Following the announcement that Simon & Schuster may pursue legal action against M. Night Shyamalan (chronicled in my blog entry on August 14), I decided to read the alleged book, Margaret Peterson Haddix's Running Out of Time.

The book chronicles the adventures of Jessie, a spunky tomboy who believes she and her family and friends are living in Indiana in 1840. When several children come down with diphtheria, Jessie's mother explains that it is really 1996 and they are all part of a historical preserve called Clifton Village. Think Colonial Williamsburg, except the people there live that way all the time and are not allowed to leave. Jessie is instructed to escape from the historical village compound -- which is heavily guarded -- and find a Mr. Neeley, one of the founders of Clifton Village who harshly criticized it from its inception. He will call the health department and hold a news conference about the epidemic in Clifton Village, saving Jessie's family and friends.

Most of the book is composed of Jessie's adventures in the "modern" world as she tries to get to a phone and call Mr. Neeley. She finds Mr. Neeley but soon discovers that it is in fact not Mr. Neeley, but one of the directors of Clifton Village posing as Mr. Neeley. She escapes from him and manages to convince several reporters to come to a press conference she holds herself. The reporters are intrigued by her story, especially given that Clifton Village has just announced that it will no longer be open to tourists.

Jessie blacks out and wakes up days later. The events following her blacking out are re-told to her by others; the entire time she was escaping from Clifton Village, she had diphtheria and that's why she blacked out. The original intent of Clifton Village was to create a group of super-immune humans who were not susceptible to disease. Initially, they all had the benefit of modern medicine, but the people who operated the village took that away and actually introduced diphtheria into the village, hoping that the people who survived the disease without antibiotics would be naturally immune to diphtheria and have children who were similarly immune. The tourist village was merely a cover for isolating people in a large historical preserve.

That said, here are the similarities between the movie The Village and the book Running Out of Time:

• A spunky teenage girl as a protagonist
• A setting that seems to be the 19th century but is in fact the modern era
• A conspiracy to prevent the children of the village from knowing the truth
• People in the village dying of a now-preventable disease condition
• The spunky teenage girl is sent to get medicine to cure the disease condition
• An implied, larger conspiracy on the outside to prevent people from learning about the true nature of the sanctuary (the head ranger in The Village, played by Shyamalan himself, tells the young ranger not to ask questions about the woods)

These are some pretty specific plot points, both of which exist in both the book and the movie. Any one of these by itself could be construed as a coincidence, but all six? Shyamalan is, I think, in a world of trouble with this one.

UPDATE: Scott pointed out that the "disease" in The Village is an infection caused by Lucius being stabbed. Matt commented, "Yeah, they've got a bad case of the stabs." Therefore, I've substituted the word "condition" for "disease," since Lucius' condition would be preventable with modern antibiotics. However, recall that the villagers in Shyamalan's film are dying of a disease that is most likely preventable, which is why Lucius wants to venture to "the other towns" to find medicine.

Posted by Mark at 2:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

William B. Rood is a city editor for the Chicago Tribune. He was also one of the officers in charge of the action on February 28, 1969 for which John Kerry was awarded a Silver Star. Several veterans who were not there have claimed that John Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for his actions that day. Most notably, Kerry shot and killed a fleeing Viet Cong who was armed with a rocket launcher and orchestrated an attack on river ambushers on the Dong Cung.

While Rood has remained silent about the events for thirty years, he published an account of what happened that day in today's issue of the Tribune (registration required to view the story). Rood's account is meticulous and only describes the events for which he was present.

Rood's story contradicts the stories of people who weren't even there who claim that Kerry didn't deserve his Silver Star. Hopefully this will put an end to critics' groundless accusations. Rood has no political reasons for putting this information forward. His credibility is enhanced by the fact that he has refused requests to talk about this even from reporters at his own paper. As he says in his essay, "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it." This is not free Kerry publicity, but a clarification of the facts from a first-hand participant.

Posted by Mark at 3:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Who are these people? These "liberals," these "conservatives"? How can you spot them? What does these labels mean? Rush Limbaugh uses the word "liberal" as though it were an insult. George Will is a "conservative" columnist. Are John Kerry and John Edwards "the most liberal" members of the Senate? Is such a thing quantifiable? Why are there "Christian conservatives" but not "Christian liberals"?

It's all about labels. Ask any philosopher or linguist. Labels exist to define what is, but also what is not. In history, we call it the phenomenon of The Other: the thing that is antithetical to us, that represents the values which are the opposites of our values. What is the East? What is the West? Simply put, we are the West. What we are not is the East. Those labels really don't do a good job of positively identifying all those traits that are the West and all those traits that are the East. As Potter Stewart might say, "I know the West when I see it." We define things in terms of how they relate to us. If we consider ourselves the West, then those people with whom we do not identify must be the East. At first glance, this looks like a simple geographical issue: obviously the people in the western part of the world are the West and the people in the eastern part of the world are the East. Look again: whose east and whose west? The Earth is a sphere, which makes absolute definitions of east and west impossible to define. Relative definitions, on the other hand, are easy to come by. The West might be defined as that part of the world west of the Prime Meridian but east of the International Date Line. The placement of these lines is purely arbitrary. The Prime Meridian extends through England because, well, England invented the Prime Meridian.

