Blackmoor Vituperative

I think people who persist in clinging to theories that have been soundly refuted by facts should not be called “economists”: they should be called “philosophers”. The consensus among economists is that raising the minimum wage has little or no effect upon employment — because the evidence demonstrates that it does not. The reasons why that is the case are varied, but a major one is that at the lowest-paid end of the employment spectrum, the demand for labor is inelastic. If it takes three people to perform a task, paying them $10/hr won’t make the task require fewer people.

The chart above shows the results of more than 1,400 different studies. The x-axis shows the size of the employment effect, and the y-axis shows that statistical power of the analysis.

The results have clustered around the finding that a moderate wage increase — in line with the administration’s proposal to increase the minimum rate in 95-cent increments — has zero effect on total employment. And the higher a study’s statistical power, the more likely it is to fall on the line showing zero effect.

“I really think that’s a very compelling takeaway,” said Hall, who has testified before multiple state legislatures on the issue. “It puts the lie to the notion that it’s going to be a tremendous job killer.”

(From 1,400 Real World Minimum Wage Increases Show No Impact on Employment, Fiscal Times

Personally, I would go with $15/hr. There is no reason in the world that taxpayers should be footing the bill to make up for the below-subsistence wages paid by employers like Wal-Mart (Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance). Increase the minimum wage to a responsible level and put the cost of doing business on the business, where it belongs.

Systematically oppressing the bulk of a population is not only morally indefensible, but terribly short-sighted. There are not enough firearms in this country to protect the rich (or just the reasonably comfortable) from the poor, if the poor decide they’ve had enough. Personally, I’d favor raising the minimum wage to $15/hr, eliminating loopholes that allow employers to pay even less than the minimum wage, and then pegging it to the Consumer Price Index (although someone should take a close look at how CPI is calculated to make sure that’s not being manipulated).

I was at a restaurant once, and the widescreen TVs were set to non-widescreen stations, with the image squashed vertically (or stretched horizontally, potayto potahto) to fit. That was bad enough. But then the show itself had a person standing in front of a TV (it was some kind of “news” show or something), and THAT TV was a widescreen TV showing a squashed 4:3 image.

How can anyone not notice how wrong this is?

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? STOP DOING IT!

I do not paint miniatures anymore. It takes me a very long time, and I simply have too many projects as it is.

Still, by the time I stopped, I think I had gotten pretty good at it. Below are the painted figures I have held on to, from oldest to newest. The oldest was painted in the early 1990s. The most recent was painted in 2009 or so.

How many of you remember with fondness the 1973 “Dr. Phibes’ Abominable Christmas Special”?

“Twelve signs of the zodiac. Twelve apostles. Twelve times, twelve! The human body has twelve cranial nerves, Doctor. … I will now play the Twelve Days Of Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho.”
(from “Dr. Phibes’ Abominable Christmas Special”, 1973)

Dr. Phibes’ Abominable Christmas Special was a Christmas-themed television special starring Vincent Price broadcast December 23, 1973 on ABC. It featured guest star Joseph Cotten in a reprisal of his role as Dr. Vesalius from The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Also guest starring were Virginia North as Vulnavia, Billie Hayes as Witchiepoo from “H.R. Pufnstuf”, Tim Conway, Roz Kelly, Florence Henderson, rock band Pink Floyd, Billy Barty, Betty White and, in an unbilled surprise appearance, Sonny and Cher (whose own Christmas episode of the hit show “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” had been broadcast on CBS four days earlier, on December 19, 1973).

The 1983 Japanese LaserDisc release is the only issue of this special on disc due to the rights issues involved with the various characters and musical performances. The special was announced for DVD release in 2002 but then cancelled when rights could not be obtained, and Disney now claims rights clearances are impossible.

I was feeling wacky, so I made this.

The ReThink Prize is offering $1,000 each for the ten best secular commandments, as determined by a panel of judges. The prize is promoting a new book, Atheist Mind Humanist Heart, which promotes a vision of atheism as positive and ethical rather than negative and reactive. Here are ten “commandments” I thought of, although I did not bother submitting them for the contest. It’s just a thought experiment.

