Minor Thoughts from me to you

Mike Huckabee on the Confederate flag:

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, told supporters in Myrtle Beach, according to The Associated Press.

"In fact," he said, "if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do."

That doesn't exactly fit the genial, cheerful, Baptist minister image that Governor Huckabee has been cultivating lately. It's just too bad that he's more willing to be offensive to fellow Americans than to antagonistic foreign leaders.

(Via Riehl World View: Huckabee: I'm A Divider, Not A Uniter.)

The city of Madison believes that if it limits your freedom it can truly make you safer. Next up on their agenda: plastic water bottles.

The city of Madison, enamored of bans on everything from smoking to phosphorus fertilizers, may be setting its regulatory sights on another target -- plastic.

In coming months, the city's Commission on the Environment is likely to begin discussing bans on the sale of bottled water at public events and the use of plastic grocery bags.

Jon Standridge, chairman of the commission, said members voted unanimously at the end of last year to place both items on upcoming agendas.

"Each year toward the end of the calendar year we sit down and talk about what people are interested in," Standridge said. "We ask if something is an environmental problem and if it is worth taking up. And if it is worth taking up, is there something we can do?"

...

Regardless of what happens, Dreckmann said, discussion of the issue is important because it will make people more aware.

"Whether or not we actually do something about it, it's just good to raise the consciousness of people, to have them think about the environmental consequences of drinking bottled water instead of just turning the tap."

If water bottles are really, truly a problem let's fix the problem. Calculate how much they add to the cost of the city's garbage costs. Count how many of them are sold in the city. Put a city tax on each water bottle sold, equal to the disposal cost. In other words, put a price on the damage that the water bottles are doing. Then, let consumers decide whether or not they want to pay that price.

Maybe a per-bottle trash tax isn't the best way to pass the cost along to the consumers. But it's a better way than simply banning the bottles and leaving consumers no choice at all. Why is the Madison city government so opposed to choice and freedom?

It turns out that the Minnesota Bridge didn't collapse because stingy Republican legislatures refused to pay for maintenance. It collapsed because someone flubbed the design.

Sixteen fractured gusset plates in the center span on Interstate 35W were a main cause of the deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Tuesday. The plates, which connected steel beams in the truss bridge, were roughly half the thickness they should have been because of a design error. How that flaw made it into the bridge is unclear; according to NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker, investigators couldn't find the original design calculations. Extra weight from construction was also a factor in the tragedy, which killed 13 people and injured 100. The findings confirmed forecasts by investigators from three months after the collapse--plus engineering experts in the immediate aftermath--and underscored the dire state of America's crumbling infrastructure.

This isn't going to make my wife very happy. She loves playing Scrabble online.

Facebook Asked to Remove "Scrabulous" - New York Times:

LONDON (Reuters) - The makers of word game Scrabble have asked Facebook to remove its popular online version "Scrabulous," which they say infringes their copyright.

The U.S. and Canada rights to Scrabble are owned by Hasbro Inc, the world's second-largest toy and game company, while the biggest, Mattel Inc, has the rest of the world.

"Letters have been sent to Facebook in the United States regarding the Scrabulous application," said a Mattel spokeswoman in Britain.

"Mattel values its intellectual property and actively protects its brands and trademarks.

"As Mattel owns the rights to the Scrabble trademark outside the United States and Canada, we are currently reviewing our position regarding other countries."

I'd recommend that Mattel buy Scrabulous, rename it to "Scrabble Online", leave it on Facebook -- then thank the founders for making the game more popular and accessible. Seriously, what harm is there to playing Scrabble on Facebook and why wouldn't Mattel want to expand their market?

