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If Korea were whole…

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The Olympics make me cry. Watching Gabby Douglas triumph brought tears to my eyes. The Pistorius story  makes me bawl. Every four years, I choke up, and what makes me always choke up is the story of the two Koreas. Looking at the results to date, the South (ROK) has 9/3/5 in gold, silver bronze, giving it a total 17 in medal count. The North, (PRK) has 4/0/1, or 5 total. Combined, that is 13/3/6 or 22 total so far. In terms of golds, it would place Korea 4th behind the UK, and it would tie with France in the total count. This makes me cry and cry watching the clips of Koreans winning. When Rim Jong Sim, North Korean power lifter took gold, I cried -happy at the thought of all the food that she and her family would get. 

While I harbor many dark thoughts about the North -I have stated that justice would be served by lining up all the fat people in North Korea on the wall, I can’t help thinking that reunification would have to involve reconciliation. I look at the example of South Africa, and the miracle that it didn’t descend in to a genocidal hell, and wish something half as good could happen to Korea before the North becomes a province of China. Unfortunately, all the potential Mandelas in the North have been shot or nicely enslaved.

I pray that force of arms won’t be required to rejoin two halves of one body, but with every decade, the memory of wholeness will become more distant. But the games, oh the games! 

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Movies Meet True Crime

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/nyregion/kidnapping-victim-is-found-inside-detectives-garage-in-queens.html?smid=pl-share

Above is link to an article about a 17 year police veteran whose kidnapping victim he is investigating is found in his garage. It inspired this movie script.

Movie Script: Heartburn. Act I: Veteran detective (Kurt Russell) assigned a kidnapping finds resonance with this latest case with an un solved kidnapping from his rookie year. His newbie partner (Miley Cyrus) provides Rom-Com relief but goes into survivor mode when her partner is arrested after the kidnapping victim (Charlize Theron) is found in his garage, bound and gagged with his DNA all over her. Act II: Detective Newbie (Cyrus) breaks out her partner from jail and both go rogue, entering the seamy underworld of the kidnapping victim who stages fake underground snuff shows where the audience pays a lot of money to witness the psychosexual torture-murder of an audience member -is it really fake?! Act III: Exoneration becomes a choice given to our rogue detectives by a mysterious figure (Cornel West) who offers redemption versus knowledge -knowledge of the circumstances of what happened to our detective’s un solved cold case who is now revealed to be his daughter (Blake Liveley in flashbacks) in dive bar confession scene between our rogue detectives who then make out and make love. Dramatic climax in a Brooklyn warehouse in DUMBO during one of the underground snuff shows where the newbie detective (now kidnapped) is the audience “volunteer.” Final sword epic fighting scene between the main character, the original kidnapping victim (who is the Venetian-masked torturer in this underground snuff show), and the mysterious figure (Cornel West).

Sent from my iPad

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The Castaways of Gilligan’s Island: The American Pantheon

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I had been looking forward to introducing my ten year old to Gilligan’s Island, and after watching the pilot (available on Amazon Prime), I now understand why this show manages to linger in my conscience long after its many contemporaries have faded away. This show echoes today among the various reality shows and in most ensemble comedies. What is Community, if not Gilligan’s Island transplanted and transmogrified. The appeal is in the crystallization of middle American archetypes of Kennedy-era America into a pantheon. If in an alternative reality, we worshipped a nature-based divinity with seven aspects, we would worship these “Six and One in One.” If you are honest with yourself, you may admit that you already do.

The Six non-Gilligan castaways represent important aspects of the American psyche. The Skipper is the authority figure, having a presumed backstory as a veteran, but lapsed into a pudgy softness that is almost maternal -observe the moobs. He is in fact both parents who are equally ineffectual. The Millionaire is America’s 1%, ascotted, bilious, and lockjawed, he is married to Lovey, who represents America’s fading glory. The Professor is representative of America’s science and technology -he is the space program, modern medicine, and computers, but is sterile -his shirts are white, never soiled or bloodied. Mary Ann is the virginal Girl Next Door -pretty as a daisy, fresh as laundry line-drying on a summer day, and fertile as the Kansas soil that she hails from. Ginger is the encapsulation of American desire. Like Joan Harris née Holloway of Mad Men, she is not blond, but essentially a stand in for America’s fetish for blonds. Ginger is as obvious as an flesh-colored orchid. Mary Ann and Ginger could be a two-faced goddess that could be named Madonna-Whore.

