larryport.com Dad, software guy, runner, swimmer, biker. Follow me @larryport.

My review posted Amazon.com:

A lot of times when you think of Nazi Germany, you think of harsh black and white footage with goose-stepping soldiers and huge amounts of swastika banners and flags. “Beasts” does away with all of that, rendering Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 in crisp full-color detail, with such amazing description history pops right out of the page.

If you’ve read Devil and the White City, one of Larson’s other books, you know what I mean when I say this guy renders history in 3D. I’m a big fan of Laura Hillenbrand and David McCullough, but because Larson picks events that are limited in scope, he’s able to portray them even more vividly, if you can believe that. What he also does is force you to discard what you know will happen after the events took place. I found that when I read this book, I was experiencing the rise of the Nazis firsthand, and that I suspended my awareness of the horror that occurred after Dodd’s tenure. Continue reading →

Let’s be clear: I don’t have a problem with what Juan Williams said. Then again, I’ve never been the victim of profiling so who the hell am I to judge.

That said, this whole media circus illustrates why I favor NPR in the first place. Who gives a damn. The reason I listen to NPR is because I don’t like to hear invective, finger pointing, vitriol, or an attempt to discredit people when I’m trying to understand what’s going on in this noisy world.

I like the fact that I get to listen to loonies on both sides of the spectrum (yes, they bring in peeps from the left and right). I like the fact that they get smart people (for the most part) for in depth commentary and analysis that’s missing in the sound-byte. I like the fact that they don’t play to my emotions, notably fear and suspicion, when they report.

If you like your news polarizing, then stay away from NPR. But if you like nuanced reporting that’s not afraid to interview libertarians, liberals, or conservatives, if you don’t like to be shouted at when you consume news, if you can handle hearing what someone else has to say without cringing, then tune in and listen.

And if you’ve been listening for years and have never became a member, make a pledge today. The loonies wanna cut their funding.

Let’s see. We’ve seen major earthquakes in Haiti, Baja Caifornia, Chile, an China in the past few months. Then we have this volcano, dormant for 200 years, erupting in Iceland shutting down travel and cargo in Europe.

What a great time to watch 2012, in which humanity gets nearly wiped out by geologic events.

Last night we popped in 2012 on BluRay. I highly recommend watching this movie, especially with friends who like to make fun absurdities in disaster flicks. 2012 is super-entertaining and hilarious, filled with very realistic-looking megadestruction, nail-biting but predictable escapes, character stereotypes, and a complete lack of subtlety in attempting to send a populist and brotherhood-of-man moral message. It’s perfect.

2012 is very much a new millenium movie, with emerging superpowers like India, Russia, and China having more of a presence than Western European countries. In what’s sure to delight the NAACP and piss off the white supremacists (but then again, what doesn’t annoy them), the ascendancy of African-Americans was reflected by a sympathetic black president and altruistic leading science advisor. There was also an unintentionally funny statement by a geologist, ‘The continent of Africa is rising!’

Particularly amusing were the lengthy, dramatic speeches given by various characters about the nature of our humanity at moments of extreme time-pressure. And even funnier were the moments of tender dialog by survivors of the complete destruction of the human race, including their families and presumably the majority of their Facebook friends.

New York’s destruction was notably absent. Perhaps the filmmakers thought it was okay to blow away Los Angeles and Vegas but seeing buildings fall in NYC would hit too close to home. Probably a good call.

In all, 2012 offers complete entertainment. You will not be bored. I’m not saying its the best movie, but its certainly a good time when watched with the right people.

Today Congress votes on a health care bill I don’t quite understand but seems to be a big deal.  What I do understand is there are proponents for it and detractors against it, and they all seem very passionate, and say all sorts of things I don’t believe.

My position?  As a friend of mine who immigrated to America said wisely:  ”Either way, we have it good in this country.”

From a software engineer’s perspective, if I tried to code up a program as large as this health care bill and then tried to predict its run-time behavior, I’d be foolish.  It’s not a perfect analogy, but the healthcare legislation activates a lot of economic and social machinery which may or may not have the major side-effects people are predicting.  So if it passes, let’s wait and see.

The bigger picture is that going back to the beginning of our country, people were and continue to be very divided about the role of government and the services it offers.  In my view, the people who think there should be no government or taxes should go try living in Congo for a while, and the people who think government should do everything should read “Atlas Shrugged” and then spend a semester abroad in Cuba.

But with government services on the mind, I’d like to ask the question, and this is NOT meant to be an analogy for government-run health care, what if libraries or the postal service were never invented?  What if people wanted to introduce these ideas and have government pay for them?  Where would people stand?

Bob Greene, Author and CNN Contributor, made an interesting point about the Postal Service.  Imagine there was no such thing as the U.S. Postal Service and someone comes up with this pitch:

“There’s a service available to you. A federally designated courier will come to your home every day but Sunday, and pick up whatever you would like to have hand-delivered to someone else in the country, no matter how far away. The courier and his colleagues will then take your envelope to that person in a matter of days. You don’t need to leave your house for this service, and neither does the person on the other end.”

“You might ask: How much does this service cost?  If you were told that the answer is 44 cents, you might think you were getting a pretty good deal.”

Or what about libraries?  Imagine selling cash-strapped municipalities on this idea:

“So we’ll build a series of buildings:  one big main one and a bunch of smaller, satellite ones.  Then, we purchase all the books we can afford, put funny-looking plastic on them to protect them, and arrange them all with an intricate classification system.”

“Maybe we could even standardize the classification system with other towns if they built the same buildings.  Then we’ll catalog all the books we have, and anyone who lives in the city can rent our books.  We could even have special buildings and books exclusively for kids!”

“We can even build a system to track who has what book rented and let other people know when the book is supposed to come back in.  We could also subscribe to dozens of magazines and newspapers and let people come in and read them.  We’ll buy a bunch of chairs and desks so people can spend time reading.  And we’ll get a bunch of computers for people to use.  And we’ll archive all sorts of periodicals so people can look up old information.”

“Oh, and we won’t charge anyone anything to use it. Unless they turn their books in late. Then we’ll nail ‘em for a dime a day.”

I love Tom Friedman, especially his ability to speak with candor about what’s happening in the world.  Finally, a baby-boomer has owned up to how much they’ve screwed things up for future generations of Americans:

“Our parents truly were the Greatest Generation. We, alas, in too many ways, have been what the writer Kurt Andersen called “The Grasshopper Generation,” eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed us like hungry locusts. Now we and our kids together need to be “The Regeneration” — the generation that renews, refreshes, re-energizes and rebuilds America for the 21st century.”

Alas.

Then he sticks it to cable TV and the GOP, easy targets:

“On top of that, the Republican Party has never been more irresponsible. Having helped run the deficit to new heights during the recent Bush years, the G.O.P. is now unwilling to take any responsibility for dealing with it if it involves raising taxes. At the same time, the rise of cable TV has transformed politics in our country generally into just another spectator sport, like all-star wrestling. C-Span is just ESPN with only two teams. We watch it for entertainment, not solutions.”

Alas alas.

Don’t forget, Tom, to throw some love at the congressional Democrats who are more like keystone cops than legislators.  Don’t leave out our president of hope who makes private deals with insurance companies.  Yes we can make back-room deals!

I like to think our post-baby boom generation can cut through all of this nonsense and work together before a new world order is established.  I’m optimistic, that hopefully, in an ideal world, the baby boomers will stop talking about the sixties and accept something as nominal as a $20 Medicare copay so that America continues to be the leading country in the world and the dollar stays put as the reserved currency.