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March 23, 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa – a brilliant filmmaker.
Let me say it simply, Kurosawa was my Master.
Martin Scorsese
Fortunately the ladies of the household were headed out on a shopping trip, so Billy and I treated ourselves to a double feature of Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Both of these films were new to us. Billy had not seen them only because he was waiting for a time to see them both together. Well, now we had our chance – on the birthday of a giant.
The films were brilliant, and I’m sure others can review them better than I. In addition to a brilliant film, I was intrigued by its place in movie history. The film is clearly inspired by American westerns yet it also had an influence on many films which would follow it. This is one of the earliest films to highlight the kind of main character we’ve grown accustomed to in American films – an amoral antihero who is driven mostly by his own concerns. Our “hero” is the kind of man we shouldn’t really care about at all. He is the kind of man who really does not deserve our respect or admiration, yet somehow we are on his side.
If you’ve not seen either of these films, do yourself a favor and check them out. As is my normal practice, I’ve linked to a Blu-ray on Amazon. I happened to notice in this case that the reviews of this version were not very good. I don’t think there is a better version available but if I learn of one, I’ll update the links.
read moreYears ago I learned of groups all over our great nation who were organizing Tea Parties on April 15th to protest income taxes. I hated taxes and I thought it was a great idea. I used to talk about doing one of my own, but like many things in life it turned out to be one of those things I guess I didn’t really care enough to do.
Several years have past since then and my opinions have changed a bit. I still hate paying taxes and I still think the market is the best place for ideas to win or lose. I’ve learned a great deal, however, about the responsibility one citizen has to help his fellow citizens. I’ve spent time reading the writings of our nation’s founders and I’ve learned a couple of things. One, some of them were more liberal than your conservative friends would like you to believe. Two, sometimes their ideas were just plain wrong. I think many of us like to take an idealized view of these men but we must remind ourselves that they fought about the issues for a reason – they were not right about everything.
The evolution of my thinking on these matters has led me to the point where I am surprised by movements like The Tea Party Patriots. According to their website, they hold three core values – Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. As I’ve written many times, I believe in all of these things. My problem with this movement is the extreme to which they carry these points and the emphasis on financial concerns. I’ll discuss each of the core values separately.
Fiscal Responsibility by government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor. A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect. Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.
I’ll admit that I agree with much of this one, but the first sentence really gets me. They start with an assumption that is incorrect – two actually. One, that any individual has the freedom to do with her money what she wants. I disagree. The other, that the government should honor and respect that freedom. If such a freedom existed, I’d agree wholeheartedly.
Why do so many of us believe that we have the right to control something simply because we earned it, created it or have some other claim to ownership? This reminds me so much of the two year old who continually screams “Mine!” Do we not have a responsibility to use our wealth in a way that benefits others? Am I really free to do with my possessions as I wish?
I guess the point is that no other person has the right to tell me what I can or cannot do with my property. I agree, but that doesn’t mean I can do what I want. The question, then, is whether a government “of the people and by the people” has the authority to tell me what I can and cannot do. Like any good libertarian, I would argue that the government does not have the right to restrain my freedom except to protect the freedom of another individual or group of individuals. Much of the poverty we see around us is most certainly caused by a callous disregard for the rights and freedoms of other individuals. If _we_ don’t watch out for others, who will?
We, the members of The Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent. Like the founders, we support states’ rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution. As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people, in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.
Once again, I have no issue with the substance of anything but the first sentence – which I’ll get to in a moment. Where I would disagree is in the application. I think the Constitution grants more power to the federal government than members of this movement would admit. My assumption is that they interpret this phrase – “those powers not expressly stated” – much more strictly than I would or than was intended. Before you get all “English teacher” on me, I know what expressly means. My argument is not with that word. In my opinion, Section 9 and Section 10 of Article I expressly grant the power to enact quite a bit of legislation – even though the specifics of that legislation is not expressly stated.
Now for a look at the first sentence. Is the Constitution the supreme law of the land? Yes and No. Yes, it is the final authority in matters of law. No, it is not the final authority on all matters. This, in fact, is why it is necessary to amend it from time to time. We must be careful not to hold the Constitution in such high regard that we neglect the importance of natural law and the rights of the individual. The U.S. Constitution is a wonderful document precisely because it helps gaurantee our rights as individuals. It is easy to assume that those rights are granted to us by the Constitution. It may grant us some rights, but other rights were ours before the Constitution was drafted.
A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible, as do we. Our current government’s interference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business.
