only be made to pay actual costs and expenses. He might have raped and murdered your mother, but he only has to pay for her funeral.

However, such limitations and caps are tossed aside when copyright is involved. In the famous Jammie Thomas case, wherein the RIAA sued her for downloading and sharing 24 songs, the RIAA was awarded $1.92 million. That’s $80,000 per song. Think about it, that means those 24 songs were worth more than your own life!

And if Thomas had stolen those songs on CDs in an armed robbery, the most she would have to pay is the actual cost of the CDs, about 30 bucks! Why is downloading more deserving of punishment than sticking a gun in someone’s face?!

And as I’ve pointed out, the songs only cost a dollar. That means the RIAA is not getting three times their damages. They’re getting 80,000 times their damages! Of course some will argue that Thomas has to pay for the multiple copies people have downloaded from her. However, there was no such evidence at trial that anyone actually downloaded a single song from her without permission. The songs were in a shared folder on her computer, and the public could access them, so that was enough to prove guilt. Normally plaintiffs are not allowed to speculate about damages and the like. “Could” and “possibly” are not enough. But in the wonderful world of copyrights, speculation is perfectly acceptable.

So bit by bit our rights are being destroyed all to protect the monopolies of the copyright industry. Due process, free speech, and guarantees against excessive punishment all fall under the might of copyright. Given the choice of the copyright industry creating a new business model or protecting their old business models under new draconian laws, which option do you think better serves our country’s citizenry?

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Maybe the Watchmen wasn’t Filmable?

I’m writing this under the assumption that everyone who wanted to has already read the graphic novel and watched the movie. If you haven’t, be prepared for spoilers.

The movie the Watchmen is not a superhero movie. It is a movie about superheroes. Yes, there is a difference.

A superhero movie is a genre piece that has to follow narrow plot and character points. E.g., the superhero will defeat the bad guy at the end. The superhero will nearly be defeated himself before defeating the bad guy. Innocent people will not die if it is at all possible for the superhero to save them.

The Watchmen is a “what if” movie in the style of the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits. (Actually, the underlying plot of the novel was taken from an Outer Limits episode “the Architects of Fear.”) Instead of postulating “what if” a fortune telling machine in a diner could actually tell the future or “what if” a boy could send adults “into the corn field,” Alan Moore, the author of the novel, asked, what if superheroes actually existed?

One “if” Moore came up with is that having a real Superman would have scared the frick out of the Soviets. Accordingly, they built up a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, which caused us to do the same.

Another “if” is that by using our Superman, Nixon would have won the Vietnam War.

Another “if” is that eventually citizens would rebel against the notion of masked heroes. Cops are pigs, but they’re public pigs and can be held accountable when something goes wrong. And if you think about the powers of Dr. Manhattan, it would actually be impossible to hold him accountable for anything he did.

Based on the foregoing, Moore assumes that with the massive build up of nuclear weapons, that a nuclear war is inevitable. So the premise of the Watchmen is that superheroes would not save humanity, but would bring about humanity’s demise. So if you think about it, it’s actually the opposite of a superhero movie.

Anyway, one of the complaints about the movie is the action scenes. Like the scene in the alley where Silk Spectre and Night Owl kick the asses of about 10 very fit gang members. That scene was not in the novel. Another scene is the slow mo butt kicking Silk and Owl do in breaking Rorschach out of prison (how he was sent to prison without a trial was never explained in either the novel or the movie!). And of course the end, which I’ll talk about below, had plenty of outrageous fighting scenes.

The complaint I’ve read is that the Watchmen is supposed to be a world where superheroes exist in reality, and in reality, people could not defend themselves like Silk, Owl, and Rorschach did. To that I disagree. If Silk, Owl, and Rorschach were masked heroes and fought real villains over a period of decades, they’d have to be able to defend themselves extremely well, otherwise they’d have been killed decades ago. It is never explained how they became such good fighters, as Bruce Wayne’s background did, but their ability to fight extremely well logically follows from their life. I had no problem with that while reading the novel or watching the movie.

But there is still something wrong with those action scenes. The problem to me goes back to the idea that the Watchmen is not a superhero movie. Not only do the “Watchmen” not save the day, they ignorantly fight against the attempt to save the humanity. Thus, the ending is very anti-climactic if you’re expecting a superhero movie.

