brandonrobison.net

Tyler Cowen linked to a post regarding Park51, colloquially referred to as the Ground Zero Mosque. The following paragraph about sums it up, and I agree:

My general take on the debate is that it really does boil down to an issue not just of religious freedom but also a means of putting into practice the very American values which Al Qaeda seeks to deny. A mosque in NYC, near to the site of 9-11, is not a “monument to the attackers” (a pernicious claim, which puts collective responsibility for the terrorist attacks on all Muslim Americans) but actually a repudiation of the Al Qaeda ideology. What they want is to make Muslim Americans reject American identity and follow their call to jihad – explicitly, as Anwar al Awlaki has repeatedly stated, and even succeeded (ref the cases of Fort Hood and Times Square). An American mosque, built for American Muslims, is literally the antithesis of what the enemy most desires.

Read the whole post here.

My simple take: There are numerous reasons to support the building of a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan; and frankly, the reasons against it are all merely divisive.

I was asked by my boss to review and “look for gaps in the logic flow” of a report prepared by the Soldier and Family Services division here at the National Guard. The report was nearly 40 pages long, but the only real substance was found in the first page with sentences like, “Army National Guard’s confirmed suicide rate reached an all-time high of 17.9 per 100,000,” and, “The intent of this campaign plan is to take a strategic approach to mitigating suicides and high-risk behavior across the Army National Guard.” Beyond that, the paper rambled on with long words and even longer sentences. I’m proud of the critique I wrote, provided below…

Two specific problems, and two general problems. First, the specifics:

The Situation, page 1, item 1: Is 17.9 suicides per 100,000 really something we need to have a ~40 page paper about? Looking at national statistics suggests that it’s not. In 2006, the US suicide rate for males was 17.7 per 100k and for women was 4.5 per 100k. Considering more than 85% of our force is male, we should expect an overall suicide rate of about 15.9 suicides per 100,000, so 17.9 isn’t that far off from what we should expect. These are back-of-the-envelope calculations, but the point still stands that the alleged suicide epidemic in the NG isn’t nearly as dire as the paper seems to suggest. Furthermore, I believe if we controlled for geography, race, and age, the expected suicide rate for the Guard would be higher, thus weakening the seriousness of the problem even further.

End State, page 2, item c: “The suicide is reduced” seems to be our goal — so if our suicides drop from 17.9 to 17.89, will we consider that success?

Then the general:

Even if I were to buy into the notion that I should be overly worried about the suicide rate, I didn’t see anywhere in the paper any sort of scientific or mathematical analysis to indicate why any of the proposals to reduce the rate should work. The paper just implies that we should all assume that the programs work, and that they all work equally well, so we should just dump lots of time, money, and effort into them. But if, for example, substance abuse programs are twice as effective at combating suicide as financial assistance programs, more resources should be put into the more effective programs.

Also, resources spent on suicide prevention likely have diminishing returns to effectiveness, meaning that the first $100k spent on suicide prevention will be more effective at reducing suicide rates than the tenth $100k. This implies that there is a point at which additional resources spent on suicide prevention will have such a miniscule effect on suicide rates that it is wasteful to spend those resources. This concept forms part of the basis for cost-benefit analysis, and while it is very unemotional and perhaps “inhuman” to suggest doing a cost-benefit analysis on resources spent toward suicide prevention, that’s ultimately the most rational choice. Perhaps these types of analyses have been done, but I read no reference to them in this paper.

I really should update once in a while huh.

Maybe.

I’m only a month and a half late posting this!

2009 had some great movies. It also had some awful ones. I’ve never seen so many bad movies in one year… so this year, not only will I be posting the best of 2009, but also the worst. Enjoy!

5. Drag Me To Hell
This movie was just fun. I know, it’s a horror movie, but my face hurt hurt after I left the theater because I had been smiling and laughing so much throughout. You might think, “A horror movie that just makes you laugh? That doesn’t sound like a good thing.” But it is.

