Bistro Boots Campfield, Internet Lights Up

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pic via the Knox News Sentinel report

The owner of the Bistro By The Bijou Theatre told TN Senator Stacey Campfield to leave the restaurant Sunday in response to some wildly distorted and dangerously wrong information he was preaching about AIDS and gay people, which I wrote about here. (UPDATE: Campfield sued for libel, headed to court)

I find it really odd that a state senator who claims "Homosexuals represent about 2 to 3 percent of the population yet you look at television and plays and theaters, it's 50 percent of the theaters, probably more than that, 50 percent of the theaters based on something about homosexuality." would patronize a place which is itself part of a "theatre" - they even spell it like one of those places where "plays" are. Gasp!

Bistro owner Martha Boggs says:

""I didn't want his hate in my restaurant," Boggs said in a interview this morning. "I told him he wasn't welcome here. ... I feel like he's gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him."

Reactions are lighting up the internet:

Sean Braisted: "There is nothing inconsistent or incoherent about discriminating against those with power who actively discriminate against those without power.  There is no difference between refusing to serve David Duke than there is Stacey Campfield.  While Campfield's views may currently have more resonance among the American populace, it doesn't change the fact that he wishes discrimination against people based on who they are.

Mike Donila
Southern Beale
Betsy Phillips
Trace Sharp
Towle Road
Daily Kos
Think Progress 
No Silence Here has a roundup of comments
And, Free Republic: Gays have their own street in Knoxville?

Sen. Campfield isn't backing away from his uneducated commentary - he's adding to it, urging folks to think that someone who has hemophilia or anyone who might be ill must be avoided because they are not "normal":

"Most "Normal" people I imagine would also stay away from the IV drug users, hemophiliacs, known disease carriers, prostitutes and other high risk people. Also conceding a man less likely to receive the disease then (sic) a women because of the nature of sex, the odds of a man getting AIDS from a female are pretty low."

Classy. At least he says "I imagine" as his imagination is completely running wild. And the real question is - will voters forget all this when his re-election efforts begin?

Camera Obscura: A Real 'Artist" of Silent Film Era

Just as Hollywood is lining up to celebrate the movie romanticizing the silent film era, "The Artist", one of the era's very talented and outspoken screenwriters, Frederica Sagor Mass, passed away in early January at the age of 111.

Fortunately, she crafted a most memorable memoir of her days as a screenwriter published in 1999, "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim", where she revealed the greed, lechery and brutal nature of the early days of filmmaking. Her memoir reminded readers that Hollywood has always been first and foremost about one thing - business, not artists. Here she is from a 1999 interview:

"I know I’ve been hard on the motion picture industry [in the book],” she remarks. “The facts and the stories I tell — about the plagiarism and the way I was handled and the way other writers were handled — are true. If anybody wants to take offense at the fact that I tell the truth and I’m writing this book …” She pauses a moment, collects her thoughts, then — Whammo! “I can get my payback now. I’m alive and thriving and, well, you SOBs are all below, because I’ve lived to 99. And I quit the business at 50.”

---

"Maas doesn’t think much of current films. “There’s no lack of material, there’s just lack of incentive to make anything else but what they consider box office. And, hell, who can dispute them? Pictures are making money. And people are getting stupider and stupider. They’ll pay seven and a half dollars to see a motion picture and it’s all in the same vein: sex, sex, sex, sex, sex and violence, violence, violence, violence. You know what they’ve done? They’ve taken the vulgar, low part of old-fashioned vaudeville — all those terrible little acts — and they’ve put it on TV.”

And from her obit in the LA Times:

"Both she and her husband, Ernest Maas, saw their ideas stolen and plagiarized, and they were blackballed by the industry after being wrongly accused of being communists, she wrote.

"Her book is perhaps the best muckraking memoir about early Hollywood," film historian Alan K. Rode said Friday. "She was one of the last living connections to silent film, and her autobiography is an irreplaceable record written from the rare perspective of a woman who lived through those times."

Her life and works deserve to be celebrated as much as or more than any box office hit of the moment. Here's to you, Frederica.

Widespread Reaction to Foxconn, Campfield, and More

I'm very happy to see that a few items I wrote about this week are getting more attention and scrutiny from the press and the public. It's vivid evidence that the internet is a very powerful force in sharing and shaping opinions.

First, the NYTimes has another story on the often deadly conditions in the Chinese factories which make electronic products for Apple, Dell, HP, IMB, Nokia and more, following up on stories I mentioned here and here. I am optimistic that all of you using smartphones, computers and gaming consoles don't want to these products being made at the cost of human lives - but first info on industrial conditions has to be reported and widely shared.

