Saalon Muyo

How did I miss this on the first pass?

But damn it, doesn’t anybody know how to write an ending any more?

I’m just gonna let that one stand without further comment.

Well, turns out his response was even less insightful than I feared.

George R. R. Martin made his brief case for why he hated the end of Battlestar Galactica, and he reverted to the overused “God did it” complaint.  It’s unfortunate, especially because he framed his complaint as a “Writing 101″ error, which, as you can imagine if you read my – ahem – impassioned post about my frustrations with A Song of Ice and Fire,  I took as somewhat ironic.

Leaving aside the fact that a deus ex machina is not always, in every case, a bad way to end a story – certainly the narrative foundation of the Western world is built on poems and plays rife with them – I think the “God did it” criticism is just shallow.  The finale sucks because a character gives a speech you don’t like that takes up 2 minutes of a 3 hour finale? That’s all there is to say?

Not that the ending is a deus ex machina, anyway.  If you didn’t see the mystical overtones coming years ago, starting all the way back in season 1, you were constructing your own ideal version of Galactica that did not exist.  Much like as I didn’t see A Song of Ice and Fire expanding endlessly starting with book 2, it’s probably my own fault for being so frustrated now.  We see what we want to see, no?

I was challenged by @aimeesblog to help her prettify the Planet Money chatter page she had built onher blog. Needing some more experience in PHP and mostly just liking a challenge, I accepted.  Below is the code I came up with after reading through the work of people much smarter than I.

There’s still one problem with it: any replies that are followed immediately by a comma are not turned into links.  Also, I should probably make this more generic to allow a search term to be passed into it and the appropriate feed to be returned, but with it being built to be a Wordpress plugin and not really knowing their API very well, this was what I settled on for the first version.

As you might have guessed, I’m calling it PlanetTwitter. Oh and if you aren’t already, listen to Planet Money.

You can find the code here.

(NOTE: Though I mention the finale of Battlestar Galactica in this entry, there are no spoilers at all for the finale or series beyond the opening of season 3. On the other hand, spoilers ahoy for A Song of Ice and Fire)

Funny the things that set you off. I was reading George R. R. Martin’s “Not a Blog” today and saw he made mention of having hated the Battlestar Galactica finale. That, apparently, is what it took to finally get me to write about Martin’s last book, A Feast for Crows.

You can blame Brennen and Brent for my initial obsession with A Song of Ice and Fire, the massive, epic fantasy series by Martin of which A Feast For Crows is part.  I remember clearly getting A Game of Thrones, the first volume in the series.  I had won a gift certificate to Amazon.com from a trivia game Brent was running, and asked what the heck I should buy.  One of the books Brennen recommended was A Game of Thrones.  And so it began.

I also remember very clearly reading it.  Not what it felt like to read it, but the actual physical sitting with the book in my hands.  It was my Grandmother’s funeral in Erie, and I can still picture myself on a cheap hotel bed, feeling the shock of Ned Stark’s startling death.  The same goes for book 3, A Storm of Swords, also read in a hotel room, this one not so cheap.  I was in Alexandria, VA with my mom.  She was on a business trip and I had tagged along.  Instead of exploring the city, I sat for hours in that room, plowing through one of the best fantasy novels I had ever read.  I made it out of the room for comics and a bowl of amazing Texas style chili. Otherwise, it was Martin all the way.

I say this to get across my deep love for the series.  There was a time when this was becoming my favorite fantasy series, when all I could do was talk about how affected I was by the series’ momentum, brutality and authenticity. A time may come again when I feel this way, too. Today, not as much.

I am not going to gripe about the publication delays faced by book 4, A Feast for Crows.  An author must take the time he needs to write his story, and waiting is not my problem.  It’s frustrating as hell, certainly, but quality and not scheduling is an author’s primary concern.  So A Feast for Crows was late. So it was very late. Big deal.

