Senate Takes Up Debate On Regular Marriage

The Senate, fresh from its rancorous but indecisive debate on a constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage, has now taken up debate on an amendment that would ban regular marriage. A leading Republican senator stated, “When you consider how high the divorce rate is, you know there are a lot of unhappy marriages out there between men and women. I’m not sure continuing to allow them is in the national interest.” The Democratic whip said, “In addition to the divorce rate, you’ve got to look at how many parents are disappointed in the amount of gratitude their children show and how many children don’t think their parents love them enough. Since parents usually want more gratitude than their children can give, and children often demand more love than most parents can give, it seems there’s an inherent problem with a marriage that can produce children.” President Bush took an unwavering position, saying, “The kind of marriage we allow in America has to set a good example for the children of this great nation, and, frankly, I don’t think a lot of marriages out there are hitting that high marker. So I urge the Congress to pass the amendment. No more regular marriages, no more bad examples for our children – it’s as simple as that. And the result is guaranteed, because, in all likelihood, there won’t be anymore children.”

Love and Courage

To many work is not a gratifying opportunity to do good, but a necessary evil they would gladly forgo if they won or inherited a fortune. It is just a livelihood, a vital drudgery. Its meaning is the paycheck and the value it has in terms of service to their community is indifferent or very subordinate. Their calculating and uncaring attitude is recognizable. Whereas people who heartily act in the interest of others are gracious, they are perfunctory. At best, in establishments that demand courtesy from employees, their behavior is irreproachable, albeit artificial. “Can I be of assistance? Here you are. Will there be anything else? You’re welcome” – no genuine attempt at pleasing, just a vapid exercise in politeness and efficiency that follows a procedure and arouses a feeling of satisfied indifference as would a serving of plain noodles. They do the minimum that is required of them, to maintain their employment, and gladly do nothing provided they get paid all the same. They never miss a break. Come the end of their working day, they rush out before the first second of the next hour has passed. They live for their time off and dream of a permanent vacation, as though leisure were the essence of happiness. What about the dignity of making oneself useful, which is the antipode of this levity? What about love – I mean the desire to live usefully in the service of others? This desire builds on gratefulness, with a view to worthiness. I start from the assumption that love is a characteristic of people who appreciate living in society, thanks to a combination of positive attitude and relatively favorable social environment. To sum up, the more they love life, in company with others who take part in their life, the more they love others. Now, feeling this love is one thing, acting upon it is quite another, which needs courage. Actually, a lack of courage would not only render this love inactive but also tend to destroy it in order to avoid shame. The mind is a double-edged thinking tool that can cut its way in and out of truth by means of veracious statements or specious arguments. Love may be denied despite every reason for loving. Therefore, courage is a rich trait of character without which love is unable to flourish, neither as an emotion nor as an action. Of course, where laziness and cowardliness have rotted or stunted love, dignity – which stems from the act of loving – is but a potential bloom. May courage be cultivated! I hate to think that the soul has such a capacity for beauty and yet can remain undeveloped, morally retarded, as ugly as a shriveled growth that an earnest gardener could have transformed into a heavenly rose. On reflection, courage should be valued above all other virtues, since it constitutes the necessary condition for developing them. It is not a sufficient condition, however. It is capable of nothing by itself while everything depends on it. Courage is the force that can raise life to joy and joy to love and love to dignity, insofar as the human nature aspires to these difficult heights, though it is always tempted to go for the easy and low option. This nature is indeed dual. People are forever torn between their