These all face off against the great demon Gilligan, who is trickster, destroyer, and adolescent priapism -he is the baby boomer in early adolescence ready to terrorize his parents and peers. If the censors had not been in the way, Gilligan’s Island in the second season would have seen Mary Ann and Ginger, both pregnant, foraging for clams while Gilligan sipped coconut juice from the Professor’s skull, using the Skipper as his living chair, wearing a vest made from the Millionaire. Lovey would have been the main course in the season one finale. There are no people of color on this show, but Gilligan’s shirt is red, which is a marker, a red flag. For along with being the trickster, destroyer, and phallus rampant, Gilligan is the Other. At best, he is the troublesome minority who amuses with minstrelsy, but at worst, he will come and take your women.

And why would we worship at the altars of such as these? We already do, because each of these characters is a demographic group that consumes and drives the economy. Each of these characters has a store at the mall. Each of these characters has a magazine, a channel on cable, and political candidate shaped for them.

When I tried to explain this to my 10 year old, he said this, “It’s a stupid tv show that makes no sense and is frustrating because of that idiot Gilligan.” Such an innocent. He has so much liberal arts education to learn!

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Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 7.0 -brief review

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The annoyingly named Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 7.0 came out last month and I couldn’t hold off picking it up because my other 7 inch Android tablet has been appropriated by my 3 year old for video watching. Turns out, while traveling, the 7inch tablet is easier to hold than an iPad. I have become a fan of the 7 inch form factor, and because most of my work is done in email, Evernote, and Dropbox, across multiple platforms, it really doesn’t matter what gadget I’m on, as long as these cloud services and apps are available.

I was first struck by this device as being more business oriented than previous tablets, having charcoal grays that would look good in a boardroom. The front is Gorilla glass, the back is a high quality plastic that feels good in the hands. There are front and back cameras and Instagram works fine from either sides. It is thin enough. The 7 inch tablets work well for me in the hospital because it fits in my pocket. All the medical apps work, and in a pinch, Citrix is usable for accessing the hospital and office data. I can also read my Kindle books and watch Netflix and Hulu, listen to Pandora and Spotify, and via Google Play can cloud base my iTunes for my Android devices, or as I have done, park the non-DRM files on a 64 gigabyte microSD card with room left for over 25 feature length films.

It runs well, has between 6-8 hrs of battery life. It is much more user friendly that it used to be, but really, if you can’t set up your own email account, you shouldn’t be given a computer. Amazon sells a faux leather book cover which works and keeps things corporate.

It will run Amazon media via Flash, but who has time to watch Downtown Abbey when you have four seasons of Mad Men to catch up on? Flash kills your battery life (we know, we know), but there are times that it is convenient although every year it is less so as Apple and Microsoft have abandoned Flash.

Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is much more touch friendly than Honeycomb which killed the 10inch Android Tablet in the crib. The Tablet 2 designation is correct in that Samsung is positioning itself as an Apple alternative in the post PC world. I like ICS because you can customize. The problems Android had when I had my Droid 2 from Motorola/Verizon are note apparent -contacts come up fast on emails, and Facebook and Twitter are laced into the OS. It doesn’t crash. Individual apps may but the whole OS no longer dies. I see no need for a task killer so far.

Why did Steve Jobs hate the 7 inch form factor? It didn’t jibe with his four square grids on his keynote presentation. As he said, you’d have to file your fingers down to nubbins to reach the right size – this is not true. I think it was a mistake on his part. The fact is that industrial gadgetry is market begging to be filled by the void being left by BlackBerry. Doctors want a tablet, but one that doesn’t need a murse or a satchel to carry.

This tablet at 249.99 at Best Buy is more expensive than the Fire, but I think it does more. Even if you are wed to iOS, the fact that most of the big apps like Instagram and Angry Birds are available means that it doesn’t matter which one you have. I am preferring subscription services like Netflix and Spotify because of their ubiquity on multiple devices. Subscriptions make more sense because you don’t need to take up precious storage space for media when you can have it in the cloud -the tradeoff being the need for a broadband connection.

Other neat stuff -it features a universal remote and IR blaster, letting you turn it into a very cool feature rich remote. The app also tells what’s on TV -it would be wonderfully convenient if it just displayed the TV as well, no?

It’s a good time to be into tech. You have options. When Apple does come it with a 7inch iPad, you’ll have even more.