Ivanhoe

It started out as a best seller historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, written in the early 19th century.  I encountered the tale as a Hollywood movie starring Taylor and Taylor as a small child.  Robert Taylor, tall dark and handsome, played Ivanhoe and the much more famous Elizabeth Taylor played Rebecca of York, the "other" love interest in the story, completely eclipsing who ever it was who played Rowena, the Saxon heiress.  The movie had jousting, fighting, siege of a castle by Robin Hood, and a climatic final trial by arms on horseback between Ivanhoe and Bois Gilbert, to save Rebecca from a capital charge of witchcraft.  The movie made a vivid impression, and although I didn't see it again until the dawn of the VCR age, I remembered every scene, and most of the dialog.
   Many years later the BBC did their own Ivanhoe.  It was longer, (two DVDs instead of one) and much more sophisticated than the Hollywood costume drama from long ago.  Naturally as a died in the wool fan I rented it from Netflix and watched it.  Interesting.  First thing I noticed is that the BBC version demanded very close attention to follow the story at all.  All the characters dressed about the same, in gray and brown, and the men all hid behind  flowing full beards making it hard for the viewer to tell one character from another. The women wore no makeup, and were nowhere near as pretty as the Hollywood actresses.  Technicolor it was not, the film was processed by one of those arty labs that specializes in turning color into black and white.  At least the camera man used a tripod to steady the camera, and the sound man made the dialog audible over the score.
   I think Hollywood did a better movie than the BBC.
 

Mistresses now a Federal Offense

The trial of John Edwards starts today.  Edwards is accused of having a mistress and paying serious money to keep her comfortable and discrete.   Don't get me wrong, Edwards is a sleaseball, taking up a mistress while his wife is dying of cancer, and doing all this while running for President of the US.
  But, used to be, sleaseballs merely got bad press and shunned by society.  Now it's a federal offense with serious jail time.  I'm so glad we had all that campaign finance reform to allow the feds to prosecute politicians for keeping mistresses.

NPR dislikes Amazon

Still listening to the car radio. Long piece on NPR about how Amazon is destroying the publishing business.  Some discussion of the Justice Dept suit against Apple and the big publishers alleging price fixing.   The NPR speaker claimed that Justice was handing the book business over to Amazon.  More unclarity followed.
    NPR claimed that the average literary fiction book only sold 200 copies a YEAR.  Wow.  Even at $30 a copy, that's only $6000 in sales, not enough to pay for setting type.  Apparently genre fiction, romances, science fiction, westerns, and adventure novels are doing much better than "literary fiction".  Could it be that  "literary fiction" is boring stories about loser protagonists?  I haven't bothered to read "literary fiction" since Hemingway died, and that was a long time ago. 
   Could it be that the old line publishing houses, all bought up and merged by a bunch of suits, simply can no longer find and print worthwhile new authors?  I'm thinking of  Tom Clancy, writer of a dozen best sellers, who had to go to the Naval Institute Press to get his "Hunt for Red October" published.  None of the regular publishers had the brains to snap up this promising new author and publish his book.  Could it be that Amazon can undercut all the old line publishing houses, which don't seem to be able to do anything except print books from their old line of established authors? 

Does the FDA have to approve EVERYTHING?

Listening to NPR on the car radio today.  A medical guy was describing an off the wall procedure which had worked well in some cases.  It did not involve the use of commercially marketed drugs at all.  But, the voice over commentator at the end of the piece said something like "This innovative procedure won't go anywhere until the FDA approves it."  
   Excuse me.  I thought a license to practice medicine granted to the right to treat patients.  In this case the treatment worked.  I fail to see where the FDA has any authority to approve , disapprove, or demand more paperwork on a procedure that does not involve prescribing any sort of drug. 
   

Exemptions, Deductions, Credits, aka Loopholes

Doing your own personal income tax is a zoo. Took me a couple of days, with computer assistance. It's all the damn loopholes, exemptions, deductions, and tax credits that make it a mess. If we got rid of ALL the loopholes, doing your taxes would be simple, just use a calculator to figure a straight percent of your income. Get rid of all the picky definitions of who's a child, single, married, married filing separate returns, head of household. Pay the same whether you are married, single, divorced, what ever. Get rid of deductions for mortgages, medical, state and local taxes, the works. Get rid of credits for electric cars, energy saving furnaces, foreign taxes paid. children raised, tuition paid, houses bought, and money earned if you have children.
Just tax the income, don't try to give tax breaks depending upon how you spent it. If we dropped all the loopholes, we could drop the rates down to 15% for the average taxpayer. Charge the wealthy a little more, charge the poor a little less.
Put H&R Block out of business.

Enlisting Robots

The Army is experimenting with a four legged walking robot. Looks pretty much like a mechanical mule. Can pack 340 pounds and has a range of 12 miles, and a speed of 4 mph. It's autonomous, able to find it's own way, does not need a driver.
Looking at the picture, I keep wondering if it is any better than a real mule. It certainly won't be as quiet, what with an engine racketing away.

I remember Dick Clark

Fondly too. Way back when American Bandstand was in it's second season, it was THE TV program. I was attending a boarding school near Philly. The lounge at Boy's End had one black&white 21 inch TV set, a table model mounted on a shelf high on the wall. Channel selection was a majority rule thing and late afternoons the channel was ALWAYS channel 6 WFIL American Bandstand. For 10th 11th and 12th grades. I'm sorry Dick Clark died, a little part of America died with him.