Some very quick options before I run into a meeting:
- For The First Time Since 1938, A January Hurricane Has Formed In The Atlantic — Yeah… I don’t know about global climate change, but it sure seems to be changing in the Atlantic…
- Senators propose 5 percent pay hike for state employees — Senators were Jackson and Courson. There were other things in the proposal too, I believe, but I guess the pay increase grabs attention.
- 2016 Oscar Nominations Are Announced: ‘The Revenant,’ ‘Mad Max’ Get Most Nods — OK, I saw “Mad Max” in the theater. Please tell me what was so awesome about it. Maybe it was something subtle, although believe me, the folks who made this one weren’t really into subtlety…
- Ahead of the Debate, Seven Goals for Seven Candidates — So we’ve got that coming up tonight.
- Jakarta attacks: Islamic State says it was responsible — They mean ISIL. Those jerks will claim responsibility for anything, if it’s horrible enough.
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Alan Rickman, Actor Known for ‘Harry Potter,’ Dies — Bryan sent me an IM via Twitter to say, “Alan Rickman died, and I’m in Court today. You should blog about this because I can’t. Consider it a guest blog that you do, yourself. Great actor.” To me, he was the one bright spot in the embarrassing “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”
And if you’ve got something else, let’s hear it…
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It was Rickman’s wonderful send-up of action movie villains that made him the bright spot in the Robin Hood flick:
I mean, this dude was bad. But also needy, in a time of stress…
Just as Weird Al’s “Eat It” was vastly more engaging and witty than the song it lampooned, Mel Brooks’ version of “Robin Hood” was way better than the film it mocked:
Another great one: “…and call off Christmas.”
I wasn’t a big fan,but he died without ever becoming a caricature of himself,like so many aging rock stars;
From,Falcon and the Snowman-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJRF8xGzvj4
If I were a 69-year-old British celebrity with cancer, I’d be very worried right now — since that describes both Rickman and Bowie…
That is, if I were a 69-year-old British celebrity with cancer who was also superstitious…
yeah,well
Check out a fairly recent film that Rickman directed and played a part in, called “A Little Chaos.” Not to everyone’s taste, but certainly to Brad’s.
Obviously, Rickman was like me in this respect: If I directed a movie and it had a king in it, I’d play the king or know the reason why…
The debates are now modeled after, American Idol
that’s been done.it’s next to impossible to have an original idea..
that’s been done.it’s next to impossible to have an original idea
2. Here would be a great way to boost wages. Give state employees a substantial raise, as was the case every year until very recently. That would apply upward pressure on private sector employers to give raises in order to compete. If this occurred in all the states the economy would be humming along in no time. What’s more there are plenty of things to do, highway construction and maintenance for example, so it isn’t like this is welfare. Ultimately the state’s coffers would be replenished by the stimulative effect. Seems like a win, win for everybody.
Let’s assume that your plan is engaged, so now all state employees are paid a whole bunch. How does this affect what I am willing to pay my secretary (and what she’ll accept as wages) to answer the phone, file stuff, and keep the paperclips untangled?
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t affect that relationship because the state government doesn’t have an unlimited amount of jobs to dole out. My secretary can’t go get a job from the state government that isn’t there. You can pay everyone in the state government more, but unless you’re going to hire a huge new group of people away from the private sector and massively increase the government’s employee base (and therefor the payroll) then you’re not going to affect the private sector one whit.
Now, if you had an unlimited amount of job openings, and the State of South Carolina was going to guarantee a job to anyone who applied then…sure I guess you could essentially put in a de facto wage floor.
Bryan, I appreciate your thoughtful response. Even if what you’re saying is true increased state employee wages would stimulate the economy by increasing the amount of disposable income available to lower wage workers. After all most state employees make less than $40k. But I also think this approach would be most effective if more state employees are hired. Nationally hundreds of thousands of state workers have been lost over the past 8 years. Time to bring them back to do the important infrastructure work the nation so desperately needs. In that case your secretary might consider looking elsewhere if you don’t treat her right. (Which in your case is probably not so.) But it will keep other employers on their toes.