4. The Hangover
With many comedy movies in which ridiculous events occur, the viewer must often suspend their belief in reality temporarily in order to enjoy what they’re seeing. Despite The Hangover being ridiculous and far-fetched, it was somehow incredibly believable for me. I felt a sort of nostalgia watching the movie, perhaps because as a teen, my friends and I would do some pretty wild things around the Las Vegas Strip. Anyway, there’s good reason this movie has claimed the throne of highest grossing comedy of all time.

3. Inglourious Basterds
Unlike other Tarantino movies where characters have really long, strange, seemingly unnecessary conversations with one another, the conversations in this movie were really great. The opening scene is one of the tensest scenes I’ve seen in recent history, and the “rat speech” is brilliant. In fact, every scene with Christopher Waltz is fantastic.

2. District 9
The political message of this movie is on the one hand quite subtle, and on the other hand, bashes you over the head with a club. It’s hard to not be annoying with political messages, but District 9 does it flawlessly. The format (mockumentary-style) is also quite novel and enjoyable.

1. The Hurt Locker
I need to see this again. (This next part might be considered a spoiler, but I don’t think so…) My favorite scene is near the end when the main character goes home and is walking through a store with his wife. The movie did such a good job of sucking you into the feeling of being a soldier in Iraq that when you’re finally brought back to “civilization” it feels truly eerie. On top of that (and I think other critics have probably mentioned this), it portrays the war in Iraq without any political bias, and does it superbly.

Honorable mention: Avatar
Yeah yeah, the story was pretty cheesy, cliché, etc. But Pandora was beautiful.

Best movie I saw in 2009 that wasn’t made in 2009: Ondskan
Everyone should watch this movie. Several times. It’s Swedish, so you’ve probably never heard of it (unless I’ve told you to watch it). I don’t want to say what it’s about, but it’s now one of my favorite movies.

Worst of 2009:

5. The Proposal

4. Bride Wars

3. Year One

2. Nine

1. The Road
The Road was awful. I like dark, depressing movies, but this one just sucks your soul out of you. And it’s monotonous. I think I wanted to die while watching this.

Biggest disappointment: Watchmen
I don’t even know what was going on here. I feel like the original story is far too complicated to be put into a single movie. It’d be like if movie makers tried to cram Atlas Shrugged or Lord of the Rings into 2 and a half hours of movie. You’d just leave the theater thinking, “WTF mate?” And that’s what happened here.

Yesterday I voted in the Virginia election. There were only five (or was it six?) positions to vote for. I want to tell you all a little about my experience voting.

First off, I only voted for three of the positions: governor, attorney general, and house of delegates. I guess that last one is like the state legislature or something? I really have no idea.

Well, leading up to the election, I was unsure as to whether I should vote for the D or the R guys. On the one hand, D is pretty close to B, which is the first letter of my first name. But on the other hand, R *is* R, the first letter of my last name. In the end, I chose to go for the R guys, and for reasons other than the first-letter-of-my-name thing.

Bob McDonnell’s competitor had put signs up all over Fairfax saying something to the effect that Bob wanted to get rid of schools. You might know I’m not a fan of public schools, so if Bob is against them, he’s my guy. I just don’t understand why his Creigh Deeds would have gone around paying for a positive advertising campaign for his election competitor.

I voted for Bob McDonnell, and he won by 6%. It’s a good thing I voted for him, because without my vote, he would have undoubtedly lost.

The race for attorney general had a similar story. The guy running against Cuccinelli (I don’t even remember his (or her) name) has been playing ads all over TV saying how Cuccinelli once said that he wouldn’t enforce laws he didn’t agree with. Wow! What a strong endorsement!

Seriously, these Democrats are horrible at the PR game. You guys are supposed to advertise negative qualities about your competitors (or at least talk up the good points of your own business). No wonder Republicans owned the elections last night.

Well anyway, I voted for Cuccinelli. This was a much closer race — Cuccinelli only won by 1%! My vote really counted here.

So in case you’re not keeping track, my vote has counted in two of two cases.

However, there is still the general assembly election. There was no R in this race, only a D. Having run as a third party candidate in the past, I can empathize with the lower-ranked parties. So I voted for the Green Party candidate, Anna Choi. I mean, I like the color green, so why not? And I can tell by her name that she’s Asian, and I like Asians.

