Review of Babel (2006)

Babel is a film by director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who was also the director of 21 Grams. Like 21 Grams, Babel is about different stories of people's lives, and all these stories are linked in some way. The movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as American tourists. Elle Fanning, little sister of Dakota Fanning, plays one of the American parents' kids.

After watching the film, the message that I took from it was that even though bad things happen, often there's nobody to blame. The tragedy happens because of a chain reaction of unfortunate events and bad luck.

The title makes reference to the Tower of Babel, which is from the bible. According to the bible, everyone spoke one language but God confused the people by changing languages. This of course is at odds with the idea that language evolved (see linguistic evolution). The movie seems to show conflict because of different languages or cultures. The movie seems to suggest that this happens because many are not willing to listen or understand others. This theme in the movie can perhaps be summed up with one biblical quote from Hebrews 13:2 that says, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it."

Unlike in 21 Grams, the different plotlines seem too independent. As a result, the film ends up looking like a collection of multiple short stories rather than one whole film itself.

The movie, I though, felt very superficial and sometimes stereotypical. The American are just so superficially American with all the imagery and stereotypes emphasized to the extreme. The same can be said of the Mexicans and the Japanese. The real world is a complex mess, but while watching the movie I had the impression that the writer had a simplified perception of reality in his mind: Japanese people are like this, Americans are like that, a tragedy is supposed to use this kind of music, this kind of camera work, etc.

While watching The Door in the Floor, another film with Elle Fanning, one of the characters in that movie talks about the art of telling a story. He says the following: "Everything in fiction is a tool: pain, betrayal, even death. These are, you know, these are like, uh, different colors on a painter's palette. You need to use them." The problem with this film is that, for me, it really seems as if the writer knew he wanted the film to be tragic and just dabbed the usual elements of a tragedy, lost kids, close-ups of people's faces as they cried, etc. With solemn music and scene after scene of people crying and walking around dazed, the film has all the imagery and tone of a tragedy. For me this story really felt like a story, as if all the parts were just put there for the sole purpose of manipulating the audience.

Review of The Italian Job (2003)

The Italian Job is about a robbery done for money and for revenge on a man who betrayed them in an earlier robbery.

First off, this is a very entertaining, very cool movie. It glamorizes thievery but also shows a noble side among thieves. Charlize Theron is by far the most attractive woman ever, and in this movie she is just sizzling hot. From every angle she is a work of art.

One of the things about this movie that annoyed was the branding. I don't know whether the brands were deliberately there for marketing purposes or whether they were essential for the plot. At the beginning of the film we notice the divers are wearing Casio G-Shocks. One hypothesis is that the film is marketing Casio watches. The other hypothesis is that G-Shocks are normally what divers use anyway because of the brand's shock resistance. There are plenty of references made to Aston Martins, and the film probably help market many new MINIs. Of course, they're not going to use a Ford Suburban for this robbery because of the SUV's size and slowness, so the MINI was probably necessary. The MINI is an icon for many people. Even though MINI is owned by BMW many believe the MINI is a symbol of Britishness. The car's status as a cultural icon is probably what justifies its price premium, as it is about double the price of a Corolla. Probably not worth it for a small car if you were totally utilitarian, but most people don't buy cars just to get from A to B.

While watching The Italian Job, I kept thinking to myself how unrealistic the whole plot was. Everything was planned to perfection and only one small thing had to go wrong for everything to fail. For everything to fall into place so perfectly is like flipping a coin twenty times and getting it to land heads up every single time. The film is definitely over-the-top but that was probably what made it so entertaining in the first place.

Why Buy an Expensive Pen?

There are two kinds of snobbery. One kind of snobbery comes from purchasing an expensive product. The other kind of snobbery comes from purchasing a cheap product. You see, some people wear their thriftiness on their shoulders as a badge of honor. My brother, for example, drives an expensive Lexus yet, when I speak about expensive watches, he proudly says, "What is the point of buying a $10,000 watch when you can buy one for just $20?" The same applies to pen. Whenever I whip my pens out people usually see the chrome and ask me why I would use an expensive pen.

The reality is that I don't use expensive pens. Many fountain pens cost in excess of $500 or even more and I certainly don't buy any of those. Pens are usually regarded as such cheap items that people usually look at you strange if you buy anything over 50 cents. Pretty much all the pens I use are about $4, which means they're expensive for a pen. Many ask, "Why get a $4 pen when you can get a BIC for just 30 cents?" The thing is, pens are not like watches. Watches usually get worse as you pay more for them. A cheap $200 quartz watch has greater accuracy than an old-fashioned $10,000 mechanical watch, but many watch enthusiasts buy expensive mechanical watches for emotional reasons. Likewise, there are many pen enthusiasts who buy old-fashioned fountain pens for purely emotional reasons, whether it is emotional attachment to a brand or whatever. But I am not one of those people. I buy pens slightly more expensive than your average BIC pen for quite sensible reasons.