For anyone not familiar with the story, humanity is not saved by fighting and defeating the bad guy, humanity is saved only by accepting that humans en mass are savages bent towards mutual destruction. And by accepting our true nature that we only live through hate and fear, humanity is saved by directing our murderous rage to something other than each other.

Thus the problem for the superhero fight scenes in the movie is that they cause a disconnect from the premise of the movie to what we’re seeing on the screen. On one hand the movie is showing us these awesome and extremely well filmed and choreographed fight scenes, on the other hand, the movie is telling us in the grand scheme of things the fights and resulting victories are utterly pointless.

So the superhero fans watching get all excited about the fight scenes, but then are disappointed in the anti-climatic message. And those watching the movie for the message, see the fight scenes as pointless, contrived, and nothing more than cinematic pandering to fanboys.

What I find both funny and sad is the commentary on the disc from Director Zack Snyder. He’s totally geeked about the fight/action scenes. Which leads me to believe he doesn’t even understand how completely pointless and contradictory they were. I think he actually believed he was making a superhero movie. Wow!

And speaking of contrived, I have to talk about the fight scenes at the end. Many people have a problem with the ending. As I’ve pointed out, it’s anti-climatic. But it also drags out way too long. And the reason it drags out is because of all the pointless and contrived fight scenes.

Adrian had already successfully completed his plan by the time Night Owl and Rorschach show up to stop him. There was simply nothing either the Night Owl nor Rorschach could have done to stop it. It had already occurred.

So why the frick was Adrian fighting them?! Why doesn’t he immediately explain his plan? There was simply no reason for the fight between Adrian and Night Owl and Rorschach to happen at all, not to mention going on and on and on. So it’s about as contrived as you can get.

But the ending doesn’t stop there. Because eventually Silk Spectre and Dr. Manhattan show up. Silk Spectre gets her butt kicked. The Night Owl gets his butt kicked again. And Adrian attempts to kill Dr. Manhattan. So then Dr. Manhattan starts to fight Adrian. It’s only then that Adrian finally explains his plan. They all understand it and agree that it was the best approach to save humanity. Except for Rorschach, of course.

Alan Moore has said that his novel was unfilmable. Most people took that to mean that the novel was too complex to film. It was not always told in a narrative form. Sometimes background facts were explained in newspaper clippings, medical reports, and from excerpts from an autobiography. Also the novel was written not as one book, but in 12 separate books spread over a year. So it was thought that taking all of these sources and putting them into a single coherent movie would have been impossible.

But in thinking about the novel and the movie, that’s not why the Watchmen is unfilmable. I think it would be impossible to make an entertaining movie with superheroes that was the opposite of a superhero movie. I don’t think Snyder understood that superhero fanboys would hate a movie where superheroes were the cause of our destruction, that their petty battles and victories were pointless in the end. Snyder also did not understood that anyone who understood and was interested in the message of the movie, would be annoyed with the pointless hero battles that were included.

We can have westerns that do not follow the cowboy movie formula, e.g., the Unforgiven. We can have love stories where the girl does not get the guy, e.g. My Best Friend’s Wedding. We can have crime dramas where the bad guy gets away, e.g., No Country for Old Men.

But for some reason we cannot have a successful movie with superheroes, without it being a superhero movie. While such a movie could technically be filmed, as Snyder showed us, it could not be made into a watchable film for most audience members. At this point the superhero genre has not yet evolved where ineffectual superheros are accepted. I doubt if it ever will.

Update – 05-06-10:

Matt Zoller Seitz over at Salon has written a pretty good piece about what I was talking about above. Superhero movies are simply too locked into their narrow genre.

I love these quotes:

Snyder’s “Watchmen” seems a milestone in the genre until you revisit the source and grasp how Snyder, in his determination to keep the story flowing and earn back his budget, amps up the fights, cranks up the music and ends up endorsing some of the same superficial genre traits that the graphic novel’s writer, Alan Moore, pushed against.

(Iron Man’s) great triumph is its ability to persuade audiences to sit still for 15 or 20 minutes at a time without wondering when the boxing robots will return.

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The Circle of Idiocy

Everything comes full circle. Even political correctness. Remember back in the 90s when diversity was so cherished? Well, now my city is having a “Unity Rally” to “celebrate our community’s commitment to work more effectively together to build a bright future for Flint and Genesee County.” Why can’t political correctness make up its mind?!