lofty aspirations and their base temptations. Their choice to honor these aspirations or surrender to these temptations determines their moral status, admirable or pitiable. Admittedly, the more you are afflicted with misery, the harder it is for you to lead a courageous and honorable existence. It is not surprising that children who grow up in miserable circumstances sometimes display miserable attitudes and behaviors once they are adults: low self-esteem and under-achievement, resentment and aggressiveness, alcoholism and drug addiction, vagrancy and crime, among others. These attitudes and behaviors deplorably impact the other members of society who are worried, troubled, harmed, or perverted by them. The problem is clearly cancerous. I hope that the future will bring effective social measures to better assist these children in their pursuit of happiness and worthiness. Benefactions, family allowances, subsidized housing, free health care and school education, together with scholarships, are present solutions that rely on private charities or government policies and call for improvements through greater creativity and generosity. Bearing in mind the deplorable impact that the children of misery can have on society, as they sometimes grow into failures, misfits, or outlaws, I feel compelled to underscore the utilitarianism behind this generosity. Just as these children arouse compassion, they are a cause for anxiety in everyone who is aware of this possible impact. Their welfare is actively sought, both for their sake and that of society at large whose interests are at stake. Likewise, employers who care about their employees, while caring about their business, always offer them the best possible working conditions. These employees are joyful and grateful as a rule, which ensures a superior efficiency and loyalty on their part. Good spirit is good profit. Some dream of equal opportunities for everyone. Will this dream someday become a reality? Everywhere in the world, it meets with inequality – between those who are born lucky and those who are not, relatively speaking. Is it a lost cause? I believe so, though I am a firm believer in progress. Even a welfare state with the most extensive social assistance could only reduce this inequality, not eliminate it. What if it resorted to communism to reduce this inequality further? History suggests that a communist regime would prove ruinous, economically and psychologically, in the long run. The equal sharing of resources between people, imposed on them by a centralized government regardless of their respective contributions to the common good, is an untenable and unviable totalitarian approach. In a word, it is an absurdity. Democratic societies, on the other hand, leave much to be desired, but are certainly the most satisfactory to date. They are based on freedom, talent, chance, and merit, while including a safety net for those who have fallen off the high wire of health and success. Things merely have to improve. The status quo is a steppingstone to brighter days. Forget perfection, which is deadly and imperfect after all: an illusion. However bright the future may turn out, it will not be without shadows. Unhealthy, unwise, unsuccessful, unhappy, and unkind adults will keep bringing children into the world. Assuming these children will benefit from improved relief measures, they will nevertheless suffer from a difficult youth, lacking in the material and spiritual advantages luckier children enjoy. Like their previous counterparts, they will be confronted by the challenge of growing into the opposite of their parents – that is, into healthy, wise, successful, happy, and kind adults. None but the strong will overcome. Only they will appreciate the divine justice that counterbalances the problem of inequality: The less luck people have at the start, the more merit they have in the end if they make a success of their life. This principle is universal and timeless; it is applicable here and now. May the objects of our compassion fill us with admiration as they rise from their woes to become our heroes! This victory against the odds is an extreme. I can think of a second extreme, as pathetic as the first is heroic. Contrary to expectations, some people born of goodhearted and well-to-do parents are miserable individuals. They are insatiably selfish and shockingly ungrateful, so infantile and spineless that play and rest are their sole ambitions. Did they have a weak character to start with? Did their parents kill them with kindness and spoil them rotten? Is that why they have no soul?

