An Education

1. We watched the movie An Education this weekend, and I thought it was very good. I want to say a few things about it, but it will ruin the movie. Everyone watch the movie this week and I'll blog about it next week.
2.  One more thing about a conflict of visions (for now, anyway). I think it kind of informs the Public Choice theory I was talking about two post ago (the outcomes of elections being mostly random). One of Boudreax's points in that podcast is that political candidates are a combination of different positions, such that any politician you vote for is likely to hold a number of positions you don't support. And you cannot desegregate the positions; you have to compromise and pick the candidate that best represents your thoughts, taking the good with the bad. But one thing I think does help the situation is that people more or less fall into two camps. They have either a constrained vision (Republican) or an unconstrained vision (Democrat).  I think this undercuts Boudreaux's point because even though when we vote we have to choose a bundle of positions, Sowell's point is we are actually very likely to have preferences that strongly align with one of two bundles.
3. Let me see if this situation strikes you as a paradox like it did me. In the church we can get baptized if we are accountable, but there is no need if you are not accountable. In fact, you may not be permitted to be baptized if you are not accountable. But of course, if you were never accountable--say you are mentally handicapped--then that is no drawback because you are not responsible for your sins. But what if you are accountable, but then become unaccountable? Well, you probably can't get baptized can you, because baptism is a covenant, and you have to enter by choice, but you are not capable of making that choice. But you also are still responsible for your sins. It's kind of a catch 22--your accountable for your sins, but you can't do anything about them. Well, the one safety valve on this scenario is that once you actually die, a baptism for the dead can be performed for you. So you own body can't be baptized, but a surrogate's can. It all works out, but it's kind of strange, that you have to die so that someone else can be baptized for you, and then you can choose to accept that baptism in the after-life, as opposed to just getting baptized yourself and choosing later.
4. You can read some of my thoughts on using U.S. military power, here. And you can comment on this post, if you don't want to comment at B v. E.
5. It's getting late, but I still wanted to write something about vouchers. This study could be better (click through for a summary), although this reply makes some good points. I initially felt a huge let down. Based on first principles, it seemed to me any school choice program had to improve education. On further reflection here are few thoughts on why that doesn't seem to be the case or on what the study might mean:
1. Education has improved but we may not be measuring how it has improved.
2. Surrounding public schools may be competing for students, so an overall improvement in the education of students in the area may be a result of competition, with no significant variance between the quality of public and private schools.
3. Home and family environment are obviously the most important factors in education. Maybe vouchers improve education, but perhaps the effect of a modest or even significant increase in school quality is simply drowned out by other factors playing into education,  like home, family and friends. (I did, however,  kind of think that giving parents some control over where their children went to school would encourage parents to be more involved.)
4. School vouchers don't improve school quality. Suppose for a second that vouchers make absolutely no difference in education. Well that means they haven't hurt education. And now parents have a choice. It seems to me like giving people a choice, even one that doesn't make much of a difference, is still a good thing. It could make a difference down the road? And it at least makes parents feel better about the education their kids are getting. (Or is that just deception?)

The Fall and Decline of Tim Burton; More on a Conflict of Visions

1. Welcome SOB reader Dallas! Feel free to leave a comment.
2. Alice in Wonderland was a disappointment (Although it was nice to get out). All the character were dumped on us artificially in the beginning of the movie with little introduction and little development. the plot was dumped on us too, not that there was much of one, or that the movement from place to place was explained in any compelling way. I mostly liked Alice, but I got the sense that she was talking to herself most of the time. Part of the fault likes with CGI characters, who didn't interact with each other like they were actually there. 
3. Aside from a good story to tell, good pacing, and appropriate music, I think one of the key elements to good story telling in movies is showing us character reaction. Remember the scene in Goonies when the kids see the ship for the first time and they are completely amazed? According to the special features, that was the first time they had seen the ship. Watching their reaction is more interesting than looking at the ship. I think that that is one of the main problem with Wonderland: very few reaction shots, or the reaction does not match the spectacle. Part of this is because of CGI. The actor doesn't know what he is reacting to, and that's a particularly big problem for CGI created characters, where interaction is key to believability.
4. Another problem with CGI is a spin on the uncanny valley hypothesis. No matter how real the CGI looks, there is always something that looks a bit fake, and, thus, it, more often than not distracts rather than enhances the experience. CGI should be used very subtlety, like in Where the Wild Things Are (which suffers from other, unrelated problems). But maybe Avatar disproves this theory.
5. Seems to me Tim Burton has lost his way. Consider his most recent movies:
1. Batman Returns--hard to watch.
2. Planet of the Apes--ugh
3. Big Fish--a solid movie
4. Corpse Bride--disappointing compare to Nightmare before Christmas
5. Sweeney Todd--this could damage my thesis because it could be good, but I haven't seen it.
6. Alice in Wonderland--see above.
6. 4 of 5 are disappointments.
7. Do you think church lessons are primarily for faith-building or primarily for learning? Here's the dilemma I face (you can read some of my thoughts on this topic here). I'll have to teach a lesson and the lesson manual is about 2 pages worth of material, most of which is very, very familiar. Obviously there's got to be a lot of discussion to teach an hour lesson based on that little material. I, therefore, primarily focus my efforts on thinking of good questions to facilitate discussion. About the second or third time through, I usually have some questions I think will prompt a good discussion. But the problem with these questions is that they tend to lead to speculative or ambiguous gospel areas. They also tend to challenge truisms we've accepted in the church. Sometimes discussions in these gray areas aren't necessarily the most faith promoting. So would you ask the question, or what criteria would you use to make that decision? I know this is kind of a hard question to answer in the abstract. (I'll put may partially formed thoughts in the comments later).
8. I for one welcome our new bureaucratic health care overlords!
9. Do you think that being a better writer makes you a worse speaker? I don't think I'm any great writer. But I do think I've become a better writer, and I think it's come at the prices of speaking confidently. My theory is that good writing comes from an economy of words and clarify of thought, that requires a lot of reflection and rewriting. It's very hard to do those on the fly. Also, when you write a lot, and get used to that precision, it's hard be less precise, even when speaking. The one exception might be when you are speaking about something you write or think about so frequently that the thoughts are already predigested into ready-made phrases and sentences.
10. Can't think of anything to write about politics now guys. I can't think of anything original to say about the health care bill (not that it would be truly original anyway). I was going to write about David Frum's Waterloo post and his subsequent split with AEI, but I suspect no one cares.
11. Here's the quote from A Conflict of Visions that I couldn't find for the last blog post:

12. Because of conflicting visions of how much knowledge a given individual can have, and how effective that knowledge can be in deciding complex social issues, the two visions attach widely differing importance to sincerity and fidelity. Where the wise and conscientious individual is conceived to be competent to shape socially beneficial outcomes directly, then his sincerity and dedication to the common good are crucial. Godwin's whole purpose was to strengthen the individual's "sincerity, fortitude and justice." The "importance of general sincerity" was a recurring theme in Godwin, and has remained so over the centuries among others with the unconstrained vision. Sincerity tends to "liberate," according to Godwin, and to "bring every other virtue in its train." While conceding that everything is insincere at some time or other, Godwin nevertheless urged " a general and unalterable sincerity" as a powerful, ideal, capable of producing profound social benefits.

    
    

    ... 

    
    

    Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries' "real" reasons, which must be "unmasked." Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied to reference's to those adversaries' "blindness," "prejudice," or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversarial be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complicated that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken--and dangerously so. They "may do the work of things without being the worst of men," according to Burke.