Furthermore, her website claims she is a fiscal conservative… which in conjunction with being a Green means she probably just favors raising taxes really high to offset government spending. But that’s ok, because I learned recently from doing my macro homework that in a Keynesian world (which we live in), an equal increase in government spending and taxes results in a net positive effect on the economy. What’s not to love about this kind of fiscal conservatism?

Unfortunately, Anna lost her bid to serve us. It went to the D.

But I refuse to let one bad race prevent me from enjoying my democratic freedoms in this country and knowing that, at the very least, my vote counted in two of the three races.

A little over a month ago I posed a question about gun rights vs. health care rights. I liked all the comments on that post, but none of them were how I would have answered the question.

So why is there a right to bear arms in the Constitution, but not a right to health care?

The answer, very simply, lies in property rights. If one views the Bill of Rights through a lens of property rights, we see that almost every Amendment is a guarantee of a private property right. An “arm” is merely a piece of property, hence it can be privately owned. But how can health care be privately owned? How is it property?

In a free world (or free market), property is produced and exchanged voluntarily. So my owning of something does not forcefully impose anything on any one else. For example, I can own a gun, and my right to own that gun does not infringe on any other individual in any way. The same can be said about other types of private property: cars, clothing, iPods. Phrased even more simply, no one is harmed, forced, or imposed upon to provide me with private property: all private property is provided to me through voluntary actions.

Health care as a right, on the other hand, does not fit this description. If I wake up tomorrow and suddenly have a “right” to health care, it would mean that some doctor or doctors would necessarily be forced to provide that health care to me. At the point where I have a “right” to health care, voluntary action will have been supplanted by force.

Lorem Ipsum is a sort of made up language. Well, not really a language. It is “simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry” and also commonly used for people designing websites before they’ve been given any real content that will go on the site they’re designing. It’s designed to look like English (actually, looks more like the Latin language). Blah blah blah. Read more about Lorem Ipsum at lipsum.com.

I stumbled onto a song called Lorem Ipsum last night and I’ve listened to it dozens of times since. It was composed by Jake “virt” Kaufman, a video game and long time scene composer. virt is an incredible arranger and composer… really, listen to practically any of his songs and keep in mind he programmed the sounds with a computer, and you can’t help but be amazed.

In this latest song of his that I’m obsessed with, he has combined orchestra, rock, a singing choir, and a strange vocaloid together. But even more amazing (to me) is the lyrics of the song: It’s just Lorem Ipsum! Check out the song now!

Recently, a friend posted a comment on her Facebook to the effect that no one should die from lack of health care, and furthermore, no one should go broke from health care expenses. Discussion ensued, and one person posed the question, “Why is there a right to bear arms in the Constitution, but not a right to health care?”

I’ll post my answer in a couple days. In the meantime, please post your thoughts on this question in the comments.

I became aware of Steven Buckner’s album through an online music website called mephtik netlabel. The website provided several of the songs from the album for free, so I checked them out, and really liked what I heard. So I bought the album. On a 10-point scale, I’d give it an 8 or 9. I had to listen to it about a dozen times before I started to want to listen to something else.

To me, the album can be broadly classified as having two styles — the first half of the album has a sort of jazzy, piano new age feel, while the latter half sounds a lot more like electronic, ambient stuff that Vangelis would’ve put out back in the day.

Actually, it sounds like the entire album was made with synthesized instruments. I’m not sure which of the instrument samples are from real instruments, if any. That’s not to say the quality is bad; in fact, the quality is quite good! Despite being synthesized, the music is very enjoyable and the composition is definitely above average. I merely wonder if it wouldn’t have sounded better with some real orchestration.

If you enjoy artists like Vangelis or E.S. Posthumus, or if you’re generally a fan of new age or jazz piano style music, you’ll probably like this game. Video game music lovers will also probably enjoy it. Luckily, you can download about a third of the album from mephtik for free, so check it out before you buy.

Get the album at Amazon.com on CD or MP3.

Where to begin?

First, this post contains spoilers of both the book and movie, so this is your warning.

Second, I didn’t jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon til just recently. I whisked flew the 7-part series this past December/January. I had meant to write up my feelings on the series, but never got around to it, because, well… it would’ve taken forever.