Even if we accept this man-made definition of east and west as they relate to cartography, does that mean that France -- which is east of the Prime Meridian -- is the East? Of course not; France is the West. How can we tell? If we were to list the reasons why France is a member of what we call the West, the only geographical reason would be that it's west of Russia. France is in the West because it shares a common religion with the West (Christianity), a common language (French, derived from Latin, the language of the Western Roman Empire), a common system of government (democracy), and a common cultural heritage. France is a charter member of the West, having helped build it over the course of hundreds of years since the fall of the Roman Empire.

What about that Roman Empire? That has something to do with it, too. The West is, roughly, the Western Roman Empire. The emperor Constantine founded a second capital of the empire, Constantinople (now Istanbul, as They Might Be Giants can tell you). The gigantic empire was divided in half geographically, but it was also divided culturally. In Rome, the Christians were closer to what we would call Catholic and spoke Latin. In Constantinople (not Istanbul), the Christians were closer to Eastern Orthodox and spoke Greek (because the people in that part of the world still spoke Greek). The cultural heritages of the two halves of the empire -- and the lands controlled by them -- have been different for over a thousand years. "East" and "West" refer explicitly to rough geographical divisions, both modern and historical, but they implicitly refer to a whole host of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences.

Now back to liberals and conservatives. They're words that act as shortcuts (aliases for Mac users) to other meanings. To label someone as "liberal" is to immediately introduce a whole host of assumptions about that person's beliefs, conveniently located under the umbrella of "liberal." The same goes for conservatives.

The word "liberal" means many things: "marked by generosity," "lacking moral restraint," "not literal or strict," "not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms." In discussing people marked as liberals in the United States, we would probably say that they are not traditional. They are open to new ideas and not bound by tradition. "Conservative" means "tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" or "marked by moderation or caution." A conservative in the United States adheres to tradition. We could say that liberals are open to change while conservatives are not. "Conservative" and "liberal" describe two separate philosophical systems, one component of which is politics.

The liberal philosophical system

• Epistemology: Reason. Knowledge comes from human beings. "Inalienable rights" are innate in human beings, as a result of their being reasoning beings.
• Metaphysics: Subjective reality. Liberals don't believe that what is true for one person is true for another person.
• Ethics: Do things for the good of society as a whole. Liberals place more importance on society as a whole instead of individuals. Helping the less fortunate is also important. Liberals deal with people in groups rather than as individuals.
• Economics: Socialism. Liberals believe that an uneven distribution of wealth is not ethical, so another mechanism -- in this case, the state -- must allocate that wealth.
• Agency: Determinism. Liberals believe that things happen outside the control of human beings and that they have no control of what occurs in the world.

The conservative philosophical system

• Epistemology: God. "Inalienable rights" come from God, who created human beings and gave them the capacity to reason.
• Metaphysics: Objective reality. There is a knowable truth that is universal for all people (this truth, incidentally, is usually the same as the politician's truth).
• Ethics: Self-interest. A thing should be done by an individual for the good of that individual. Things done for the good of the individual will necessarily be done for the good of society (Adam Smith's "invisible hand").
• Economics: Capitalism. Conservatives believe that capitalism is the most just of all the economic systems. A person should work for what he earns and nothing less or more.
• Agency: Free will. There exists nothing outside the control of a human being's free will. There are no excuses because everything is the result of a person's good or bad choices.

Now an explanation, because I will be torn to pieces if I don't offer one. I added "agency" because I think that's an integral part of these philosophical systems. Conservatives and liberals have different views on who is responsible for things happening in the world. Conservatives, like existentialists, believe that everything can be reduced to choices. If you've got problems in your life, it's your own fault, because you made bad choices. Liberals, on the contrary, believe that you have no control over your actions. They are determined by your environment, by other people, and by your own genetic makeup. You have no control; you merely react to things that occur.

These descriptions would represent an ideal liberal or an ideal conservative. No human being could be like these ideals, but they are things that a conservative person or a liberal person strives for. Real people are a mixture of both, or of other systems, for these systems are not the only philosophical systems that exist.

