On Friday night, I was able to nab an exclusive interview with Arlington-based author Garrett Peck, who was in Charlottesville to speak about his new book, The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet, at the Barnes & Noble book store at Barracks Road Shopping Center. Earlier in the day, Peck had spoken in Lexington to a group of VMI cadets at his alma mater and to other area residents.
I first encountered Peck a few weeks ago when I was in D.C. on business. Stuck in traffic on Interstate 66 in mid-afternoon, I tuned to the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-FM. The conversation was about alcoholic beverage regulation -- a topic that has long interested me -- but it wasn't until the end of the interview that I learned the guest's name and that he was scheduled to speak that night at the Arlington Central Library. Since the library was just a few blocks from where my car would be parked, I decided to attend the presentation.
Peck's talk was interesting and entertaining. (It was accompanied by a slide show with images of the temperance movement and drinking culture.) When he mentioned that he would soon be in Charlottesville to talk about his book, I made a note of it.
That's how I found myself in the religion section of Barnes & Noble last evening, sitting with Garrett Peck and asking him questions about alcoholic beverage regulation, the drinking age, regional differences in attitudes toward alcohol consumption (and preferences for types of beverages), and other topics touched upon in The Prohibition Hangover.
The interview is in two parts of about seven minutes each, both also available on YouTube.
The first part includes introductory material. The second part addresses the most controversial question -- should the drinking age be lowered back to 18 -- and the efforts of groups like the Amethyst Initiative.
In an article on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to ban the sale of big-screen television sets in California (apparently he hasn't heard that Californians with cars can drive to Nevada, Oregon, or Mexico to go appliance shopping), the Daily Mail includes this paragraph:
Televisions account for about 10 per cent of residential energy use in California, the state with the highest population in the U.S., driven largely by the surge in sales of large flat screens.
So California's population growth is due to the sale of big screen TVs? What is it that people are watching there?
Does China have a two-plasma-TV-set-per-family policy?
The National Museum of Natural History announced Wednesday that it is dedicating a new hall to the story of human evolution, giving emphasis not only to how we became humans but how changes in the natural world affected human development.
The Hall of Human Origins, tracing a 6 million-year history, is scheduled to open March 17 -- 100 years to the day that the museum opened.
A news release from the Smithsonian Institution states:
The $20.7 million exhibition hall will be complemented by ongoing human origins research and education programs, which are all key components of the museum’s broader initiative, “Human Origins: What Does It Mean to Be Human?” The initiative focuses on the epic story of human evolution and how the defining characteristics of the species have evolved over 6 million years as its ancestors adapted to a changing world. The museum will launch a compelling new Smithsonian Human Origins Web site and a revolutionary virtual experience hosted on the Blue Mars 2150 virtual Web site. It will include a complete reproduction of the physical exhibition plus additional features visitors can only experience on the Web....
More than 50 U.S. and international scientific research and education organizations, such as the U.S. National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Museum of Kenya and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and more than 70 distinguished scientists and educators are collaborating with the Human Origins Initiative’s research, education and outreach programs.
Visitors to the 15,000-square-foot Hall of Human Origins will be immersed in a unique, interactive museum experience illuminating the major milestones in the origin of human beings and the drama of climate change, survival and extinction that have characterized humans’ ancient past. On entering the exhibition from the Sant Ocean Hall, visitors will travel through a dramatic time tunnel depicting life and environments over the past 6 million years. Visitors will also engage with life-size forensically reconstructed faces of early human species, all designed to provide visitors with a sense of personal connection as they look into the eyes and faces of their distant ancestors.
Other key features in the exhibition include interactive snapshots in time using the actual field sites where research is being conducted, a display of more than 75 skulls (cast reproductions) and an interactive human family tree showcasing 6 million years of evolutionary evidence from around the world, a “One Species Living Worldwide” amphitheater show and a special “Changing the World” gallery, in which visitors can address pressing questions and issues surrounding climate change and humans’ impact on the Earth.
It turns out that the new exhibition is being funded, in large part, with a donation from libertarian philanthropist David Koch -- the same David Koch who was Ed Clark's running mate on the LP presidential ticket in 1980. Trescott continues:
The 15,000-square-foot space will be named for David H. Koch, a chemical engineer and executive vice president of Koch Industries who gave $15 million for the hall's construction. The other primary donor to the project is Peter Buck, a physicist and co-founder of Subway restaurants, who gave $15 million to an endowment for research and accompanying education programs.