What bothers me is that the novel we got was a sprawling, long delayed side story of little consequence to the series.  Long fantasy series’ generally have this problem. At some point in the middle they begin following every rabbit down every hole, adding side characters and background stories until the main plot is barely advancing at all.  In book 1 our main characters are the only point of view characters, but by book 4 we are spending half of our time with people of whom we have rarely if ever heard.

A Feast for Crows may not be a bad book, but it is a pointless book.  Martin’s original plan was to jump forward 5 years following A Storm of Swords, a bold idea that the end of that novel almost necessitated. The ending of Swords left characters on the verge of great developments, at the cusp of realizing much of the setup of the first 3 volumes.  A five year jump would put us right in the middle of that payoff, allowing the final 3 volumes to race ahead from that point.

Book 4 was going to be A Dance with Dragons, a title full of promise considering we had spent the first half of the series slowly building the character of Daenerys and the return of dragons into the world.  It was likely to continue the deliberate but fantastic character arc of Anya Stark, a child  now on the cusp of being capable of the vengeance promised to her enemies.  And it was almost certain to drop us into the middle of whatever terror was building beyond the Wall.

Instead we got, respectively: Nothing, almost nothing and nothing.

Somewhere along the line, Martin soured on the idea of jumping ahead. He said the need for flashbacks filling in the lost time was crushing the narrative of the novel and that jumping ahead was not feasible.  So book 4 changed to A Feast for Crows, and it would presumably fill in those 5 years.

I was skeptical.  If you initially thought those 5 years weren’t worth writing, was this really going to make for an interesting novel? Or was it going to feel like a book of backstory whose only reason for being written was setting up the next novel?  I had, perhaps unfairly, assumed the jump was being done because the intervening years did not need to be told in detail.  In fact, the revelation that even the initial version of book 4 was going to be flashback-filled had me worried. Why jump at all if you’re going to detail what we missed anyway?

Still, Martin hadn’t let me down and I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.  It might not be the most exciting book, but it would at least be necessary.  And maybe it would be exciting, after all.  Who knew?

Then came scary change number 2: A Feast For Crows was being split into 2 books.  Not chronologically, but by dividing which characters would appear in which book.  That 5 year period we were going to skip entirely? Yeah, it had just become 2 books.

A Feast for Crows was not an easy read for me.  I admit freely I was very worried about the quality of this book due to the confusing narrative changes Martin had made to it.  I know I’m not the writer of this series, but I have trouble understanding how a period you once felt confident you could skip could become 2 whole novels.  This sounded like a writer too wrapped up in the minutia of his world, too intent on telling every detail of his story.

Unfortunately – and you can attribute this to seeing what I expected to see if you’d like, though I’d disagree – that was exactly what I got.  Worse, I got something I did not expect: a preponderance of time spent on side characters of whom I had no emotional attachment and some odd narrative changes.  Do the political maneuverings of the Greyjoys really matter to this story? The same of the Martells:  why should I care? Was there any need to suddenly start naming point of view chapters after character aliases?

Worse, the of previous point of view characters who did make an appearance, few were the protagonists for whom we had been asked to care to this point.  Yes, I think Jamie Lannister is an interesting character. Sure, I’m fine watching Cersei’s plans fall apart around her.  But to spend the better part of a novel on them, the Greyjoys and the Martells while leaving only two or three chapters each for any of the Stark children was highly disappointing.  It gave the impression of reading the series bible for background, not of getting the next chapter in the story itself.

Compare this to the end of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, in the last minutes of which we suddenly jumped a year ahead.  We saw lives changed without explanation, new conflicts, new problems.  And then, when season 3 opened, we stayed a year ahead.  In fact, it jumped another 4 months further down the path.  Major changes had occurred, and rather than worrying about showing us how each one had come about, it plowed ahead, confident the audience would learn most through context and the rest as needed.  Imagine if, instead, season 3 had opened back before the end of season 2 and decided to spend the season filling in that last year.

Now imagine that season 3 only did that for half of the characters, leaving the rest for season 4, and didn’t pick back up with the plot until season 5.