This is a matter of great sadness for me. I believe in the power of the free market. Always have, always will. The operative word, however, is FREE. Our current economic system is very far from free in many regards.
I can hear the Tea Party Patriots yelling now. “That’s right. That is precisely what we want to see changed.” Okay, I hear you and I agree. Our current system may be broken but let’s not assume the answer is the unfettered permission to do as we please. This is a common misconception of freedom and it all seems to be rooted in the first sentence of the first core value – I have a right to do with my possessions as I see fit. This is simply not the case. In many cases the actions I take have a negative impact on the freedom of others. This is why we don’t allow businesses to behave in certain ways.
I was drawn to this topic today because of the reading I’ve been doing about the health care reform that was signed into law yesterday. If you’d asked me 15 years ago I would have been very much against this proposal. Today, I may not agree with everything proposed by the new legislation but I am happy something is happening. As a society we have turned a blind eye to policies which are not fair to all citizens while they pretend to be conservative and based on free enterprise.
Like I’ve written and said many times – if the government is going to tax us and dictate policy, it is about time they begin to pass legislation that is fair. I know this proposal is far from perfect. I’m confused, for example, why it still involves employers in the equation. I’m sure I’ll have something more to write about that.
read more“I wanted to inspire them to be whatever they want in life, way beyond a princess or a diva.” –Elena Grant
Good for you Ms. Grant!</dd>
I’m not so sure I believe that??</dd>
I know the Internet is a tremendous resource for any number of constructive pursuits, but every once in a while I am reminded of how much fun it is. I’m not talking about blatantly useless time wasting activities we’ve all engaged in – watching drunk animals or people getting injured on YouTube and things like that. I’m talking about something else.
read moreSeveral months ago I was trying to learn more about what the Christian church has taught about war and peace. My research, of course, included several searches using some of my favorite search engines – including Google.
What immediately struck me was the suggestions that popped up when using Google. I took some screenshots and made a note to write this post.
Today I read an interesting post over at search engine land entitled Can Google Tell Us What Men and Women Are REALLY Thinking? and it made me want to dig out those screenshots.
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Like most people I was shocked at the news of a quake in Haiti and the absurd casualty totals being reported. I’ve been to Haiti. It’s a beautiful place but the people there have had their share of difficulties and they absolutely don’t need this. No one needs something like this, but least of all a place like Haiti.
I was shocked once again when I learned of the responses of Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson. I listened to the complete statements of both men several times and I just can’t get over how wrong they both are.
read moreIn a thought provoking piece entitled Martin Luther King’s other dream: Economic justice for all, John Gehring of the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good writes:
As we pause to honor King’s legacy, it’s tempting to sanitize his radical call for economic justice or temper his prophetic words about war. We prefer King as an icon stored safely behind history’s glass case. When his words are quoted these days, we rarely hear the righteous anger of a preacher who denounced the Vietnam War and described America as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” We choose not to reflect on his warnings about the arrogance of American foreign policy. We avoid an honest grappling with his critique of capitalism as a system that permits “necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.
Dr. King was an extremist. It seems that most of those who point this out do so as a judgement against him. Those of us who respect him and his work tend to forget it. Last year on this day I reflected on King’s extremism and did my part to express my thoughts about King the Christian and the American.
We need more extremists.
Remember his legacy by listening to some great songs inspired by his life and work.
read moreCelebrity News, Gossip, Popularity – MashCeleb – link
You got me. I don’t know why but I like celebrity gossip.
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| What Record Sales of the Amazon Kindle Means to Your Church Website | Heal Your Church WebSite – link |
Every time I’m involved in a discussion about failed customer service it reminds me of my experiences with AT&T Wireless. And every time I wish I’d my experiences in a public place so I could give out a link and not have to talk about it anymore.
Today I spent an hour and seven minutes on the phone with AT&T to fix something that should have taken just a few minutes and I’m convinced, once again, that AT&T could not provide worse customer service if they were purposely trying to do so.
So, I’m here to detail the story of these fails so I no longer have to talk or write about them again.
AT&T has failed miserably every time I’ve needed something.
Bear in mind that there have been customer service reps along the way who tried desperatedly to help but I guess the system is so flawed they were left powerless. Or perhaps they are just very nice people who happen to be incompetent. In either case, I do not lay the blame for any of this on any one person.
I also have to tell you – I’ve not made any of this up and the only embellishment might be very small exagerations to the amount of time spent on the phone with AT&T, but I promise you that those are very slight.