No Pulitzer For Drama; No Wonder

This year, when The Pulitzer Prizes were announced, the not entirely delightful news is that no Pulitzer was awarded in drama. While the decision is unsettling, the prudence of it must be acknowledged, since, affection for the theater and those who make it aside, there was no drama to consider. Let us have the courage to ask why and, along the way, try our best to understand everybody’s culpability or innocence. If you keep tabs on Broadway, just so you’ll know if, by some surprising concatenation of events, a drama you might actually be interested in seeing comes along, you know that the usual fare this past season was once again a series of enthusiastically promoted trifles. But the financial realities on Broadway make it exceedingly chancy for producers to put up anything that isn’t already proven at the box office and, even more importantly, with the critics, who can even disable a previous box-office success. All very understandable. The producers are not in the business of nourishing unproven works, no matter how worthy they may suspect or be advised they are. Not understandable. The small and regional theaters are seldom managed by people who have any sense of what mainstream appeal might be or they very likely wouldn’t be working in a little or regional theater. Perfectly understandable. Even if a small or regional theater puts up a work that might attract a wider audience than the reliable coterie whose interests are decidedly offbeat, the likelihood that a well-known critic or even a second-string critic will show up is discouraging. Understandable. During the theater season, little theaters put up shows with withering frequency in New York and all over the country. The critics whose names people might known do not flock to any production that doesn’t have some kind of major preproduction cache. Their primary job is to review the little shows in the big venues, not the remotely possible big show in a little venue, and their secondary job, should they occasionally be inspired to assume its obligations, is to cherry pick smaller productions that present some precondition of influential interest. Also understandable. The current crop of critics, when confronted by a work in any theatrical venue that smacks of being mainstream, are unlikely to find it suits their own offbeat temperaments. Not understandable. It is such temperamental selectivity that prevented, among countless lesser knows, a relatively mainstream playwright like Arthur Miller from getting a rave review during the last two or three decades of his life, and even a popular confectioner like Neil Simon from getting one for many years. The inescapable fact is, offbeat people usually prefer offbeat works. Very understandable. We’re all human. But what would be really refreshing is for a major critic or two to surface whose tastes would incline them to help nourish intelligent theater that deals with the major text and subtext of contemporary mainstream American life. Once we were fortunate enough to have them, like the legendary Brooks Atkinson and the more recent Walter Kerr, we could be far more hopeful that mainstream works would have a chance of surfacing. After all, critics are the first significant audience for any work, and so they are necessary partners in the attempt to rejuvenate intelligent and widely relevant American theater. As for the playwrights, we must understand their plight, too. Simply put, comes the hopeful new playwright with a mainstream sensibility, where can he hope to find an outlet? And, if he does, can he hope to have a critic show up, let alone one who is on the same page with his sensibility? Quite a rare – and, year after year, an apparently impossible – combination. Even Actors Equity is aligned against the poor talented soul. Should the playwright somehow find a theater that will put us his or her work, he or she will get what is known as a showcase presentation, which provides for four weeks of rehearsal and a four-week run, possibly extended to five weeks. Since the rehearsals must be conducted with actors who have to participate in their spare time, due to the meager honorariums showcase appearances provide, it’s difficult to get a production that does the work justice. And a four-week run simply is not long enough to build word of mouth. Between the scarcity of venues that have a predisposition toward a playwright who has a sensibility that might reach mainstream America, the difficulty of getting a production that showcases the work in a way that renders whatever excellence it may hold, the brevity of the run, and the scarcity of critics who might arrive, compounded by the unlikely prospect that any who do might appreciate it, can we blame the playwright who finally decides that he’s involved in a hopeless puzzle that, at best, is merely baby sitting him as an intellectual. Is it any wonder that he may sulk between disappointing efforts and finally walk away into a writing career where there is some hope of getting somewhere. Understandable, at least. So there you have, as best as we can explain it, why no Pulitzer was awarded for drama. But we could never leave you without whatever hope there might be. The one factor that hasn’t yet entered contemporary theater that has influenced, for better or worse, film and television, is the advent of the self-funded writer-producer. Considering the gauntlet that faces the mainstream playwright without his or her own resources, such a writer-producer, maligned as he may initially be as self-aggrandizing by the theatrical establishment, may be the only hope left. Meanwhile, we must reluctantly admit, better not to award the Pulitzer at all than to award it to a trifle, masquerading as a piece of consequence. At least, some sort of standard has been indicated.

Upcoming movies

Since I've been spending quite a bit of time at the movies lately, that also means I've been seeing lots of trailers. When we're not seeing a lot of movies, I miss seeing all the stuff that's coming up, although sometimes that can be a blessing as well. I can't tell you how tired I got of seeing numerous trailers for "The Eye" and "The Ruins".

But with the summer movie season about to kick in, there are quite a number of movies coming up in the next multiple months that I'm interested in seeing. Here's a rundown of them.

I first saw the theatre standee for "Made of Honor", which is being released May 2, and it didn't do anything for me, but as I've been seeing the trailers, it looks funny. Yeah, it looks to be pretty predictable with standard romantic comedy overtones, but I like the physical comedy I've seen in the previews. Here's the link to the trailer.