Another story I wrote I posted on the KnoxViews website about some dangerously stupid comments from TN state senator Stacey Campfield on AIDS and gays has been burning up the internets. I posted the story on KnoxViews since he is Knoxville's senator and Knox voters are the ones who put him in office. Reaction has been swift and widespread - MetroPulse, the KnoxNewsSentinel, the Nashville Scene, the Washington Monthly and many more. 


A story to keep your eyes on - following the massive opposition to the proposed internet censorship ideas in the failed SOPA legislation in Congress, there is another far sneakier bit of censorship headed towards the U.S. and Europe thanks to a super-secret treaty agreement called ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement which endorses the worst of the SOPA provisions.


As the website Boing Boing notes that ACTA is an:

" ... unprecedented secret copyright treaty that was negotiated by industry representatives and government trade reps, without any access by elected representatives, independent business, the press, public interest groups, legal scholars, independent economists and so on. Time and again, the world's richest governmental administrations (only rich countries were in the negotiation) told their own parliaments and congresses that they could not see what was in the treaty, nor know the details of the discussion. The European Parliament was one of the bodies that asked its administration to share the treaty discussions with the elected members, only to be turned down. Cables in the Wikileaks dumps showed US officials orchestrating this secrecy because they knew how unpopular this one-sided, heavy-handed copyright treaty would be.

The buzz on this treaty is that it may bypass our nation's congressional review if President Obama signs the agreement as an 'executive order'. Bad idea - and hopefully more and more online users will catch this news and oppose it as strongly as they opposed SOPA.

Welcome Back to No Silence Here

After a brief absence, former KnoxNews columnist/blogger/media overlord Michael Silence is back online, highlighting all types of news, information, and bloggers-of-note at No Silence Here.

So bookmark his site, get his feed, do what you gotta do to become a regular reader.

A sample of recent posts:

Tennessee's Gov. Haslam says anti-gay legislation a waste of time.

2-year study of 'red-light' traffic cams show don't decrease accidents - as Mike and I and many others have said, these 'cam-scams' are about making money. In a recent audit, Bluff City, TN is shown to be making more money from these cams than from property taxes.

Welcome back, Michael!

Foxconn vs American Workers: A Losing Game

Rallying for their lives

American media is beginning to notice that our low-cost demand for consumer goods and the deep desire for only huge profits by bosses is driving us over an economic cliff. This NYTimes report peeks a little behind the curtains ...

"An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts. 

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States. 

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said. 

Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes. 

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony. 

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

The economic engines in China and in Asia are fueled in ways American workers can't or won't work under. It isn't a matter of whether American workers are skilled or not.

I mentioned recently the mass suicide attempt by employees at one Foxconn complex in a bid to keep the wages they had.

Reports on Foxconn's business model are just barely being provided. But the information is grim. And a global solution which might ignite a boom in the American economy is at best a murky concept. It's as if we are debating what kind of boat to take to sea after we have already leapt over the rails of a ship and are swimming away.

Vermin Supreme Vows Free Ponies for All if Elected President

Since I've painted such harsh pictures of the Republican candidates for president, it is only fair that I also present a non-party candidate who embraces idiocy as the heart and soul of his campaign. Plus he promises free ponies for every American and wears a boot on his head. Ladies and Gentlemen, here's Vermin Supreme. Wheee!!

Camera Obscura: The Sad Demise of George Lucas

It's sad to witness the strange demise of filmmaker George Lucas, who no only held great promise, but exploded the world of cinema and cinema fans with his original "Star Wars" trilogy, and then exploded the world of visual and audio effects with his breakout creations of Industrial Light and Magic. But that is all in the past, and here in the present, Mr. Lucas appears oddly lost and angry and I'm left to wonder what happened to him.

Yes, yet another fanboy critique of you and your work. I'm really sorry. I know it isn't anything you want to hear.

His company and he himself financed and released today a big-budget tale of the incredibly heroic World War 2 pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen titled "Red Tails". And he's been very vocal about what he sees as Hollywood's failure to support big budget movies with all-black casts. Indeed, he drafted the creators of "Undercover Brother" and "The Boondocks" to write and direct this movie. But his own goal was to created a sort of patriotic African-American John Wayne hero movie when I don't know that anyone - regardless of their race - wanted one. Hey, you want a tough, he-man African-American genre movie hero? Watch "Shaft". And that was decades ago, and now, audiences are just expecting more.