Sure we could have said “Oh, that’s exactly how Tigh lost his eye,” or “Oh, so this is when Tyrol became the head of the union.” But did we need it?  Certainly not, and the series was stronger for jumping the exposition and getting on with the business of telling its story.

Which leads me back to what set me off.  I’m curious as to what, exactly, Martin hated about Galactica.  Is he going to be upset that the series didn’t deliver on what he felt it had promised him?  That it had abandoned plot threads over its run and did not resolve them sufficiently in the finale?  That it focused on characters he didn’t feel were important?

I ask because I have this sneaking suspicion that any complaint he levels on Galactica could be leveled doubly against his own series.  Certainly Galactica played loose with many of its early themes and had a bad tendency to lose main characters for weeks at a time.

But do you know what it didn’t do?  It didn’t give fans an entire season detailing exactly what role Simon and Dorel had in the Cylons’ decision to come to New Caprica while showing us no more than a few minutes of Tyrol and Tigh and ignoring everyone else. It didn’t extend itself endlessly, pushing the expected finale further and further away.

Do you know what it did do?

It ended while I still cared what happened.

Here’s hoping A Dance with Dragons proves me wrong. I want to love A Song of Ice and Fire again.  Maybe Martin will use Galactica as a mirror and not just as a punching bag.

Sometimes life hands you all the commentary you need wrapped up in one package.  Today is such a day. Rejoice,  just before you cry.

Journalism is dying.  And if it isn’t, it’s only because it’s already dead.  There are many reasons for this, most of them due to corporate entities merging news divisions with entertainment divisions and the consolidation of these new entertainment-news divisions under a handful of large, corporate umbrellas.  This kind of consolidation involved budget cuts, staff reductions and a shift in focus to ratings measured in 30-60 minute blocks.

Once the newsroom was pared down into a poorly funded, undermanned journalistic machine, it was all but fated that an industry meant to be our watchdog would no longer be able to watch much of anything.  In the years since, our media has traded investigation for access.  They allow any organization, any interest group, to give their side as if reading a press release without fact checking getting in the way.  Opposing sides are brought on and given equal time in the name of balance, whether or not the opposition has anything other than opinion on their side.  And the powerful in our nation, the ones most in need of scrutiny, are given softball questions so as not to offend them and lose the network its coveted access.

It’s a disgrace.

Over the past week, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has been in a back and forth over some unkind words spoken of CNBC.  In it, Stewart mocked CNBC for its lack of foresight and its gentleness to CEOs and wealthy insiders who – it was later discovered – were outright lying to their interviewers.  Stewart was speaking in response to a rant made by Rick Santelli, one of CNBC’s reporters, over “loser homeowners” who were being bailed out by the federal government.  Stewart’s point was simple: CNBC, the network of financial professionals working to give you the inside scoop, were telling their viewers that everything was fantastic right up until the moment things fell apart.  So, Stewart asked, who were the losers?

Things got a little ugly after that.  Mad Money host Jim Cramer took personal offense at some of what Stewart said, and after some more traded barbs, Cramer agreed to come on to The Daily Show to talk to Stewart.  That happened last night.

The interview was great, and in it Stewart raised a lot of points which I won’t bother to summarize. He’s smarter and funnier than I am and you can watch the video.   Here, go for it, then we’ll keep talking:

One of my favorite sources of financial information, Planet Money, posted the video today, and I’m sad to say their post was a massive disappointment, demonstrating what I can only describe as an utter lack of awareness of what was going on in the interview.  For instance:

What did you think? Did Stewart (backed by his studio audience) come off as a bully? Was Cramer’s contrition believable or did it come off as staged? Will it change anything about Mad Money? Do you want Cramer as your financial watchdog?

Oh?  That’s your response?  Did Steward come off as a bully? Welcome to recursion!  Witness an uncritical and superficial media become the target of incisive commentary, after which it is discussed by an uncritical and superficial media.  The post addresses the interview like the media addresses every debate: as two equal forces presenting balanced sides.

