Attention to detail
I saw the movie "Prisoners" today and while the movie itself is "only" 7 out of 10 (maybe 7.5), the performances by Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal were superb. But there were a couple of things that the filmmakers either paid attention to, or were just lucky enough that the sets they chose were locations that had little detail stuff right. I'm not going to make a long laundry list, as there were a number of these details that they had right. I will make mention of the fact that I saw what appeared to me to be the proper and current labor law posters inside of the police station.
But there is one detail that they got wrong that really bugs me. I understand the choice, because the writers wanted a character to do a certain thing and they had to provide him with a way to do it. But in doing so, they violated what is a standard procedure for cops all over the world. So all that good work in paying attention to those little details was somewhat overshadowed by one big gaffe, even though I understand why they made that choice.
Don't let my niggling about this stuff keep you from seeing a good movie with some excellent performances.
* * *
I have over 20 students in my two current classes. Add those from that class I substitute taught the other day and the count goes above 30. I will do what I need to do to help them. But I have to admit it is a minor annoyance when a small percentage (usually less than 2%) apparently don't pay attention when I show them step by step how to do something. I know this because they didn't ask questions at the time, but when I'm supposed to be enjoying a well-deserved three day respite from teaching and work in general, they ring the phone. It isn't any one person, it's the combination of that and those who have issues with their enrollment in the right class, or their attendance, or whatever. But it's fine. I will help them for as long as needed.
I wanted to go see a second movie today, "Enough Said" at 7:40 p.m. at the local art house theater (no free publicity from me for a certain basketball team owner). The film is supposed to be terrific and the writer/director is going to be there for a Q&A afterward. I should have bought the ticket as soon as I learned of the event. I didn't. So when I looked this morning to get one, the only seats left were in the front row. I refuse to sit in the front row of a theater. If that's all that's left when I buy a ticket, I turn around and go get a refund. My procrastinating about getting a ticket has cost me an opportunity to do something I wanted to do.
* * *
Right now I'm listening to my favorite talk radio host, and she's discussing the food stamp program and the impending cuts. $40 billion over $10 years. Before I weigh in on this, let me show you a chart (no, I'm not channeling H. Ross Perot at the moment).
Now that the economy is supposedly recovering, the trend should reverse and food stamp spending go back down. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Look at this chart:
I'm not going to rant about the people paying for expensive groceries with EBT cards, putting them back into their real Louis Vuitton purses and walking out to their brand new SUVs (wait, I just did rant). That's old. The problem is that our system of means testing is flawed.
Jeff Greenslate is a musician who was part of a piece on Fox News. Fox took a few liberties with the facts though. They portrayed him as owning and driving an Escalade, buying only expensive food with his meager monthly ration of $200 per month in food stamps. That's not the case. The story claimed he surfs every day. That's not the case.
But what is the case is that he's basically sponging off of his friends and society because the rules allow him to. Read this quote from him: “I have goals in life,” Greenslate said. “And pretty much all (food stamps) does is help me instead of going working some dead-end job. If you’ve ever tried to work in a job that’s not making more than 15 bucks an hour, you can’t live on it. So this way I focused on a career, a goal, what I love, and why wouldn’t you if you qualify?”
Food stamps were modified when the recession/financial collapse hit. Before the modifications, an able-bodied person with no children would only qualify for three months of food stamps. After that they were on their own. Now if someone is disabled, or otherwise unable to work, they deserve help. Able-bodied people should be forced to work. I'd rather see him get $400 per month in food stamps in return for 40 hours of labor. If he doesn't want to do the work, fine. He doesn't get the help.
How do we fix the means testing? Look at Greenslate. He "sofa-surfs" at the homes of his friends. There is a value to that free rent he gets. Free rent should be looked at as income. Include it in the means testing process. He gets support from friends and family when he needs money. Include that in the means testing process. Suddenly he may not qualify.