I never owned a cell phone until the iPhone was released. The iPhone was announced and I wanted one – not needed one, *wanted* one. So, I planned to get three of them – one for me, one for my wife and one for my teenage son. I was beginning to buy the argument that teenagers *need* cell phones. My son would disagree (a lot like his old man) but he is glad he has his iPhone because, like me, he *wanted* one.
Long story short, Terri decided she didn’t want one and a client sent me one as a gift when he heard I wanted one. Setting these up was a breeze and we loved them – no issues at all. I’ve spent $499 and I service for two lines but no minimum contract.
We decided to add Terri to the plan and get her a different kind of phone.
When all we had were iPhones on the plan, my phone was the primary line on the account but for some inexplicable reason my phone could no longer be the primary phone now that there would be a non-iPhone on the account. Well, things went downhill from there. I had to call customer service twice and work out how to get my voicemail working again because of this simple switch.
At this point I was doing a lot of work on location for clients and I needed a reliable way to have Internet access “on the road” so I opted to get a data card. I wanted the option to turn service on and off so I paid $299 for the card to avoid signing a contract.
The first annoyance were the emails from AT&T about text messages to me at some phone number I did not recognize. I called AT&T and learned that each card has a phone number associated with it and apparently when AT&T set up the card they forgot to disable text messages. Not long after this, a relative came to live with us and I added another data card but this time I opted for the contract. I reminded the person behind the counter to disable text messages. Now, I’ve spent $847 for equipment and I’m spending about $270/mo for service and I have two two-year contracts.
Our houseguest then breaks my data card (the one not under contract) and it cannot be repaired. So, I stop by the store to have the service stopped – no problem.
Until I get the bill. AT&T charged me a termination fee of $175. I called to complain and, of course, I’m on the phone for almost an hour until I’m talking to someone who understands my problem. Sure enough, they remove the termination fee but in some kind of number changing confusion they end up disabling the data card that actually works. In the process, I start getting those annoying “we sent you a text message” emails again. Another phone call clears this up after only thirty minutes or so on the phone.
Billy and I get up at 6a.m. and head to the Apple store with Billy’s HD video camera. The plan is to wait in line for the new phone if the line if not very long but to shoot some video if it is. When we arrive there are 16 people in line so we get in line. We enjoyed our time in line very much and the free coffee and donuts. Thank you very much Apple.
We meet with an “iPhone Specialist” at 8:16 and by 8:25 we are ready to activate the phones, pay for them, and get on with our day – but something has gone wrong. It’s old news that Apple had some issues keeping up with the demand for the iPhone that day but in my case the culprit was AT&T. AT&T has activated the two new iPhones and now Apple cannot ring them up because the SKU (or some number) is already marked as activated. The Apple rep gets on the phone with AT&T and we assume they can sort this out in a matter of minutes. Apparently not. After about an hour of waiting, the folks at Apple set Billy and I up at a table where I can plug in my laptop and get some work done and Billy can use an iMac and do whatever it is he does with his free time. Then they bring us some more donuts and coffee. I have to be honest – I enjoyed this day very much. It was a front row seat for all the action, free coffee, and a I got to chat with several of the employees who were intrigued by the cool stack overlays on my MacBook Pro.
During the next four hours – yep, four hours – the Apple reps kept checking in with me to tell me what was going on. Finally, they are at an impasse. AT&T insists there is nothing they can do and that I must come back another day. AT&T was blaming a lot of this on Apple’s servers, etc. and that was all they were going to do. Fortunately, one of the managers at the store had an idea – check the old iPhones. Sure enough, her suspicion was correct. The phones we had in our pockets were no longer working. AT&T had activated the new phones so my old ones did not work. She went back on the line with AT&T to fight for us.
After two more hours – I’m not kidding you – the same manager comes to me in a manner you might expect a doctor to come to you with bad news. “Mr. Soistmann, we’ve explained the situation to AT&T and unfortunately there is nothing they *WILL* do today and that means there is nothing we *CAN* do – TODAY.”
“So,” she continues, “we are just going to give you the phones.”
What? I’d actually joked with them hours ago about this. Apparently, the problem was that they couldn’t charge me for the phones because they wouldn’t ring up as a credit purchase because of the activation issue and they were not allowed to sell them for cash. I’d told them that this was not a problem – just give me the phones.
They assured me that I could activate them at home using iTunes and everything would be fine. We actually tried in the store first but by then the chaos with Apple’s servers was in full swing and it was difficult or impossible for anyone to set up a phone.