Division of Labour: I fall victim to the drug war:

As I've mentioned, I had transplant surgery on Tuesday. After removing my IV lines, the doctors put me on the controlled substance Percocet for pain relief, to be taken as needed up to 4x daily. (Note: the stuff works.) Under federal rules, I had to request each dose, and the nurse had to watch me take it upon delivery. (I might hoard and resell them?) The hospital could not give me any Percocet to take home with me when I was discharged on Saturday. But they could write me a prescription, to be filled at my pharmacy. Problem: I was discharged at 7pm, and my pharmacy had closed at 6pm. The hospital pharmacy was also closed. So, thanks to federal anti-narcotic hysteria, I would be without pain relief until my pharmacy opened on Sunday at 10am. The hospital said that they had faxed all my new prescriptions there, so my agent went to pick them up. But no Percocet was among the pills she returned with - under federal rules, prescriptions for narcotic pain relievers can't be faxed or phoned in; only presented in person in hard copy. She had to make a second trip, carrying the written script they'd given me.

I think it's time to return to a free market in narcotics.

I don't always enjoy listening to Rush Limbaugh. He tends to be bombastic and more than a bit over the top. I think that his brash rhetoric probably turns people away, who might otherwise agree with him. Still, when he's right, he's right.

One of his monologues today was perfectly on point.

No, no, no. Let me tell you something about this wealth business. I've been broke twice in my life. When I was 31 years old, I was making $17,000 a year. I have been fired I forgot how many times. Seven times! So I've been there. This constant refrain that I'm "out of touch," is just bogus. That's another thing that really bugs me: this movement within the Republican Party to claim that the middle class is in great suffering and pain. I understand if you own a house, and your value of your equity in your house is plummeting, that you're worried, and I understand that totally. What you need to hear is the truth of why it happened, so that you can make plans in the future. These are cycles, and everybody in every country and every society goes through them, and ours are not nearly as bad as people around the rest of the world are. I know health care is expensive. That's why I'm focused not on making it more expensive, but on making it cheaper, and how you do that? You do it with conservatism! I'm by no means out of touch on this. If the health care industry were priced like every other industry is on the patient's ability to pay, then we'd fix the problem, and that's the direction we have to head in.

But if we're going to keep this notion that everybody's entitled to have whatever they want medically paid for by their neighbors, then we are finished. We are finished as a country; we are finished as a society. You can talk about my wealth, but let me tell you something, sir. I don't depend on anybody else for anything, and it was one of my objectives when I grew up. I didn't want to be obligated. I didn't want to be dependent. I didn't want to owe anybody. I don't buy into insurance plans because it's a hassle! Now, I know a lot of people don't have that freedom. I used to not have that freedom, either. But I do now because I worked for it -- and if I can do it, a lot more people can do it than think they can, and that's conservatism again. People are much better than they know. They have much more potential than they know. But when you've got a Democrat Party and a movement telling them they suck, telling them they can't get anywhere because the deck is stacked against them and the people stacking the deck are Republicans and so forth, then you are diminishing the country; you're diminishing the future, and you're destroying people's lives.

......

The health care problem in this country is getting worse, while people are voting on for people who are making it worse because they hear these people saying, "I'm going to fix it." Well, the people in charge of fixing it have no interest in it getting fixed, because if it gets fixed, you don't need them. You can rely on yourself. This health care debate is one of the most infuriating things I witness every day, because I get so sick and tired of people buying hook, line, and sinker a lie. "I'm going to get everybody covered. I'm going to make sure everybody gets health insurance in this country. We're going to make sure it's not just the rich." It doesn't happen, does it? When you have government telling private industry how to operate, this is exactly what you get, and it's going to happen in energy. It's already happening in a number of other industries, too. It's happening in the auto industry...

Mary Anastasia O'Grady wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the findings of the latest Index of Economic Freedom.

"The evidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn't tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world's economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated.

Why are some countries so poor? Why is the U.S. so much richer than countries like India? Is it because the U.S. gobbles up the wealth of the world and doesn't play nice with other countries? Not really, no.

In "Narrowing the Economic Gap in the 21st Century," Stephen Parente, associate professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, debunks several World Bank myths by showing that it is not the resources -- land, workforce and capital -- of an economy that play the most important role in explaining higher income countries. Instead it is "the efficiency at which a society uses its resources to produce goods and services."