Check out this article in the Flint Journal if you feel a need to learn more.

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Is it any wonder the Newspaper industry is dying?

My local paper, the Flint Journal has an article about a magician with about 40 years of professional experience coming to give some free shows in the area. What was the best headline the Journal could come up with?

Linden High School graduate to perform free magic shows in Frankenmuth

Wow, that sounds about as exciting as going to watch a neighbor’s daughter’s dance recital. I posted a comment criticizing the asininity of the headline, and they changed it to this:

Linden High School graduate and longtime magician Bret Beaudry to perform free magic shows in Frankenmuth

Which I must admit is better.

Still, if the Journal does not know how to market something easy such as a free professional magic show, how can it market something hard, such as selling day-old news printed on paper and delivered in trucks?

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The Newspaper is dead, long live the news!

Plenty of people are writing about why the newspaper industry is dying or failing. Here’s a really good one right here. It goes into excruciating detail about the newspaper industry’s problems. However, it misses the point. It does not explain why the newspaper industry is dying, it really explains why the newspaper industry failed to adapt to the internet. Let’s make this clear, the internet is the sole cause of the death of the newspapers.

Once upon a time it was an efficient means of distributing news for every city and town to have its own printing press, sometimes more, printing out recent news. Other technologies came but couldn’t touch the newspaper for its depth. TV, Radio, etc… the newspaper survived them all.

It took the internet to kill off the newspaper. Suddenly, having thousands of printing presses spread over the country to distribute day-old news was utterly inefficient.

However, we must separate the death of the newspaper with the death of news. Someone once said that P2P would not kill off the music industry, only the current music industry. The same is true with news. The idea of a physical newspaper printed on paper and delivered in trucks the day after the fact, is done. Sure they’re still around. But so is a brain-dead person on life support. Maybe the current corporations behind the newspaper industry will manage to turn themselves around and make the transition to digital distribution. But it simply does not matter if they do. Someone will. And that’s what we have to remember. The news will survive the death of the newspaper.

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Some competition is good for you

I just read a post at Techdirt about a musician who wrote a song expressing his love for his favorite hockey team. To express its appreciation, the team is suing him for trademark infringement. The musician turned around and sued the team for copyright infringement, i.e., using the song without paying him.

As I’ve written about previously, this is all about a heightened sense of entitlement we’re experiencing. For example, newspaper writers want credit for stories covered by broadcasters, Aretha Franklin wants compensation for wearing and promoting a hat, and the producers of Britain’s Got Talent wants compensation for Susan Boyle’s viral YouTube success.

Unfortunately for the above, the newspaper guy did not create the story, it’s news. Franklin did not make the hat, she merely wore it. And the producers of Britain’s Got Talent did not make Boyle a great singer, she was born that way. So in fact they deserve nothing.

For most people nowadays being compensated is a zero-sum game. Not only do they want what they’re entitled to, they think they’re entitled to what everyone else is entitled to. So when they see some other business making money off of their business, they think they should get all the money. Despite the fact they did nothing.

However, there is a difference between complimentary competition and parasitic competition.

The road construction industry compliments the automobile industry. Without roads, there would be far fewer automobiles. And, vice versa, without automobiles, there would be far fewer roads built. Thus, those two industries compliment and benefit each other.

An example of a parasitic competition is one that derives its customer base off of the work or content of another. An example of this could be P2P. The Pirate Bay, for example, obtains advertising dollars when people visit to obtain content owned by someone else. And generally, users searching for content at Pirate Bay does not benefit the content industries. In fact, they leach off those industries.

So the musician suing the hockey team, and vice versa, is about as asinine as GM suing the nation’s road building industry. Sure, GM could argue that without automobiles there were be very little use for roads. Thus, the road building industry is somehow leaching off the hard work of the automobile manufacturers.

However, the road building industry could make the opposite claim. That without “their” roads people would have no place to drive. Thus, the only reason people buy cars is because of the roads that were built. Thus, automobile manufacturers are somehow leaching off of the hard work of the road building industry.

A good rule of thumb to consider before suing a competitor is to ask, “Is the competitor actually helping me in any way?” If so, don’t sue.

The second rule of thumb to consider is to ask, “Could my competitor sue me for the opposite I’m suing him for?” If that is true, once again, don’t sue.

If both are true, then immediately fire your attorney for even mentioning a lawsuit.

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