Mike Huckabee is Being Reasonable

Hey, credit where credit's due. Apparently in an interview (transcript here the Huckster said with regards to Obama and the Reverend Wright comments:

And one other thing I think we've got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Now, I'm no fan of Mike Huckabee, but this is a very reasonable point of view for him to have. Huckabee's also much more environmentally-attuned than a lot of the old-guard evangelical movement, and is ever so slightly more to the left on issues of homosexuality and other social issues. While I certainly would never even begin to consider voting for the man for the presidency, he's a much more positive voice for the religious movement than the older generation, and seeing him as a future leader of that movement is probably a good thing overall.

This just illustrates the larger point that sometimes these kinds of social issues resolve themselves over time, and that civil rights for LGBTQ individuals and the like are pretty much historically inevitable. Which isn't to say that liberals shouldn't be fighting for all our might to gain these rights now, but simply that in fifty years our children and grandchildren will look back at these gay marriage fights the way those of us today look back at the interracial marriage fights of the fifties and sixties.

I'm Behind

I've been feeling under the weather for about the last month. I've been watching a lot of movies and reading books, but I haven't been up to writing full-on reviews. I may be missing one or two, but here's the list of stuff I've missed:

Movies
Patton Oswalt: Werewolves and Lollypops
Redacted
Hard Candy
Wings of Desire
Double Indemnity
Six String Samurai
Undead or Alive
A Fish Called Wanda
Nashville
Catch and Release
Husbands and Wives
South Park: The Imaginationland Trilogy
Lake of Fire
For the Bible Tells Me So
Straw Dogs
The Dallas Connection
Oleanna
Slither
Diary of the Dead

Books
Isaac Asimov presents Invasions
Debatable Space
The Crying of Lot 49
The Final Solution
The Subtle Knife

And probably one or two more I'm missing. Some of these will get full-on reviews (like The Crying of Lot 49 but most of them will either be dealt with in small bundles (the two religious documentaries, for instance) or in miniature capsule reviews. If there's anyone out there who wants a full review of any of the above, though, please leave comments and I'll post as full a review as I can.

Beer Review: Rogue Ales Dad's Malt Liquor

Rogue Ales Dad's Malt Liquor

That's right, while this beer is now retired Rogue Ales at one point made a craft version of a malt liquor. Was it any good?

Appearance: Pours dingy orange yellow into the glass, soapscum head on top. 2.5/5

Smell: Corn-based aroma, slightly bready. A touch of sweetness. Could be any ordinary American Macro Lager. 2.0/5

Taste: Slightly sweet, notes of caramel deep in the highly malted flavor. Some residual sweetness in the aftertaste. I don't think this uses the Pacman yeast that Rogue is so famous for. (Note: I just read the back of the bottle -- this one uses Czech Pils Yeast.) Goes down more smoothly than I anticipated, and is quite pleasant. 3.5/5

Mouthfeel: No discernible carbonation, somewhat thick. Slight hoppiness. 3.0/5

Drinkability: This really isn't a bad beer at all, and I'd go for this before I'd go for a lot of lagers and pilseners. It's by no means a great beer, and six bucks a bomber is a bit pricey, but for an American Malt Liquor this is top-notch. (Not that that's saying much.) 3.0/5

Overall: 2.9/5

Does This Mean Batman's Going to Do a Stooges Routine?

Over at i09, Charlie Jane Anders has a roundup of Batman/Superman teamups, and gives a suggestion for a future version:

So here's how I'd make the dynamic between Superman and Batman more interesting: I'd turn them into Lethal Weapon.

Superman is the cautious one, the straight arrow who does everything by the book despite (or because of) his almost limitless power. Batman is the crazy, out-of-control risktaker who keeps dragging Superman into situations he's not equipped for. Batman is the guy who sends Superman and himself diving into a black hole on a spaceship with one dud engine. He's the one who drags Superman and himself into a nest of trolls, whose magic weapons can hack Superman to pieces. He seems to make impulsive, rash decisions, but always turns out to have a plan. Sort of.

And yes, I know that since Grant Morrison's JLA Batman has been portrayed as the uber-control freak who always plans twenty steps ahead in every situation. But he's also the non-powered guy who dresses up in a bat costume, with his face unprotected, and jumps off rooftops into gunfire every night of the week. He's the crazed, half-suicidal Mel Gibson to Superman's Danny Glover.

As crazy as this sounds, it might actually work if the tone is done just right. I can't say that I'm a huge fan of comic books in general, but I'd probably read this just for the "what the fuck was that?" factor.