Mr. Parente cites the microeconomic research of McKinsey Global Institute, which estimates that modern industry in India could take a huge bite out of its productivity gap with U.S. competitors by simply upgrading production techniques. India doesn't need another multilateral education project. It needs to tap into knowledge already available in successful economies -- the information and technology is out there. The trouble is that it is unavailable in many countries like India, because government barriers and constraints to limit competition make access difficult or impossible.

In other words, the U.S. is richer because American workers do more with what they have, not because they have more to do something with.

Don Boudreaux puts it quite nicely.

As Julian Simon taught us, the ultimate resource is the free human mind. A land rich in petroleum, arable land, and iron ore and other minerals is useless to a society of humans incapable of rational thought and intolerant of change. Nor would such a land of potential plenty realize its potential if its inhabitants are restrained by tyranny or by widely shared misconceptions that individual enterprise, innovation, profit, and the pursuit of worldly pleasures are degrading or sinful.

But unleash people from the countless foolish and rent-seeking constraints imposed by government and from constraints imposed by their own superstitions and they will create resources. They will flourish and prosper, not only materially but also culturally and intellectually. A free people can and will build a dynamically prosperous society in even relatively barren and inhospitable places such as New England, Arizona, and Hong Kong. An unfree people will languish in poverty even in lush paradises such as much of Central and South America and in lands teeming with 'natural' resources such as Congo and Russia.

(Via Cafe Hayek: Freedom and the Ultimate Resource.)

This is the first time I've ever heard a candidate give the right answer, when asked how Christians should approach social problems. The fact that Fred Thompson refused to pander to the crowd just ices the cake.

Thompson Talks Religion - From The Road:

Mixing theology and social issues on the campaign trail is rare for Fred Thompson, but he discussed it today answering a question from a member of the audience.

A woman asked him if he would "as a Christian, as a conservative" continue President Bush's programs to combat global AIDS.

"Christ didn't tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it," Thompson said.

"The government has its role, but we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other."

Since when did playing poker become illegal?

Another Dumb Poker Raid:

Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week. If California is like most states (and I believe it is), a poker game is only illegal if the house is taking a rake off the top. In this case, it looks like that "rake" was the $5 the extra the hosts asked from each buy-in to pay for pizza and beer.

Police also took a 13-year-old girl out of the home, away from her parents, and turned her over to child protective services. In addition to the charge of running an illegal gambling operation, the hosts are also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Good thing the poor girl was saved before slouching toward an inevitable life of crime.

...

This account suggests the police hinted to individual players that the hosts may have been cheating or defrauding them, though that's not apparent in the news accounts. Firsthand accounts on poker sites have only good things to say about the hosts. Of course, even if the hosts were cheating, it wouldn't justify a full-on raid, particularly in mid-tournament. The SWAT tactics seem more like intimidation. Raiding in mid-tournament also ensures there's a $1,300 pot to seize for the sheriff department's general fund.

(Via The Agitator.)

The hardest thing I ever had to read was the "goodbye" that I wrote for my grandfather's funeral. This was the second hardest.

Obsidian Wings: Andy Olmsted:

Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G'Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July.

Andy was a wonderful person: decent, honorable, generous, principled, courageous, sweet, and very funny. The world has a horrible hole in it that nothing can fill. I'm glad Andy -- generous as always -- wrote something for me to publish now, since I have no words at all. Beyond: Andy, I will miss you.

---

"I am leaving this message for you because it appears I must leave sooner than I intended. I would have preferred to say this in person, but since I cannot, let me say it here." G'Kar, Babylon 5

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." Plato*

This is an entry I would have preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we can control in life, and apparently I have passed one of those limits. And so, like G'Kar, I must say here what I would much prefer to say in person. I want to thank hilzoy for putting it up for me. It's not easy asking anyone to do something for you in the event of your death, and it is a testament to her quality that she didn't hesitate to accept the charge. As with many bloggers, I have a disgustingly large ego, and so I just couldn't bear the thought of not being able to have the last word if the need arose. Perhaps I take that further than most, I don't know. I hope so. It's frightening to think there are many people as neurotic as I am in the world. In any case, since I won't get another chance to say what I think, I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Such as it is.

Please read his last words.

His family has also provided information about how you can help out.