The total cost of the hall is $20.7 million, with $3.5 million from other private sources and $2.2 million from the Smithsonian's federal funds.
In a statement, Koch saluted the Human Origins Program, saying, it "has the power to influence the way we view our identity as humans, not only today, but for generations to come." Koch, an MIT-educated engineer, has given generously to many educational, cultural and medical institutions, as well as to conservative political groups. He was the 1980 Libertarian vice presidential candidate.
The article doesn't mention that in 1995, Koch purchased the apartment that once belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis when she lived in New York City. Koch sold the flat in 2006. (File that under "real estate trivia.")
No doubt there will be some complaints that the exhibition -- whose displays will trace back human evolution some four million years and include the recently discovered "Ardi" -- is the work of godless libertarians.
Such complaints might come from the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Those behind the Creation Museum believe -- and offer as scientific fact -- that the Earth is only about 10,000 years old, or younger, and that men and dinosaurs co-existed. Though the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum boasts that it is within a 650-mile drive for two-thirds of the U.S. population, it only attracted some 750,000 visitors in the two years after it opened in May 2007.
In contrast, the National Museum of Natural History has drawn about 6 million visitors already this year, as well as 7 million in 2008, 7.1 million in 2007, and 5.8 million in 2006.
The topic for Blog Action Day in 2008 was "Poverty." In 2007, the topic was "the Environment."
This year the topic is "climate change," a subject I have addressed in the past. (Also here and here.) As the Blog Action Day web site explains,
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.
As one of those "thousands of voices," let me first see what's in the news about "climate change."
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
....last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.
Strangely enough, yesterday Steve Shannon, a candidate for Attorney General in the Commonwealth of Virginia, circulated a video accusing his opponent, state Senator Ken Cuccinelli, of being "anti-science" because Cuccinelli said in an interview with WTOP Radio in Washington, D.C. (at marker 0:33 on the video):
"The last ten years, the globe hasn't warmed."
Is it anti-science to state a scientific fact?
It's not just the BBC that has taken note of the plateau in global temperatures. Christopher Booker wrote in the Daily Telegraph last December 27:
Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.
First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century....
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
Next Sunday will see the simultaneous premiere, at dozens of locations around the country, of a new documentary film called Not Evil Just Wrong. (The film will be shown in Charlottesville at 8:00 p.m. in room 402 of Wilson Hall on the grounds of the University of Virginia; the screening is cosponsored by the Network of Enlightened Women and the College Republicans.)
A front-page article in the Washington Times on Tuesday described the entrepreneurial efforts of the filmmakers as they try to distribute their final product without the support of major studios or a big-name distributor. Movie critic Sonny Bunch reports:
Unable to get Hollywood studio backing for their new documentary, "Not Evil Just Wrong" - an answer to Al Gore's climate-change lecture "An Inconvenient Truth" - husband-and-wife filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney have taken matters into their own hands.
Hoping to tap the surge of populist anger and activism on the right, they are bypassing traditional distribution avenues and bringing their film directly to motivated audiences through "cinematic tea parties," their term for the patchwork of grass-roots screenings in living rooms, campus auditoriums and rented theaters across the country that they have scheduled for Oct. 18.
Mr. McAleer and Ms. McElhinney are part of a new breed of guerrilla documentarians across the political spectrum. Taking advantage of cheaper, more accessible video-production technology and innovative, Internet-based direct marketing and distribution techniques, they are assembling new audiences for their films from the ground up - without the studio middlemen.
As an indication of some of the hurdles faced by McAleer and McElhinney, John Fund reported in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week of a public appearance by former Vice President Al Gore at a gathering in Madison, Wisconsin, of the Society of Environmental Journalists, where the Nobel laureate agreed to answer questions from the audience:
Irish documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer was in the line. A former Financial Times journalist, his new film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong," is a direct refutation of Mr. Gore's thesis and warns that rushing to judgment in combating climate change would threaten the world's poor. When his turn came, Mr. McAleer asked Mr. Gore about a court case in Britain in which a parent had objected to "An Inconvenient Truth" being shown to British schoolchildren because it was largely propaganda, not science.