When I first saw the trailer for "Iron Man", which is being released May 2, I was very surprised to see Robert Downey, Jr. in the lead role. I guess everyone is doing these kinds of films nowadays. It looks like it'll be interesting, though. Here's the link to the trailer.

I remember watching and loving "Speed Racer" as a child, and even though I really can't tell you much about what I watched (other than that whenever I've been stuck at a train crossing, I've always wished I had his car so that I could jump over everything and be on my way), I'm interested in seeing the live-action feature film version, which is being released May 9. I'm not crazy about the Matrix-like funky special effects, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Here's the link to the trailer.

I enjoyed "The Chronicles of Narnia", so I'm interested in seeing "Prince Caspian", which is being released May 16. I've never read the books and haven't yet decided whether I want to attempt them. I've got too much stuff in the queue as it is, so it's not like I'm looking for things to read, but it's something I might consider in the future. I might have to watch the first film again to orient myself before seeing this one. Here's the link to the trailer.

You would pretty much have to be living under a rock to not know that the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones series is being released May 22. I'll be spending the majority of May trying really hard to avoid spoilers, especially once the film premieres at Cannes. I'm looking forward to seeing the film - the trailer looks great, I'm excited that Marion (Karen Allen) is back, and I'm interested in seeing how Shia LeBeouf does in the film. Here's the link to the trailer.

I hadn't heard until recently that they were making yet another version of "The Incredible Hulk", which is being released June 13. The last version didn't interest me enough to actually see it, especially with the horrid special effects, so I was pretty ho-hum about this version - until I saw the trailer. It looks pretty good, and I find it interesting that Edward Norton is playing Bruce Banner. With the cast also including Liv Tyler, William Hurt and Robert Downey, Jr., I'm looking forward to seeing how this version pans out. Here's the link to the trailer.

I've already talked about being excited to see "Wall-E", which is being released June 27. We're planning on getting tickets for opening night at the El Capitan as soon as they go on sale. (You don't really need me to link to the trailers, do you?)

It'll be a two-movie weekend since I'm also interested in seeing "Wanted", which is also being released June 27. I'm not a particular fan of Angelina Jolie, but the trailer looks awesome, and Morgan Freeman is in it, so how could you go wrong? Here's the link to the trailer.

I recently saw the trailer for "Hellboy II", which is being released July 11, and it looks kind of interesting. I've never seen the first film, and watching this trailer made me think about a city full of the inhabitants of Tatooine's cantina. The husband wants to see the film, and he's recommending that I watch the first film so that I can understand this one better. Here's the link to the trailer.

The second installment of the new Batman series, "The Dark Knight", is being released July 18. I was looking forward to seeing the film anyway as I love this particular incarnation of the story (I was not a fan of Batman being played by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer or George Clooney though admittedly, I didn't see the last couple movies in the series.), but it'll be sad to see Heath Ledger's last role, in which he supposedly does an amazing job. Here's the link to the trailer.

The movie I'm most excited to see, "Mamma Mia", is also being released July 18. It's going to be a bit of a schizophrenic weekend at the movies. (You don't need me to link to this trailer either, do you?)

I had heard nothing about "Tropic Thunder", which is being released August 15, and as I watched the trailer, it wasn't really the kind of movie I'd normally be interested in - except for one element. The apparently-very-busy Robert Downey, Jr. is in this film, playing a critically-acclaimed Australian actor who undergoes a controversial medical procedure so that he can play an African-American character in the movie-within-a-movie. The trailer footage of him looks incredible, so I think I'm going to have to see this movie just for him alone. Here's the link to the trailer.

Another movie that I'd known nothing about is "Hamlet 2", which is being released August 22. But we saw the trailer recently, and we were laughing so hard that it's one of the movies I'm looking forward to seeing the most. It's just completely irreverent, and the show-within-the-movie just looks outrageous. Here's the link to the trailer.

