The book does have baggage, unfortunately. The book claims to get to the "guts" of basic economic issues using every day examples with no charts, graphs, or jargon. While this may be so, it certainly isn't without bias. Frequently the Conservative Alert alarm went off in my head as Sowell went through examples. And while there is no mention on the book jacket or inside the covers about the author's political placement, further research on him proved my alarm correct. While this did make the book difficult to continue reading at times, I realized part way that while I was getting an education in basic economics, I was also getting a snapshot into Conservative ideology, which has always been hard for me to grasp.

The first example of this came when Sowell explains Scarcity vs. Shortage. When a town is devastated by a storm, it is sensible and proper for the local hotel owner to raise his rates, forcing families to share scarce rooms instead of spreading themselves out and using up rooms needed by others. Why the hotel owner couldn't keep rates the same and simply monitor and oversee the room usage (god forbid a community share naturally) was not addressed. I understand Sowell's point and the concept, but the example was one of my first alarm bells. In another spot he speaks to down-sizing and cites General Motors cutting of 50,000 jobs in 5 years. It made economic sense to do this, and the low unemployment statistics suggest that these workers "had plenty of places to go." (Here is one of those places where one of those pesky charts or graphs with solid numbers would have helped to support his argument) He tops that with how it may seem "especially galling" that the execs then give themselves big raises after firing employees. Sowell defends the execs by...well, he doesn't really defend them. They have to get the most work done with the fewest people, and somehow that means they get those big raises. And did you know when we talk about "rich" and "poor" that they're really the same people, and that it's "misleading" to compare them? Because those poor in seventeen years will be in the top 20% of income earners, see? This is an interesting time-warp idea that I look forward to exploring in other books on economics, which I have ordered. And when referring to the "poor" we have to remember to not use emotionally charged words and think from a disembodied economic standpoint: the label is really misused. We're an "affluent country"--how poor can we really claim to be when almost all of us own a microwave and a television set (!!!)?

And if you felt, reading this review, that I used too many quotation marks, then don't bother with the book, because Sowell does this constantly for emphasis. To wrap up--overall Sowell gets most of his points across even with these shortfalls (mostly by the use of heavy repetition), and if you didn't get enough the first time around, the revised edition is at least 100 pages longer. Pleasant reading.

This is an album that takes time to grow on you. At first listen I found little to like--the music doesn't seem to have much melody (at first), the lyrics are unintelligible most of the time, the singer goes off into mad screeching, and the band seems to be just making noise. Then I sat and payed attention, looked at the lyrics (thank GOD the band supplied a lyric book) and had a few more listens. The music is deep, layered, interesting, and challenging.

The singer doesn't really sing too often "on pitch", and seems to be making up the rhythm of the words on many occasions. Sometimes, even with the lyric sheet, I would lose the words he was singing. A couple of times I played a game with myself and wrote down the words I thought he was singing and then compared them to the lyric sheet, often with humorous results. In many of the songs it sounds like someone is stretching out his vocal cords and running over them with a serrated edge. The lyrics are complex to the point that they must be memorized because they don't necessarily make traditional sense, and they're not sung clearly. Like this nugget from Pheurton Skeurto:
"down on their knees holding hairpiece see how they flock ten for some grapes trip over words with gifts and garage." Well, if you know what the h*ll he's talking about I'm impressed. There is a LOT of this kind of thing on the album, but the fact is he sings (or screams) it with such soul that you can empathize and scream along (although on some days if my throat is any kind of tired I can't even listen because it makes my throat wince just hearing him scrape his vocal cords raw).

For two months at least I was happy with just exploring the first three songs. Seven, In Circles, and Song About An Angel are all incredible compositions. If you are willing to spend some time delving into the music (nothing shallow about this stuff) then this is album will definitely reward your efforts.

First, I recall seeing Cronenberg on one of the late night talk shows, either Letterman or Leno, I don't recall. But he stood up from his chair during the conversation, reached his hands out to the audience and said "Look, it's a COMEDY!" signaling to me how misunderstood the film would be. Of course, if you know anything about Cronenberg, you can expect a challenge when you go to the theater.

Second, I then saw the film and convinced my wife (then girlfriend) and five of her close friends to see it with me. Within an hour all five of them walked out of the theater and went to see something else (probably with Julia Roberts--Pretty Woman was high on their list of fave films at the time). Upon regrouping the first thing the most enlightened of the five said was "What the hell was THAT?" I didn't understand the film either, and the lack of a real traditional narrative and plot made for a VERY long first viewing. Since then I've read the book and each subsequent viewing of the film brings out more of the great humor.

By the way, to fix one previous observation, the sex scene with Julian Sands involves him turning into a giant Centipede (not a parrot), and the image will haunt you forever.

A note on the beer commercial thing: the other reviewer was simply commenting that the theme was also used in a commercial, not that it originated there. This beautiful theme has been used over and over again in movie trailers for other films, it's that good. If I remember correctly, it was even used in the trailer for Shawshank Redemption, but I could be wrong.

A note on length: the album is only about 30 minutes long, and the theme is repeated within that quite frequently. There are some great moments on this disc, but I would maybe question a full price for the length.