Mr. Gore swatted away the question by claiming the judge had found in favor of his film. He also briefly addressed one of the objections to his film by scoffing at claims that polar bears weren't an endangered species. Mr. McAleer tried to follow up by pointing out that polar bear populations were increasing, but his microphone was quickly cut off. Organizers insisted that several other people were waiting with questions and they had to move on.
In fact, Mr. Gore didn't answer Mr. McAleer's question and was wrong on the facts. The British court found that An Inconvenient Truth "is a political film" riddled with scientific errors.
ReasonTV has produced a short (less than 5 minutes long) interview with environmental scientist Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming and Global Crises, Global Solutions. The interview is conducted by Charlottesville's Ronald Bailey, who is science correspondent for Reason magazine. Both Lomborg and Bailey accept the validity of anthropogenic global warming. Lomborg posits that, based on an analysis by a panel that included three Nobel-prize-winning economists, government-mandated action (such as cap-and-trade legislation or other forms of carbon taxes) is likely to be the least successful approach to ameliorating the effects of global warming. As the infobox that accompanies this video on YouTube says:
What's the best way for humanity to reduce suffering from man-made global warming? No individual has been a stronger voice for rational cost-benefit analysis on this issue than Bjorn Lomborg, the head of Copenhagen Consensus Center, and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It! On Thursday, September 3, 2009, Lomborg stopped by Reason's DC HQ to discuss the latest iteration of his ongoing project with Reason magazine science correspondent Ronald Bailey.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center's expert panel of five top economists, including three Nobel laureates, has concluded that greater resources should be spent on research into climate engineering and green energy. They also concluded that the least cost-effective way to deal with climate change is carbon taxes. Such carbon taxes are the economic equivalent of cap-and-trade carbon rationing schemes like the Waxman-Markey bill being considered by Congress and which are being negotiated by the U.N.
The expert panel consisted of Nobel laureate economists Thomas Schelling, Vernon Smith, and Finn Kydland. They were joined by University of Chicago economist Nancy Stokey and Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati. The panel considered and ranked 21 ground-breaking research proposals by top climate economists on the basis their benefits and costs in dealing with global warming.
People around the world are starting to catch on to what the costs of various government-mandated "solutions" to climate change will be. In Australia, for instance, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on October 12:
The Lowy Institute of International Policy is releasing its 2009 survey on attitudes to global affairs, which finds climate change has slipped in importance on a list of Australia's Top 10 foreign policy goals.
The survey, taken in July, showed protecting jobs was the foreign policy priority for the community.
Climate change had slipped to seven on a list of 10 goals in 2009, down from equal first in 2007.
Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt wants the government to heed the results.
"I think the government would be slightly shocked by these results," he told ABC Radio.
"They spend all their days talking about international negotiations and yet the message that comes through from people is we want a stable economic environment, we want to have a stable future, we want the opportunity of employment and hope and aspiration for our children and our grandchildren."
A commentary on that poll in the Wall Street Journal expands on the reasons Australians might have let climate-change concerns slip in their list of priorities:
Less than half of all Australians consider global warming a "serious and pressing problem," according to a poll released yesterday by the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank. That's 12 percentage points lower than in last year's survey. "Climate change" ranked 7th in a list of 10 "most important" foreign-policy goals—down from first only two years ago.
The poll, which surveyed 1,003 Australians by telephone in July, goes to show that fighting global warming is an expensive fad, not a moral imperative. Down under, citizens and businesses have grown more alarmed about Canberra's efforts to limit carbon emissions as the costs of doing so have become clearer. A July report by Melbourne-based research firm RepuTex estimated the cost of the bill for Australia's top 200 companies could reach as much as 2.8 billion Australian dollars ($2.5 billion) annually, costing thousands of jobs. Industry opposition was a big factor in the Senate's rejection of the government's first shot at passing the emissions-trading scheme in August.
Australians aren't the only citizens of Western industrialized democracies to have their doubts about carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes.
A Rasmussen Reports survey in early May had some surprising findings, given the large amount of coverage the legislation was getting in the news media at the time:
Given a choice of three options, just 24% of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29%) believe the proposal has something to do with regulating Wall Street while 17% think the term applies to health care reform. A plurality (30%) have no idea.
