Just war in Henry V

We went to a panel discussion on Monday about Henry V which had been billed as exploring the notion of a just war. It was really a discussion about how the concepts of king and war are constructed in the play, but things really got fascinating when an audience member who had been a trained actor in London and was deployed last year to Afghanistan in the British military took the floor and gave everyone a serious dose of reality. He loves the play, and he talked about English military and political history as well as theatrical history, but mostly he talked about how true the play is to various experiences of a soldier, particularly before battle. Much of the audience clearly wanted to quietly digest his observations, but he was unfortunately followed by a noxiously self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing local poet who went on a lengthy anti-American rant to nobody’s illumination.

The evening really made me wonder at how thoroughly Shakespeare presents the war as unnecessary. The crowning moment comes in the wooing of Katherine, Henry’s “capital demand” in France’s surrender. He has won her through the war, but then starts over and wins her through wooing. Why not save 10,000 lives and try wooing first? Would I have had an easier time wooing Lisa if I had first conquered JP? Well, maybe, but would it have been worth the cost to the good people of JP?

I’d like to see the panelists discuss just war as we were promised, but I suppose you go to a panel discussion with the panel you have, not the panel you wish you had.

TurboTax 2007 bug list

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a TurboTax 2007 bug list? A list you could check before you sent in your taxes? Intuit refuses to make that list public (or identify specific bug fixes in their updates), so here’s my contribution to what will have to be a vast distributed bug list instead.

TurboTax 2007 Federal and State Deluxe, Mac

Printing bug: Program crashes when trying to print line details for lines 35 and 41 from Schedule C. Program version: all updates as of 1/30/2008. Temporary fix: take screen shots of these line details, one screen view at a time, and print those screen shots.

Import bug: When Schedule C, line 35 details are imported from a 2006 return, the descriptions are incorrectly imported from the 2006 Sch C line 35 while the amounts are correctly imported from the 2006 Sch C line 41. The descriptions should also be imported from line 41, because your opening inventory for 2007 is supposed to match your closing inventory for 2006 (not your opening inventory for 2006). Program version: all updates as of 1/30/2008 and at least one earlier version. (Note: an update will not be able to correct this problem unless you re-import from the 2006 return.) Temporary fix: retype or copy all descriptions one at a time if the descriptions matter.

TV drama: comments

This is a comment thread for the current poll on how you like to access television dramas (if at all). Do you like the time-shifting of Tivo, or the commercial-free marathon possibilities with DVDs, or the shared culture (same time, same commercials) of traditional broadcast television? Are you sold on HD? Or is the Internet penetrating enough that televisions are going the same way as landlines?

What I’ve learned about SeaWorld

1. There’s a lot to see, even if you don’t go to the rides or gift shops. Our first day, we didn’t quite get to everything during the 9 hours we were there.

2. Some of the shows are definitely worth seeing. The dolphin show is marvelous. We went back to SeaWorld primarily to see that again. Their Cirque-like show is fun, with beautiful sets and cool acrobatics. The Shamu show is extremely manipulative, but the killer whales are fascinating if you can get past them being part of a 40-minute beer commercial.

3. I don’t know how most of the food is, but the vegetarian sandwich at the “healthy alternatives” cafeteria is dreadful. However, they didn’t hassle us at the gate about bringing in some of our own food and a bottle of water. And you’re allowed to go out to your car and re-enter the park, so you can always have lunch in your car.

4. If you don’t want to pay $3 for a bottle of water and don’t trust the water fountains, there are a couple of good alternatives. The guest services office that we went to had a free water bubbler. Or you can sit down and look approachable, and a SeaWorld employee may come over and offer you 2 bottles of water if you’ll answer a few questions about your trip to SeaWorld.

5. Some of the staff are really knowledgable, friendly, and happy to answer questions. We learned about the manatees (skin feels like a basketball), the penguins (a couple of the 4-month-old king penguins were losing their down), and the egrets and wood storks (not an official part of the exhibits).

6. When offered food, many animals exhibit startlingly similar behaviors. Including sting rays.

7. If you arrive a couple of hours before closing, parking may be free.

Snowy egret acting out

Photo by Michael

Free tickets: comments

This is a comment thread for the current poll. What live events would you like to see? Do you see as many live events as you’d like to? Are the biggest obstacles ticket price, free time, location, or babysitting?