Or better, if Lucas wants to energize Hollywood to support African-American directors and writers and actors, then give them the financing and the whiz-bang effects and tell them "Make the stories and movies that you want to make."

After reading this lengthy interview with the angry and seemingly disconnected Lucas in the NYTimes I was left with the impression that he has somehow been diluted into a weird sort of Howard Hughes person. He had too much success, too much money, too fast and too soon. Lucas' has really hokey ideas about movies (not necessarily a bad thing) and has nurtured an incredible amount of technical development of cinema - but hates anyone who might challenge his decisions to make "Star Wars" anything except what he wants it to be. Fights with a world of fans? Really?

Midi-chlorian machine

Here's my own personal fanboy rant against how Lucas unwisely changed the intentions of his "Star Wars" tale -- the original film (now called Part 4) was a hero's journey, a young man takes on adventure and ideas (empires even!) far beyond his grasp and changes the world as a Jedi Knight. But in "The Phantom Menace" (aka Part 1), we learn, hey, to be a Jedi, you have to have the right genetic code (something Lucas wrote of as a high Midi-chlorian count in the bloodstream) in order to be special. Heroism or wisdom is not achieved through effort and work, it's just about being born with the right heritage. ?????

He's about to release (again) the entire movie series now in 3-D, and from Part 1 through Part 6. But if you tell (or see) this story out of the original order, there is no mystery as to who heroic Luke Skywalker and villainous Darth Vader are. None. So what story are we watching now? Not the ones which forever changed movies and movie audiences around the world.

Let's put it this way and compare some basic movie-making concepts --

Also being released theatrically today is a movie called "Haywire" by the director Steve Soderbergh (who also did the camerwork and the editing), and he's been a critic-approved director and a blockbuster-movie-franchise creator too, for many years. But he also makes small-budget, tightly wound action and thriller movies too. "Haywire" is mostly a karate/kung-fu action yarn - a straight-up genre movie, expertly made. He's done this type of thing before with the excellent crime thrillers "Out of Sight" and "The Limey".

Compare that with "Red Tails" - it too has rousing action scenes, yes, expertly made. But "Red Tails" comes from real-world events and that history is pretty much discarded here. "Haywire" ain't history, did not cost a fortune to make, and is based in fantasy. And Soderbergh has also taken on huge historical projects too, like "Che: Parts One and Two", which don't skimp on history or action and is a truly notable achievement.

From here in my movie fanboy seat, I can easily pick the better filmmaker, and he's probably a happy fellow too. So it is not George Lucas.

I still like his early films too - "THX-138" and "American Graffiti" are great movies (which Lucas hates). But after 1980 ... it's all been downhill.

Here are a few more examples you can watch tonight on Turner Classic Movies - both sharp, witty, exciting crime thrillers, expertly made, and expertly written and performed by using well-made characters in settings both imaginary and real, which are both popcorn movie fun and still manage to speak to real-world ideas, like technology and individuality.

First, at 10 pm "The Anderson Tapes" by Sidney Lumet. Sean Connery and an excellent cast plot a massive heist at a luxury apartment complex in NYC. Fresh from prison, none of them know how much every move is being tracked by casual and police surveillance sources.

That's followed by the original version of "The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three", about crooks pretending to be terrorists as they hijack a subway car in Manhattan. Every performance here stands out, major and minor, they move and sound like real New Yorkers and real crooks. The recent remake was awful - this version is hugely entertaining.

The First Metaphor For 2012?

Yes, I know dear reader, I've not written in a week, which is nearly 17 years or something in internet-time. I have had the usual Enter The New Year's Unwell Episode, mingled with some Better Not Write That Thought Down and Put It Online days too. It is surely tough to offer a viewpoint on certain events in our world so as not turn this Cup of Joe into a bitter, ugly drink.

You deserve better than that and I'm just not happy to regurgitate the hate one so easily finds online.

The coming weeks and months of political elections as any one of the candidates provided on the Republican side of the footrace/musical chair game for the presidency is already awful. Their whole raft of folks has been a total tie between folks who are all being chosen dead last as the person anyone wants for their team. And the Tennessee legislature is back in session too, and all accounts reveal little good will come of it. So providing even a glimmer of good news will not be an easy task. I'll do my best though.

Giant internet resources went dark yesterday to protest a terrible bit of lawmaking via Washington regarding new internet rules, and that means, yes, Congress is back in session too. We are really seeing some of the most lackluster, if not utterly depressing, actions from our political leadership system. Blogger Seth Godin spoke of this problem yesterday:

"Sure, Congress has a marketing problem--largely because they have a problem with the decisions they make and the way that they make them.