1. Be kind to everyone, even when your kindness is not reciprocated.
2. Seek the company of people who appreciate and inspire you.
3. Avoid confrontation, and those who seek it, when possible.
4. Defend yourself and others with violence, when necessary, but take no joy in it.
5. Be generous, even when there is no possibility of your generosity being reciprocated.
6. Do not take what is not freely offered.
7. Be useful, to the best of your ability.
8. Create something beautiful, to the best of your ability.
9. Be worthy of the trust of others.
10. Be true to yourself.

I think that’s a pretty good list, but I don’t think it’s terribly innovative. Desiderata is better.

If I could have gone to eleven, I would have added something about being a good steward for nature, but I ran out of commandments.

Tonight’s film fun was Lifeforce, starring Steve Railsback, Mathilda May, Peter Firth, and a host of others. This is one of my all-time favourite movies, and unlike some movies from the 1980s, this is every bit as great now as it was the first time I saw it. Maybe even more so, since this is the Shout! Factory director’s cut on Blu-ray.

I just can’t express how awesome I think this movie is. Everyone is so perfectly cast. Steve Railback as the shell-shocked astronaut fighting his involuntary obsession with the Space Girl is perfect. Mathilda May as the Space Girl communicates through body language and expressions a range I am not sure any living actor could match. Peter Firth as the SAS colonel is as cool as James Bond and just a little bit pervy. Frank Finlay as the death-obsessed biologist is amusingly quirky and detached as only an English actor can be.

How could this movie have failed at the box office? Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakob on the script, John Dykstra on special effects, Henry Mancini on the soundtrack, Tobe Hooper at the helm… this is undoubtedly one of the best science fiction movies of the 1980s, and absolutely the best movie Golan-Globus ever produced. I have not yet watched the extensive special features, but I am looking forward to it.

THANK YOU, Shout Factory, for bringing this long-awaited director’s cut to Blu-ray!

A friend who has daughters shared with me this article about a guy who bought a Justice League board game to play with his daughter, only to find out there that there wasn’t a single female superhero in the game. Seriously?

I find it baffling that there are so few female characters in superhero movies, and that those few seem to get left out of the merchandising so often. I assume that women who like superheroes like female superheroes, and I know that guys like female superheroes (Black Widow was the best thing about the second Iron Man movie). So who is it at these marketing companies that keeps making the bone-head decision to drop Wasp from the Avengers but keep Hawkeye (a character so lame that he’s become the poster-child for ostensibly sexist comicbook art, overlooking the fact that any art with Hawkeye in it looks ridiculous), or to leave Gamorra out of the Guardians Of The Galaxy merchandise? We, the people who buy this stuff, totally dig the female characters (for different reasons maybe, but that’s okay). So who are the idiots in board rooms saying, “No, no, no! We can’t have Supergirl or Batgirl or Power Girl or Wonder Woman or Black Canary or Batwoman or Jade in this movie/game/poster/action figure set, that’s just crazy talk!”, and why are people still listening to them?

The board game story has a more or less upbeat (if not entirely happy) ending. Even so, the whole thing mystifies me, it truly does.

We just finished watching The Host (2013). I liked this movie much more than I expected. What if the Puppet Masters’ invasion had been successful, and years later, one of them had second thoughts about it?

I was expecting some kind of action-adventure chase movie, with lots of action scenes. In all fairness, there are a number of action scenes, but most of the movie is a character study, as the alien “Wanderer” and a number of humans get to know each other. What if the Puppet Masters were … people? What if they started to see us as people?

Give this movie a shot. You might be surprised.

The third Friday of August is Cult Movie Night at Castle Blackmoor. This month, we celebrate the career of Rutger Hauer with two of his most difficult-to-find films. First, we will view Fatherland (1994). Twenty years after Nazi Germany won World War 2, a German investigator and an American journalist uncover a conspiracy of terrible crimes committed during the war.

People who want to stay late will see the action-horror film Split Second (1992). This is a film about eating chocolate, drinking coffee, and getting “BIGGER GUNS!” Set in a near-future world where global warming has put the city of London under eight inches of water, Hauer plays a police detective hunting down a serial killer with a very familiar modus operandi.