I avoided the shopping malls on Black Friday (as well as the pepper spray-wielding shoppers), but I couldn’t completely resist the siren call of online commerce. Who among us has the moral fortitude to pass up the opportunity to purchase Starcraft II for $29.99? Certainly not me. At some point, I should get around to purchasing gifts for others. But when presented with a sale, one must have priorities.
I received an email from Blizzard Entertainment the other day informing me that my World of Warcraft account was hacked. After running a few different malwae scans, I discovered that a keylogger had somehow installed itself on my system. I pride myself on running a clean machine, so this hack was more of personal affront than a cause for alarm. The keylogger is now eradicated and I’ve changed my most critical passwords (email, banking, etc), so this mischief shouldn’t inflict any lasting harm. But I’ll be more diligent about running weekly system scans. I suppose I should also be more selective about the fishnet-related sites I visit.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday. I’ll be taking a blogging holiday tomorrow to enjoy some football and mashed potatoes. I’ll be back on Friday to share whatever random thoughts happen to be passing through my head. As always, I remain grateful for your continued patronage of my obscure corner of the digital bazaar.
Like a lot of Community fans, I was saddened to learn that the series is being placed on hiatus and will likely be cancelled. The show’s geeky and borderline absurdist sense of humor strokes this nerd’s funny bone just right, but I’ll concede that it probably won’t appeal to the vast majority of American viewers. Any broadcast sitcom that devotes whole episodes to riffs on alternate universes, Dungeons & Dragons, and stop-motion Christmas specials is probably not long for this world. Perhaps it will find a home on cable or even Netflix. And there’s still Parks and Recreation. But at least give me a series finale that ends with Troy singing the Reading Rainbow theme song. Or have Annie and Britta make out. One of the two.
Severe depression can be debilitating, but in Melancholia, it also serves as a mechanism for coping with the end of the world. The movie’s opening chapter introduces us to Justine (Kirsten Dunst) as she and her new husband arrive at their wedding reception. The reception, held at an opulent golf resort owned by her brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland, what are you doing here?), serves as the venue for Justine’s latest struggle with what the movies hints is a long history of clinical depression. Over the course of a stressful evening plagued by familial sniping, Justine’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic. It soon become apparent to both Justine and her husband that their marriage is over before it could even begin.
By the movie’s second half, Justine’s depression has become so crippling that she is forced to move in with her sister and brother-in-law. Meanwhile, a newly discovered rogue planet dubbed Melancholia is on a course that may or may not destroy the Earth.
Melancholia, like Lars Von Trier’s other movies, is not kind to its characters. The sumptuous visuals in the movie’s prelude serve as one of the loveliest spoilers in cinematic history, informing the audience that things will not turn out well. But that knowledge detracts nothing from Dunst’s luminous performance or the moments of sheer beauty that Von Trier sprinkles through the rest of the movie. Dunst plays Justine not as a hero or a victim, but simply as a woman whose depression rips away her capacity for self-delusion.
Melancholia is playing in theaters and can also be downloaded from Amazon and iTunes. It looked great on my LCD TV and I’ll be curious to see whether the additional revenue from downloads prompts other studios to experiment with simultaneous theatrical and digital releases.
Enjoy your weekend. I’ll be spending mine not seeing the new Twilight film and not buying a Kindle Fire.
Over at the Atlantic, constitutional scholar Garrett Epps hypothesizes that the expansion of Medicaid could be the real undoing of health care reform. States opposing the ACA will argue that they have become so dependent on federal Medicaid funding that it must comply with any new conditions attached to the funding (like the expansion of Medicaid to single adults living in poverty), no matter how sweeping or burdensome, or risk losing the funding entirely. According to the states, this amounts to an unconstitutional abuse of Congress’s spending powers. It’s a bit like the ungrateful trust fund kid objecting to his rich uncle’s recent edict that he must maintain a 3.0 GPA or the trust fund spigot gets turned off. And Epps seems to think there’s at least a chance that the conservative Court could buy the argument.
It’s an interesting theory, but I’m skeptical. I’m not aware of any precedent that questions Congress’s ability to attach conditions to the funding it doles out. To rule otherwise would cast doubt on nearly every other program that distributes money to states, whether it’s related to education, food safety, or just about any other realm of public concern. The Court would also have to set forth some fairly specific criteria defining reasonable and unreasonable exercises of Congressional spending powers. Such wading into the legislative weeds might give even the most right-leaning justices pause. My own guess (and it’s only a guess) is that the Medicaid expansion will stand regardless of how the Court rules on the individual mandate.
My apologies for the lack of a post yesterday. The blog was having server issues, but everything seems fine now.
If you’re reading this while it’s still Wednesday evening, consider making a contribution to your favorite Minnesota charity by visiting the Give to the Max site before midnight. It’s an easy way to take care of those charitable contributions you’ve been meaning to make and it benefits wonderful organizations doing great work in the community. In fact, I’m heading there as soon as this is posted.
Pity the poor Supreme Court law clerks who will have to absorb and summarize for their bosses the avalanche of briefs (from the litigants as well as a host of amici) that is sure to come now that the Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Of course, they will also have a front-row seat to one of the most significant legal battles to visit the Court in at least a decade, so any pity should be tempered with envy. And with the Court allotting five and a half hours for oral argument, NPR might as well plan on letting Nina Tottenberg host the entire day’s programming.
Over the next six months, law professors will be shoving themselves in front of any available camera to share their unique insight into how the Court will ultimately rule. My advice: treat it all like so much dinner party chatter. Nobody can say with any certainty whether the Court will rule one way or the other or by how wide of a margin. It’s all guesswork and opinion. Whatever the outcome, it will likely contain at least one surprise. But I’m relatively certain of one thing: the Court won’t strike down the law in total. Even if the insurance mandate is struck down, states will still be required to set up Exchanges and insures will still be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of health status. A Court ruling might not settle the issue so much as reframe it just in time for the 2012 election.