These systems translate readily into the realm of politics. Democrats tend to be "liberal," while Republicans tend to be "conservative." Politics kind of messes up the reasoning behind things, because politics is about power. Is a liberal politician doing something because he feels his liberal philosophy will be best for the country, or is he doing something because he wants raw power? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Politicians -- allegedly -- do things for the good of the country. A conservative politician pushes for conservative policies because, in his opinion, those policies will be best for the country. Or is he pushing conservative policies because he feels they will give him more power? That's when these philosophical systems get intertwined with politics and it becomes hard to tell what "liberal" or "conservative" means. Some politicians that might be considered liberal favor conservative policies, and conservative politicians might favor liberal policies.

Conservatives are not bad people because they are conservative, nor are liberals evil because they are liberal. Neither one hates America. They represent opposing philosophical systems, nothing more. People from each side feel that theirs is the correct philosophy because ... well, because that's the way people are. When a person holds a belief, he naturally feels that his belief is correct. The problem occurs when these philosophies enter the realm of politics, when people are making decisions for America based not on an objective evaluation of the situation (i.e. "What is good for America?") but an ideological evaluation (i.e. "What do I think is good for America?"). This is where we run into the problem of conservative thinkers using their conservative ideology to make decisions and not their own minds. As Maslow would agree, a liberal person is not bad, but he can use that liberality to bad ends.

Politics today relies too much on ideology, and ideology is too inextricably linked to politics. Ideology is misused and confused with wisdom and is used to achieve power, not to make America better for everyone. A politician must think about serving his country, not improving his own station in life or the stations of his cronies. Conservatism is not the correct choice all the time; neither is liberalism the correct choice all the time. A politician much evaluate each situation as it occurs and not base every decision on a philosophy which, in the end, may not be good for all Americans.

Posted by Mark at 2:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Warning! Spoilers ahead! If you haven't yet seen M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and don't want The Twist to be revealed, then stop reading here!

That said, here's a funny story. I was telling Michelle about The Village and how it was set in the 19th century and that Matt didn't care for The Twist, and she responded by spinning an interesting tale. She said she remembered reading, in eighth grade or so, a book about a 19th-century society which, it turns out, wasn't 19th-century at all. Chronologically, the people in this little town lived in modern times, but the parents were keeping that information from the children, acting as though it were the 19th century, designing 19th-century buildings, even making their children memorize the presidents only up to a certain point in the 19th century. The parents were supposed to tell their children the truth when they turned 13 or 18 or something like that, but they stopped doing that and the children grew up believing it was the 19th century. Eventually, though, the children found out.

When she told me this, my jaw dropped about ten feet. Michelle hadn't seen The Village or heard anything about the plot, and here she was, telling me almost exactly what The Twist was. I told her that what she had just described was, in fact, The Twist from The Village. She was amazed!

I did a Google search, looking for a book that may resemble the plot of The Village, but Michelle couldn't remember the name of the book or the author. It appeared that we would never know the name of the book whose plot preceeded The Village by at least eight years.

Until now. I did a simple Google search and the first result was an article from MSNBC dated a mere two days ago. Margaret Peterson Haddix wrote her first book, Running Out of Time, in 1995. In Haddix's book, "adults in a bucolic 19th century town keep the same secret from their children, and a plucky tomboy journeys through dangerous woods to get medicine." Sound familiar? Yup, that's the plot of The Village. Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Running Out of Time, is contemplating a lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company, the distributor of The Village. Haddix was tipped off when friends and journalists noted the similarities between the two works and asked her if she had sold the concept to Shyamalan. She hadn't.

What are the odds that two people come up with this same idea? Is it really that obscure a concept -- people duped into believing they live in a particular time when, in fact, they don't? It's quite an interesting situation and I certainly don't know what to make of it. For the time being, I can only give credence to Haddix's suspicions that Shyamalan may have stolen the idea from her.

Apparently, this isn't the first time this has happened to him, either. In 2002, a screenwriter from Pennsylvania sued Shyamalan, claiming that he took the idea for Signs from an unpublished screenplay of his. That time, the incident could be written off. This happens to lots of successful writers: people sue them, claiming that they got the idea first, but there is never any way to prove it. This time, there is definitely proof. Running Out of Time sold half a million copies and won awards. This is not a question of "he said, she said." Shyamalan has some tough charges to answer to: a book which was definitively published many years before The Village, with the same obscure plot? Even down to the detail that "a plucky tomboy journeys through dangerous woods to get medicine"? If Shyamalan didn't plagiarize the plot, this is a fantastic coincidence. If he did, then how did he think he would get away with it?

I've got to find a copy of this book. I hope Michelle still has hers.

Posted by Mark at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I can handle vilifying so-called liberals. Sure, that's fine.

But now, they want to indoctrinate kids to hate people with a point of view that is different from their own. Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed: A Small Lesson in Conservatism is available for $8.99 from WorldNetDaily. Good grief. Here's an excerpt from the website:

"Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! A Small Lesson in Conservatism" is a wonderful way to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. In simple text, parents and children follow Tommy and Lou on their quest to earn money for a swing set their parents cannot afford. As their dream gets stuck in Liberaland, Tommy and Lou’s lemonade stand is hit with many obstacles.