I was so pleased at this point with Apple that I totally forgot that MY WIRELESS COMPANY DIDN’T CARE THAT I COULD NOT USE MY WIRELESS PHONE AND THEY DIDN’T SEEM TO CARE WHEN I’D BE ABLE TO GET A WORKING PHONE.
We took them home and set them up. No problem.
Well, not quite. Apple’s part was easy and painless but we did need to wait until later in the evening. AT&T, however, had all kinds of issues provisioning the phones properly – especially my son’s. To compound the issue AT&T tried to blame every bit of it on Apple every time I called. About 40 hours after I’d come home with the phones they were working properly.
And then Apple called me. There must have been other issues similar to mine and AT&T was insisting that a transaction be recorded for every single phone (at least that’s the way Apple told the story – my suspicion is that this had something to do with Apple’s own record keeping). If I did not come into the store that day my phones would be disabled. Billy and I both went the Apple store where they gave us two new phones and two $500 gift cards to pay for them. Another hour at the store and, of course, more phone calls to AT&T to make the phones work right.
I was taking the family to Italy to celebrate Terri’s birthday. She wanted to go somewhere, I’d always wanted to see Italy, and her birthday fell on Easter, so Italy was it. I rented an apartment in Rome for Easter weekend (4/10 – 4/12) and a house in Bagni di Lucca for the following 14 days. The house had Internet access but the apartment didn’t. I didn’t plan to work that much but I needed Internet access.
I needed to adjust our calling plans and text messaging for overseas anyway so I called AT&T to get it all set up. My data card had a plan that was unlimited data for $60 per month. They offered me a plan that was $120 per month and it would be 5Gb total in Italy and a few other countries and only 100Mb in the U.S. I told them to set it up for 4/10.
We arrived in Rome and settled in. Later that day I checked my email and did a few things to check on pending projects. The next day I used the card a few times to browse the web and play around a little while waiting for the family to prepare for our first day out in Rome. I would have guessed it was less than 10 Mb of transfer.
The next morning the card wouldn’t work and my phones were not working either. I spent several hours on the phone with AT&T and I don’t remember all the details but I do know the following:
They did not switch me to the international plan until 4/11. They thought that would make sense since that synced with my billing cycle. Well, isn’t that nice?
They had a record of 6.8 Mb of transfer on 4/10 and 4/11 – seemed about right for what I did on those days.
They also had a record of some ridiculous amount of transfer from before all of this. To this day, I have no idea how that usage ended up on my card.
The fees for number three were so high that AT&T had turned off my service.
After spending more than an hour on the phone with several different people, they told me they’d straightened it out and everything was fine.
Until I got home and tried to switch back to my original plan. AT&T no longer offers an unlimited plan for data cards and they wouldn’t let me back on it. I was furious with them. I called, wrote letters, visited a few stores – no one could do anything to help me. Before I left for Italy I went out of my way to discuss my options with AT&T. I’d called three separate times to see what plan would be best. I explained to them that I only needed international coverage for two days. I told them that I would probably leave it on that plan while in Italy but I certainly didn’t *need* it the whole time. They assured me that I’d be able to get back on my plan and that the international plan would even be pro-rated for the time I had it on. They, on the other hand, did not have the courtesy to tell me that THEY DO NOT HAVE THAT PLAN ANYMORE. If I had known they didn’t offer that plan anymore I would have opted to leave my card alone and find another solution – an Internet cafe, pay the charges for the few Mb I needed, something else.
I’m still not sure how they can even do this. I signed a contract for two years for unlimited data per month for $60 per month. I have to stick to that or pay a termination fee but they don’t need to stick to it? Now they tell me my card will still cost $60 a month and I’m still bound by my contract but I only get 5Gb of transfer per month. I fought and fought with them and they wouldn’t budge. I called back several different times and spoke with supervisors and mangers – still they wouldn’t give in. I decided I’d have to live with it.
Then I got a bill for almost $2000. I’d been billed for every minute of usage on that card at international rates and for many more minutes that I didn’t even use. They were even billing me for data transfer from 4/12 when the card never worked on that day. It took me almost three hours of time on the telephone to get them to give me a credit for $1165. Frankly, I have no idea if that was fair but I was sick of the whole thing.
About three weeks ago my daughter’s phone ended up in the wash. My son has seen other phones recover from this kind of thing so we tried all the tricks to dry it out but it was dead.