If the people with real need versus the people who just want the help when they have the ability to replace that with money from a job were the only ones receiving the benefit of food stamps; we would be able to cut more than $4 billion a year in food stamp spending without making anyone who needs help having to go hungry.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Jack Klugman's son has joined the chorus decrying the inclusion of Corey Monteith in the special category of In Memoriam on the upcoming Emmy awards while his father, a three-time Emmy winner won't be paid a special tribute. He's honest enough to call the response to criticism over Monteith's inclusion by the executive producer of the show, Ken Ehrlich what it is. Bull. They aren't including Monteith because his "performance was much admired." They're including it because they want to increase their audience with people who fit into a more attractive demographic. I was going to watch the show, but now I will not.
The current mess at the College of Southern Nevada over financial aid is another example of being penny wise and pound foolish. The school screwed up aid awards in 2011-2012 and owes the U.S. Department of Education nearly $800,000. A student population of their size should have more than 40 staff members in the financial aid department. They recently re-added position and hired to get up to 27 positions, three of which are vacant.
I'll rant tomorrow about Muslims killing "infidels" and the Quran. But I will point out that there are roughly 100 references to killing in the Quran and none of them appear to be connected to killing the "unfaithful". I need to do more research before I state that definitively.
Tony Basil says that since 1982 she's received "...like $3,000 in royalties worldwide" from her smash hit "Mickey" and that seems a bit understated to me. While she did not write it, and wasn't a big singing star who could command a strong royalty rate, that just doesn't add up. BTW, she just turned 70 and she looks great.
We may take freedom of speech a bit for granted and the arrest of a farmer in Egypt for naming his donkey after a powerful general is a good reminder of that fact.
If the federal government shuts down I hope everyone who lives in Washington, D.C. will take their uncollected garbage and leave it at the doorstep of Speaker Boehner.
Much is being made of the fact that three of the four "fail-safe" mechanisms on a hydrogen bomb that was accidentally dropped in 1961 when the B-52 bomber it was aboard broke up in flight, failed. Maybe we should focus on the fact that this is why there was one fail-safe and three more redundant fail-safes. So that it wouldn't go off, and it didn't. Then again, there was no good reason to fly training missions with these weapons.
* * *
This Date In History:
19BCE The death of the Roman poet Virgil; the creator of the Aeneid.
455 – Emperor Avitus enters Rome with a Gallic army and consolidates his power.
1217 – Livonian Crusade: The Estonian leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo the Accursed are killed in Battle of Matthew's Day.
1435 – An agreement between Charles VII of France and Philip the Good ends the partnership between the English and Burgundy in Hundred Years' War.
1745 – Battle of Prestonpans: A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart
1776 – Part of New York City is burned shortly after being occupied by British forces.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792 – The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy.
1843 – John Williams Wilson takes possession of the Strait of Magellan on behalf of the newly-independent Chilean government.
1860 – In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Palikao.
1896 – British force under Horatio Kitchener takes Dongola in the Sudan.
1897 – The "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" editorial is published in the New York Sun.
1898 – Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China.
1921 – A storage silo in Oppau, Germany, explodes, killing 500-600 people.
1933 – Salvador Lutteroth ran the first ever EMLL (now CMLL) show in Mexico, marking the birth of Lucha Libre
1934 – A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing 3,036 people.
1937 – J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published.
1938 – The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people.
1939 – Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu is assassinated by far-right legionnaires of the fascist paramilitary organization called the Iron Guard.
1942 – On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp.
1942 – In Poland, at the end of Yom Kippur, Germans order Jews to permanently evacuate Konstantynów and move to the Ghetto in Biała Podlaska, established to assemble Jews from seven nearby towns, including Janów Podlaski, Rossosz and Terespol.
1942 – In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews.
1942 – The B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight.
1953 – LT No Kum-Sok a North Korean pilot defected to South Korea and is associated with Operation Moolah.
1961 – Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter.
1964 – Malta becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1964 – The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world's first Mach 3 bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
1965 – Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations.
1971 – Bahrain, Bhutan and Qatar join the United Nations.
