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I'm underemployed (historically particularly as an editor in book and magazine publishing), recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 606
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 30 sign-ups; 22 cancellations; Total= 8
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 7 sign-ups; 3 cancellation; Total= 4
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration. Later note: forget I ever said this.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
THIS IS WHY I'M BUMMED OUT ABOUT SUPERMAN RETURNS. As I've seen Bryan Singer say before:
A boyhood fan of the old George Reeves TV series "Adventures of Superman," Singer saw director Richard Donner's "Superman" starring Christopher Reeve on opening day in 1978. Singer was not into comic books growing up and knew nothing about the "X-Men," but said his early love for Superman helped inspire him on the "X-Men" movies.
And that was great for X-Men, because he had no preconceptions, so he was able to learn and make a terrific original adaption, and did even better in the second film.
But Singer didn't love "Superman." He loved Donner's Superman. That's the problem.
What I've desperately wanted in Superman Returns, for all these years that it's bounced around from one director to another in "turn-around," (see the Kevin Smith struggle with Jon Peters' version I referred to here) was a film version that finally was true to the character, the way Batman Begins finally did the job I'd been waiting all my life to see done of Batman on screen, rather than only in comics.
The first two Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner films (hardly the "original films," of course, given how many previous screen versions there were, from Kirk Alyn to George Reeves to the Fleischers to....; later came Bruce Timm) had their fine moments, to be sure.
But they also made a complete joke out of Clark Kent, and out of Lex Luthor, and for me that seriously damaged the films. The inspirational moments were great. But the next minute you had Idiot Clark, and "Otis," the buffoonish Ned Beatty character, and the moronic Ms. Tessmacher, and a near-complete reversion to the really dopey, juvenile, Superman of the Fifties and early Sixties, back when Mort Weisinger was going nuts.
And they also had Kryptonians, including Superman, shooting beams out of their hands, Superman turning the globe backwards to turn back time, and, again, Idiot Clark.
Whereas Smallville, despite a fairly loose sense of plot logic with considerable frequency, has for many years now been doing a great job of being creative and respecting the character, without turning anyone into an idiot or a buffoon, least of all Clark Kent.
But Singer, ignorant of the comics, ignorant of the character, but, crucially, raised to love the Donner films, came to the project without any notion of freshly recreating Superman, the way Batman was restored in Batman Begins to his true, serious, comics self.
Instead he saw himself as remaking the Donner buffoon concept, merely wiping away the logical extension of the character into complete crap, as happened with the films we won't talk about, Superman III and IV.
So we have, instead of a wonderful restoration or rethinking, the way neo-Battlestar Galactica tossed out all the crappy parts of the original piece of sh*t, and rethought them into something smart, an apparent simple continuation of Donner.
Well, I'm sure Singer will do a good job of that, within those limitations, and I've saved my pennies to make it the second film I'll see in a theater this year, and I hope to like it as well as I can, but I can't help but be deeply frustrated that I'll still have to wait god knows how many more years to see a rethought, more serious, version of Superman finally, some day, show up in the theater.
But there's still Smallville, thankfully.
And eventually a new Batman film I can hope won't be Ratnerized.
The dumbass slideshow attached to this article barely acknowledges comics; it's as if Superman primarily existed on screen. For more on that, see Mark Evanier.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for more Superman p.r. See also what I wrote in comments here, among many other places.
ADDENDUM: James Marsden talks about being in both Superman Returns and X3:
Singer "was just intensely focused on Superman," Marsden said in an interview. "He didn't have time to think about X3. We went to dinner a few times, and I never brought it up, really. But if it was brought up, what surfaced was, in my eyes, this sadness. What he told me was the one, ... not regret, ... but the one thing he missed about not being a part of X-Men 3 was the cast. The cast of X-Men was something really very unique and very special. The bond that was created over the last six or seven years with that cast was really something that's not common in the business. You always get to know the people you're working with, but for whatever reason that cast really bonded to the point where you'd work five- or six-day weeks sometimes, and on your one day off you'd get together and go to Ian McKellen's house, where he'd cook you dinner and sit at the piano and sing show tunes. So it was a great group of people, a very talented group of people, and I think Bryan missed that."
[...]