As the camera sees it

Photo by Michael

Indexing in Spanish

acortamiento: 160
anglicismos: 123-126
árabe: 146-147

It’s not easy to index a book written in a language you’ve never formally studied. Knowledge of a language is often described in terms of how well you can understand written or spoken forms and how well you can produce written or spoken forms. Should “indexing knowledge” join “reading knowledge” and “conversational knowledge” as a way to list language skills on a résumé? Does puzzling out lots of subway signs in Spanish as a child qualify me to index a textbook written in Spanish? Indexing skills can transfer, but this has definitely been one of the odder challenges of the past week.

My favorite Orlando destinations are: comments

Comment thread for the current poll about Orlando destinations. Where would you recommend? My personal favorites have been Cirque du Soleil’s resident show Nouba and the main street through Winter Park (a neighborhood, not a theme park, that includes a great Tiffany museum).

If you were a work of art: comments

Results of the most recent poll:

If I were a work of art, I’d want to be a:
painting (1)
sculpture (2)
artist’s book (1)
film (1)
caricature (0)

I’m very curious whether this was an easy choice or a random pick. I chose artist’s book because of the interactive nature of the medium that draws in the viewer. Also, I really like many artist’s books. But I saw some at least off-the-cuff reasons to choose the others: a painting is accessible to many people, a sculpture can seem the most likely to have an animus or spirit, a film is modern and multimodal, and a caricature makes people smile.

Boston City Hall

Ever since Boston’s mayor proposed building a new City Hall in Rhode Island and turning the existing City Hall building into a giant fish tank, everyone in Boston has been treated to short architecture courses about why the current City Hall doesn’t work. The best explanation I’ve seen is by Walt Lockley, and it’s accompanied by some great monochromatic photography of the exterior and interior of the building.

It’s fun to take a break from the usual role-playing of residential designer and instead try a quick round of urban planning. I’ve never set foot in Boston’s City Hall, hardly even noticed it on the few occasions I’ve been at Government Center. I have spent a fair bit of time in my town’s City Hall and a number of other local government buildings. From a citizen’s perspective, they all have the same structural problems: lack of natural light, lack of artificial light, poor maintenance, poor signage, no comfortable waiting or gathering areas, and no Dunkin’ Donuts.

The best decision the RMV ever made was to scatter some local offices into area malls. Malls have tons of artificial light, food courts and restaurants, reasonable benches and chairs, and retail therapy. The RMV doesn’t have to provide any of that — the mall provides the amenities that make going to the RMV tolerable. And malls highlight one aspect of capitalism that really does work: malls try to be pleasant because they have a financial incentive to keep patrons coming back. That can’t be the full answer, though, because public libraries also tend to be far more appealing than city halls and courthouses. Do libraries have incentives to keep up patronage?

I’m sure that if Boston were to build a new City Hall, it would have lower ceilings, easier handicap access, and more windows. Those are improvements, but what’s needed is a broader examination of the purposes that a City Hall building can serve, and of the potential experiences of visitors to the building. It’s something I’ll be mulling over as I head over to my arts council meeting, which has been relocated from our City Hall to a local cafe.

Orthodoxy

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.”

— Justice Robert Jackson, United States Supreme Court, 1943

This was written during World War II. I love the image of a constitutional constellation almost as much as the nostalgic image of a government interested in steering our ship of state by it.

The cult of the quarterback

Sure, I could talk about Tom Brady’s numbers this season, or in his career, or just in the game last night. I could analyze the media focus on quarterbacks, or the fan focus on quarterbacks, or the game’s focus on quarterbacks. I could, but I’m busy making plans for next week’s worship meeting.

Once more into the opening night

We saw the latest Actors’ Shakespeare Project production last night in Harvard Square, a beautifully-spoken Henry V with a cast of five taking all the parts. They sold me. I left the theater convinced that this small cast is the right way to put on the play (at least if the cast is this good), and that Shakespeare must have written the script for a cast of five. The role of Chorus was taken by different actors at different times, highlighting the show-within-a-show nature of Henry V and allowing the joy of the entire company to shine through. This is a redemptive production for the ASP that showcases acting and the text. And, oh, what a text!

Interest from the IRS

We received a 1099 form directly from the IRS (whose Federal Identification Number is 38-1798424, not the more plausible 00-0000001 (or is that reserved for the President, like Air Force 1?)) for $11.00 of interest in 2007. It was a bit confusing, because the IRS didn’t pay us $11.00 of interest in 2007. Turns out this is for the interest component of the telephone excise tax refund that was part of last year’s income taxes. It’s amazing how much effort and money we expend in this efficient capitalist system to measure every last dime. Perhaps at some point it’s not worth the printing and postage to keep sending this money back and forth to the government? After I give them $3 out of this $11 that they gave me because of the $80 that the phone companies gave them because of the $1900 that I gave the phone companies, can we call it a day?