A member of Andy Olmsted's family has just written me to say that if people want to do something in honor of him, they can send donations to a fund that has been set up for the four children of CPT Thomas Casey, who served under Andy and was killed while trying to help him.

I haven't been organized enough to write here for quite a while. I did, however, find some time to get into a discussion about health insurance over at Coyote Blog.

You may find it interesting.

You know how it's said (at least, I've heard it) that after a long marriage, you tend to start resembling your spouse?

Next time I witness such a phenomenon, this story will make me wonder:

"Twins separated at birth have married each other without realizing they were brother and sister, it has been revealed.

"The British couple's marriage has now been annulled by the High Court after judges ruled the marriage had never validly existed."

Next time anyone calls the plot of Oedipus Rex forced, we know just where to refer them.

(From FOXNews via SKY News)

Im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Pokerspielen, bei denen die Pokerspieler gegeneinander spielen, online blackjack hier die Spieler direkt gegen das Haus.

Are we slaves to the state or are we entitled to the fruits of our own labor? Wisconsin state Senator Jon Erpenbach thinks that we're slaves to the state:

Sen. Jon Erpenbach has proposed a bill that at first glance appears to have nothing to do with video games: It would raise the age at which a person in Wisconsin is considered an adult in criminal court from 17 to 18.

Erpenbach's measure would pay for the added expense by creating a power pill for the counties: a 1 percent surcharge on video games and video game consoles such as Wii systems, Xboxes and PlayStations.

The fee would translate to about 60 cents more on the $60 "Halo 3 " or $2.50 more on a $250 Wii.

Erpenbach, a Middleton Democrat, said he doesn't believe video games cause crime. He was simply searching for a revenue stream to cover his bill, he said.

"Here 's one idea to pay for it," he said. "If you have another one, fine. "

Apparently, my purchases and my income are simply a "revenue stream" for Senator Erpenbach's bright ideas. If his bill is such a great idea, maybe the state could find a less worthwhile idea and shift some money from one to the other.

Wendy Henderson, a policy analyst for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, thinks that the state should tax video games, for the good of the children:

"Video games are perhaps not the best use of the kids' time, so if we can use some of the money from the video games and turn it into something positive, that's a really good use of that money."

What a vacuous argument. A lot of gamers are adults, not children. Given that the gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood right now, it's possible that far more adults than children play video games. Is Ms. Henderson going to dictate how my wife and I spend are time? Will she tax us if she disapproves?

Finally, 20-year old Nathan Bakken,

said the surcharge wouldn't change his game-buying habits.

"I 'm not going to boycott it or anything, " he said. "It's not that much money. And it's helping people."

Nathan, I support your right to spend your money on anything you want. If you want to give your money to help people, I suggest you buy the gift cards in the checkout lane of the grocery store. You could make a lot of friends by handing them out at local food shelters. But, please, don't pick my pocket when you want to be generous.

I was just flipping through my newsreader and saw an interesting headline: Tata Pulls Ford Units Into Its Orbit:

Tata Motors said that it was entering detailed talks with Ford about the takeover of Jaguar and Land Rover, confirming what investors and analysts have anticipated for months.

I've been reading The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher lately. Early in her prime ministership, Lady Thatcher had to decide what to do with Land Rover -- at the time an ailing government owned company. I haven't yet read what her ultimate decisions were, but somewhere along the line it was sold at least once and now Ford owns it.

According to this article, Ford may sell Land Rover to Tata Motors, an Indian owned company. It wasn't that long ago (cosmically speaking) that Britain "divested" itself of India. Now, in a manner of speaking, India may be taking over a part of Britain.

I find that both slightly amusing and a great symbol of how much richer the world is becoming.

Despite the certain eyeball-rolling from the young ladies in our lives we know is sure to come - or perhaps, in fact, because of it - your Minor Thoughts correspondents feel we cannot possibly consider ourselves socially-responsible bloggers without mentioning the latest on video-game addiction.