Another Rasmussen Reports poll, conducted in June, showed that 42 percent of Americans believe that the House-passed bill will hurt the economy. A majority of Republicans – 56 percent -- and independents – 52 percent -- said the bill would hurt the economy, while 23 percent of Democrats said the same thing. Thirty percent of Democrats said it would help.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post/ABC News poll published on June 25 showed that only 52 percent of Americans support a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions similar to Waxman-Markey (see below). That was slightly less support than cap and trade enjoyed in a late July 2008 poll. Forty-two percent of those surveyed in June 2009 opposed such a program. That 42 percent and the 42 percent that Rasmussen found saying cap-and-trade policies would be harmful to the economy neatly match up, don't they?
The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454), also known as “Waxman-Markey” after its two principal sponsors in the House of Representatives (Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts), passed the House on June 26, 2009, by a close vote of 219-212. In its printed form, H.R. 2454 runs to 1,428 pages. (That number is not a typo.)
The companion bill in the U.S. Senate (S. 1733), was introduced on September 30 and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. The principal sponsors are Senators John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Barbara Boxer (D-California). In its printed form, S. 1733 only has 821 pages. S. 1733 is sort of The Fountainhead to H.R. 2454's Atlas Shrugged.
The spirit of Blog Action Day suggests that I should urge my readers to take action on the topic of climate change. So I shall.
Readers, I encourage you to call your Senators and ask them to vote "no" on S. 1733, the so-called "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" (also known as "Kerry-Boxer"). The number for the Capitol Hill switchboard is (202) 224-3121. If you don't know the names of your Senators, you can look them up on the U.S. Senate web site or at Congress.org, where you can plug in your ZIP Code and learn the names of all your elected representatives, along with their contact information.
Remember the message: Vote NO on cap-and-trade. Vote NO on Kerry-Boxer. Vote NO on S. 1733.
That's the question that first sprang to mind when I heard on NPR this morning that the Norwegian Nobel committee had awarded its peace prize to freshman President Barack Obama of the United States, a person who has been in office for too short a time (not even 9 months) to accomplish anything of lasting significance in the pursuit of international peace.
The Bloomberg news service inadvertently expressed the same sort of incredulousness with this headline:
The deadline for submitting nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize was February 1 -- just days after President Obama's inauguration. Did he really do so much in a fortnight that he bested other contenders with far more experience and a longer record of achievements?
The last U.S. President to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was Jimmy Carter (in retirement), which will no doubt lead to more and more explicit comparisons between him and Obama -- in terms of their naivete and their mismanagement of U.S. foreign policy.
Both Obama and Carter share a Wilsonian idealism -- that is, they lack a sense of Realpolitik -- that is also appropriate, since Woodrow Wilson won his Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Versailles Treaty after World War I.
This is the second in an irregular series of quirky and informative items that have shown up recently in the news media or in the blogosphere.
Eric Brescia, a Republican candidate for the House of Delegates in Virginia's 47th District (in Arlington; he's aiming to succeed retiring Democratic Delegate Al Eisenberg), had an opinion piece in The Washington Blade last week headlined "Equal rights requires Republican allies; I need your support to become a pro-gay GOP voice in Va. legislature." In it, he says:
IF THE REPUBLICAN Party wants to be relevant for the newest generation of voters, it cannot continue to drive a social wedge between those who seek to protect “traditional marriage” and those who seek to extend the rights and responsibilities to couples who want to enjoy such a commitment.
And if gays and lesbians want to enter into civil marriages in states like Virginia, they’re going to need Republicans in Richmond advocating on their behalf.
Brescia is one of the new breed of confident, thoughtful, libertarian-minded Republicans who are trying to rescue the legacies of Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan from the pages of history books by making them relevant for today. To see the candidate himself answer questions about the issues that animate his campaign, check out my blog post from August 13.
By the way, Brescia is one of those Republican candidates who do not use Twitter for campaign communications. Let's just say I'm surprised.
The good news about the Obama era is that the president has returned the issue of the size, scope, and power of the federal government to center stage. And that in turn has revived the long-dormant small-government spirit in American conservatism.