As for X-Men, Marsden said: "[Singer] has amazing adoration for what he's created, for the X-Men fans and the X-Men universe, so I think it was a really hard thing for him to give up. Having said that, he knows what he's doing. He knows he empowered his own destiny. So he was very happy to be helming Superman. And when he talked about X-Men 3 he didn't sit around and go, 'What'd they shoot? What's the script like?' He said, 'Brett [Ratner is] a good friend of mine, and I think he'll make a good movie.' He wanted the movie to be good. So it was like you'd see 30 seconds of 'That could have been fun. OK, back to my movie.'"
That partying with Ian McKellen sounds like fun.
Also, the Straczynski/Zabel proposal for Star Trek from 2004 has been revealed:
The treatment called for a re-imagining of the original series, centering on the three main characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, set on the U.S.S. Enterprise on its first five-year mission. Zabel told SCI FI Wire that the show would reset the mythology to "start a new 'Universe B' which would be free to move in new directions as needed and yet allow us to work with the classic characters that all fans love and cherish. The best of all worlds, if you will."
As for the ship's mission, Zabel said the new mission would be "oriented toward discovering the truth behind an ancient life that appears to have had a hand in creating the numerous humanoid species throughout the universe. That would have been the over-mission, which would have steered the Enterprise into finding its share of new worlds and civilizations just the same."
Zabel wrote on his blog: "We wanted to do what they do in the world of comics, create a separate universe so we could embrace the good stuff, banish the bad, and try some new things. We wanted to use Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but show them off as you'd never seen them before."
Don't look to Zabel for comics insights, since he writes:
These days, JMS is practically a one-man bullpen over at Marvel, writing "Spider-Man" and "Fantastic Four" at the same time, and several other titles, something that hasn't been done, I believe, since the days of Stan Lee.
Which is absolute nonsense, of course; hundreds of writers have written multiple series at Marvel at the same time since Stan Lee.
As far as I'm concerned, Smallville is mostly WB teen-relationship porn. Mileage probably varies, depending on what you compare it to. I'm picky. I just caught "Mask of the Phantasm" on TNT, this weekend. Wow.
The Smallville actors are all good; but the scripts tell a sad story (to me) of marketing pressure working on the actual talents of Miller/Gough/Loeb.
They started something new and interesting with the Michael Rosenbaum Lex. Allison Mack/Chloe was an original Veronica Mars prototype before the real version arrived, and John Glover's Lionel is a interesting successor to his Brimstone Lucifer. But all that's mostly drowned out, for me, by the way they distort good comic book elements (Jor El, the megalomaniac who Knew Better, the Nude Kara-clone: "Clark, I've come to take you home;" the "Raiders of the Lost Krypton" arc, "Lana the Dominitrix/Sufi/Witch," etc.). Also, the ever-repeating stock plots: "boy turns bad," "girl turns bad," "poor old meteor-monster," "poor old LexCorp victim," "get the ship," "get the medicine -- I'm really sick."
....All this swimming in a soup of WB teen-relationship drama and music marketing....
It's not always boring. I liked "Lexmas." But all things considered, I'd rather be reading Secret Identity.
I, like a lot of viewer-fans, didn't like the witch sequence stuff.
Aside from that, I like the stuff you describe, or it doesn't particularly bother me; I don't take the show that seriously.
But you and I, and you and others, have been this route before over Buffy.
I'm sure I'd like a lot of the comics in recent years, and dislike others. They're not in my budget. (Though I do do things like follow some plotlines through sites such as here, as I've mentioned before.)
I do hope to sometime or other see the last season of JLU. And then someday the new Legion show. So far the DVDs available (through Netflix, for instance), are pretty limited, though; I'm sure someday they'll be a full set.
You've lost me here, Gary. Granted I'm not a comics person, but what is this "respecting the character" stuff? Superman has had multilple writers, and you seem to mean "staying close to the ones I think are good". You've said yourself "a near-complete reversion to the really dopey, juvenile, Superman of the Fifties and early Sixties" so the films were true to the comics, just not the ones you'd have liked them to be true to.
Isn't it time he learned to put his underpants on first, anyway?
Now I'm really worried that Samuel L Jackson's character in "Snakes on a Place" stays true to the ethos of Samuel L Jackson characters who say a certain four-syllable word. Standards must be maintained.