“That would apply upward pressure on private sector employers to give raises in order to compete.”
Compete. Good one! The private sector already competes with the public sector for talent. I wonder which side wins that battle?
I would LOVE to see the opportunity to compete with the public sector. Let’s put let a private entity compete for running the state’s Department of Transportation and see if we can get roads fixed instead of spending millions on projects that are politically connected. Maybe we could get some innovation, motivation, and action.
Yes, you can always get action when you don’t have to consider the views of people who disagree with you.
As for your “I wonder which side wins that battle?” The private sector does, as long as it continues to pay more money.
The main attractions of the private sector are 1) getting paid more, and 2) lack of accountability — you CAN do whatever you want, especially if you’re the boss. By contrast, public sector bosses have a lot of other bosses, including lots of people who don’t see things the way they do at all — and THAT is a big drawback to public service.
Of course, the private sector doesn’t ALWAYS pay more — newspapers never did. But journalism offers much the same thing that government service does… the opportunity to provide a public service. That’s why I did it, anyway. That, and the fact that it was THE thing I was best at. And there’s little satisfaction in working at something that doesn’t make the best use of your abilities…
Lack of accountability in the private sector? You’re joking, right? The bagel shop where my daughter works has fired more people for poor performance in a year than I bet the entire state government. You have to go to jail to lose a government job.
Well- close.
I worked in state government in South Carolina for 6 years until I left to go to a similar job in the private sector.
It’s very, very, VERY hard to get fired as a state employee. I agree with you. I saw it every day. Yes, they do create jobs for people rather than fire them. I’ve seen that happen and if this wasn’t a public site, I could name names (not that anyone would likely know them).
at the same time, a lot of state employees work very, very hard and do sacrificed higher pay for stability and job security. I could also name a number of state employees that work extremely hard and are taken for granted by their departments and their area directors because state government doesn’t provide the resources to reward hard, dedicated workers that go way above and beyond for the public.
“Yes, they do create jobs for people rather than fire them.”
And I’ve seen that many times in the private sector. Yes, even at newspapers, back in the day when they could afford such things. Not any more, though. For that matter, probably not in the past 20 years.
But at a company that is flush and doing well and expects to keep doing well, sure — you’ll find people like that. And if something can be found for them where they’re actually making a contribution, it’s not such a bad thing.
I’ve never been at a private sector company that made a habit of promoting people to supervisory positions when they could not cut it in a line job like I personally witnessed in the agency I worked at in South Carolina.
I have seen private sector companies hire someone based on their name and put them in an easy job because they weren’t qualified. But of course this happens in state government too.
There’s also another version of that, in which jobs are created for people because they’re just that good and you want to keep them.
That happened — ahem — to me early in my career, when I worked at The Jackson Sun in Tennessee. I was competing with Jeff Wilson for the state politics position being vacated by John Parish, then the dean of Tennessee political writers (John was leaving to be press secretary to newly elected Gov. Lamar Alexander — this wasn’t so much a move up for John as it was a case of his agreeing to join the administration to add some heft and gravitas.)
Jeff got the job. But rather than leaving me to stew in the Gibson County bureau, Editor and Publisher Reid Ashe created a special assignments job in which I roamed Tennessee — and sometimes other places, such as when I went up to cover Howard Baker in the Iowa caucuses — and pretty much wrote about whatever I wanted to. Which was better than covering the legislature.
So I happily stayed. After a couple of years of that, I became news editor, which at that paper meant supervising all the news-side reporters, and stayed another five years… So it worked.
I tell this story to say that there were probably SOME people who resented my special status and thought I was dead weight, only filing stories as I felt like it. But Reid considered me to be a star (hey, that was HIS opinion), and that’s why he created the position.