So: According to The Economist,

"Both console gaming [i.e., Nintendo, Playstation, et al.] and its online counterpart ["multiplayer online gaming"] are booming businesses that are set to keep on growing. In 2004 the industry saw its revenues overtake those generated by film box-office receipts. This year it is expected to outstrip the music business with revenues of $37.5 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), a consultancy. And the games industry is forecast to expand by over 9% annually over the next few years to become worth $48.9 billion by 2011."

The Republic of Korea, "home to the world's most extreme gamer culture" (The Washington Post)), is of course greeting this news with only slightly less enthusiasm than it would the melting of all polar ice caps.

[In 2006] the government -- which opened a treatment center in 2002 -- launched a game addiction hotline. Hundreds of private hospitals and psychiatric clinics have opened units to treat the problem... An estimated 2.4 percent of the population from 9 to 39 are believed to be suffering from game addiction, according to a government-funded survey. Another 10.2 percent were found to be "borderline cases" at risk of addiction -- defined as an obsession with playing electronic games to the point of sleep deprivation, disruption of daily life and a loosening grip on reality."

Never mind that the above symptoms are also typical of Korean life in general; contemplate instead facing a future in which there exist double the number of nerds alive today. Korea's government sure is. And while admittedly, the concept produces a few obvious positives - for one thing, that 5+% of the male population will obviously not be mating, and that's good news for a country about to experience a dire shortage of females - the "Land of the Morning Calm" just feels it is not quite yet ready to concede that its proud, ancient warrior tradition has come down to how well it plays Halo.

Which is why, at this point, war with France is its best option.

Blizzard HQ

I'm an American and I know Terrorism when I see it (and I see it everywhere). This influx of next-generation games on Korea is certainly nothing less than Cultural Terrorism. And, as the Israelis can tell you, if there's to be any hope of ending terrorist attacks, the country must cut them off at the source: those rogue states which serve as their nurseries.

Game-wise, that oddly enough means France, which is at least good fortune for Korea in that it's one nation the R.O.K. can conceivably conquer. Unbeknownst to innocent adult-adolescents everywhere, the tentacles delivering their favorite computer crack have for years led back to the French multinational beast that is - Vivendi! The froggy biz is responsible for some of the best-known games on this planet, including the current holy grail of all gaming experiences, the seminal World of Warcraft itself.

Who could have ever suspected that a development firm with a name like "Blizzard" would start each day by singing La Marseillaise (Do they even have blizzards in France? You never hear about them, at least not in the US)? But then, really, who could have suspected the French of going into the video game industry at all, and doing well at it? Maybe it's just our twenty-plus years of experience with company names like "Nintendo" and "Atari", but we Americans tend to expect our geek culture to come from the East; we gave up on the Old World long ago. How is this understandable?

The simple answer is: it's not. And people fear what they don't understand. And they hate what they fear.

Ergo, we here at Minor Thoughts hate this development, and urge that Korea teach this Eurotrash to meddle in our affairs but good. They need to be made an example out of before we all learn, to our infinite self-loathing, that the Finns are behind our favorite action movies.

Well, the Chinese have stopped even pretending concern for the welfare of the foreign peoples to whom they export. As if shipping potentially hazardous tires, dolls, wooden art sets, and even faulty fortune cookies wasn't enough, now they're selling people missiles.

But Saudi Arabia, a country so renowned for being concerned with safety that it still doesn't allow women to drive, has taken a stand. Its own Interior Ministry recently

"made its largest terror sweep to date, arresting 208 al-Qaida-linked militants in six separate arrests in recent months... The ministry said members of [one] cell were planning to smuggle eight missiles into the kingdom to carry out terrorist operations, but it did not say what kind of missiles or what the targets were. [The newspaper] Okaz reported Sunday that the missiles were already inside Saudi Arabia [when they were confiscated]."

A Minor Thoughts source also confirmed that lead-based paint was used to decorate the weapons.

The findings of a recent Gallup poll suggest that of all political persuasions, Republicans feel most mentally healthy - and it's not even close.

Reports Gallup's site:

"Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education."

Now, the blog Daily Kos correctly notes the obvious reason why the poll hardly settles the issue.

"Notice anything missing? Like, say, pointing out that this was SELF REPORTED mental health? And this poll is really not so much a poll about mental health than a poll about people's PERCEPTIONS of their mental health?"