1972 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation № 1081, placing the entire country under martial law and marking the beginning of his authoritarian rule.
1976 – Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet.
1976 – Seychelles joins the United Nations.
1977 – A nuclear non-proliferation pact is signed by 15 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union.
1981 – Belize is granted full independence from the United Kingdom.
1981 – Sandra Day O'Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice.
1984 – Brunei joins the United Nations.
1991 – Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Louis Jolliet
Christopher Gore
H. G. Wells
Henry Stimson
Preston Tucker
Chuck Jones (genius!)
Larry Hagman
Leonard Cohen
Henry Gibson (he made a great Illinois Nazi)
Jack Brisco
Fannie Flagg
Hamilton Jordan
Jerry Bruckheimer
Don Felder
Stephen King
Artis Gilmore
Bill Murray
Ethan Coen
Dave Coulier
Nancy Travis
Cecil Fielder
Faith Hill
Ricki Lake
Alfonso Ribeiro
Luke Wilson
Nicole Richie
Movie quotes today come from "Meatballs" in honor of Bill Murray's birthday:
Tripper: Attention. Here's an update on tonight's dinner. It was veal. I repeat, veal. The winner of tonight's mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who guessed "some kind of beef."
#2
Tripper: [entering party] Alright, virgins to the left, non-virgins to the right.
[to Crocket and Wheels]
Tripper: You guys split 'em up however you want.
#3
Tripper: But, the real excitement of course is going to come at the end of the summer, during Sexual Awareness week. We import two hundred hookers from around the world, and each camper, armed with only a thermos of coffee and two thousand dollars cash, tries to visit as many countries as he can. The winner of course is named King of Sexual Awareness week and is allowed to rape and pillage the neighboring towns until camp ends.
#4
Tripper: Important announcement - Some hunters have been seen in the woods near Piney Ridge trail and the fish and game commission has raised the legal kill limit on campers to three. So, if you're hiking today, please wear something bright and keep low.
But there is one detail that they got wrong that really bugs me. I understand the choice, because the writers wanted a character to do a certain thing and they had to provide him with a way to do it. But in doing so, they violated what is a standard procedure for cops all over the world. So all that good work in paying attention to those little details was somewhat overshadowed by one big gaffe, even though I understand why they made that choice.
Don't let my niggling about this stuff keep you from seeing a good movie with some excellent performances.
* * *
I have over 20 students in my two current classes. Add those from that class I substitute taught the other day and the count goes above 30. I will do what I need to do to help them. But I have to admit it is a minor annoyance when a small percentage (usually less than 2%) apparently don't pay attention when I show them step by step how to do something. I know this because they didn't ask questions at the time, but when I'm supposed to be enjoying a well-deserved three day respite from teaching and work in general, they ring the phone. It isn't any one person, it's the combination of that and those who have issues with their enrollment in the right class, or their attendance, or whatever. But it's fine. I will help them for as long as needed.
I wanted to go see a second movie today, "Enough Said" at 7:40 p.m. at the local art house theater (no free publicity from me for a certain basketball team owner). The film is supposed to be terrific and the writer/director is going to be there for a Q&A afterward. I should have bought the ticket as soon as I learned of the event. I didn't. So when I looked this morning to get one, the only seats left were in the front row. I refuse to sit in the front row of a theater. If that's all that's left when I buy a ticket, I turn around and go get a refund. My procrastinating about getting a ticket has cost me an opportunity to do something I wanted to do.
* * *
Right now I'm listening to my favorite talk radio host, and she's discussing the food stamp program and the impending cuts. $40 billion over $10 years. Before I weigh in on this, let me show you a chart (no, I'm not channeling H. Ross Perot at the moment).