So, yesterday I stopped by AT&T to get her another phone. We looked at some others but she decided on the same phone because it’s a very cool phone. If I used an upgrade it would be only $20 – excellent. Since she is not due for an upgrade, we were going to use another line for that. The clerk told me that my line was eligible for an upgrade. I told her I was wary of using that line because its an iPhone and we’ve had so much trouble getting the stupid phones provisioned as iPhones, etc. She assured me that there would be no problem. I asked her to check all the lines because Billy and I plan to use ours for the next iPhone and we want to plan the dates properly. Turns out he and my wife were also eligible. We asked her to use my wife’s line to keep things simpler when we go to use our upgrades. Her only concern was that this was a 2G iPhone and she thought we might have to do something in iTunes to make iPhone-specific features work. We did the switch and I called my wife to ensure that the phone still worked and we planned to check out the iTunes fix later.
The next day my wife noticed she did not have Internet access on her phone so we connected it to iTunes and saw no indication of what to do. We checked the voicemail feature and, sure enough, it was not working (which we were expecting in this case). So I called AT&T. I spent six minutes on hold and then spent 39 minutes talking to someone who was very nice but could not figure out how to fix the voicemail. She noticed that the phone did not have a data plan and it took her ten minutes to find the unlimited plan for the phone. Finally, she transferred me to technical support. Ten minutes on hold with them and twelve minutes with the tech and everything was fixed. From what I could tell he did exactly what she had tried but for some reason it worked.
To be fair, I kept the first rep on the phone longer than necessary because I was paranoid about the account changes which I didn’t realize were necessary – did my daughter’s phone now errantly have the wrong data plan? and other questions like that.
read moreAn article I read in the USA Today last month reminded me of a topic I’ve wanted to write about for some time – the thriving business of spoofing corporate logos in the name of Christ. According to the article,
American retailers sell about $4.6 billion worth of Christian products annually, and some are spoofs or spinoffs of commercial logos or brand names. Many such goods are illegal, trademark attorneys say, but companies often are unaware their names are being copied or don’t put up a fight for fear of being labeled anti-faith.
The piece focuses mostly on the legal and ethical questions mentioned in that paragraph and these are legitimate concerns. I don’t think most of these products qualify as parody. They are almost certainly infringements of copyright and/or trademarks, but that is not what bothers me most about this stuff.
read moreAre you offended that I didn’t say Merry Christmas?
According to statistics posted on the website of the Wish Me A Merry Christmas Campaign, 53% of Americans are offended when greeted with Happy Holidays.
I have to tell you that I am a little surprised by this. I’m not sure I trust the statistics in the first place but that seems like an awful lot of people. Are people really offended by this? I understand why people prefer “Merry Christmas.” I prefer that myself and I’m very pleased when people say it, but I’m not offended when people say something different.
Another statistic on the website states that nine out of ten people think it’s okay to say Merry Christmas. Saying Happy Holidys is a good way to keep from offending the one out of ten. If more then five out of ten are offended by this effort, do we drop in in favor of offending the minority? I think the answer is no. People who are offended by Happy Holidays simply need to lighten up. If it doesn’t exclude you, don’t be offended by it. Simple as that.
I just think people misunderstand the spirit of Happy Holidays. I know many people are worried about the war on Christmas, but I don’t think that is what this is about. Americans celebrate at least five different holidays in the space of five or six weeks. Happy Holidays is a way to acknowledge all of these holidays at once. Is there really something offensive about inclusioin? Years ago my friends and I used to say Happy Hanukwanzmas. Would that be better?
The merits of the campaign itself are a different issue entirely for me. When I first stumbled onto this site I was very irritated – mostly because of my thoughts above – but I came to see some merit in the idea or at least in a modified version of the idea. I do think more retailers should offer a friendly Merry Christmas under certain circumstances. A great example is when I stop to purchase my tree every year. It would be downright silly for the clerk to wish me Happy Holidays when I am clearly in the act of celebrating a specific holiday.
On the other hand, my experience tells me that this campaign could do without the buttons. I tend to say Happy Holidays sometimes, but I’ve found that people almost always respond with Merry Christmas if I say Merry Christmas first.
Merry Christmas!
read moreConfusing Words Project Censored – Media Democracy in Action one word. so little time. Snowflakes and Snow Crystals The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [IEP] Digital Resistance to Political and Cultural Manipulation and Indoctrination How to Flex Your Rights During Police Encounters habitforge – Getting you to the finish line. Visual Walkthroughs Recent codes – RefactorMyCode.com
Posted via email from Bill’s posterous
read moreThis was actually a much better movie than I expected. It turns out it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I enjoyed seeing Michael working in an environment in which he was very comfortable. He seemed like a genuine artist and an exceedingly decent human being.
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