In that regard, I’m more positive than Hayward is about the “tea party” movement. True, it is somewhat “unfocused,” without a clear “connection to a concrete ideology.” But it reflects and galvanizes the natural American antipathy to big government.
Now the responsibility of the conservative media and political leaders is to give the tea partiers a positive cause to rally around, by shining light on scholars with good ideas. There are plenty of free-market intellectuals today, far more than in the era when Milton Friedman dined alone. Glenn Beck does indeed sometimes devote significant time to a single intellectual; other talk show hosts should do the same.
In a helpful frame of mind a few days later, Yorktown University's Richard Bishirjian offered a few books that young conservatives should read to advance their educations and stretch their minds. Writing in The Washington Times on Wednesday, Bishirjian said:
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has published several studies that demonstrate that required courses in English literature, American history and the history of Western civilization are no longer required to earn the bachelor of arts degree. Is there anything that can be done? Yes. Read these books:
Once again, conservatism doesn't need to be reinvented. Its principles need to be relearned to be passed on to this generation and to future generations. The surest way to do that is not by reading the popular polemics of today's overheated partisans, but through the writings of the passionate original thinkers and scholars who helped found the modern conservative movement.
A good list, though -- as David Boaz points out in his Examiner piece -- Hayek explicitly excluded himself from the label "conservative," calling himself (and Margaret Thatcher, among others) a "liberal." At least Hayek's essay, "Why I Am Not a Conservative," is indirectly included in Bishirjian's syllabus (as part of The Constitution of Liberty).
In other education news, Virginia's James Madison University earned the dubious distinction of having the "Speech Code of the Month," as designated by the civil-liberties organization known as FIRE ("Foundation for Individual Rights in Education"). According to FIRE's Samantha Harris:
JMU's policy on "Obscene Conduct" provides that "[n]o student shall engage in lewd, indecent or obscene conductor expression, regardless of proximity to campus." (Emphasis added.) Torch readers may already be familiar with this policy, because we blogged about it several weeks ago. Our post caught the attention of student reporters at JMU, who have published several articles in the student paper The Breeze since our post first appeared. The first article, on Sept. 24, expressed FIRE's concern that this broadly worded policy could be used to punish a great deal of student expression, including expression taking place online in e-mails or on sites like Facebook. Because "lewd" and "indecent" have no defined legal meaning, they could be interpreted to include almost any crude or vulgar language that someone found offensive, most of which would nonetheless be constitutionally protected. The policy allows for punishment of lewd and indecent expression on or off campus, so virtually everything that students say or write is fair game — and I would venture to guess that college students use plenty of crude and vulgar language on Facebook and elsewhere.
Free speech is sometimes irreverent, and it's seldom as irreverent as it is on Red Eye, the 3:00 a.m. news and chat show on the Fox News Channel that is virtually the only FNC show I watch. I was pleased to learn that Red Eye is getting great ratings -- even though it is aired in the middle of the night. Host Greg Gutfeld and his gang of regulars are entertaining and informative, and unafraid of being politically incorrect.
I use energy-saving lightbulbs throughout my house -- the ones known as CFLs that take a long time to warm up -- by my own choice. Governments, however, are lining up to deny me that choice and make the venerable, Edison-invented incandescent lamp illegal.
Reason.tv put together an informative and entertaining video, called "Light Bulbs vs. the Nanny State," about CFLs, hooking it to the European Union's new prohibition on incandescents:
The video is also available on YouTube and it suggested this question to me: Before Edison, how did cartoonists indicate that someone had a bright idea?
Finally, next week I will be participating in Blog Action Day 2009. Some will be surprised, some will be pleased at what I'll have to say.
The topic for Blog Action Day is climate change, or what used to be known as "global warming" (a term that has fallen out of usage as evidence emerged that planetary temperatures plateaued about 11 years ago and may actually be declining.)
According to a news release from Project Virginia, a campaign consulting service, more Republican than Democratic candidates in the Old Dominion use Twitter as a means of campaign outreach.
