1. My US History classes this week have been entirely consumed by summarizing the course of the Civil War, and we’ve only gotten to the end of 1863. That’s after about two weeks of going over the lead-up to the war. There is just so much to go over, even from my relatively superficial knowledge of the subject. I’m quite proud of the fact that my students (all three of them in that class) are all able and willing to look at both sides of the war (I tried to present both perspectives as fairly as possible, though I may have ended up giving more emphasis to the South since it doesn’t get acknowledged as much these days).

2. For relaxation, I pulled up my emulator of various old Nintendo games, trying out one or another. I really wanted to like Super Battleship, but it frustrated me too much, as it did things like giving seemingly random damage, so that you could expend all your ammunition on an enemy ship without sinking it, while it could deal lethal damage before you even aim (regardless of relative size). You could engage a tiny destroyer with a battleship from twice the range of the former, yet it could still deal severe damage. Then one of my cruisers blindly rammed a destroyer and I gave up.

3. I also tried out Rainbow Six, which I had tried to play as a kid, but didn’t understand it and gave up (though I liked the book a lot). Returning to it now I found it really fun, with the slow-paced, tactical shooting element and plotting out the mission ahead of time. I only played on the easiest difficulty, so I didn’t get the full experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I did play (well, except that one stupid stealth mission…).

4. My government class was supposed to read Matthew Spalding’s We Still Hold These Truths. Though honestly, I found it pretty worthless and mostly skipped over it (and I was quite proud to find my students seemed to agree about its shortcomings without my pointing them out). Prof. Spalding seems to me to have a very shallow view of his subject and of history in general, largely amounting to being able to quote the Founding Fathers extensively, but never engaging with them or critically examining their ideas. He seems to regard whatever they wrote as a kind of holy writ from which we can glean proof-texts to support our favored governmental policy. He makes broad and inaccurate historical claims (e.g. the claim that property was exclusively an affair of the aristocracy prior to the Enlightenment, taking the term ‘Absolute Monarch’ at face value, and so on) and he contradicts himself right and left (“Property in the new nation was to be inviolable” > “The Founders’ goal was to break up large estates”). Whatever the Founders say or did is perfectly good and pure, any problems that emerge since are the fault of selfish interest groups acting in bad faith.

In short, it’s pure polemics of a strictly party-line style by someone who has little to no insight to offer.

5. This especially struck us after reading excerpts from the far more nuanced and interesting take by Alexis de Tocqueville, who favors democracy and liberalism, but is clear-sighted enough to recognize its flaws and dangers, especially as embodied in the United States as it was at the time.

By the way, an interesting coincidence: de Tocqueville mentions the 1812 Baltimore riots, where newspapermen critical of the recently-declared war with Britain were hounded and eventually lynched. Later, reading up on Robert E. Lee for my history class, I found that his father, Light Horse Harry Lee, had been present at the time and in fact received the injuries that would eventually kill him in trying to defend the victims from the wrath of the Majority.

6. Dialogue is something of a lost art, isn’t it? I watched Uncle Buck for the first time this week, which is John Hughes writing for John Candy in the titular role, so you know it ought to be good. This is pretty much a medium-good comedy of the 1980s, but it’s just plain a good story, and the dialogue, especially from Candy, is delightful. It also features a pre-Home Alone Macaulay Caulkin, so when those two go at it you know it’s gonna be fun:

Miles: “Where’s your wife?”
Buck: “I don’t have one.”
Miles: “How come?”
Buck: “It’s a long story.”
Miles: “Do you have any kids?”
Buck: “No, I don’t.”
Miles: “How come?”
Buck: “It’s an even longer story.”
Miles: “Are you really my Dad’s brother?”
Buck: “What’s your record for consecutive questions asked?”
Miles: “Thirty-Eight.”
Buck: “I’m your dad’s brother.”

Besides, it’s always a delight to watch John Candy at work; the man had such a positive energy to him, in addition to being a really fantastic actor. We lost him way too soon.

7. What made me think of the dialogue issue was seeing the full trailer for Netflix’s Avatar the Last Airbender adaptation. The visuals look great, and it’s almost sure to be better than Shyamalan’s version, but the dialogue in the trailers struck me as overall weaker than the original’s:

New:
Aang: “I can’t stop the Fire Nation. I don’t want the responsibility!”

Old:
Katara: “Why didn’t you tell us you were the Avatar?”
Aang: “Because…I never wanted to be.”

That, and “I don’t want the responsibility” seems a lot more selfish and shallow than the original’s “they tried to take everything and everyone I loved!”, where the issue was less Aang not wanting responsibility than his being hurt and frightened by suddenly being pushed into adult demands and threatened with the loss of his father figure.

Granted it’s not fair to judge between a trailer and a full show, but I’m not sold on the new script so far (Sokka’s “flying ball of fur” line was spot-on, though). There’s also the issue that, if it’s too close to the original, you’ll have to wonder what the point is, but the original is good enough that it’ll be hard to deviate without ending up worse (at least they can skip “The Great Divide”).

Oh, well; we’ll see. I’m not morally certain it will be a train wreck, so that’s better than most adaptations.