Beer Review, Burton's Old Expensive Ale

Burton's Old Expensive Ale, Burton Bridge Brewery

Appearance: This beer nearly leaped out of the bottle at me, likely overcarbonated. First pour leaves huge head that fills up nearly two-thirds of the glass -- after removing some of it I managed to fill up enough of the glass to get an idea of the color and consistency. Dingy brown body, very hazy. Very thick head (obviously), off-white colored. 2.0/5

Smell: Hard to classify. Slightly musty, malty. Reminds me more of a brown ale than an Old Ale. Slightly nutty. No hops in nose. 2.5/5

Taste: Very malty, roasty. A touch of unfermented sugar in the wort I think -- slightly sweet and somewhat cloying. Slightly astringent, not complex at all. 2.0/5

Mouthfeel: Thin, watery. Apparently this one lets all its carbonation out in the original bang, 'cause I'm not getting it in this glass. 2.0/5

Drinkability: I'll finish this one, but this is really a brown ale marketed as an Old Ale. Reclassify it as a brown and it isn't so bad, but this is just a disappointment. 2.0/5

Round Numbers

Mike Dunford over at The Questionable Authority has a post up about the futility of the number 4000.

Somehow or another, I doubt that the parents of the 3683rd soldier to die are somehow injured less than the parents of the 4,000th. I doubt that the parents of the 4010th will feel any differently. And, of course, American soldiers aren't the only ones who have died in the course of this disaster. We don't know how many Iraqis have died. Every estimate that's been published so far has been the subject of some controversy, because the different estimates aren't in complete agreement with each other. After five years, the whole country is still so comprehensively screwed that it's not possible to safely conduct the censuses and surveys needed to come up with an answer that everyone can agree with. The survivors of the family that becomes the collateral damage from an American air strike don't mourn any less than the family of the American soldier killed by friendly fire.

His wife is a military doctor serving in Afghanistan, and he goes on to talk about the "holes" that having a family member in the service leaves in the life of the family. (Dunford has two small children.)

She was home, briefly, for Christmas, then gone again for a few more months. By the time she came back, she'd missed several inches of growth between the two of them and a year of their education. The kids had changed. I'd changed. She'd changed. Fitting everything back together was not easy, and it often wasn't pretty. But we managed. And a little more than a year later, we got to do it all again.

The second time, when she deployed to Iraq, was harder. She'd changed more by the time she got back, we'd changed more, and we had to start dealing with the whole process of putting the family back together again. The whole process wasn't helped by our inability to comprehend why the whole Iraq thing was even necessary to begin with. At least with Afghanistan, we could fall back on the necessity of someone doing something. Even that limited comfort was gone when we dealt with Iraq.

This is the kind of reasoned but emotion-laden stuff that we forget all-too-often when talking about this war, on either side. "The Troops" are not some monolithic entity that are all having the same experience in Iraq or Afghanistan, and pretending that they're all poor kids scared to death, not caring about the overall mission, and just trying to get home in one piece or even that they are all noble gentle(wo)man soldiers fighting for a noble cause in the face of adversity for what may be a pointless conflict is overly simplistic.

The soldiers are people, first and foremost. They have varying opinions about what the best option for the future of Iraq (or Afghanistan) is, and have gone through varying experiences there. War is an incredibly serious thing, and if we could all stop chanting slogans long enough to listen to people like Dunford and others who either have themselves or had family members in these conflicts, then maybe we could actually come to some kind of reasonable consensus on the best option for the future.

Go read the whole thing.

Movielog, 3:10 to Yuma

3:10 to Yuma, 1957
Written by Halsted Welles
Based on a story by Elmore Leonard
Directed by Delmer Daves
92 minutes

A weathered old rancher (Van Heflin) is rustling cattle with his two sons, when a stagecoach carrying bars of gold is robbed by a gang of robbers run by the famous Ben Wade (Glenn Ford). Wade's an agreeable kind of guy, asking politely for the money and only killing when the stagecoach driver pulls his weapon first. He takes the old man's horses, but only so they won't follow him, and agrees to set them loose near town.

The rancher's name is Dan Evans, and his farm is thirsting to death -- they're in the midst of a drought, and his cattle and family are slowly starving to death. Witnessing a murder is a terrible thing, sure, but as he says, you have to witness all kind of terrible things every day. In his words you feel the conviction of this bleak attitude towards life, which his wife doesn't quite share. She thinks he should have done something about the robbery, although she doesn't know quite what he could have done.

The robber is living large. He and his gang go to the nearest town and are served drinks by the pretty young bartender. He reports the robbery to the town marshal, although he doesn't fess up to it himself, and when the rest of the gang hightails it to move on to the next location, he sticks around and charms the young woman -- if there's anything this thief lacks, it isn't charisma.

Of course, sticking around was a bad move, because he's quickly recognized and put under arrest by the local law enforcement. And the rancher agrees to take part in an audacious plan to get him onto the train to Yuma, not so much for the ideals of it but for the $200 he's promised in exchange for the dangerous assignment.

It's funny how much plot there is in the above, because the various machinations of the storyline really only exist to get the two men into a closed motel room, with Wade trying to tempt Evans into letting him go free. It's a tempting argument, as Wade at one point offers $10,000 just to drop the gun and let him walk out of the door.

There's not much to say here without ruining the pleasures of the film, but in the performances of these two (and the supporting players, such as Leora Dana as Evans' wife, and Henry Jones as the lovable town drunk) the film comes alive, and as the tension mounts and Wade's gang gets closer, we find out what really drives these men.