As of 12:00 p.m. (does that mean 12:00 noon?) on October 7:
BY THE NUMBERS: • Republicans in Virginia have more than twice as many total Twitter users following them as their Democratic counterparts. Followers: “R” = 13,074. “D” = 6,328. • Republicans hold a 33-18 lead among candidates using a dedicated campaign Twitter account. • 9 of the Top 10 Candidates for VA House of Delegates with the most Twitter followers are Republicans. • Republican statewide candidates – McDonnell, Bolling, Cuccinelli – have 8,462 followers versus the 5,073 users following Democratic statewide candidates Deeds, Wagner, and Shannon.
Ford O'Connell, the president of Project Virginia, commented:
“It’s clear Virginia Republicans have taken the lead in using Twitter to connect with voters. Twitter’s overall impact on politics has yet to be fully realized or quantified, but it’s apparent that campaigns which are early adopters of social media tools will be more engaged with their supporters.”
The news release also provided a link to all of the Virginia politicians (at least those running for office this year) who have -- and don't have -- Twitter accounts.
I'm not sure whether the "Twitter gap" is significant enough to make a major difference in the outcome of this year's elections for the General Assembly and for statewide offices. It might make a difference in some close races or in contests for open seats, where a slight communications superiority could pull a candidate over the finish line.
I hope that on November 4, somebody does an analysis of Twitter vs. non-Twitter candidates, to see if tweeting gives candidates a winning edge.
These are among the dozens of artists, scholars, and film lovers who will be attending this year's Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville.
Virginia Film Festival director Jody Kielbasa, who just recently succeeded Richard Herskowitz in that job (Kielbasa and his family moved to Charlottesville in June), announced the line-up of films, panel discussions, and special events at a news conference at the UVA Art Museum on Wednesday. About 90 minutes later, he repeated the announcement at a reception for the festival's supporters and staff.
Kielbasa inherited a theme that had been selected by the festival's board earlier this year, "Funny Business." He noted that the natural meaning to draw from that is "comedy," but upon reflection it is easy to widen the scope, since "funny business" also means "shenanigans," "double-dealing," and mischief-making.
Consequently, the festival will include movies about the "funny business of politics" (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, for instance) and the "funny business of business" (Wall Street).
The film festival will also feature several regional premieres, including an opening-night presentation of the documentary film Marching Band, which focuses on the Marching Cavaliers of the University of Virginia and the Marching Trojans of Virginia State University. Marching Band was directed by French documentarian Claude Miller and was previously screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
A special emphasis on local topics and Virginia film making will include the documentary Bedford: The Town They Left Behind, about the small town that lost the most (proportional) number of servicemen in the D-Day invasion, and how the town's residents today face the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Locked Out: The Fall of Massive Resistance is a documentary film about the decision to close Charlottesville's government schools rather than open them up to racial integration; it will be followed by a panel discussion with former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, UVA political scientist Larry Sabato, and several of the students whose educations were disrupted by massive resistance. A film about Prince William County's immigration policy, 9500 Liberty, will also be screened, as well as With These Hands, a documentary about the closing of a Martinsville factory.
All of Jody Kielbasa's remarks, both at the press conference and at the reception that followed, are now available on YouTube. Here they are, divided into six (nearly equal) parts. (I apologize for the low lighting conditions. It was dim inside the UVA Art Museum.)
The Virginia Film Festival takes place the weekend of November 5-8, 2009, at various venues in Charlottesville, including Culbreth Hall and Newcomb Hall on the grounds of the University of Virginia, and the Paramount Theatre and Regal Cinemas on the downtown mall. A full schedule of confirmed screenings and other events should be on line already; tickets go on sale through the Virginia Film Festival web site on Friday morning at 10:00 o'clock.
"I'll give you 13 shows, but that's all," said the BBC's head of light entertainment in 1969, and Monty Python's Flying Circus aired to a perplexed, but eventually grateful, British audience on Monday 5 October that same year. Over the subsequent 45 shows, the rules of television comedy were rewritten as John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam created lunatic characters and sketches, as funny today as they were 40 years ago.
The Oxbridge-educated group brought silliness and erudition in nearly equal amounts to television sketch comedy. Not exactly sui generis -- the Pythons had roots in pantomime, music hall, and British radio and movie comedies of the 1940s and '50s, as well as the satirical shows at Oxford and Cambridge, the Edinburgh Fringe, and even Beyond the Fringe -- when it reached America via public television, Monty Python seemed revolutionary.
