The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

The Brilliant Lebowski

Jeet Heer, who usually writes about politics, today praised a movie that was horribly underrated when it came out 20 years ago this week:

The shifting critical fortunes of The Big Lebowski are legendary. Roger Ebert initially gave the movie a mixed review because of its ramshackle plot, which “rushes in all directions and never ends up anywhere.” In 2010, he upgraded The Big Lebowski to the status of a “great” movie. Denby also changed his mind, according to a recent Washington Post survey of critics who initially panned the movie. Others either haven’t revisited it or are still put off by it. Daphne Merkin, in her original New Yorker review, said the movie was “drenched in knowingness” and lacked a “narrative structure.” She likes the movie slightly more now, but not by much. “I think it is a quintessential insider movie, one that plays in this shrewd way to groupthink,” Merkin told the Post. “You’re either in on it, or you’re not in on it.” But even Merkin allowed that “the dude and his disconnected dudeness has a certain appeal now, maybe because the world has grown more horrendous or reality is less bearable than when the film was made.”

The Big Lebowski is a grower because the plot is less important than the characters. At the heart of the movie is the improbable friendship of the near-pacifist Dude and the violence-prone Walter. The zinging banter between the two characters is really a battle of philosophies. The Dude (one of the authors of the original Port Huron Statement, “not the compromised second draft”) embodies the spirit of the 1960s counterculture, weatherworn by the 1990s but still wily and subversive; Walter is a knee-jerk hawk, always escalating conflict, often with disastrous results. But to enjoy the movie you have to get to know the two characters and appreciate the nuances of their friendship, which is easier after multiple viewings. The dialogue also becomes richer, as you notice how the characters have distinctive lingos which the Dude, with his sponge mind, absorbs and echoes. 

The Big Lebowski is a masterpiece of world-building, but to enjoy it you have to be willing to enter its world on its own terms. Few were willing to do that in 1998. But today, thanks in part to the Coen brothers’ oeuvre, it doesn’t seem so strange anymore.

What else can we say? The Dude abides.

Florida votes to secede from the Eastern time zone

Florida's legislature has voted overwhelmingly to change the state's clocks:

The Florida Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act on Tuesday, three weeks after the state’s House of Representatives, and sent it to Gov. Rick Scott for his signature or veto. (Asked on Wednesday whether Mr. Scott would sign it, and why or why not, his press secretary, Lauren Schenone, said only, “The governor will review the bill.”) The margins of victory in both chambers were overwhelming — 33 to 2 in the Senate and 103 to 11 in the House — and the measure has considerable public support.

The problem? Florida doesn’t have the authority to adopt daylight saving time year-round.

15 USC 260a allows states to adopt year-round standard time, but not year-round daylight saving time. The Department of Transportation is in charge of what states go in what time zones.

In any event, what the bill's sponsors really want, but didn't know how to ask for, is to move Florida from the Eastern time zone (UTC-5 standard and -4 DST) to the Atlantic time zone (UTC-4 standard), and then exempt the state from DST. The intent is simply to put Florida on UTC-4 year-round.

What would that look like, though? From mid-March to early-November, it would look exactly the same, since they're on UTC-4 when on Eastern Daylight Time. Sunrises in would occur between 7:30am mid-March and 6:30am mid-June, sunsets between 7:30pm mid-March and 8:15pm mid-June.

In the winter, mornings would be pretty dark, but there'd be a lot of evening light. The sun would rise just after 8am on December 21st, but set around 6:30pm. In Jacksonville, way up north, the sun would rise about 20 minutes later. But farther west, in Pensacola, the sun wouldn't come up until 8:45am on December 21st, potentially obviating any benefit of the sun setting close to 7pm.

Note that Pensacola, at 87°11' W, is almost due south of Chicago. Miami (80°17' W) is nearly due south of Pittsburgh. But Florida's latitude reduces the differences between summer and winter daylight hours, compared with what we experience farther north.

Should Florida move to UTC-4? It might not be a bad move, if having daylight extend later in the evening makes up for the later sunrises. It would not, however, actually change the astronomical reality of how many hours of daylight they get.

We'll see if the Department of Transportation or the U.S. Congress gives them the authority to hop.

Youth is wasted on the young, EU railways edition

The European Union will let every 18-year-old citizen travel its railways for free this summer:

This summer, the European Commission is offering 18-year-old European residents a free Interrail ticket—a rail pass that permits travel across 30 European countries for a month. What’s more, they’re not just offering it to one or two teenagers. With a budget of €12 million for this year, the commission plans to fund trips for 20,000 to 30,000 young people, with the possibility of more passes in the years to come. Exact details of how to apply and who will be get an Interrail pass, worth up to €510 ($628), will be released in the next few months. But one thing is already clear: A large town’s worth of European 18-year-olds will be able to travel from Lapland to Gibraltar by train this summer, and the price they will pay is precisely nothing.

Visiting any major European station 25 years ago, you would have found the summer platforms packed with young people using Interrail passes, heading off to pretty much wherever they fancied on a whim. Its price—a then-steep £27.50 ($38) when first launched in 1972—meant that the experience was largely confined to young people who had middle- or upper-income parents, or who had jobs to help them save up. In an era when flights were still an exorbitant luxury and part-time jobs for teenagers more readily available, it was still a great deal. Night trains made it possible to cut accommodation costs, and the sheer range of countries included—all of Western Europe and even much of the Eastern bloc before 1989—was dizzying.

I got a 15-day pass in 1992 for about $300, or about $500 today. I wish I could do that again. Oh to be 18 and European...