The blog goes a little far, however, in its vitriolic attempt to fully rebut the results.

"[Gee,] why would anyone doubt that someone who considers themselves a Republican wouldn't be completely honest and forthcoming with a complete stranger on the phone about a personal matter that has no small amount of social stigma attached to it?... If we have learned nothing[sic]... it is that Republicans are well adjusted, honest folks who are in no way invested in maintaining the illusion of complete normalcy to a judgmental and unforgiving society that they helped bring about and still maintain."

Since the names of the participants in these studies aren't revealed, fear of embarrassment can hardly be much of a factor. Plus, Gallup itself does play fair by mentioning that, "In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls."

It also cannot be said that to learn how separate demographics perceive their own mental health is not in itself enlightening. A group's belief in its own mental health likely, at the very least, indicates a lower shared stress level.

None of this is to suggest that Republicans are more mentally healthy in general than Democrats (I know far too many Republicans, many of them just as angry and bitter as any Democrat), only to remind that the poll should not be cavalierly dismissed as partisan. Such a trend likely means something - but possibly nothing more than that Republicans generally possess a less stress-inducing world view ("Planet Earth will be just fine."), whether right or wrong, which translates into more assurance and attendant better mental health. At this point, who can say?

All that out of the way, your Minor Thoughts correspondents would like to point out that the inclusion of other independents within our bracket is doubtlessly throwing off our score.

CATHOLIC LEAGUE SPOKESPERSON Kiera McCaffrey is righteously indignant about an album booklet included in Britney Spears' new CD release, "Blackout", reports MTV.

Said booklet shows Britney Spears and a handsome man of the cloth getting cozy together in the confessional.

Declares McCaffrey: "What would be great is if she got serious about her religious faith and instead of mocking the confessional, maybe she could visit one for its intended purpose... [The photo of her on the priest's lap is] a cheap trick."

Your Minor Thoughts correspondents naturally take umbrage at Ms. McCaffrey's assertions. Getting a pretty woman to sit on your lap is not a "cheap trick"; it's a difficult art - especially if you want Quality. It took the writer of this article 4-5 months to get this beauty onboard, and while he's no Don Juan, he doesn't think the Catholic League could've done any better.

But this leads us to the real tragedy: because, really, having a pretty woman on your lap is simply one more Biblical value which the Whore of Babylon can never understand. Looking at these photos, the priests of Rome see blasphemy, whereas we Protestants, quite frankly, see a step in the right direction.

At least Ms. McCaffrey and her ilk have the comfort of knowing not a lot of priests are going to see what fun they're missing, though. Sales on Spears' album debuted below expectations and have been sinking ever since.

Everywhere I turn in the media, I hear that the economy is horrible. I hear that our parents had it better than we do. I hear that my generation may be the first ever to be poorer than my parents generation.

Hogwash.

First off, my parents never had iPods growing up. In fact, they didn't even have cassette walkmen. Surely that's a form of wealth? Second, my daughter will grow up in a home with multiple computers; flat screen high definition televisions; cars with automatic windows, doorlocks, and airbags; wired and wireless networks; video chat with grandparents; cellphones for all; and more. Isn't that also a sign of great wealth? Isn't that also far more than my parents ever had? (Yes.)

Secondly, even if new technology didn't indicate an increased standard of living, rising incomes would. Check out the the National Data Book's spreadsheets for Money Income Of Families--Distribution by Family Characteristics and Income Level.

Between 1970 and 2004, annual median income increased from $9,867 to $54,061. After adjusting for inflation, annual income increased from $41,568 to $54,061. That's quite an increase! Incomes were adjusted using the Consumer Price Index Research Series, to that even takes into account increases in the cost of healthcare.

Sounds to me like we're doing pretty good.

The new film adaptation of Beowulf's justly been receiving loads of huzzahs for its groundbreaking use of 3D technology (The Economist has devoted an article to how exactly it works), but its screenplay has received far less - if any - respect from the critics.