In Milwaukee in the mid-1970s, Monty Python's Flying Circus was played on Tuesday evenings at 10:30 on WMVS-TV (Channel 10), so on Wednesday mornings, the senior lounge, the Blue & Gold Room, and the cafeteria at Marquette University High School were all abuzz with teenage boys imitating and trying their best to recreate, verbatim, the sketches they had seen the night before. It's a tribute to the quality of Python performances that, even after a single viewing, they could be recreated (at least by the smartest ones). Later, when vinyl LP recordings became available, memorization became easier, if a bit less daunting. We would spend hours on "The Argument Clinic," "Dead Parrot," and, among many others, "The Spanish Inquisition." (Bet you didn't expect that!) For a sample of Monty Python's influence on MUHS students, check out "Life on Film" from 2007.
It was under the influence of Monty Python -- how else would 16-year-old Midwesterners be introduced to existential philosophers? -- that I and some of my classmates came up with this cheer for the MUHS sports teams (nicknamed the Hilltoppers):
Socrates, Plato, Bertrand Russell Here we go, Toppers -- Husserl, Husserl!
It might not have inspired anyone to audition for place kicker, but whoever said public TV can't be educational?
Monty Python's Flying Circus is being celebrated all over the web today. For instance, Stephen Beard, a correspondence for public radio's Marketplace, had a report on today's broadcast about how many of the early Monty Python sketches reflected the socio-economic realities of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.
It's Monty Python week on IFC, where the cable film channel marks the 40th anniversary of the cheeky, British comedy troupe. Events will include a six-episode interview/documentary, "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)," featuring all of the remaining group members discussing the ensemble's cultural impact and legacy. The week will also include, of course, the classic Python films.
Charlottesville is agog with the news that a new passenger train rides through town on its way to Washington and New York. Rachana Dixit has the story in the Daily Progress:
A new, daily Amtrak train that will stop in Charlottesville before going to Washington and the Northeast received much fanfare on Wednesday as it rolled into the city’s West Main Street station.
“We’re really pushing rail and public transportation because it’s the wave of the future,” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said during the train’s whistle-stop tour.
The new train was due to arrive at the station at 2:15 p.m., and it pulled in at roughly 2:24 p.m.
Beginning in Lynchburg, the train officially starts its service today and will add 14 more trips per week in Charlottesville. It came to Charlottesville on Wednesday from Culpeper and then headed to Lynchburg after Kaine — who received a rail hat that said “Chief Engineer,” a train whistle and bandana — hopped on.
Some area residents have advocated for more passenger rail service along the U.S. 29 corridor, most notably Meredith Richards, a former councilor and the chairwoman of CvilleRail and the Piedmont Rail Coalition.
The new train, which makes no economic sense (I'll get to that momentarily), is subsidized by Virginia taxpayers to the tune of at least $10.9 million over the next three years (Daily Progress figure) or perhaps $17 million (WSET).
The estimated number of new passenger trips per year ranges from 50,000 to 59,000, which means that each trip is underwritten by taxpayers for between $96 to $113 (using the higher subsidy amount).
The aim of the new service is to entice people away from driving to Washington on Route 29. For an individual, however, it is cheaper to travel by car than by train, even with the subsidy.
I calculate that it costs me, driving my 1999 Saturn, about $20.00 in gasoline (and I'm being generous: that's assuming gas is $2.50 per gallon, when it actually is less than that along the Route 29 corridor, at least until you reach the Beltway). It costs me between $1.00 and $8.00 to park in Ballston. Even if I park in the nearest commercial parking garage near my downtown DC office, the maximum charge for 24 hours is $22.00.
That means that the most I would pay to drive myself to downtown DC is $42.00, roundtrip, including parking. Since I nearly always park in Ballston, however, it is more realistic to calculate my cost to be $28.00 (if I spend all day in DC).
According to the Amtrak web site, the one-way fare on the new train is $29. Roundtrip fare is $58.
That means I save between $16 and $30 by driving myself.
If I were to travel with a friend or colleague and split the costs, we together save between $32 and $60.
For every person traveling together on that Charlottesville-DC trip, choosing Amtrak increases the cost by 100 percent while choosing a private automobile reduces it by 50 percent (up to the point every passenger seat in the car is filled).