I have to take some issue with you, Bud, as a now retired state employee. In my nearly 30 years with the state, I cannot recall ANY time that we got substantial raises every year as you suggest (especially not “very recently”. There were many years where we, at best, got a raise something close to the cost-of-living index (mostly back in the ’90s), a good number of years we got no raise at all for several years running, and, at least twice at Clemson, saw our salaries involuntarily
reduced for the better part of a year (and that reduction was never replaced).
I can’t really speak to the impact of state salaries on the private sector. For most of my time with the state, the leave and retirement benefits were the main attraction. While I was never in management in the private sector like Brad, my 10 years working in radio and TV in SC before joining the state got me maybe seven days of vacation a year, no sick or family leave and no employer retirement contributions.
I agree with the idea of higher wages for state employees but disagree that it would work as you describe
1) state employees haven’t had a “substantial raise” in a long time. I know. I was one for 6 years and I am best friends with one that is now in his 23rd year. We discuss this on a regular basis.
He’s ok with it now because he only puts in about 28 hours a week of his 37.5 hour work week.
Why? He gives them their fair share of what they pay him for – and that’s not 37.5 hours a week.
2) Most private sector employers already pay more than similar jobs in state government. I know that because – “‘I’ve been there and one that.”
I’ve probably said it before, but Mad Max told a very, very simple story that has been carved on rocks since people started carving words on rocks.
“The great king rode out to battle. The great king fell. The victor rode into the city.”
There have been hundreds of crappy epic movies that told us about every possible side of that story in the grandest, most tedious scales. You just have to have the the love interest, the political infighting, the clash of empires, the uniting of empires, “FREEDOM!” speeches, etc.
Not many movies bothered to think about the drama that must have gone on between that first period of those words on the stone carving and the beginning of that next sentence. That’s what set Fury Road apart. It takes place before the old usurper story became a common motif. It’s as basic as hunting a leopard and the last thing most people would have thought of if they were making a post-apoc movie.
Instead Miller made a pre-epoch movie. That’s kind of refreshing.
Well, you just went way over my head. I’m not following what you mean by “pre-epoch.”
All I remember is extreme action — ridiculous action, of the “top THIS, fellow directors” variety — and a good bit of off-putting imagery that served to say to me, “You wouldn’t want to live in this world. You don’t even want to visit it.”
One of the most off-putting things to me in modern cinema is extreme, UNREALISTIC action. It has ruined many a film for me, from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to “The Avengers.” And I wanted so much to love both. Contrast two Joss Whedon works: “Firefly” vs. “The Avengers.” “Firefly” is sci-fi, but the action is on a human scale. “The Avengers” is CGI.
Give me action in which, if the hero punches a guy, even once, he breaks his hand. Which is what tends to happen if you hit someone with a naked, closed fist.
The very limit of action, the most extreme acceptable, is Jackie Chan, who you know actually DOES those things. Or “Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior.”
In terms of action, I’d like to dial the movie industry back to about 1963, when Steve McQueen (or his double) jumping that barbed-wire fence on a motorcycle was THE most impressive thing most of us had ever seen in a movie.
That said, I would not go back to that time in other respects. The acting and direction back then was usually uniformly awful.
If you throw a punch you have to land from the eye down. If someone is throwing a punch at you you have to drop your forehead.
It’s all physics. Just sayin’.
I prefer the Miyagi defense to punching.
Actually, as I learned from bitter experience, you want to hit in the body. An ideal spot — an up-angled shot to the “floaters” — the bottom ribs.
That happened to me kickboxing when I failed to keep my elbows down to protect my torso.
This was in my one and only sparring match, when I was 47 years old, from which I learned two things: First, when you’re wearing boxing gloves, you can take shots to the face and head all day. I don’t even remember feeling those blows, which surprised me. Second, you don’t EVER want to get hit in the floaters.