The first blurb on the back cover states: "[Educators] have taken our money, betrayed our trust, failed our children, and then lied about the failures with inflated grades and pretty words." This a huge blanket statement, and unfortunately the meat of the book retains the quote's outlook and generality.

Sowell spotlights bizarre occurences and bad experiences in schools and then blankets entire systems with these black spots on education's record. According to Sowell, teachers are of low intelligence and are only looking for the easy way out while damaging children as much as they possibly can along the way.

While attacking school structure and curriculum, Sowell takes situations and textual examples out of context, does not actually include any input from teachers or administrators, does not include any examples of actual curricula to back up any of his criticisms, and often quotes disgruntled parents without providing the reader with any background on their situations. He also uses a very narrow sample of schools within which to demonize the entire system.

There are definitely problems in some American schools. The problems described in this book don't exist in the schools around my area--we have wonderful caring teachers and great schools for the primary and secondary level. If you are a parent looking for advice in your child's education, look for yourself in your community. Schools will show you their curriculums if you ask. Good teachers and administrators will allow you to observe their classrooms for you to make your own decisions.

The book starts off by listing basically every known excuse we have as a society about why we don't take pen in hand and write to each other, be it letters or thank you notes, and then gives us the excuses we need to break those bad habits of not communicating with our fellow colleagues with personal handwritten thoughts.

The book gives you all of the help you might need to get your note writing back in shape and off the ground. Tips on rescuing handwriting, advice on writing utensils and types of paper to use, ideas on managing your time in order to have time to write, and a whole section on appropriate language and basic etiquette for notes in basically every important social situation you might come across.

The Art of the Handwritten Note is an invaluable resource in our era of continuing technological isolation.

For some reason, though, I have been unable to really get into the music. Many of the songs are really only centered around two chords and are then continuously built upon with interweaving motifs that simply repeat over and over again, or else descend into a complete chaos of sound. A couple of words that came to my mind as I listened were "collages" and "washes" of sound and color. Often as I listened I would lose interest in a song after the first couple of minutes, because the same formula of repetition and layering was used so often.

I feel the most successful songs are the slow anthem-types. Cool Waves is very nice to listen to, as well as the title track, Stay With Me, and Broken Heart--even though Broken Heart sounds like it comes straight out of a Michael Nyman soundtrack. Which brings me to the dangerous thought I will proffer that there really isn't anything terribly original in this album. My ear was consistently drawn to comparisons with early Yes, Beatles (Pepper era), King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Nyman, Glass...all of which have done it before (better or worse to be decided by fans).

Overall a decent enough CD. I heard one of the tracks on a mix tape in the background at a coffee shop the other day and thought it was a fine addition to the ambience of the place.

I left it for a year, and determined not to be beaten and also convinced that I was not "getting it", I gave it another try. I made it through and found a whole new world of beauty in the words. I was struck again and again by the unexpectedness of Percy's descriptions of places, thoughts, and emotions; meaning they were unusual and perfect and consistently made me think and smile. I still found Binx to be creepy and selfish initially, but I hung in there to see his eventual transformation. There is also a good deal of humor that I missed the first time around. It also helped me tremendously to read with a "southern accent" going on in my head the whole time.

One other point that I find cool--about halfway through it hit me how difficult it must be to write an entire novel from the first person, from only one person's point of view, and keep it interesting and deep, which Percy does extraordinarily well. I rarely reread books, but this one may have to be on my shelf for a return journey.

We do get a breath of fresh sound with track 6, when they have a guest artist doing a rap over the industrial power beats. Another high point is track 8, which really is a paler sounding Skinny Puppy, but is the closest we get to a melody, and even contains a key change and change of texture. Wow!

I'm a fan of industrial music, but this album I felt was just too monochromatic and long to merit any more than three stars, which it gets because it is at least produced well. I have been enjoying their Delerium stuff.

There really is kind of a plot to this film. Steven Soderbergh, who directed and wrote this film, stars in it as well. An employee who writes speeches for a cult known as Eventualism dies suddenly, and Soderbergh's characater is assigned the task of saving the organization with a new speech, part of which must follow the rules set out in the title of the review.

Along the way hilarity ensues. The more I watch the film the more I see and the more my mind spins that anyone thought this up and was able to put it together coherently. To me one of the biggest targets of the film is language. There are characters who speak in substitute words: "Hoodwink scatterbox? Hasty landmine?" "Ambassador jumpsuit landmine.", scenes where the characters speak in generalizations (mentioned in Tom Keogh's review), and the whole last act that replays many scenes in the first act and brings together actions from the second act (where both main characters switch bodies into other characters that are lookalikes), but with Soderbergh's character dubbed in three different languages. And you know what? It doesn't matter because you still know exactly what's going on and you don't really care what they actually say, because it's all damn funny in the process.

There is the layer of social commentary as well. TV talk shows where the host is so bored he visualizes naked tree cutting, naked man on a bike (there must be something to comment on there), cult followers of Eventualism, paranoia of the mole, reverse female weight desire, ripping tags off of mattresses, loyalty to your company and projects...the whole thing has to be seen to believed.

In my opinion this film is far cleverer and funny than 95% of the comedies being produced today. Definitely funnier than anything involving Julia Roberts falling down multiple times. Challenge yourself to a new experience and check this one out. It's one of a kind.