http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:58:13 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/21/165813.php Bryce EddingsImagine traveling all over the world for the sole purpose of drinking beer. Along the way you get to talk to other beer lovers about why and where they enjoy their favorite ales or lagers. In short, imagine traveling all over the world trying to find the meaning of beer. Sounds like a dream, right?Now, think about it again. Think about it practically. Remember the last time you woke and immediately regretted that last beer or two that you had the night before? Now imagine that feeling in a hotel room, far from home, with an early plane that you have to catch so you can fly to another city just to drink more beer (the last thing that you really want to do just then) and talk to more beer people. Starting to sound a little nightmarish, isn’t it?But don’t get me wrong. I’m completely envious of Pete Brown for this is exactly the pilgrimage that he took. I’d go tomorrow if given the chance. He chronicles his trip in Three Sheets to the Wind. Starting with a simple pint with a friend in London, Brown’s journey led him to the Czech Republic, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, the US, Australia, Japan, China, Germany (during Oktoberfest, of course), Norway and Sweden.Three Sheets to the Wind is an absolutely delightful read. It is full of information about beer drinking, beer drinkers, beer-makers, and beer-sellers all over the world. From his description of a devious ham and beer vendor in Madrid, to the ice-encrusted beer taps in Australia, to the 007 villain-like brewers in Japan, Brown provides plenty of fascinating stories about beer culture all over.But don’t go thinking that this is a stodgy travel book with carefully crafted and antiseptic discussions of other places. Brown’s writing style is completely conversational and he pulls no punches in his descriptions of the people, places, and beer companies that he encounters. His self-effacing style and wry wit lends the narrative a charm and keeps this bald honesty from seeming nasty. You get the feeling that this is exactly the way that Brown would tell you his stories over a pint back in that London pub.I’d recommend Three Sheets to anyone who likes to travel, likes beer, or, even better, likes both. Books51836@blogcritics.org Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:58:13 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/21/144646.php Bryce EddingsIn the interest of full disclosure I should tell you that I am an atheist. For those that know me, this is no shock. Those that don't know me probably don't care. I only point it out so that you can know my perspective of this DVD.The movie has a fascinating beginning. In an amusing montage of old movie clips and under Brian Flemming's near sarcastic narration we are presented with the story of Jesus. The kitchiness of the old films and Flemming's barely contained chuckle through it all do a very good job of showing how Christ's allegedly miraculous time on Earth appears to those of us on the outside - as whole lot of hooey.After this quick recap of Christianity, Flemming makes the surprising ascertain that Jesus never actually existed. This was a new one for me. I've always assumed that he did exist but was just one of the best documented cases of a messiah complex in history.This is the kind of stuff that I can really get into. I've truly enjoyed the ride of The Da Vinci Code with all of the reactions and reactions to the reactions. I love to sink my teeth into conspiracy theories and history. And what better historical conspiracy could there be than the invention of the Christ?But, despite the title of the film, very little time was spent on this angle In fact with my first viewing, I wasn't really sure what the point of this DVD was except for Mr. Fleming to declare as loudly as he can that he doesn't believe.For after making the claim that Christ never existed and backing it up with a few facts presented with the same chuckling sneer, Flemming moves right on to begin ridiculing Christians and poking at them from every perspective that he can.He explores the separation between the God of the bible, vengeful and absolute in law, and the God of today's Christianity, more Care Bear than maker and overlord of all things. He examines the more likely folk tale roots of the "facts" of the bible. He discusses moral atheism, a concept that seems to be an oxymoron to many people today, with a handful of interesting scholars and thinkers.In fact, it was these experts that I found myself enjoying the most. As the film moved on and went deeper into Flemming's personal journey from a devout christian to an even more devoted atheist, I found myself liking him less and less. In the end Flemming, at the height of narcissism, revisits his old school - a Christian institution. The point of his visit and interview with its principal is really unclear though Flemming seems to think that he taking a stand. Really, he appears to whine about a time in his life that he'd rather have gone another way. While the principal does a fine job of remaining calm under his accusatory and erratic form of questioning, Flemming believes that he's building the situation to a dramatic victory. When the principal mentions some sort of trouble that Flemming got himself into while at the school and ends the interview by walking away, Flemming gets his final victory by going to the school's chapel where he thrice accepted Christ and declares that he now denies the existence of the Holy Spirit.Perhaps the only