At least they've left us a useful career guide about what not to do in the real world."

It's a good read. Depressing, but a good read.

I hold hope that the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia is not the iconic metaphor of 2012, but it looks more and more like lousy captains are loose in every direction. It would mean we're all going to have to work harder to make up for it.

Xbox Workers Threaten Mass Suicide

Conflicting accounts are beginning to get media attention about a group of possibly hundreds of workers at a plant in China who threatened to commit mass suicide over a pay dispute. Workers for Foxconn - which makes parts for the Xbox, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Wii, and the PS3 - apparently took to the roof of one of the company dormitories and made the threat.

A report via Kotaku says the event followed an employee request for a raise, but were told they could either keep their jobs with no increase or quit and get severance pay. Other reports say the company told the employees their Xbox production line was being shut down and some would be transferred and the rest simply fired. As for the number of those who made the suicide threat, reports range from a few dozen to as many as 300. (More pictures here.)

Foxconn is the world's largest maker of electronic components, and is also the largest private employer in China. In 2010, one worker did commit suicide at one plant, which prompted the company to install 'suicide prevention netting' at some of their plants. Recent investigations at the some of the plants showed near-military like conditions for workers who are under constant surveillance as they work and live at the factory dorms.

Microsoft did issue a statement about the incident -

"Microsoft is one of many companies that contracts with Foxconn to manufacture hardware. Upon learning of the labor protest in Wuhan, we immediately conducted an independent investigation of this issue.

After talking with workers and management, it is our understanding that the worker protest was related to staffing assignments and transfer policies, not working conditions. Due to regular production adjustments, Foxconn offered the workers the option of being transferred to alternative production lines or resigning and receiving all salary and bonuses due, according to length of service. After the protest, the majority of workers chose to return to work. A smaller portion of those employees elected to resign.

Microsoft takes working conditions in the factories that manufacture its products very seriously. We have a stringent Vendor Code of Conduct that spells out our expectations, and we monitor working conditions closely on an ongoing basis and address issues as they emerge. Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors and to ensuring conformance with Microsoft policy."

The radio show "This American Life" aired an episode on Jan. 6, 2012 about working in the electronics factories in China and for Foxconn.

The company's full list of customers is available here.

Pentagon Spy Drones For Home Users

Flying spy drones are making the move from military/police applications to home use. At the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, exhibitors are teasing the sale of these items for just about anyone to use.

"Like the HD video cameras now included in the livestreamers’ cellphones, aerial surveillance drones have progressed from ultra-expensive professional gear to impulse-buy items. What was once in the Pentagon budget is now at Toys “R” Us – in a simple form, at least.
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"Introduced in 2010, the one-pound styrofoam craft has four rotors and a plethora of sensors to keep it stable and navigable. In some ways, it resembles an iPhone, with accelerometers and a gyroscope to measure movement and location, for example. Parrot says that it can fly 50 feet high, up to 11 miles per hour and stay aloft for about 12 minutes on a charge.

"Built-in Wi-Fi allows control from an iPhone or Android phone. The Wi-Fi also beams back moderate-resolution (640-by-480-pixel) video to the phone.

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Rapid advances in this new spy tech are already underway:

"This updated version, due out in the second quarter of 2012 for a list price of $299, offers a better HD camera at 1280x720 resolution, as well as the ability to recognize and interact with shapes and colors for an augmented reality (AR) “gaming mode,” which layers digital drone obstacles and enemies atop the camera’s actual view of the real world.

"The new 2.0 AR.Drone also offers pilots a “traveling” mode, allowing them to set the drone to automatically move and record in specific directions for maximum stability and image quality. As in the case with the Wi-Spi drones, the recorded video can be uploaded directly to the Web."

Stephen Hawking on the Universal Mystery

Like many people, I've followed the works and ideas presented by the scientist Stephen Hawking for many years with great interest and fascination. His ideas are always fascinating as he ponders the workings of the universe even as he himself is stuck in a physical form which has lost the ability to move or speak without the aid of machinery. He's quite enigmatic.

But in an interview published today in New Scientist magazine in honor of his upcoming 70th birthday, I've learned he and I share a tremendous curiosity for another endless enigma. When the magazine asked him "What do you think most about during the day?" he replied:

"Women. They are a complete mystery."

I'm with you, Stephen. 

Women are one of the best creations in the universe. While one might be able with diligent research and investigation to decipher the workings of time and space, and at least present a theory of some sort, which might be tested and explored, about our shared universe ... women continue to dumbfound men. (Not that difficult, really.) And I would hate to contemplate a universe without them in it.