At over 4,000 pages, reading the series is no small endeavor, and once you have finished, you can’t help but feel like you’ve just been on an incredible journey. I have only felt such an incredible sense of varying, strong emotions after finishing a very few number of books… such emotions as accomplishment, sadness (of coming to the end of the journey), pure bewilderment and elation (“I can’t believe how amazing that was…”): Harry Potter belongs on my short list of this type of book.

And within the series, one can rank the books in order of enjoyment. My favorite book in the series? Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

At the beginning of the story, Dumbledore tells Harry they are going to have private lessons throughout the year in order to better prepare Harry for his destiny — to defeat Voldemort. The instruction taught during these lessons is primarily about Voldemort’s upbringing and past. Thus, at least in my mind, the two main purposes of the sixth book are to 1) develop Voldemort’s character and 2) develop the relationship between Harry and Professor Dumbledore. Both of these are done through the lessons.

Along the way, other events occur: for example, the romance between Harry’s best friends Ron and Hermione begins to flourish; also, Harry and Ron’s sister Ginny also start to hit it off. However, this is mostly an appendage to the story. The romances are similar to the game of quidditch, which shows up in almost every book, and helps move the story along, but is certainly not the focus of the books. The movie would have you believe otherwise.

In the process of developing the romances, the movie makers brush off the aforementioned two main purposes of the story. As a result, in the last half hour when Harry and Dumbledore travel to the cave, it really doesn’t even make sense: a surprised Dumbledore admits he had no idea Voldemort had created horcruxes to immortalize himself, and moments later, they’re whisked away to a cave where Dumbledore believes a horcrux is hidden. This makes a lot more sense in the book, as Dumbledore knew about the horcruxes, he just didn’t know how many there were until Harry retrieved Slughorn’s memory.

Within the cave, either the acting or the directing of Dumbledore was terrible. He didn’t convey any real suffering. The one time he screams “Kill me!” at Harry, he sounds like an angry maniac, not like a man in the throes of abjection. And in the next minute, he’s conjuring huge fireballs. This is probably the coolest part of the movie, and it only lasts for about three seconds.

Since relationship-building between Harry and Dumbledore is virtually non-existent during the movie, when Dumbledore is killed in the next scene, I didn’t even care. It was almost as bad as when Cedric was killed in the fourth movie. “Who cares? He wasn’t even that important of a character.” (this next sentence was added hours after I originally posted this blog; thanks to Ashley for the reminder…) After the movie, Ashley remarked that she felt sadder when Hermione was crying over Ron than she did when Dumbledore died, and I completely agree.

The movie ends with Harry, Ron, and Hermione hanging out in the tower where Dumbledore was murdered, discussing how they must go out and search for the horcruxes. Ashley noted that the ending was very similar to the ending of The Fellowship of the Rings, with Frodo and Sam committing to one another to finish the mission they are destined to complete. But whereas FOTR made you feel emotions of friendship, loyalty, and hope, Half-Blood Prince made you feel… nothing.

Actually, if I felt anything, it was irritation: irritation that the movie was so lacking in epicness. Despite having so much epic potential (arguably the most in the series, since Dumbledore is killed with no explanation), it had none.

In addition to my main complaints, a few others include:

- The scene where the Burrow (the Weasleys’ home) is destroyed was completely pointless and a waste of time. Its absence could’ve allowed for more ending awesomeness or more development of Voldemort or Harry/Dumbledore.

- The lack of mystery. Throughout the book, another theme/conflict is that Harry is suspicious of Draco, and spends a lot of his free time trying to figure out what Draco is up to. None of this kind of suspenseful mystery is present in the movie; not with Draco, nor with any of the other mysteries in the movie. “Who is the Half-Blood Prince? Oh, I don’t really care, since obviously the main plot of this movie is the romances among the teenagers.”

In conclusion, I have a very strange feeling of ambivalence for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I sit there and watch it and I generally enjoy it… but then I leave feeling like I missed out. I think what it really comes down to is that it’s a decent/good movie, but it’s not a great movie, even though it totally had the potential to be.