Liberals keep appearing from behind their lemon tree, taking half of their money in taxes, forbidding them to hang a picture of Jesus atop their stand, and making them give broccoli with each glass sold.

Law after law instituted by the press-hungry liberals finally results in the liberals taking over Tommy and Lou’s stand and offering sour lemonade at astronomical prices to the customers.

How about Help! Mom! There Are Straw Men Under My Bed! A Small Lesson in the Ridiculous Rhetoric Used By Conservatives? I think that title would be better and it would be more informative. Admittedly, though, I haven't read the book. But "forbidding them to hang a picture of Jesus atop their stand"? That's quite a blatant false statement (no one -- no one -- is suggesting that religious elements should be removed from a private sphere; that notion was invented by the kind of people who wrote this book). My big fear is that this book will politicize kids at any early age, an age when they aren't old enough to analyze political arguments or realize that they are being imbued with political propaganda.

Posted by Mark at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's be reasonable, here. No one wants to vote for John Kerry. In terms of why people will vote for him, though, the reason is simply that 1) he's not George Bush, and 2) he has a chance of getting elected. John Kerry is a necessary evil. He's got a lot of problems. One of them is that no one knows who he is! Another is that he wavers (waffles?) on lots of issues.

Still, though, his proposed policies aren't as crazy as George Bush's. Kerry would not let his religion influence his political decisions. Here are some of the religious-based decisions that Bush has made: supporting a constitutional amendment preventing gay marriage; supporting abstinence-only education (despite studies which show it is no better at preventing pregnancy than contraceptive education); providing government funding only for those charities abroad which do not endorse abortion; John Ashcroft, a ridiculous Puritan who -- let's not forget -- tried to overturn a decision of the people of the state of Oregon because he disagreed with it, and is currently engaged in a war on pornography in the midst of a war on terror (let's weigh those out; which is more important? You're right; if we let people see boobies, the terrorists win).

In terms of economic policy, George Bush has turned a multibillion-dollar surplus into a multibillion-dollar deficit. In fact, his budget deficits are the largest since Reagan. He gave a tax cut to the wealthiest Americans under the guise that such an act would create more jobs, since more employers would be able to hire more employees with the extra disposable income they had (this is predicated on the illusion that giving people who make six figures an increase in their personal disposable income will translate into an increase in their company's disposable income). Alan Greenspan, the man that every president listens to, disagreed with Bush's tax cut. (It's a wonder Greenspan is still alive, since everyone in the administration who has disagreed with Bush has been immediately discredited as though this were Soviet Russia. Cf. Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neil.) Bush also lobbied for the elimination of the dividend tax. BerkshireHathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the elimination of the dividend tax, disagreed with Bush, since the only people who would benefit were -- again -- the super-wealthy. As Buffett has said before, the millions of dollars that he would get back would do more to stimulate the economy in the hands of middle-class people than himself. The talk about average Americans getting money back from the elimination of the dividend tax is false. Middle-class Americans would get a few hundred dollars back at most, while super-wealthy people with lots of money invested in stocks (Dick Cheney being one of them) would get millions back.

These are just some of the things that George Bush has done in his four years in office. To see some more, visit McSweeney's Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush.

I have high hopes that John Kerry will not do a lot of these things, and from what I know about his platform, those hopes are correct. Nevertheless, John Kerry will not save the world. He is not a great candidate. He is not a candidate for the idealistic. He is a pragmatic candidate. John Kerry is necessary to undo the last four years of policies that have been bad for America (but very good for wealthy Americans, incidentally). John Kerry is not a Franklin Roosevelt or an Abraham Lincoln. Let's be clear about this. At the DNC, praise was heaped on him and it was as though he were the Messiah. He is no Messiah. At best, he's a janitor that will sweep up the crap that has happened under Bush's authority.

This will be another close election. Neither candidate will have the mandate he wants. Ralph Nader will not win this election. If this were, say, four years ago, when it was a contest of ideals, then Ralph Nader would be a viable alternative. This is not about ideals anymore. This election is 100% about voting Bush out of office. John Kerry is the only candidate that can muster enough votes to accomplish that goal. Ralph Nader will only cut into Kerry's potential winnings. In fact, Republicans have been pushing to get him on the ballot in as many states as possible, hoping that people vote for him so that potential Kerry voters split between Kerry and Nader.

I will be voting for John Kerry, but not because I like John Kerry. I will vote for him because I dislike Bush. The fact of the matter is that Kerry is not the best candidate; he's the least bad candidate. Yes, it's a terrible reason, but this has been a terrible four years for America, and another Bush term only promises more terror in the future.

Posted by Mark at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)