This is not what was going on.

Watch the interview again if you must, but note specifically the video Stewart uses of Cramer from 2006.  In the first clip, Cramer addresses the practice of creating false rumors to bring down the price of a stock so that you can make money by short selling it.  When the clip is over, Cramer tries to suggest he was trying to educate people about the practice, not advocating it.  So Stewart shows more of the clip, and in it Cramer then says, basically, “It’s easy and you should do it, too.”

So holding people accountable to the things they’ve said is now bullying.  Or at the least, is debatably bullying. Stewart doesn’t shout at Cramer, or call him names or use any of the other typical news commentator tactics.  He stays calm but does not let Cramer off the hook.  And what does Planet Money, a serious financial news program, ask?

Do you think Stewart was bullying Cramer?

No discussion of what the facts of the debate were.  No mention that facts have any place in the argument at all.  It’s just your average, uninsightful blog-style commentary that turns every story into a WWE wrestling match.

Journalists are not supposed to be color commentators for a sports game.  Instead of asking if Stewart was bullying Jim Cramer, perhaps you should be asking why no one else – including yourselves – put this story together.  CNBC is a major network, and people touted as experts are lying or misleading their audiences about the markets they are supposed to be illuminating.  And a comedian had to give us the facts.

And what do you do?  You ask if he’s bullying.

Shame on you, NPR.  You should be doing better.  We deserve it.

First president to be remixed into a profanity laced techno song? Almost certainly. Thank you to Remutefor giving us all the best parts of Dreams From My Father set to a thumping bassline.

Pointing out Bill O’Reilly’s gross hypocrisy never gets old, but this video from The Daily Show is extra-special awesome.

I loved So You Think You Can Dance, but force feeding Katy Perry to their captive audience last year was unfair.  This is one of the worst performances I have ever seen by a professional musician, topped only by Gavin Rossdale failing to play the simplest song on Planet Earth – Glycerine – at a concert I went to in high school.  It’s so bad that it’s more memorable than a lot of decent performances.  A year later, and here I am still talking about it.

It’s a crappy song. It’s over-produced and chock full of stiff psuedo-dancing. This one is the real deal.

Why does she have a career, exactly?

But maybe the lesson is that we need less regulation. The attempt to reduce risk to zero is an illusion. Maybe it is better to have the risk more out in the open where investors are much more cautious because the government is not the backstop.

- Russell Roberts, “The Shadow Banking System

As I see it, the crux of the Chicago & Austrian schools of economics’ arguments comes down to two things.

1. Don’t tax me.
2. Don’t legislate the market.

The opposition to any stimulus spending is that it must ultimately be paid for by taxes.  The opposition to regulation is that the market should not be interfered with by the government.  I don’t mean to oversimplify a school of thought in defense of which volumes have been written, but as advocates of the school deny that the market can be successfully manipulated (or even understood), there isn’t a lot of room for theory.  As Marlo put it, “The game be the game.”

Russell Roberts – who has caught my critical eye more than once – wrote today about his reactions to Paul Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.  It’s a good read, and one of Roberts’ few posts not filled with snide remarks in place of reasoned ideas.  He doesn’t attack Krugman on the grounds that he’s Krugman.  Instead, Roberts gives a fairly clear description of his market ideals when it comes to regulation.

In explaining his views, Roberts points clearly to the problem I have with his school of economics: its success requires a world every bit a fantasy as Marx’s Communist utopia.  In the supply-side world, the lack of regulation will reshape the market into a self-policing, transparent economic machine.  It’s an idea that, if such an idealistic world could ever come to pass, might make sense.  That it requires a wholesale change in human nature is where the theory collapses, just as Marx’s Manifesto only works if the majority of human beings suddenly began to care more about community than themselves.

Roberts suggests that transparency would enable the market players themselves to gauge risk without the government telling them what they can and cannot do.  He’s right, too.  Transparency would do exactly what he’s suggesting.  But how to achieve that transparency?

