World Without End

If
you loved Pillars of the Earth and want to read 1000 pages full of
great characters revolving around medieval life in a growing English
town, re-read Pillars of the Earth and save yourself the slight
disappointment from reading World Without End.


World Without End would be a good book on it's own, but when it is
inevitably compared to Ken Follet's masterpiece Pillars of the Earth,
it falls way short. The characters in World Without End are strikingly
similar to their ancestors from Pillars of the Earth, but not as
fleshed out or likable. You never really find out what motivates most
of the main characters. And as with Pillars, Ken Follett tried to make
the plot drive around a great construction project, but for some
reason, I never knew if it was the bridge, or the hospital, or the
tower, and I never really cared. It seemed to me the book could be
summed up by saying: a group of the main characters get together in a
public place, they argue, a poor decision is made by some bureaucrat,
something bad happens as the result, some people have sex, some people
die, repeat for 1000 pages.



An O.K. book, but not great like Pillars of the Earth

The The Impotence of Proofreading

Revolutionary Road

I just watched Revolutionary Road.  What a horrible mess of a movie.  It was well done, well acted, and so well directed, I give it 7 out of 10 for the production value, but the plot was miserable.  Not miserable meaning it didn't make sense, but miserable because the characters were such miserable people.  I started out liking the movie but the more it dragged on the more I hated it.  As with most movies, after the first act, I thought it was an interesting story, and I should hold my judgment  until it was over.  After the second act, I was still thinking, not too bad, but could be better.  Even halfway through the last act I felt the film had some redeeming value.  But in the last scene where the husband of the realtor turns his hearing aid down, I was struck with the total piece of work the director was shoveling, and I fucking hated it.   I would recommend having a medical procedure done over watching this movie.   Booooooo

Good Riddance Al Gore

From the Guardian

After eight long, tiresome years, President Al Gore won't be missed. Even if he did save the planet

No one thought Al Gore would be a loveable president, but, after eight years in the White House, he has gotten truly tiresome. The droning voice, the purchase of an eco-friendly robot dog, the campaign for carbon-free diamonds - all these things were hard to take, and he has been way too smug about reversing global warming. I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction, especially in light of the glacier that recently crushed Wasilla.

I think I started to dislike Gore when he stirred up a media storm after the Feds broke up the terrorist ring conspiring to fly airplanes into buildings back in 2001. He could have let it pass quietly, as Bill Clinton did with the millennium plot arrests in 2000. Instead, Gore held a press conference to milk it for political gain and scare us into a 15 cent per gallon gas tax. But who can afford to pay over a dollar and a half per gallon? No wonder we're resorting to electric cars these days.

And why did he pressure the universally admired Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to step down early in 2002? Replacing him with that old warhorse Paul Volcker was a nasty surprise, especially when Volcker choked off a promising housing boom in 2002 and imposed old, outdated regulations on lenders. Some properties lost as much as 8% of their value that year. Now housing prices are rising really slowly, and GDP barely grew by 3% this year.

To be sure, Gore did accomplish some good things in foreign policy. The Middle East is definitely better off now that Israel and Palestine are separate states. It was clever to transfer the most diehard West Bank settlers to the Gore Biosphere in North Dakota. But in Iraq, even after the demise of Saddam from virulent salmonella, Qusay has proved to be no more agreeable than his father, and Uday is simply out of control. (Grinding up the players of the national football team and roasting the remains on a stadium-sized spit was the nadir of his coaching.) When a group of foreign-policy luminaries - from Bill Kristol to Paul Wolfowitz and Kenneth Pollack - urged Gore to invade Iraq and remake the entire Middle East, the president didn't even listen. That's rude.

Then, of course, there were the countless scandals and ethics problems. Recall that in 2003 a department of justice official failed to report receiving a bottle of Bordeaux wine from the French government, even though experts agree that its value would be in excess of the amount permitted as a gift. Then there was the case of politicising federal agencies, when Gore officials were accused of changing the wording in a report on global warming to say that it was a "severe" rather than a "serious" threat. The Republicans held hearings on that for weeks.

Of course, the biggest disappointment was Gore's failure to handle Hurricane Katrina properly. Not only did the massive evacuation of New Orleans prove a costly and time-consuming overreaction, since the levees - fortified in 2003 - held up fine. The emergency management agency also took over 24 hours to set up trailers for evacuees along the Gulf Coast, leaving them without government housing assistance for a full day. And Gore's decision to single-handedly venture into a flattened house in Mississippi and free a trapped two-year-old showed him to be an irresponsible showboat. Sure, President Gore knows CPR, hears like a German shepherd, and has the strength of 10 men - but we didn't need to see it.

All in all, the Gore combination of psychodrama and condescension won't be missed. It's also time for the Democrat stranglehold on power to end. What we need now is a bit of adult behaviour: a Dick Cheney presidency won't be eventful, but at least it will be calm.

It's Not Easy Being Cheesy