I'd heard that they were doing a remake of "The Women", which is being released October 10. I'd seen the original film as well as read the original play and enjoyed them both. The casting of this new version is pretty interesting, so I'm interested to see how it comes out. There's apparently no trailer available yet.

Unique Movies Can Boost Pupils' Reading Proficiency

Does your child read at a proficient reading level? National statistics paint a bleak picture.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 90 percent of eighth-graders in Washington, D.C., 81 percent in New Mexico, 80 percent in Mississippi and Nevada, 78 percent in Louisiana, California and Hawaii, 74 percent in Texas, and 73 percent in Florida were reading at a level below proficiency in 2003. At least 63 percent of eighth-graders in 32 other states read at a level below proficiency.

To assist educators and parents in helping children become more proficient in reading, SFK Media Specially For Kids Corp. provides an innovative learning program called ReadEnt. It blends reading with entertaining movies to teach and improve vocabulary and comprehension. These Reading Movies use a patented technology called "Action Captions," which show each spoken word on-screen, in real-time, as a character speaks.

According to SFK Media, this type of captioning is effective in improving the rate of vocabulary development and comprehension. The words become ingrained in the children's minds and, therefore, both reading and spoken language skills develop naturally.

"[Students] watching these Reading Movies, even though they think they are just watching a movie that is entertaining, ... are comprehending words. They are reading whether they realize that they are or not," said Chelsee Atkins, an educator and reading specialist in Florida. "If they sit down and watch a couple of these movies each week, they are spending 10 hours a week reading."

ReadEnt's Reading Movies are available as interactive DVD programs for use on the TV or computer and include such classic titles as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Tales of Gulliver's Travels" and "The Trojan Horse." They can be used in a variety of different teaching configurations: as a shared experience on a single television monitor; as a guided activity, where a group of students interact on their own computers; and as a one-to-one tutorial, in which the teacher or parent assesses the child's comprehension and vocabulary recognition.

"Learning is playing in its best sense, and entertainment should be learning," said Joy Esterberg, a language skills specialist at Baruch College in New York. "This program is a wonderful marriage between learning and entertainment."

Understanding Surround Sound Systems

Surround sound is the concept of expanding the spatial imaging of audio playback from 1 dimension (mono/Left-Right) to two or three dimensions. It is often employed for a more realistic audio environment, actively implemented in cinema sound systems, technical theatre, home entertainment, video arcades, computer gaming, and a growing number of other applications. Many popular surround sound formats have evolved over the years. They include ambisonics, quadraphonic, Dolby 5.1 Surround sound, DTS, and MP3 Surround.

Surround sound can be created using several methods. The simplest to understand uses several speakers around the listener to play audio coming from different directions. Another approach involves processing the audio using psychoacoustic sound localization methods to simulate a 3D sound field using headphones. The third approach, wave field synthesis, uses a very large number of speakers to generate the "audio hologram" of the original audio in the whole room (as of 2004 the only commercial implementation of this is Iosono). Surround sound is not limited to placement of speakers along a flat (2-dimensional) plane. Vertically-located audio sources can be considered.

Dolby Digital (DD) uses the AC-3 file format, which any Dolby Digital Decoder can decode to produce 5.1 audio. Dolby Digital is the technical name for Dolby's multi-channel digital sound coding technique, more commonly referred to as Dolby 5.1. A six-channel sound coding process originally created by Dolby for theaters, AC-3 was subsequently adapted for home use and is now steadily becoming the most common sound format for DVD.

Six discrete audio channels:

•3 for speakers at the front - left (L), center (C), and right (R)
•2 for surround speakers at the side or rear - surround left (SL) and surround right (SR)
•1 low-frequency effects (LFE) channel carries supporting deep bass sound effects, ranging from 10 Hz to 120 Hz, which can for example be used by a subwoofer. (This is the '.1' in '5.1'.)

DTS is an encode/decode process that delivers 5.1 channels of "master quality" audio on CD, CD-R, and DVD. Each DTS encoded disc represents a sonic "clone" of the original film soundtrack.

