My high school, which had been around long enough for my mother to attend it, had never officially acknowledged Martin Luther King Day, up until my senior year. A few words from my favorite teacher, and I was resolved to change that.
Mr. DeBarthe had been pointedly relegated to the classroom that was as far as one could get from the principal’s office and still physically be in the school. He was a Mormon with an elaborate mustache and no beard, fond of wearing Hawaiian print shirts, especially one that said “Tahiti” on the pocket. He went on archaeological digs. He coached the chess team. HIs grading system was difficult for many students to understand. He refused to answer yes or no questions. He could draw a perfect circle on the blackboard, and he often came up with reasons to do so.
My first real interaction with Mr. DeBarthe happened when I was taking a journalism class my sophomore year. I was writing an article about the chess team, which regularly attended the national high school chess championship tournament, despite paltry support from the district. Mr. DeBarthe had some inflammatory things to say about the school board, and I put them in the article. The journalism teacher refused to accept my assignment, insisting that no teacher in his right mind would make such a statement if he knew it was going to be printed and distributed to the administration. I returned to Mr. DeBarthe, explained that we were talking on the record, and asked if he wanted to change his quote. I read it back to him.
“I was being too kind,” he said, and gave me another quote, twice as inflammatory. Upon hearing about this, the journalism teacher threw up his hands, and the quote went into the paper.
I resolved to spend as much time as possible in Mr. DeBarthe’s classroom for the remainder of my high school career. Read the rest of this entry »
A few weeks ago, my social media feeds were full of updates from friends and acquaintances who were thrilled with the “repeal” of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Most of these people are, like me, heterosexual and with no experience or interest in military service. One friend tweeted that she was excited to be in the vicinity of the Capitol building when the historic repeal took place.
I remember the advent of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 1993, when I was in college at the crest of the wave of political correctness that had gay activists, among activists of many other kinds, protesting on campus constantly. It seemed that no political event, local or national, was too small to provoke a march or an angry public speech.
I suppose it’s possible that there were protests over DADT, but I don’t remember any. I do remember a gay friend shrugging as he explained that DADT was a compromise policy. Clinton had campaigned on the promise to let gays into the military, other forces convened to block him, and DADT was what emerged.
Much anti-DADT rhetoric of late implies that DADT is the problem in itself; as if, without it, the US would have a military in which sexual orientation was not an issue. This is not true. Read the rest of this entry »
Rubicon, the espionage thriller that was the best new show since Breaking Bad, has been canceled after only one glorious season. According to polling systems that were antiquated and stupid even when Eisenhower was president, the show has been shown to be popular with the wrong age group: viewers over 50.
The original Tron (1982) was not a great movie. But it articulated some ideas that were big at the time, and thus came to be widely remembered as better than it actually was. The central conceit – that a man can be transported inside of a computer, and interact with programs as if they were people – was a ready-made fantasy for a generation of children who came to believe that global technological advances were directly tied to their own journey into adulthood.
The original Tron was the story of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a professional programmer, hacker, championship video gamer, video game arcade owner, lady’s man and general wise-ass. In short, he was exactly the type of adult that every geekboy wanted to grow up to be. Flynn lived in an apartment above his arcade, with windows around the perimeter, through which he could look down on the gamers. It was the sort of thing that makes sense to those who have many years to speculate about what their own future dwelling-place is going to be like. Read the rest of this entry »
One thing about conventional media piracy: movies, TV, music, etc. The creators of the content are always attributed. You don’t ever see, for example, pirated movies in which those meddlesome opening credits have been edited out, or a music blog proclaiming “These songs sound good; download them,” without any mention of the band. On the contrary, the culture of piracy is rife with excitement about the quality of what’s being exchanged. It’s common to find a gushing review of a film, and links to download it for free, on the same site.
All this is by way of saying that, regardless of your feelings about piracy, stealing content and then re-deploying it without attribution is a crime at a whole other level. Today I got an unexpected taste of this. Read the rest of this entry »