Freed from regulations, how many corporations would not only open their books, but do so in a fashion that precludes stat juking or misdirection?  If a bank is losing money, what’s to stop them from hiding their losses in creative bookkeeping, just as they did in the run-up to this crisis?  The problems facing our financial systems originated in largely un- or under-regulated domains; just look at the havoc caused by the unregulated, privately traded Credit Default Swaps that the market used to hedge against risk.

The fact of the matter is, when corporations were far less regulated – such as at the end of the 19th century – they engaged in all manner of shady practices.  It’s been demonstrated time and again that short-term profit motive is one of the most common and unquenchable desires in the human makeup.  That a lie is unsustainable, that a practice is ultimately destructive, that a bonus today will lead to termination tomorrow; none of this matters if the perceived short term reward is large enough.

Roberts is suggesting that less regulation would lead the market demanding transparency so as to properly assess risk.  I think his suggestion is right, but the market demanding and the market providing are not the same thing.  If there are no legal ramifications for misleading others about the risk you represent, why would a corporation be honest?  The price you pay in the market for misrepresenting yourself is the eventual collapse of your company.  Is this punishment at all meaningful to someone who has already gotten paid large sums of money prior to the discovery of the lie?  If you’ve gotten so rich off of your deception that you no longer need to work, what leverage does the market have against you?

Being rich means less in prison than it does on St. Croix.  Effective regulation gives the public – the entire public, not just market players with enough money to make waves – the power to punish those who execute their positions improperly.  Regulation also puts the onus of investigation onto those with the resources to do it properly.  While a institutional investor has a chance at assessing the risk of an opportunity, individuals looking for somewhere to place their retirement savings  do not.

Think back to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.  What chance did an average citizen have of discovering the conditions under which their meat was stored and processed?  Even if Cargil would allow me to walk through their factories, how am I to afford making such a trip just to ensure I’m not eating rat poop with my pork chop?

Now, imagine a corporate accounting department with CPAs, lawyers and former physics students.  They’re doing everything they can to hide forthcoming losses.  How am I – a simple .Net programmer – going to have any chance of assessing the risk of any investment in that kind of environment?  Will I trust the risk assessment of a third corporation,  hoping that they are both competent and  have no vested interest in misreporting the facts? Or the media, who are now owned by the same corporate interests we ask them to watch?

I believe that Roberts is saying that our current regulatory system has failed.  I agree.  I also agree that transparency is a necessary component to risk assessment.  Here’s my question: How do we demand honest transparency without regulation of some kind?  It would be saner to demand a regulatory system that provides the transparency that the market needs to do its job without further interference.  A world where corporate interests support full transparency is a fantasy, far less likely than one in which government regulation can provide enough oversight to reduce the frequency and scope financial shocks.  Roberts doesn’t trust the government, and I can sympathize, but why he trusts corporations more is a mystery to me.

My government is flawed, cracked and sometimes utterly non-functional.  Yet, I can still vote for its officers.  I can demand changes, fight corruption and support its best efforts.  I need no money, no capital, to have this voice.  Instead, my vote is given freely to me, a right of citizenship that all possess.  Not so with corporations, who have sold the majority of their votes to high-income members of their own world.  My control over my government is weak, but it’s the greatest gift this nation has given me.  It’s a gift no corporation will ever give me, under any circumstances.  If I must choose to trust an institution – and, like it or not, we are forced to do so every day – I choose the one that calls me a citizen, not a customer.

Everyone in the Pittsburgh Area!

This weekend, from Wednesday, January 21 to Sunday, January 25, I will have a short film running in my friend’s show The Body Beautiful.  The show will be at 8 P.M every day except Sunday, when it will be a 3 P.M. matinee.

My film’s short, but it came out OK considering I shot it on 3 hours of sleep.  I’d love if you could come out and see it, but don’t kill yourself if you can’t.  I’ll put it online once the show is closed.

In case you’re interested, it’s called “Pretty Girl” and is my second short film in a row centered around a dead body.  What’s wrong with me?