A lie wrapped in a fabrication, lacquered over with a falsehood

In a powerful June, 2016, column for Slate, Dahlia Lithwick laid out the NRA's (and the right's) second-amendment hoax. It's worth revisiting:

The Supreme Court ... most famously in a 1939 case called U.S. v. Miller [ruled] that since the possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” had no reasonable relationship to the “preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” the court simply could not find that the Second Amendment guaranteed “the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Period, full stop. And that was the viewpoint adopted by the courts for years.

What changed? As Cass Sunstein and others have explained, what changed things was a decades-long effort by exceptionally well-organized, well-funded interest groups that included the National Rifle Association—all of whom “embarked on an extraordinary campaign to convince the public, and eventually the courts, to understand the Second Amendment in their preferred way.”

The larger fabrication is the idea that the Second Amendment—unlike other provisions of the Constitution—cannot be subject to any reasonable restriction.

Hoax number three: Obama, Clinton, Democrats, liberals, the media, whomeverare coming for your guns. They are Coming. For your Guns!!! This is the crunchy candy shell that makes the other two lies seem almost reasonable.

Meanwhile, as Lithwick and others keep saying, we're the only country in the OECD where you're more likely to get shot than get hit by lightning. (Seriously, in every other country the incidence of gun death is less than 0.5 per 100,000—about the incidence of being injured or killed by lightning. In the U.S., the incidence of gun murder, not just getting shot, is around 3.6 per 100,000.)

And to think, this is all driven by a trade association. Imagine if the National Association of Dental Hygienists had that much power.

And kudos to Lyft, who announced they'll give free rides to anti-gun rallies. This is one more reason I use them and not the other guys.

Why does Russia care about our politics?

An op-ed in today's New York Times provides more context to help understand Josh Marshall's observation in my last post. Former Obama deputy secretary of state and former Biden national security adviser Antony Blinken says that Russia is actually very weak under Putin, so putting a wedge between their two biggest threats—The E.U. and the U.S.—gives them breathing room:

When it comes to sowing doubt about democracy and fueling dissension among Americans, Mr. Putin is eating our lunch. And Russia retains the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, with new weapons in the works that Mr. Putin saw fit to brag about during last week’s state of the nation speech — even if his rhetoric far outpaced their technical reality.

But elsewhere, Russia’s adventurism is feeding a growing, gnawing case of indigestion. And it masks a deep-set rot in Russia itself. Mr. Putin is a masterful painter of facades. But his Russian village looks increasingly less Putin and increasingly more Potemkin.

NATO is more energized than it has been in years — not because of President Trump’s browbeating, but in response to Mr. Putin’s aggression. The alliance now has forces on regular rotational air, land and sea deployments along Russia’s border, and its budget is increasing, in part with a sustained infusion of funds from the United States. The European Union has revived the idea of strengthening its own defense capacity, spurred on by Mr. Putin’s threats and Mr. Trump’s rhetorical retreat from America’s commitment to Europe’s defense. Europeans are getting more serious about energy security. They are multiplying new routes, connections and sources for fuel and renewable power. That’s making it harder for Mr. Putin to use oil and gas as strategic levers. American-led sanctions, despite Mr. Trump’s reluctance to impose them, have done real, sustained damage to Russia’s economy.

As for keeping Russia’s fist on Ukraine’s future, Mr. Putin has managed to alienate the vast majority of its citizens for generations. Systemic corruption is now a bigger bar to Ukraine’s European trajectory than is Moscow.

Keep in mind, one of the principal aims of Russia's interference with our government is to get rid of the sanctions we imposed on them when they invaded our ally Ukraine. They could get the sanctions reduced or eliminated by ending their occupation of Crimea, of course, but that would expose Putin's fundamental weakness.

Authoritarian governments are corrupt, full stop. The whole point of authoritarian systems is to protect thieves from the rule of law. Russia has been in this state for more than 20 years now. Let's not follow them.

One sentence that sums everything up concisely

From Josh Marshall:

[D]ecoupling the United States from the major states and economies of Western Europe has been the central foreign policy goal of Russia for about 70 years.

We defeated the Soviet Union by allying ourselves with most of the world. Now the President of the United States is undoing 70 years of work and handing Russia their own sphere of influence.

Great work, Mr President.

Blogging A-to-Z sign up tonight

I've narrowed my list down to four potential topics for the Blogging A-to-Z challenge:

  • U.S. Civics
  • Programming (with .NET)
  • Music
  • Places I've visited

I've got 26 topics lined up for each. I think they'll all be fun and relatively easy to do (though I'll have to start writing them at least a week ahead). But like a true INTP, I can't decide which to start with.

Sign-up is at 00:01 GMT tonight, or 6:01 pm Chicago time.

How to buy a gun (International edition)

The New York Times outlines what you need to do in various countries to obtain a firearm:

United States 1. Pass an instant background check that includes criminal convictions, domestic violence and immigration status. 2. Buy a gun.

Canada 1. To buy a handgun, prove that you practice at an approved shooting club or range, or show that you are a gun collector. 2. For any gun, complete a safety course and pass both a written and a practical test. 3. Ask for two references. 4. Apply for a permit, and wait 28 days before processing begins. 5. Pass a background check that considers your criminal record, mental health, addiction and domestic violence history. 6. Buy a gun. If you bought a handgun, register it with the police before taking it home.

Israel 1. Join a shooting club, or prove that you live or work in a dangerous area authorized for gun ownership, including certain settlements. 2. Get a doctor’s note saying you have no mental illness or history of drug abuse. 3. Install a gun safe. 4. Release your criminal and mental health history to the authorities. 5. Buy a gun and a limited supply of bullets, usually around 50. 6. Demonstrate that you can use your gun or a similar gun at a firing range before taking it home.

Actually, there is one place in the world where it's easier than in the U.S.: Yemen. But that's because they have no functioning government. We're in great company.