reason that I would watch this DVD all the way to the end is that I agree with every conclusion that Fleming has reached in life. In fact what he does tell about his life closely parallels mine.I share with him the mixture of disgust, amusement and fear at the fundamentalist protestant christian movement that has become so powerful in almost every way in the United States today. My inclination is to praise this DVD but I try to look at works like this from the perspective of the other guy as much as I can and from that angle he failed miserably.At the risk of abusing a metaphor, Flemming is preaching to the choir.Any Christian that could sit through the first ten minutes of this film and not either walk out of the room or throw their DVD player through the window deserves high praise. Nevertheless, Flemming's disparagement is so complete I can't imagine that this Christian, patient as he or she might be, would be able to entertain any of the ideas presented. And that's a shame because many of them are quite compelling.With an attitude that both sides of the widening cultural divide in the United States is guilty of, Flemming does more than say that he disagrees with most of his countrymen. He loudly and proudly says that they are hateful, despicable, clownish oafs. He presents the extremes of their points of views as mainstream and damns them all for it.Once again, I'm tempted to go along with him in this but I'm embarrassed at his maltreatment. Most Christians, like most people, think of themselves as good people and believe that they are doing the best that they can for themselves and the world. At one point Flemming does admit this but it is so deep in the film and a Christian would have to wade through so much muck that it hardly rights the wrong.I watched the film again, trying to find where I might have misinterpreted something or taken Flemming's approach too literally. I couldn't find it. I also watched every minute of the extras, half because I found the experts very interesting and half to try to find the film's message.I finally found it. The last extra is a captioned slide show that purports to go deeper into the subject. Really it is little more than a recap with clearer references to the source materials. Then at the very end of the slide show, though, I finally got it. For lack of a better word, this video is evangelical propaganda for an aggressive atheistic movement.Really!I couldn't believe it. What good word is there to spread? I've been an atheist for years and I've never found it to be particularly fulfilling and I've never felt the need to convert anyone else. It's not about fulfillment; it's just a rational choice that one makes. Nor is it a lifestyle or life philosophy. I don't ask myself at the end of each day whether or not I was a good atheist today.But Flemming seems to be targeting people just like me and in that light the whole video, save that bit at his old school, makes a lot of sense and frankly is quite well done. Most of the experts in the film share a belief that christians are not only wrong but they're dangerous. It's hard to look into history and disagree. And today it seems even worse with so many of the political and cultural battles being waged on protestant fundamentalist lines. Once the film has gotten to the targeted viewer - because most christians would have already shut it off or walked out of the room - Flemming offers some atheistic, naturalistic, antireligious or whatever you want to call them organizations at the end of that slide show. I can't deny that I'm intrigued so it appears that his propaganda has worked at least in this case.I just hate feeling manipulated. Video41334@blogcritics.org Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:46:46 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/19/151020.php Bryce EddingsI wanted to actually try Mr. Pilzer's suggestions before writing this but I just haven't been able to get to it. I will post my results later when I have.The biggest challenge this book presents is that you actually have to pay attention to your health insurance. This is something that I, and I'd say most Americans, have never really done. I have insurance through my employer. There's something about a deductible and that's about all I usually know.Until something happens, that is. I really woke up to this when two things happened. I broke my thumb over the summer. This required surgery and follow up appointments which racked up quite a bill. In the end, the whole ordeal cost well over $5K! And, miraculously and somewhat mysteriously, my insurance paid all but $109. That's all I had to pay.Amazing.Then in October I decided that I wanted to strike out on my own. I quit my job, set up a consulting business, and immediately started worrying about health insurance. For me, this detail is even more worrisome than taxes. For the time being, we are on my wife's insurance but frankly it's not a very good plan and it's quite expensive. I planned to find individual insurance as soon as I could anyway and now I feel a lot more confident about this process thanks to Pilzer's book.In the first place, this guy is excited about health insurance. I really have never encountered anyone with so much enthusiasm for this, to me, mind numbingly boring topic. His excitement really comes through in the book. Under most writers I wouldn't make it two paragraphs into this subject before falling asleep. But Pilzer keeps the reader's attention with his enthusiasm. It also helps that the text is often interrupted with charts, text boxes, subheading, etc. All of this drags you along as he explains