When you look at this chart the first thing people are going to bring up is our economy and financial situation crashed. Lots of people lost jobs, or became underemployed and therefore became eligible for food stamps. I get that.Now that the economy is supposedly recovering, the trend should reverse and food stamp spending go back down. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Look at this chart:
This estimate was made before this proposal to chop $4 billion per year for the next ten years was introduced into the House. As you can see while spending is projected to level off and shrink slightly, it isn't going to go anywhere near the old levels. Here is the key reason why:
As you can see, during a period where the number of people receiving food stamps more than doubled, and the spending on the food stamps themselves more than doubled, spending to get people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (sounds so much nicer than food stamps, doesn't it?) went up more than six times.I'm not going to rant about the people paying for expensive groceries with EBT cards, putting them back into their real Louis Vuitton purses and walking out to their brand new SUVs (wait, I just did rant). That's old. The problem is that our system of means testing is flawed.
Jeff Greenslate is a musician who was part of a piece on Fox News. Fox took a few liberties with the facts though. They portrayed him as owning and driving an Escalade, buying only expensive food with his meager monthly ration of $200 per month in food stamps. That's not the case. The story claimed he surfs every day. That's not the case.
But what is the case is that he's basically sponging off of his friends and society because the rules allow him to. Read this quote from him: “I have goals in life,” Greenslate said. “And pretty much all (food stamps) does is help me instead of going working some dead-end job. If you’ve ever tried to work in a job that’s not making more than 15 bucks an hour, you can’t live on it. So this way I focused on a career, a goal, what I love, and why wouldn’t you if you qualify?”
Food stamps were modified when the recession/financial collapse hit. Before the modifications, an able-bodied person with no children would only qualify for three months of food stamps. After that they were on their own. Now if someone is disabled, or otherwise unable to work, they deserve help. Able-bodied people should be forced to work. I'd rather see him get $400 per month in food stamps in return for 40 hours of labor. If he doesn't want to do the work, fine. He doesn't get the help.
How do we fix the means testing? Look at Greenslate. He "sofa-surfs" at the homes of his friends. There is a value to that free rent he gets. Free rent should be looked at as income. Include it in the means testing process. He gets support from friends and family when he needs money. Include that in the means testing process. Suddenly he may not qualify.
If the people with real need versus the people who just want the help when they have the ability to replace that with money from a job were the only ones receiving the benefit of food stamps; we would be able to cut more than $4 billion a year in food stamp spending without making anyone who needs help having to go hungry.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Jack Klugman's son has joined the chorus decrying the inclusion of Corey Monteith in the special category of In Memoriam on the upcoming Emmy awards while his father, a three-time Emmy winner won't be paid a special tribute. He's honest enough to call the response to criticism over Monteith's inclusion by the executive producer of the show, Ken Ehrlich what it is. Bull. They aren't including Monteith because his "performance was much admired." They're including it because they want to increase their audience with people who fit into a more attractive demographic. I was going to watch the show, but now I will not.
The current mess at the College of Southern Nevada over financial aid is another example of being penny wise and pound foolish. The school screwed up aid awards in 2011-2012 and owes the U.S. Department of Education nearly $800,000. A student population of their size should have more than 40 staff members in the financial aid department. They recently re-added position and hired to get up to 27 positions, three of which are vacant.
I'll rant tomorrow about Muslims killing "infidels" and the Quran. But I will point out that there are roughly 100 references to killing in the Quran and none of them appear to be connected to killing the "unfaithful". I need to do more research before I state that definitively.
Tony Basil says that since 1982 she's received "...like $3,000 in royalties worldwide" from her smash hit "Mickey" and that seems a bit understated to me. While she did not write it, and wasn't a big singing star who could command a strong royalty rate, that just doesn't add up. BTW, she just turned 70 and she looks great.
We may take freedom of speech a bit for granted and the arrest of a farmer in Egypt for naming his donkey after a powerful general is a good reminder of that fact.
If the federal government shuts down I hope everyone who lives in Washington, D.C. will take their uncollected garbage and leave it at the doorstep of Speaker Boehner.
Much is being made of the fact that three of the four "fail-safe" mechanisms on a hydrogen bomb that was accidentally dropped in 1961 when the B-52 bomber it was aboard broke up in flight, failed. Maybe we should focus on the fact that this is why there was one fail-safe and three more redundant fail-safes. So that it wouldn't go off, and it didn't. Then again, there was no good reason to fly training missions with these weapons.