The difference between Dolby Digital (AC-3) and DTS is:

•DTS provides a deeper and tighter low frequency presence
•DTS allows the sound to breath - transparency
•AC-3 leaves the impression that something is missing from the mix
•At lower bit-rate AC-3 starts to sound like MP3's encoded at a low-quality 96kbps 
 (artifacts)

DTS is more three dimensional.  The sound actually moved forward from the individual speakers to sound more full. This fullness was most apparent with the music. Instead of simply coming from the speakers, the DTS filled the front soundstage not only side to side, but with more depth as well. Bass reproduction was also more defined in the DTS version, leaving the DD edition sounding muddy.

Dolby Digital incorporates dialog normalization, which alters the decoded level of the soundtrack. The typical setting reduces level by 4 dB; other reduction levels are possible. In most decoders, this leads to a reduction in signal-to-noise and dynamic range.

Dolby Digital also provides a "stereo down mixing" feature as a substitute for a dedicated stereo mix. However, many production engineers have admitted that they often have to modify the original 5.1 mixes in order to attain acceptable stereo down mixes. Therefore, the 5.1 mix on many Dolby Digital DVDs may differ from the original master.

5.1 Surround Sound Headphones:

While the traditional method of surround sound described above uses numerous speakers to produce the entire sound field, the surround sound mix is limited to a two-channel stereo mix when using headphones. That is why recent developments in surround sound technology include 5.1 surround sound headphones, to allow you to have the same sound quality and surround sound experience without waking the neighbors or disturbing roommates.

America To Sue Rest Of World For Ungrateful Behavior

America, which has sacrificed the lives of its citizens and its material plentitude more selflessly than any other nation in history to come to the assistance of other countries, noted the astonishingly heated negative commentary about it emanating from virtually every corner of the globe and has decided to sue the rest of the world on the grounds of ungrateful behavior. The President said, “You can’t just go out there and sacrifice your sons and daughters lives and expend so much of the national treasury and not get a little something back. We’ve got sorrowful families all across the land, with whose losses I deeply sympathize, and we can’t even afford to fix the potholes on federal highways. So what choice do we have? We’re taking the ungrateful foreigners to court. Justice will be served. We merit and demand some praise here.” A grandmother for the plaintiff stated, “My family has lost loved ones in three different wars and all in countries that I haven’t heard a good thing said in about America for years. When I take the stand, watch out. I’m patriotic pissed.” The international court at The Hague has declined to take the case, primarily because it is in The Hague. Upon learning of that court’s disinclination, the U. S. has appealed to the U. N. to find a venue that will hear the case.” A prominent attorney for America commented, “We’d rather not have the trial here. Holding it in our own country will detract from the credibility of the outcome, but having it in an unfriendly location is bound to create the kind of inflammatory demonstrations that will lead to a lot of free press.” Not surprisingly, France, Germany, and Spain have also nixed the idea of hosting the trial, maintaining that since they’re all being sued, supporting the action seems inadvisable. Britain and Italy are understood to be considering the matter. Tony Blair is the most disposed to hosting it, saying, “We hardly ever badmouth America, so we hope to come through the trial with flying colors.” The Italian government has expressed some willingness to host it but has indicated it may charge for rental of the courthouse. “I’m confident of victory,” another attorney for America maintained. “All you have to do is look at the newspapers. All the incriminating evidence you need is on the lips of leaders and the public in general in just about every country of the world. The only thing that stands in the way of a big win for the U. S. is finding a country where we can conduct the trial.” Should the verdict go as the plaintiff hopes, the expectation is that the guilty will henceforth base their comments on a true understanding of just who this country is. One of the most persuasive arguments the nation’s attorneys hope to present is based on the usual philosophical tactic of imagining the opposite argument. As the lead attorney for the country put it, “Will you please tell us what other country in the world, besides your own, you would prefer to possess the amount of power America has? We are, in fact, the first nation in the history of the world that could conquer it but, in addition to being freedom-loving people that the whole idea offends, we’re savvy business people who know we just can’t afford the worldwide upkeep.”