I enjoy riding on a train as much as anyone. It is my preferred mode of transportation between Washington and New York. (There's no way you'll find me driving on the streets of Manhattan.) I once even took the Acela from New York to DC. Someone else was paying for it, of course.
Enjoying railroad travel should not, however, blind us to the fact that passenger rail, because it is not economically viable in an open market -- that is, in the absence of government subsidies -- exists only because of a transfer of wealth from the poor (who, by and large, do not travel by train) and the rich (who like to travel by train because it is the chic thing to do, and they can pretend to be environmentally conscious while doing it).
Looking at the numbers, however, why would any rational person choose to take the train rather than drive between Charlottesville and DC? Besides saving money, you would have more flexibility in terms of choosing when to depart and arrive, and if you have a change of plans -- or if your DC-area business is in Tyson's Corner rather than Capitol Hill -- you are better able to adapt to your travel needs and desires. What's more, if I drive myself, I can talk on the phone or listen to NPR without worrying about bothering other passengers.
This is a bad deal. Anyone who thinks otherwise has been bamboozled. (To be fair, people with large disposable incomes and who care little about their travel budgets might rationally choose the Amtrak option. The rest of us would not.)
Sometimes one comes across interesting, intriguing, or -- let's be honest -- silly items in the news media or around Web 2.0 that deserve being pointed out, but don't require extended commentary.
With that in mind, I have decided to start a weekly (perhaps less frequent) series of posts that simply list a few of those items and let readers look at them, if they wish, or skip them, if they prefer.
Here, in no particular order, is the weekly wrap-up for Thursday, October 1, 2009.
Legendary risks/benefits analyst Sam Kazman notes that living without cars is a luxury only the urban rich can afford, in an op-ed piece in the Washington Examiner.
Speaking of cars, the Wall Street Journal reports that former Vice President Al Gore is one of the investors in an automobile manufacturing firm that is being subsidized by American taxpayers. The company is making high-end sports cars that run on electric engines -- playthings for the green-oriented wealthy car owner.
Speaking of Al Gore, former Virginia state climatologist Patrick Michaels reveals in National Review Online that the historical tempurature data purporting to prove global warming -- oops, global climate change -- has been destroyed or lost. At least it is not being made available to researchers.
Educational administrator Steve Foerster asks why two University of California-Berkeley executives engage in special pleading, in their Washington Post op-ed that argues for expanding federal taxpayer subsidies to state universities.
Radley Balko documents another ridiculous result of the multiplying tentacles of the government's War on Drugs: a grandmother arrested in Indiana for buying too much cold medication for her family. The original article he found, from the Tribune-Star in Indiana, is here.
Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia (the 2008 Libertarian Party presidential nominee) looks at how the idea of a "summit meeting" has been dumbed down. He also points out that common sense can solve more problems than two-day government-sponsored conferences, and do so more efficiently.
An alternative newspaper in Colorado is looking for potential pot reviewers. (I don't mean cooking utensils; I mean marijuana.) Will they double up as fast-food restaurant reviewers?
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are in Copenhagen to persuade the International Olympic Committee to grant Chicago the rights to host the Olympic Games in 2016. If they are successful, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. A story on NPR's Morning Edition noted that Olympic Games-hosting is a money-losing proposition, despite all the hype. Here's the money quote:
Fold in all the costs and revenues, he says, "including federal allotments, municipal allotments, provincial or state allotments, it's always been that a debt has to be paid somewhere."
Benoit Denizet-Lewis has a cover story in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine on a neglected topic: coming out in middle school. Anyone who used to be a gay teenager should read this article. So should anyone who is or will be the parent of teenagers.
Ryan Sager points to a widely-commented-upon study about "gaydar." Those really, really interested can see the original study (or at least the abstract) by Nicholas O. Rule here. Those slightly less interested can see a newspaper report in the Tufts Daily and a report on a different, but thematically related, study in the Boston Globe. Blogger Jena Pincott also comments.
Finally, I found a very funny video on YouTube, a parody of the famous "David After Dentist" video that now has had over 30 million views. (When I first saw it several months ago, it only had about 600,000.) Be sure to watch the whole thing.
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
On Friday night, I was able to nab an exclusive interview with Arlington-based author Garrett Peck, who was in Charlottesville to speak about his new book, The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet
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