This is perplexing, since what writers Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have written is something of an achievement - a new, nearly legitimate interpretation of England's oldest epic poem. The general failure of film critics to recognize this may be due to the same ignorance which resulted in their complaints about Frank Miller's 300 earlier this year. No review of that movie was apparently complete without the observation, soon trite, that the directors had forgotten to give their Spartans body armor. But this only revealed how many of those reviews' writers had actually missed one of the movie's fundamental points: 300 isn't an attempt to accurately recreate a historical event, but an attempt to accurately recreate the spirit of how Ancient Greece would retell such a historical event. The Spartans are nearly naked not because that is how they really fought, but because that is how Greek artists would depict them.

Director Zack Snyder himself has said as much:

"300 is a movie that is made from the Spartan perspective. Not just from the Spartan perspective, the cameras are the Spartans, but it’s the Spartans sensibility of the Battle of Thermopylae... If you had Spartans sitting around a fire and they were telling you before anything was written down what happened at Thermopylae, this is the way they would tell it. It’s not necessarily down to the fact that they don’t have armor on. Everything about it is just to make the Spartans more heroic [italics mine - go get your own].”

Beowulf is the same kind of creation, only far, far more ambitious. Not only does it recreate with a sometimes wince-inducing measure of honesty the kind of world in which the story purports to take place, but with only two notable (and ultimately unnecessary) exceptions that I could count, the movie is completely faithful to its source material - yet reinterprets that material in such a way that the themes of the story are doubled in strength.

The story of both the original poem and the movie is easy to summarize: an over-the-hill king named Hrothgar is besieged by Grendel, a monster who enters his hall every night and eats a couple of the king's apparently very loyal subjects. Beowulf arrives and rips the monster's arm off, then follows the beastie into its cave in order to kill its mother, too. As proof of his kill, he brings back Grendel's head. Years later, Beowulf dies saving his kingdom from a dragon. The End.

What holds all of this together, in the poem, is the comparison readers are invited to make between King Hrothgar at the beginning of the poem and King Beowulf at its end. Beowulf the movie amplifies this theme by answering the questions about the poem most of us never even thought to - but should have - asked: Why doesn't Grendel kill Hrothgar himself? Why does Beowulf return to Hrothgar with only Grendel's head? And really, the dragon's just kind've a random tack-on, isn't it?

Well, not anymore, it's not. Gaiman and Avary explain Grendel's torturing of King Hrothgar as the confrontation between an illegitimate, freakish son and his deadbeat dad. The kingdom's wrecking by a monster is the result of its king's fornification with a bewitching succubus. The same demoness successfully seduces Beowulf, when he arrives in her cave to kill her, and thus the warrior later returns with only Grendel's head.

This coupling between man and Satanic siren, of course, results in the birth of a new monster, which bedevils the crowned Beowulf many years later: the dragon. Everything thus comes full-circle and Beowulf finds himself in the exact same position as his predecessor - naturally, the very best of scenarios in which to contemplate the two mens' differences.

See what I mean about the themes being strengthened? Yes, liberties are taken in that new "scenes" are added to the story. But they're really nothing more than most theologians do with the Bible itself, imagining details that do not contradict what is known, in order to make sense of story points otherwise not understandable.

The consequences of failing to at least pay child support are brutally exposed in Zemeckis's film..

I shouldn't really be surprised that these particular writers pull it off. I'm used to Hollywood bungling its adaptations, but Neil Gaiman is a British import who's made his name writing modern takes on mythology; it's his niche, and he's good at it. Stardust is another example of his work.

And really, that might be why I enjoyed Beowulf, and you should take any recommendation here with a grain of salt; Beowulf can play the part of a straight-up action-adventure story for your typical moviegoer, but it's also a game being played by a couple of lovers of literature with their brethren. Fun-averse purists aside, inhabitants of English Departments far and wide are watching this movie with glee. And they understand why Beowulf feels it necessary to get naked before wrestling a giant.

Full enjoyment of the show is thus reserved for a select audience of which I, for once, am a member.

So, not often getting the chance to be part of an elitist "in-crowd" at anything, I'm naturally going to go see it again. Have fun doing whatever it is you, y'know, non-English Major types do with your lives.