It broke four of my ribs — two on the spot where I was hit, and two others on the other side of my body, from the overall shock to the ribcage.
Oh, I learned a THIRD thing — don’t ever spar with a construction worker who is 20 years younger, 40 pounds heavier, has several inches of reach on you, and who obviously doesn’t know that “sparring” doesn’t mean “hit the other guy as hard as you can”…
Actually, I took it beyond that. I never sparred with anyone after that. I stuck to the kinds of kickboxing classes that emphasized cardio fitness…
Truly Madly Deeply and Galaxy Quest are my favorites.
Good thing Brad listens to me, huh?
By the way those are both good calls. He was also great as the fussy British wine-snob in Bottle Shock.
The top has to be Die Hard, though. He makes that movie. It’s one of the few action movies where almost all of the great quotes are from the bad guy. Hans Gruber has to be one of the top five all-time bad guys. It’s a Caskey tradition to watch Die Hard every Christmas, since it’s such a great Christmas movie.
Later, he played Snape in all the Harry Potter movies, and pulled off that role with wonderful malevolence.
He was a great actor who happens to be in most of my favorite movies.
His subtle performance in Love Actually was also very good.
As one person on Twitter said: “He’s starred in the best Christmas movie ever (Die Hard) and the worst Christmas movie ever (Love, Actually)”.
Pretty funny, although I have to admit that the Caskey family does enjoy Love, Actually.
I am a big fan of Love Actually. My favorite scene is when the Walking Dead guy reveals his love for Keira Knightly and then later does the “dropping cue cards while Christmas carol plays” bit.
Plus the British guy who goes to the U.S. to find hot girls and meets the hat trick of babes in the bar.. and then comes back with Shannon Elizabeth? Winning!
Yeah, I like it. He didn’t have the best line, though. That was the prime minister saying to Thatcher’s portrait, “YOU have this kind of problem? Yeah… of course you did, you saucy minx!”
Love Actually is one of our favorites Christmas movies, and until he died, I didn’t realize that he was the villain from DieHard, which speaks to his talent, I suppose.
My favorite scene is the Colin Firth proposal scene, with Hugh Grant’s door-to-door search a close second.
I love the Gift Wrap Scene.
“No! No bloody holly!“
By Grabthar’s Hammer, Alan Rickman shall be avenged!
Ironically, I watched a bit of that just the other night…
He said that line with such weariness at the store dedication, and then with such tenderness to the dying young alien that worshiped him. He was a master of subtlety in acting.
I’ll take the bait on #1.
You can’t ascribe a single event to climate change. And it’s not a question as to whether the climate is changing. It is. There’s plenty of evidence for it. Alex may be a part of that evidence, or it may not. Oceans absorb heat from our atmosphere and hold it longer, allowing it to build up, which would indicate more frequent and stronger storms.
Even without considering climate change, this hurricane is interesting (to weather buffs, anyway) for a lot more than its forming in January. It formed much further north than most hurricanes due (it began almost due east of Charleston). It formed in the western Atlantic rather than off the coast of Africa. According to NOAA, it’s going to turn pretty hard to the north. And it may still be hurricane force when it gets to 50° N–about the same latitude as Newfoundland or Paris. Storms generally don’t retain hurricane strength in the North Atlantic. It’s remarkable that there’s enough heat in the ocean that far north to keep it churning. Alex is an anomaly for all of those characteristics.
Movies have become a cherished ‘art form’.Everything else is free.
wiki-
Literacy: the ability to read and interpret the written word. What is post-literacy? It is the condition of semi-literacy, where most people can read and write to some extent, but where the literate sensibility no longer occupies a central position in culture, society, and politics. Post-literacy occurs when the ability to comprehend the written word decays. If post-literacy is now the ground of society questions arise: what happens to the reader, the writer, and the book in post-literary environment? What happens to thinking, resistance, and dissent when the ground becomes wordless?