It's a common complaint about 3:10 to Yuma that it ends rather anticlimactically, but the truth is that not much would be gained with a lengthy shootout. Everything that needs to be said is said, and you can read the subtext in the faces of the leads.

This film was remade last year with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in the lead roles, and having seen the 1957 version I'm very interested in seeing what the more modern filmmakers can do with it. I'll see it soon and movielog it when I do.

Beer Review -- Rogue Kells Irish Style Lager

Rogue Kells Irish Style Lager

Appearance: Pours light orange, yellow-tinged, with a small but persistent white head. Highly carbonated and quite effervescent. 4.0/5

Smell: Very sweet, somewhat malty. No notes of corn. Reminds me more of an amber from the nose than a Euro Pale Lager. Slightly citrusy, almost like... grapefruit? Complex, rewarding, much better than expected. 4.5/5

Taste: Crisp, clean, slight notes of corn here but basically just a sweet lager. Hops are present but the don't exert themselves. Sweetness is a bit cloying on the finish, but it doesn't stick around and makes me want another taste. Quite nice. 3.5/5

Mouthfeel: Moderately thick. Goes down smooth and silky. Not watery, but thin. The carbonation is quite mild. 3.5/5

Drinkability: Rogue's website claims this is 5% ABV. This would make a nice session beer. Quite drinkable. 4.0/5

Predictable

I knew as soon as I saw that news item about the "fossilized dinosaur" that creationist organizations would start having a field day with it. Especially since the original press release includes the words "rapid burial." Grab the clue stick -- just because an ancient fossil indicates rapid burial doesn't mean that it died in Noah's Flood.

So why the date of 65 (or 67) million years?2 Hoganson explained, “[The Badlands are] one of the few places in the world where you can actually see the boundary line where the dinosaurs became extinct, the time boundary. In the Badlands, this layer is exposed in certain places.” Hoganson is referring to the K–T extinction boundary, which allegedly divides the Cretaceous Period from the Tertiary Period in the fossil record and marks the extinction of the dinosaurs. Thus, the team must date the find as at least 65 million years old—despite any evidence otherwise—just so it lines up with evolutionary theory and the uniformitarian understanding of the fossil record.

That "uniformitarian understanding" is based on particle physics that has been known for at least a century and has withstood literally thousands (if not hundred of thousands) of direct tests. Scientists aren't "assuming" the age of the fossil any more than you are "assuming" that I was born more than ten and less than two hundred years ago.

That said, we find a few flaws in assigning this date to Dakota—and it’s important to remember that that’s what scientists do: assign dates based on circumstantial evidence. Fossils don’t come stamped with exact dates!3

Depends on what you mean by "exact" -- creationist blustering about the ineffectiveness of radiometric dating is so overblown as to be ridiculous.

The scientists explain how Dakota must have been “buried rapidly.” That is exactly the explanation creation scientists give, but we have a clear, global explanation for the millions of fossils we have, which are time and time again shown to have been buried rapidly and catastrophically: the Flood of Noah’s day, which unleashed catastrophes worldwide and covered the world in water for a year. Starting from this viewpoint, we can make sense of these many fossils buried rapidly and recently—just a few thousand years ago.

Making shit up is so much easier than actually trying to understand the world, isn't it? And scientists do have a clear explanation for why so many fossils are buried relatively rapidly -- if they weren't buried rapidly, we wouldn't find them at all, or at least not at that level of preservation. It's a form of the anthropic principle.

Ultimately, this news shows us once again that science is beholden to one’s worldview. In this case, as in many, the old ages required by the fossil record—which are in turn required by the time line evolutionary theory needs—dictate the dating of the fossil. Starting from Scripture, we have the answers that explain why we find millions of fossils laid down catastrophically in rock layers all over the earth: the global Flood that the Bible describes.

I'm not going to bother detailing them, but anyone who isn't familiar with these issues should head on over to talkorigins.org to check out all of the scientific problems with a global flood. When Larry Moran wrote his post on people being fractally wrong, this is what he was talking about.

Beer Review -- Ettaler Curator Dunkler Dopplebock

Ettaler Curator Dunkler Dopplebock

I believe I picked this up at either Riverside or Greenlife in Chattanooga.

Appearance: Thick brown syrupy body, very minimal head. Approximately appropriate for-style. 4.0/5

Smell: Very sweet, malty, nutty. Slight astringency due to high alcohol. Smells more like an eisbock than a dopplebock to me. 3.5/5

Taste: Rich mahogany nut brown. Deep. Notes of chocolate and coffee buried way down under. Strongly alcoholic and with quite a bit of unfermented sugar -- this is a very sweet beer. Grows on me instead of becoming cloying. 4.0/5

Mouthfeel: Like a mix of water and syrup. (Maybe like a simple sugar?) Runs across the tongue and down the throat like velvet, swishes around the tongue easily. 4.0/5

Drinkability: Dangerously so, given the alcohol. I'm not always the biggest fan of dopplebocks, but this one is really quite nice for the style. 4.0/5

Overall Rating: 3.9/5