Cheap pens are usually bad pens. Their design is influenced by economy, not ergonomics, which means after lots of writing your hands will strain. A poor pen will damage your finger if you use it for a while. I used BIC Cristal pens initially simply because they were the cheapest I could find. My fingers started to bulge in areas that pressed against the pen. Some of my joints have warped a little. These areas are usually hard, inflamed, and bits of skin are starting to fall off. You usually have to press really hard on a cheap pen to get it to write. This means your hands and fingers sustain more strain. So cheap pens are bad for your fingers' health and well-being.

Another reason I don't like cheap pens is because of their leakages. Cheap pens also use cheap ink, which means the ink usually does not dry quickly and it smears all over the paper. It smears all over your hands, on your clothes, and on your desk.

See Norak's Pen Ranking for a list of my favorite pens.

John Howard's Immigration Policies

John Howard won the election after the children overboard incident because he was able to attract many working class votes away from Labor.

With recent controversy over IR, the working class seems to have turned their backs on Howard whose popularity has plummeted. When the working class think of themselves as working class people fighting against big business they will align themselves against Liberal, which is the political party of the ruling class.

John Howard's biggest challenge then is shifting perceptions of the working class, making them think on events not as a conflict between economics classes but a conflict between locals and foreigners. If John Howard makes a big deal about Muslims, boat people, and Aborigines, the working class of Australia will perceive the ruling class of Australia not as an opposing economic group but as a united team of Australians. The working class will embrace the ruling class.

It seems, however, that Sydney Morning Herald Editor Ross Gittens has caught onto Howard's games. In a piece titled Back-Scratching at a National Level, Gittens says the following:

There's a saying among journalists that news is anything someone doesn't want you to know. So let me tell you all about John Howard's immigration program. It's a key part of the Government's economic policy, but one it rarely talks about.

Why? Because Howard wants his Battlers to think he shares their dislike and distrust of foreigners, especially boat people. And it wouldn't help his image for people to know he's running the biggest immigration program we've ever had.

The fact is, however, that immigration is playing a big part in keeping the economy growing strongly, preventing shortages of skilled labour from causing a wages blowout, keeping inflation under control, limiting the rise in interest rates and keeping house prices rising rather than falling.

When Howard was elected in 1996 he cut the planned immigrant intake to 68,000, but by last financial year he'd more than doubled it. His planned intake for next financial year is almost 153,000 - plus 13,000 under the humanitarian program. To that you can add about 24,000 New Zealanders - who don't need visas and will be arriving to join the 470,000 of their fellow countrypersons who are here.

Last calendar year was the eighth straight year of net immigration (that is, net of permanent departures) in excess of 100,000.

Actually, thanks to a burst of high migration in the late 1980s, net immigration has exceeded 100,000 a year in 12 of the past 20 years, having exceeded 100,000 only 12 times in the previous two centuries. Another way to put it is that the program is running at a lot more than a million immigrants a decade.

The reality is that Howard is playing a tricky game. While he has to pretend dislike foreigners for the sake of the working class he has to also boost immigration for the ruling class who care about money and therefore want more workers.

Further Reading: Marxist Theory of Racism and Racial Inequality

Abolishing the Weekends

I'm an economics major myself. Many economists believe that by abolishing weekends (i.e. laws that force people to stop working over the weekends), the economy will improve. You don't need a PhD in economics I know this will work because more time on the weekend will free up time to work more. More work means better economy. In It's Not Rational to be Rational, Ross Gittens has a go at the economics fraternity and makes the following argument against abolishing weekends:

There's no doubt that a most effective way of raising the productivity of our factories, offices and shops is to keep them working as close as possible to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

To that end we've deregulated shopping hours and made great strides in getting rid of weekend penalty rates. But the more of us who're required to work at weekends, the more the weekend ceases to be the weekend.

Parents will have trouble getting together with their kids on any day of the week and it will be hard for friends or relatives to get together, even after work, because there'll be no common after work.

Hands up anyone who thinks that's a good idea. It's a social end we're in the process of sacrificing to advance narrowly economic means. It's happening because rationalists don't bother their heads with non-rational ends like togetherness.