his rather simple solution to rising employer health care costs.His solution, and I'm not spilling the beans on him here because it's right there in the title, is to leave your traditional employer provided healthcare plan. He argues that things are such now that obtaining individual insurance is actually cheaper and can provide better coverage for healthy individuals than under the old system of employer provided insurance."Yeah, right," you're probably thinking. Conventional wisdom says that purchasing individual health insurance is cripplingly expensive. That's what I believed when I saw the synopsis of this book. But Pilzer demonstrates how one can combine high deductible individual insurance with a new financial tool that Congress recently put into place called an HAS to make it work.Like I said, I haven't tried it yet myself but I will.I sat down with this book and read it cover to cover but only because I planned to write this review. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone else nor would I do it myself if I were reading it for the first time. Even with the enthusiasm and attention grabbing format I mentioned above I found my mind wandering while I read it. This IS a book about health insurance, after all, and there's only so much you can do with this subject.And Pilzer apparently realizes this. Mercifully, the first section of the book, directly after the table of contents, is called "Executive Summary." In it he presents almost every realistic health insurance scenario followed by a summarized solution and where you can find the specific details of his solution in the book. So in some ways this can be called a reference manual to Pilzer's new health insurance solution.And he doesn't just cover individuals. There is quite a lot written for businesses about how they can take advantages of the new health insurance laws to cut their costs for health insurance. The most innovative approach was to educate employees about the cheaper solutions available to them for finding individual insurance then compensating them, before taxes, for their costs at a fraction of the overall costs associated with the traditional arrangement. Everybody wins.So, if you have health insurance, need insurance or handle the insurance for your company, I recommend this book. Books41228@blogcritics.org Mon, 19 Dec 2005 15:10:20 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/11/28/130728.php Bryce EddingsDo you know where the soul of America is? I do but I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to read the book.Actually, this book is less concerned with America's soul than those parts that have become separated from it. Specifically religion, business, politics, the workers - well, the whole country, I suppose - and each part is represented by a caricature designed for first time novelist Abraham King's dissection and criticism. The book opens and closes on a flea market - a nice device that prepares the reader for the messiness of all that will come. Surrounded as it is by the chaos of mounds of junk for sale and grubby customers rifling through old pots and pans, the book produces a futility for the characters as they try to enforce some sort of order to their life. While each character desperately clings to whatever portion of the American pie he has gained, he is unaware of the ground crumbling beneath him. We are shown how the actions of each contribute directly to the decline of America. This demonstrates a perpetuation of power on the parts of both the powerful and powerless that vexes the entire novel. The caricature studies begin with the militia man without a militia. He has a credo and an agenda but no followers. He is followed by two religious leaders, one who is slowly converting his church to a shopping mall and another who doesn't really seem to have a church at all. We also meet the business tycoon whose entire existence is literally and necessarily spent at his desk as it contains the life support systems for his failing body. The working poor and the middle management employee help to round out this modern American morality play. Finally, the government overseeing this madness is run by amateurs trained by amateurs with no greater goal than to stay in office. Anything here sound familiar? If there is a genius to King it is that he can take the ills intrinsic to the point of being familiar in modern American society and twist them through hyperbole so that we are reintroduced to their corrosive nature. He holds up a circus mirror to make us reexamine the evils that we have become used to. This very act produces not only a chance to see the America with fresh eyes but many chances at humor. For all of the darkness here, there is a great deal of comedy. I found myself laughing aloud and while simultaneously horrified by book's macabre twists.You might have noticed, if you try to be a politically correct grammarian as I do, that I seem to have slipped into the now archaic method of referring generically to all persons with a masculine pronoun. This is not the case. Except for one or two minor characters, this book is devoid of women. I'm not sure if this is an oversight by the author or another of his many points regarding what is wrong with America today. Given Abraham's taut metaphors, I tend to think the later. This is really an entertaining book. The idea is well conceived and the characters, even if I can't find myself caring for even the most sympathetic of them, are interesting enough to keep the pages turning.But then this is a parable so who needs depth? Books40176@blogcritics.org Mon, 28 Nov 2005 13:07:28 EST