Chuck Norris Ponders The Iowa Caucus

Bestowing meaning to today's vote in the Republican vote in the Iowa caucus is like pondering the meaning of what Punxsutawney Phil chooses to do on Groundhog Day.

Roughly four-hundredths of one percent of the American population participates in the vote in Iowa - mighty small numbers easily out-manned by the reporters and campaign-spinners who urgently seek ... something to report or spin about Republicans other than a Joke of the Day. Still, an election does have to start somewhere, though the winner of the GOP Iowa caucus in 2008 was Mike Huckabee and his effort tanked shortly after.

Republicans have nothing to gain by taking the presidency in 2012. They want to run Congress, and heap blame on President Obama for every ill in the world. It's like running a "long con".

 For more fun-filled election predictions, let's check out the Constitutional Thinking of Chuck Norris, who today offers his "10 Questions to Find Our Next President" -

"8) Who has the best working comprehension of America?

John Adams, America's second president, said, "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."

Up next: the Kardashian Family investigates health care while shopping. Ah, Republican politics, the comedy gift that keeps on giving.

Number One Blog Post of 2011

While there were many popular posts here during 2011, there was one which drew more readers and visitors than any other by an enormous margin. I was a bit surprised to note the constant rise in the number of readers/visitors over the months to the post. But given the reality that our Congress in 2011 has failed to lead or decide or act in any way which would benefit the nation's crumbling economy, then it should be no surprise at all the top post here for 2011 was a political fact-check which shreds the Republican claims about why our economy tanked and why it struggles to recover.

This post first appeared on May 10, 2011. And since the information provided has resonated with so many folks, I reprint it below. Thanks to all who made it so popular!

Dr. Evil Running Congress?

The talk flowing from Washington about the national debt sounds too much like the goofy comedy scenes of Dr. Evil demanding "one billion gajillion fifillion shapaduluullmeleleshaprenodlash mamillion dollars" from the nations of the world to halt a nefarious destruction of the planet.

House Speaker John Boehner and his GOP brethren (like my congressman, Rep. Phil Roe) are whipping up a scarefest about the status of the national debt - while avoiding the very obvious solution right before them. "Cut 2 trillion dollars!" cries Boehner.

Cutting spending by trillions of dollars is possible, nearly 9 trillion came from Bush era policies which were never paid for and should be eliminated -- As Peter Orszag, director the Office of Management and Budget said quite plainly:

"You mentioned that $9 trillion projected deficit over the next decade. That basically reflects three things.

The first is the failure to pay for two policies in particular, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Those were deficit financed. Over the next decade they account for $5 trillion.

Second, the economic downturn, because it triggers the so-called automatic stabilizers, which raise unemployment benefits, they raise food stamps, they cause -- revenue tends to decline during an economic downturn, all of which is beneficial because it helps to mitigate that GDP deficit that I was talking about. But it also over the next decade adds $3.5 trillion to the deficit.

And then finally, the Recovery Act accounts for less than 10 percent of that total. So basically, the $9 trillion projected deficit can be entirely accounted for by the failure to pay for policies in the past, the economic downturn, and the steps we’ve had to take to combat that downturn, which is not to say action isn’t necessary, it absolutely is. But it’s also important to realize we didn’t get here by accident."

It's clear the House Republicans don't want to cut spending or reduce the debt - they want to scare voters today in hopes of winning elections tomorrow, no matter what the cost might be.

New Words/Phrases of 2011

In no particular order, a short selection of words of phrases which became prominent this year and will likely become more commonly used in 2012.

biopiracy - I'm betting this word (along with bioprospecting) gets more widely used in coming years. It became prominent in news reports and press releases regarding a massive lawsuit brought against the agricultural mega-corporation Monsanto by the nation of India, which claims Monsanto is "stealing" plants indigenous to India and slightly modifying the plant genetics in hopes of getting a patent on them and then cornering the market on supply. More info here.

underdemolished - I encountered this one several times in 2011, used in reference to the existing buildings of say, a bankrupt restaurant chain, which continue to operate despite barely covering costs - it isn't that there is an over-supply of buildings, it's just that the ones that are in use are "underdemolished". Also used to describe the glut of over-valued homes no one wants to buy.

tebowing - From the world of football, this is a verb describing the act of dropping to one knee to pray in a public event or location. (See Tim Tebow for more info.)

smartphone - I'm pretty sure I never heard this word prior to 2011. It annoys me. And I hope it soon goes the way of the "velocipede".

web curation - Instead of telling someone I write a blog or maintain a web site or write for web sites, I now can claim to be a 'web curator', which sounds mighty fancy and pays just the same as I make now.

ambush marketing - While it seems a redundant phrase, it refers to the way a company can piggy-back their logo onto events and services they do not sponsor but can simply invade. It's being rather common in describing the advertising orgy surrounding the 2012 London Olympics.

planking - Probably the most fun word of the year, the most ironic fad and something anyone can do anywhere, also known as the "lying down game". You can even mix together planking with tebowing and get this:

2011: The Year Movies Died

It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future.