Suppose there were no weekend leisure time. Now suppose you and your friend worked seven days a week. You can still meet your friend simply by ringing him up and asking him whether he is free at a particular time when both of you are free. This is exactly the same thing most of us already do if we want to schedule an appointment with an accountant or a dentist or a physician. Gittens seems to be suggesting that certain days be days when we meet friends. He says that by getting rid of weekends the convenience of relying on weekends as days when we meet friends is gone. Well, if we are going to create convenience for people to meet to do certain things, then why stop at the meeting of friends and also extend this concept to the meeting of dentists and patients? Suppose the Government designated Monday as a day off and declared Monday to be "Dentist's Day." This day is designed to allow people to meet their dentists to have their teeth fixed. If they don't have dentists, they can just laze around watching TV all day similarly to how people with no friends don't meet friends on the weekend and probably watch TV on the weekend as well. If anyone argues that Dentist's Day be banned then Gittens can use the same argument he did before. He can say that banning Dentist's Day will make it hard for people to arrange time with their dentists. Yes, he's right, but not everyone wants to go to the dentist once every week and those who don't just laze about doing nothing when they want to work. By liberalizing, people get more choice. Anyway, why stop at Dentist's Day? Why not have Accountant's Day or any other day? Before long nobody will be working.

Some people make the argument the making people work on weekends does not help the economy because the extra work people do will wear them out and make them less productive. Suppose this were true. Suppose I normally worked from Monday to Friday as a car salesman. Suppose on a five-day week I sell 10 cars. Now suppose new laws come in and the boss asks me to work Saturdays and Sundays as well, so now I work seven days a week. Because I had less leisure, my productivity decreases and suppose I sell only 5 cars per week now. If this were to happen, the boss would suspect that my not resting is causing the problem and tell me to rest. You see, the employer wants to maximize his profits too, and he does so by asking you to work what he thinks is the optimal hours, which takes into account the leisure-work ratio.

Why I Like Paris Hilton

It's very strange to witness so many people ranting and raving about how much they hate Paris Hilton, yet at the same time so many people are eager to know what she is up to. I am sure there are many people who both admit hating her and are curious about her at the same time.

When I first heard about Paris Hilton it was from the sex tape scandal. I have seen the sex tapes myself. It's nothing special. I never watched the first episode of The Simple Life when it came out on TV. I went to watch with my brother the movie House of Wax, which had a Paris Hilton death scene.

I am a car enthusiast. I first became interested in Paris after learning that she drove a Bentley Continental GT. She has since sold her Bentley and gotten herself a Mercedes McLaren SLR worth about half a million dollars. Of course, I don't automatically like someone just because they drive an expensive car, but this sparked my curiosity, so I watched some episodes of The Simple Life, which happened to be on. While watching the fourth season of The Simple Life, I started to notice that Paris is not really that dumb. Rather, she displayed signs of creativity. For example, in one episode her hosts, the Contreras Family, wanted to go camping in the wilderness. Instead, Paris drives the Toyota minivan all the way to a nearby Hilton hotel. Paris tells the family to go camping in the hotel instead. The family, including the two little boys, were disappointed at not being able to go camping in the wilderness. Saddened by the family's disappointment, Paris told them to go out to the cafeteria to eat. What Paris did next was stunning. While the family was away, she ordered truckloads of stuff to be delivered to the hotel room where they were staying and she completely changed the hotel room into a forest. The room had a tent, real trees, an animated fire, wood, and even stuffed animals. It wasn't as real as the real wilderness, but it was close enough, and it illustrated the lengths that Paris would go to to please the children. This event shows not only how creative Paris is but also how kind and generous she is.

Paris's creativity is further proved in later episode in which she directed a music video about the difficulties of being a mother. Nicole Richie's purpose during the fourth season seemed to be to shock people with rude language, and Nicole provided the lyrics for this music video, which was obscenity laden. Paris, on the other hand, tried to dilute the negativity of the lyrics by infusing the visuals with humor. She succeeded, and the host family was extremely grateful for her attempts.

Paris Hilton, it seems, is a misunderstood girl. In prison when she said she had been acting dumb all the time, it came as no surprise. Those who know her should know that she is smarter than what the mob would lead people to believe. Some criticize her for not achieving anything substantial in her life and not earning her celebrity status, but for me and many others Paris is a simple and sweet girl who excels in just being herself.

Pen Ranking

Below is a ranking of all the pens I have used. I will add to the list as I use more pens. If I have time I will add reviews for each pen, detailing the pros and cons.

1. Uni-Ball Jetstream
2. Uni-Ball UM-120
3. Pilot V Pen
4. Papermate Gel Roller II
5. Pilot Dr. Grip
6. Uni-Ball 207
7. BIC Cristal