* * *
This Date In History:
19BCE The death of the Roman poet Virgil; the creator of the Aeneid.
455 – Emperor Avitus enters Rome with a Gallic army and consolidates his power.
1217 – Livonian Crusade: The Estonian leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo the Accursed are killed in Battle of Matthew's Day.
1435 – An agreement between Charles VII of France and Philip the Good ends the partnership between the English and Burgundy in Hundred Years' War.
1745 – Battle of Prestonpans: A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart
1776 – Part of New York City is burned shortly after being occupied by British forces.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792 – The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy.
1843 – John Williams Wilson takes possession of the Strait of Magellan on behalf of the newly-independent Chilean government.
1860 – In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Palikao.
1896 – British force under Horatio Kitchener takes Dongola in the Sudan.
1897 – The "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" editorial is published in the New York Sun.
1898 – Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China.
1921 – A storage silo in Oppau, Germany, explodes, killing 500-600 people.
1933 – Salvador Lutteroth ran the first ever EMLL (now CMLL) show in Mexico, marking the birth of Lucha Libre
1934 – A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing 3,036 people.
1937 – J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published.
1938 – The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people.
1939 – Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu is assassinated by far-right legionnaires of the fascist paramilitary organization called the Iron Guard.
1942 – On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp.
1942 – In Poland, at the end of Yom Kippur, Germans order Jews to permanently evacuate Konstantynów and move to the Ghetto in Biała Podlaska, established to assemble Jews from seven nearby towns, including Janów Podlaski, Rossosz and Terespol.
1942 – In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews.
1942 – The B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight.
1953 – LT No Kum-Sok a North Korean pilot defected to South Korea and is associated with Operation Moolah.
1961 – Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter.
1964 – Malta becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1964 – The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world's first Mach 3 bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
1965 – Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations.
1971 – Bahrain, Bhutan and Qatar join the United Nations.
1972 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation № 1081, placing the entire country under martial law and marking the beginning of his authoritarian rule.
1976 – Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet.
1976 – Seychelles joins the United Nations.
1977 – A nuclear non-proliferation pact is signed by 15 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union.
1981 – Belize is granted full independence from the United Kingdom.
1981 – Sandra Day O'Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice.
1984 – Brunei joins the United Nations.
1991 – Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Louis Jolliet
Christopher Gore
H. G. Wells
Henry Stimson
Preston Tucker
Chuck Jones (genius!)
Larry Hagman
Leonard Cohen
Henry Gibson (he made a great Illinois Nazi)
Jack Brisco
Fannie Flagg
Hamilton Jordan
Jerry Bruckheimer
Don Felder
Stephen King
Artis Gilmore
Bill Murray
Ethan Coen
Dave Coulier
Nancy Travis
Cecil Fielder
Faith Hill
Ricki Lake
Alfonso Ribeiro
Luke Wilson
Nicole Richie
Movie quotes today come from "Meatballs" in honor of Bill Murray's birthday:
Tripper: Attention. Here's an update on tonight's dinner. It was veal. I repeat, veal. The winner of tonight's mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who guessed "some kind of beef."
#2
Tripper: [entering party] Alright, virgins to the left, non-virgins to the right.
[to Crocket and Wheels]
Tripper: You guys split 'em up however you want.
#3
Tripper: But, the real excitement of course is going to come at the end of the summer, during Sexual Awareness week. We import two hundred hookers from around the world, and each camper, armed with only a thermos of coffee and two thousand dollars cash, tries to visit as many countries as he can. The winner of course is named King of Sexual Awareness week and is allowed to rape and pillage the neighboring towns until camp ends.
#4
Tripper: Important announcement - Some hunters have been seen in the woods near Piney Ridge trail and the fish and game commission has raised the legal kill limit on campers to three. So, if you're hiking today, please wear something bright and keep low.
posted by me at 8:10 PM
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