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Comments by YACCS

 

VDH

I never fail to be awed by Victor Davis Hanson. I am not worthy to share the same internet.


Happy Independence Day.
posted by Peter at 7/03/2003 04:37:00 PM |

 

Paul Verhoeven is still a dope

Here's an article that explains the triumph of the PG and PG-13 ratings without blaming John Ashcroft:

Of the top 20 biggest box office hits of last year, all but one were rated PG or PG-13. The Santa Clause 2 was the sole G-rated film to make the list, while 8 Mile, the R-rated Eminem (news - web sites) movie, just missed at No. 21.

The PG rating appeals to movie-savvy teens who find a G rating too juvenile. PG-13 is even better, implying the movie goes about as far as it can without kids having to be taken by parents if they want to see it.

Even so, more movies are still given R ratings than any other rating:

R-rated movies have hardly died. This summer, The Matrix Reloaded became the highest-grossing R movie ever, with $268.9 million and counting. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines opens today, and Bad Boys II on July 18. R is the most common rating, but only because so many are low-budget foreign-language films that aren't widely released, or steamy made-for-video movies.

posted by Peter at 7/02/2003 06:37:00 PM |

 

Shallow people go off the deep end

I learned to swim at the town pool when I was about 5. I remember paddling around with the kickboards and also getting water in my ears, but my most vivid memory of the lessons is being forced to jump off the diving board into the deep end of the pool. The instructors stood at the side of a pool ready to extend a long pole I could grab on to if I panicked and started to drown. My fear of the deep end was largely psychological; I couldn't touch bottom in the shallow end, either. But fear is fear, and it was usually the pole for me.

When I got a little older, even after that traumatic formative experience, I grew to appreciate the deep end. So now, when I read a line such as this:

The old-style "drowning pools" won't be missed, said aquatics expert Tom Griffiths.

I immediately look for a cup of coffee so I can take a sip and spew it all over my monitor in shocked surprise. "Drowning pools"? "Won't be missed"? "Aquatics expert?" Halle Berry full of grace, what in the heck is wrong with people today?

In case you haven't yet read the article I am mocking, here's a summary: People were getting hurt jumping off diving boards in municipal pools, so the boards were removed. So fewer people used the deep end of the pools. So now the deep ends are being filled in:

Philadelphia has been filling in its deep ends over the past several years, said Terri Kerwawich, the city's aquatics coordinator. After filling in two more this spring, the city has only 10 deep ends left at its 86 pools. All but one or two will eventually be filled in.

The article quotes various aquatics experts and coordinators (who the heck knew such people existed?), along with a soccer, I mean swimming, mom who all praise the new shallow designs. They're "safer" and more "family-friendly" and yes, even "interactive" (you know, as opposed to the old pool designs that allowed no interaction whatsoever).

Well, screw friendly interactive family safety if it's come to this. Let aquatics busybodies build themselves a safe little padded cell on a safe little island away from the people in the world who want to live. Give me my childhood of deep ends and merry-go-rounds and Big Macs and pointy chess pieces and un-car-seated car trips to Florida.

(But I'll take today's adolescence. That sounds fun.)
posted by Peter at 7/02/2003 06:28:00 PM |

 

To Serve Mankind

While I'm glad the New York Times, as I noted, is finally providing some perspective on the supposed budget crises, the article still frames the debate as being between services or tax cuts. But what "services" are we talking about, exactly? Libraries? I suppose so. Fire investigators? Apparently. And, of course, the cabaret cops.

Records from the city's Department of Consumer Affairs show that the Bowery Bar is not one of the city's 332 licensed cabarets, so the evening's dancing was illegal under current laws. The city has shut down 11 businesses for cabaret law violations this year, compared with 20 closed from 1999 through 2002.

The cabaret laws have drawn fire since they were enacted in 1926 in reaction to popular racially mixed jazz clubs in Harlem, said Paul Chevigny, a New York University professor who has written a history of the laws. Critics say the laws do not address the more serious problems surrounding nightclubs, like noise, security or loitering.

Gretchen Dykstra, the consumer affairs commissioner, said the city was re-examining the laws for this very reason. But unless the laws change, members of the night life task force known as March — for Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots — will continue to crack down on unlicensed cabarets.

And heaven forbid people smoke while they dance; then the city of New York would declare martial law and call out the National Guard.

Gee, I can think of a few government employees who could be fired without impacting the "quality of life" in New York City. (Or, rather, firing them will improve the quality of life in New York City.) It would be a lot less irritating to read columns about the horrors of government budget cuts if there weren't so many stories like this, of completely wasted government resources. Nobody even makes an attempt to slash programs like this before raising taxes.
posted by David Nieporent at 6/30/2003 02:22:00 AM |

 

Kate

Katharine Hepburn is dead at 96. I'm not much of a cinephile; I have seen at most maybe one or two of her movies. Like W.C. Fields and Mae West, much of what I think I know about her comes from caricatures in 1930's Warner Brothers cartoons. But I always felt a little glimmer of amazement to know that, unlike all the others being lampooned, she was still alive. Sadly, no more.

posted by Peter at 6/30/2003 12:26:00 AM |

 

On further review

It's been fashionable around certain areas of the blogosphere to single out certain New York Times articles and say, "See, they're finally trying to be fair, now that Howell Raines is gone." I don't really know whether he has anything to do with it, but it does seem as if the reporting has undergone a sharp change in direction in a short time. For instance, the Times has been "flooding the zone" (in Raines' favorite phrase) to prove that George Bush's tax cuts have been devastating for state budgets. (Though it's never explained _why_ the federal government should be funding the states.) We hear horror stories about people devastated, communities decimated, and children weeping in the streets.

But, now, in the post-Raines era, lo and behold, a story which is actually balanced, pointing out that the budget cuts aren't extensive at all.

Fire marshals will no longer investigate most car fires. There will be 3,500 fewer police officers compared to three years ago. Inmates on Rikers Island will not get intensive drug counseling. And most city libraries are now open five days, instead of six.

It is hardly the kind of thank you that New Yorkers might expect after being asked to pay higher income, sales and property taxes in the fiscal year that starts Tuesday. But despite those cuts, New York City government will offer an array of services that is still more generous than it was early in Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's tenure, when New York faced its last major fiscal crunch. And the cuts agreed to this week by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council are just a pittance compared to the wholesale reduction of basic government operations that occurred during the mid-1970's fiscal crisis.

It's nice to see, when reading the hysteria of Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman on the editorial page about the Republican plan to starve babies and puppies, some actual perspective. Spending, despite all the drastic, mean-spirited Republican tax cuts, is actually increasing in New York. As it is in most of the states with budget crises. The real crisis isn't that taxes are being cut, but that there is never an appetite for cutting any government program, ever.
posted by David Nieporent at 6/29/2003 10:55:00 PM |