As 2011 is set to end and 2012 to begin, I'd like to take a moment here to mourn the passing and the imminent extinction of an art form and a technology which has been an enormous part of my life and most of yours. (If you are say, age 20 or younger, the following will be a senseless old person rambling.)

2011 truly marks the end of movies. The use of 35 millimeter film moving past a light at 24-frames-per-second and projected onto a screen is fading fast in favor of digital technology. Even if I claim that digital is better, it is impossible to know if the claim is correct since we are in the midst of it's use and ascendance.

The quote at the start of this post from writer William Gibson, who coined the term "cyberspace" for his novel "Neuromancer" in 1984, a term already dusty and quaint. He made his remark in this interview with the Paris Review this year, and he had more to say on the topic, comments which seem appropriate in this eulogy for movies, for film, for cinema:

"It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. … My great-grandfather was born into a world where there was no recorded music. It’s very, very difficult to conceive of a world in which there is no possibility of audio recording at all. 

"I can remember seeing the emergence of broadcast television, but I can’t tell what it did to us because I became that which watched broadcast television ... 

" ... we’re all constantly in a state of ongoing t­echnoshock, without really being aware of it—it’s just become where we live. The Victorians were the first people to experience that, and I think it made them crazy in new ways. We’re still riding that wave of craziness. We’ve gotten so used to emergent technologies that we get anxious if we haven’t had one in a while."

Thanks to the constant digitization of everything for storage and delivery via the internet, I do indeed have access to much more of the history of movies, as will all the world. But what goads me is the abandonment of the film projectors themselves, the end of film, the actual stuff you can hold in your hands composed of thousands and tens of thousands of frozen images, which can be made to race past a light and create the illusion of life, persistence of vision, a concept which has filled my life and my imagination and which I am still exploring, though now it will more as archeologist rather than anthropologist. I am now an antiquarian far removed from the cutting edge, a removal which took place pretty quickly.

What was once the product of gears, light bulbs and sprocket holes (ancient steampunk artifacts) is now the domain of the Digital Cinema Initiatives, pixels, gigabytes and hard drives.

There is no longer a need to change reels, mark the timing of that change with a "cigarette burn", or have stacks of film cans.

Is it a better image?

In this column, it is noted that:

"Vittorio Storaro has estimated that there are a minimum of 6000 x 3000 bits of information in one 35mm celluloid frame – in other words, eighteen million bits of pictorial information. In our HD transfer, there are roughly 2000 x 1000 bits of information per frame (or there would be, if we were working in Storaro’s ideal but theoretical 1X2 ratio) – i.e. about two million bits of information."

So that's where we are now, but that standard of image information is surely to change very quickly. Standards range from 24 FPS (frames per second) to 72 or more, and director Peter Jackson is using an army of more than 40 digital Red Epic cameras to film "The Hobbit" and is aiming for 48 FPS. I'm still yearning to own my own 35mm Arriflex camera. Some might say that's rather like asking for some papyrus and a few reeds to write some cuneiform.

Don't get me wrong - I don't want 8-track tapes or cassettes back, though I did like my old reel-to-reel sound system. I'm not wailing about the loss of hand-tooled buggy whips, or I hope I am not.

But if the only place you watch movies is on a screen you can hold in your hand, you are missing a major part how movies have served us best - they helped us form communities where we shared experiences all together, as one, at the same time, in vast darkened palatial rooms where overhead a beam of light raced above us and landed on a massive screen and life jumped out at us all.

But who knows what unimaginable discoveries and technologies might lie just ahead? That might be for those who dream more of the future, not the past.

Read more on the end of the 35mm movie world here from Roger Ebert or A.O. Scott.

A Gift of Purity from Knoxville's Li'l Christmas Elf

Knoxville's Li'l Christmas Elf, Senator Stacey Campy, has A Very Special Christmas Wish for the Poor and the Sick.

"Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, said he plans to push three bills calling for drug testing in the 2012 legislative session - one dealing with persons on welfare, one for those drawing unemployment compensation and one for those receiving workers' compensation benefits.

As Southern Beale says:

"I find it very strange that Republicans don’t believe government can do anything right … except decide who can marry, who can raise children, what you can watch on TV, what books you can read, which religion is the right one, when life begins, how much compensation is enough if you are injured by corporate negligence, and if your pee is pure enough to collect your unemployment which, by the way, is a benefit you paid for. Government is great at all of that stuff.

---

"So who stands to gain in Tennessee? Look no further than Tennessee Republican Congress Critter Diane Black, whose husband is CEO of Aegis Sciences, a company which does drug testing. Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is on Aegis’ board of directors — presumably advising the company on how to screen for drugs via videotape. /snark"

Too bad Elf Campy and Santa Ramsey, I mean, Senator Ramsey, did not check the pee of government employee and judge Richard Baumgartner, who was gacked out of his brain on drugs while running Knoxville's drug court that even the guilty verdicts in the Christian-Newsom murder case he handled were overturned. That would have saved the state tons of money, prevented all the re-trials headed Knoxville way, and spared the pain and suffering of many, many people. And remember, Baumgartner will still get his full pension and have his record of drug offenses wiped clean in just 2 years time.

Merry Christmas from Elf Campy!!

I Could Have Been A Potash Tycoon

It really is annoying how I learn more and more as I get older that I don't know diddly-squat about what I thought I knew, and that there are indeed a mere handful of people who control even the basic elements found on the periodic chart and are bajillionaires who live in ways I cannot imagine. On the plus side, at least I can still learn new things about this world. On the downside, at my age, I am unlikely to corner the market of a necessary global commodity and thus will never, ever, ever live for one moment like a bajillionaire.

And these thoughts were instigated by one thing - potash.

I recall learning about potash when I was a young schoolboy - it was an ancient creation, made by burning plants and trees and mixing the resulting ashes into a field where one wanted to grow food. The ashes were loaded with potassium, but we have since found that there are massive sources of potassium already in existence underground, so it is mined and sold worldwide for everything from fertilizer to plastics to textiles and much, much more.

(A side note here - my high school chemistry teacher really did not open up much of an exploration of chemistry as such. She was in the midst of a divorce and was realizing she was a lesbian and was concerned with the daily issues of running a small donut shop with her husband when she taught my class. On the plus side: we had hot fresh donuts every day, usually kept warm in a rather expensive incubator in the chemistry classroom. But I digress.)

As I said, the word potash came up when I read a report yesterday about a 22-year-old Russian lady who just paid the most ever recorded for an apartment - $88 million for a ten-room flat in Manhattan, about $13,000-plus per square foot. She is Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the heir of Potash Tycoon Dmitry Rybolovleva, who last year sold his share of the Russian potash company Uralkali for $6.5 billion. (His Wikipedia page is an oddly translated tale of fabulous wealth and personal strife, including a murder charge for which he was ultimately acquitted. ) Ekatrina is apparently only going to use the apartment when she 'visits' Manhattan.

There are really only a few companies controlling the potassium market - the Potash Corp. of Canada, Uralkali and Belaruskali, and another North American company called Mosaic. But we're not done yet - "The global trade in potash is even more concentrated, with just two syndicates dominant: Canpotex managing sales of the three North American majors, Potash Corp, Mosaic and Agrium; and BPC, a joint venture combining Uralkali and Belaruskali."

According to the report cited above, the price is expected to surge in the next decade, from around $400 a ton to $1500 a ton. Of course, like most items traded on the global markets, the economic collapse in 2008 dropped the price, but it is on the rise again - potash is vital for bio-fuels and for growing more and more food for folks who live in India and China and Brazil and everywhere else. And it's a vital manufacturing component for just about everything.

Potash is Big Business.

And never once did anyone tell me, "Son, invest in potash". And what I thought I knew about potash and potassium turned out to be damned little. And I learned just a wee bit more about the faceless and nameless few who control patents on chemical elements and the global economy.

And like Billy Pilgrim, I sit here all old and stuff, my feet turning blue in the cold, pecking away at a keyboard and being a curmudgeon. "Potash," I mutter to no one. "Potash."

Annual Christmas Monkey Caption Contest with Musical Bonus

We all hold to certain traditions, likely because as necessary as it may be to learn to roll with the constant changes of life itself, there are comforts unexplainable in keeping and holding traditions. And so here we are again at Christmas, and since the first official Cup of Joe Powell blog post for Christmas, I have offered the Annual Christmas Monkey Caption Contest.

No prizes, save those of personal satisfaction, which may well be the reason we keep and hold to our traditions - a moment of personal meaning which we need not explain to anyone. And yes, the ideas expressed so far in this post seem far too serious for Santa Monkey. Still, the fact he (or she) appears but once a year imparts solemnity despite the appearance of hilarity ... which may be the best definition one could make for the word 'tradition'.

So please leave your caption in the comments.

In preparation for this year's posting, I did review those of years past and sadly learned that several of the hand-picked Christmas music I've added over the years have vanished, mostly due to using web sites which ceased to be. Most fortunately this year, I found a pretty darn fine collection via Paste magazine - they offer 40 tracks which you can download for free or just listen to. But I decided to tempt fate again and offer just a few of my favorites from this collection, starting with "The Christmas Waltz" by She and Him, which is actress Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. Zooey has a voice that could melt snow. And while these tunes are all from one collection, each one below has been hand-picked just for you and just for this year. I think it's likely one of the best collections of music I've ever offered here.

Merry Christmas, dear reader, and may it be the best you have had so far.

Miracle Berries, or The Food That Sugar Companies Hate

A stray comment on a Knoxville message board I frequent brought up something called "food tripping" which led me to be educated about "miracle berries", food trends, history, corporate and government conspiracy, and other oddities of one of life's necessities - eating.

I rather like to eat. I have to do it fairly often. So I was intrigued by the mention of "food tripping" parties which became popular in larger U.S. cities a few years back. Participants gather to eat/sample a range of food and drinks after they chew on some "miracle berries", which magically block sour and bitter receptors on the tongue and boost sweet receptors. Folks say it makes sour things like pickles and limes taste rich and fruity, beer tastes like a milkshake and the effects of the berry on taste buds last for about an hour.

These events of idle folks who seek rare, hipster-ish fads of the moment were featured in a story and video from the NYTimes. And the ingredient in these West African berries which causes (for reasons no one has, at this point, scientifically explicated) the tastebud change is called "miraculin", a name seemingly suited to snake-oil promotionalists. Let the YouTube videos parade past your eyes.

So I plundered into the Google machine for more information. And the ragged historical mystery of the berry soon became linked to corporate warfare dating back to the early 20th century. While African locals had eaten the berry for who knows how long to improve the taste of foods in their diet, it was a French explorer, Chevalier des Marchais, who found them in 1752 and brought them to Western tongues.

But it was an American named Robert Harvey who synthesized the protein in the berry to provide a new sweetener to the U.S. and fell prey to foul deeds:

"In the ’60s and the ’70s, an entrepreneur named Robert Harvey managed to raise tens of millions of dollars to create an all-natural alternative to sugar using the miracle fruit, and he managed to synthesize the active ingredient in this berry, which is a protein called “miraculin.”

"And companies, other corporations started getting interested. And Harvey was turning down offers in the billions for control — billions of dollars were being offered to him for this, because it looked like it was poised to become an all-natural alternative to sugar. And even the artificial sweetening industry was very concerned about this threat of this small red berry.

"But what happened was, that just as it was about to launch, Harvey’s company, his office was raided by industrial spies. His files were stolen. He got into high-speed car chases in the middle of the night. People were following him."

"And then it got banned just as it was about to launch. And he got a letter in 1974 from the FDA saying the miracle berry — miracle berry products are not allowed into the market in any form whatsoever. And so, he had to shut down the entire operation.

"I called the FDA several dozen times and had a very hard time getting anybody to be able to speak about it. But what I did learn was that it is considered a food additive, and it is not allowed to be used as a food additive. Now, the fresh berry itself is different. So they said the berry can be used, and that’s the USDA’s department. But the USDA doesn’t even know it exists. So it is in a kind of regulatory limbo."

But one could, if one desired, order up some of these pills via sites like ThinkGeek and Amazon.

Or you can order the berries themselves from the only supplier in the country, in Florida, at miraclefruitman.com. The are running a Christmas special.

Aside from benefits in replacing sugar, the berries have been found to be most helpful to diabetics and to folks undergoing chemotherapy, as it returns the tastebuds to working order.

Welcome to the Christmas Toilet

Someone seems to have some creepy and conflicting attachments to Christmas and Santa. (via Chattanooga radio station WUSY's Facebook page)

There are 3,000-plus search engine results for items like this. So make that a whole lot of "someones". Also weird, folks who drape "gift wrapping" themes on a toilet. Guess you could call that some kind of friendly optimism.