Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat. New technology and methods have changed the rules for surveillance, but the informed public debate about those changes has never taken place. Maybe we should get on that.

On cuddle puddles at Stuyvesant, and beyond

If you’ve found any of my other links about teenage sexuality the least bit interesting, you *cannot* ignore the article in this week’s _New York Magazine_ titled The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School. The initial hook to the story is learning about salacious goings-on at one of NYC’s most prestigious public high schools, but it doesn’t stop there, oh no. To whit:

bq. These girls have obliterated the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t� stranglehold that has traditionally plagued high-school females. They set the sexual agenda for their group. And they expect reciprocation. “I’ve made it my own personal policy that if I’m going to give oral sex, I’m going to receive oral sex,� says Jane.

I think what I find most interesting about the article is that once you get past the entire subset of teenage culture that some of us were completely unaware of and are probably at least a bit uncomfortable with, you find out that, in the end, not much has really changed. Sure, teenagers ideas of friendship and intimacy and flirtation have changed dramatically, but is it any more dramatically than the change from the time when boys and girls weren’t allowed together unsupervised? The time when they didn’t even speak to each other except at heavily supervised formal events? Or even the time when a young man had to ask a woman’s (and per parents!) permission to write her letters?

During my high school years (not too long ago) the rules were different, and while I did find myself allowed to be alone with girls, I remember even then feeling uncomfortable on the occasions when I found myself in a girl’s bedroom. I, no doubt, was pretty far on the conservative end of the spectrum, as were most of the girls I hung out with. So I don’t find this current shift to be at all out of place.

And I find it comforting, when looking at the change, to see that beyond the superficial and the flirting and the day-to-day encounters of teenager-hood, the real longing for companionship still remains:

bq. Most of the kids say they hate relationships, that they don’t want to be tied down, that they want to be open to different possibilities and different genders from minute to minute, but there is a natural tendency—as natural perhaps as the tendency to experiment—to try to find connection. Like it or not, emotions get involved. If you look closer, you can see the hint of longing, the momentary pouting, the tiny jealousies. Jared can’t take his eyes off Nikki, but Nikki seems interested mainly in Alair. Jason, too, is angling for Alair’s attention, but Alair is once again focused on Jane. And Jane, well, Jane might actually be in love.

I find this sentiment comforting, and I think in the end the article shows us that kids will be kids, teens will experiment and be trendy and push against the blurry boundaries of social norms, but when it comes right down to it the adults of tomorrow still want what the adults of today, and the adults of yesterday want — comfort, companionship, stability, connection, love. In short, don’t freak out, we’re gonna be okay.

What I still can’t get a handle on, though, is that this is *Stuyvesant*. I guess I just figured, from my warped persepctive and my middle- and high-school experiences, that the “intelligent,” “driven,” “hard working” kids were the ones least likely to be at the leading edge of these sorts of social changes. But then, perhaps I was hanging out with the “wrong” crowd. 😉 And in a school of 3,000 — no matter the school — there is always going to be *someone*, to use a marketing slogan, “think[ing] different(tm)”.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds…and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of…wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space…
…put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Not trying to throw around _Newsies_ trivia unnecessarily, but this one is just too strange to pass up. Apparently a Color Guard squad (i.e. flag/rifle/etc. team) did a _Newsies_-themed (and scored) routine in 2005. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that I’m about 85% sure that I attended a Winter Guard competition at the very high school where this took place, back when I was dating a fabulous person who happened to do that sort of thing. Looking at the pictures I got a totally weird _deja vu_ thing.

Newsies flag routine

Apparently some of the child actors in one of the best Disney movies ever, _Newsies_, filmed a no-budget horror flick on the set. IMDb describes the improbable Blood Drips Heavily on Newsies Square this way:

bq. Washed up actor Don Knotts shows up on the back lot of Universal Studios in Hollywood, California in hopes of landing a role in the new Disney movie, Newsies. Unfortunately director Kenny Ortega quickly dismisses Mr. Knotts and has him thrown off the lot. Mr. Knotts is quite upset by the turn of events, so decides to go on a killing spree, believing that if he can’t have a role in the movie no one can. He knocks off one newsie after the next, each in a different and unique way.

Okay, seriously, I very much need to see this. Anyone have any thoughts on where I might find it?

★★☆☆☆
Review

Elektra

Fiddling with my silly DVR tonight I accidentally stumbled upon this Marvel Comic-inspired film on HBO-HD. The visuals are beautiful, the cinematography captivating, and the main character, played by Jennifer Garner, is deep and interesting. And that’s about it. I can’t summarize the plot because, having seen the movie, I don’t understand it. The bad guys have annoying superpowers, everybody is a ninja, and standard action film cliches apply. Elektra’s childhood backstory, wonderfully flashbacked, never leads anywhere interesting.

In general the plot is straight-forward and easy to follow — girl with strange gifts (she can see glimpses of the immediate future), mother killed when she was young, young woman full of anger, finds work as a hired assassin, caring teacher and mentor, woman ends up on a path to redemption — except that there is cleary so much more (probably explained in the comics) that is only barely hinted at and then tossed aside, haphazardly, leaving the viewer with a sense that there is probably a lot of meat here, if only someone wanted to take the time to clue us in. Then Elektra decides to save her latest assasination targets (a father and young daughter) rather than killing them, and all kinds of weird superpowered villains appear, from nowhere in particular, to finish the job. Elektra fights, as you might expect. We never quite understand why.

Clearly this is no a movie I can recommend if one is looking for any depth. As a standard action film it is so-so. Which is sad, because the locations they filmed in were marvelously deep and interesting and beautiful and infused with personality, the visuals were captivating, some of the fight scenes were delightful (if one can ignore Elektra’s hideous red costume), Jennifer Garner’s portrayal of the main character was so full of promise, and even the score (by _Buffy_ composer Christophe Beck) was pleasant. Sadly, all of that counts for little when there isn’t a plot.

If you’re looking for something with which to enjoy your new HD setup, though, this fits the bill quite well.

Another move

I’ve gotten sick of “TextDrive”:http://www.textdrive.com for several reasons, and it was annoying enough tonight that I said to hell with it and just moved AgBlog over to a Berkman server, and also upgrade WordPress while I was at it. It took all of an hour. I should have done it sooner.

I’m not sure how permanent this will be, but in the meantime the site is nice and fast and I can finally finish my theme. I’m also installing the plugin that will let people receive an email when new things are posted. Let me know if you see broken things.

In what is ostensibly a review of the book _Rainbow Party_, Caitlin Flanagan hashes out an incredibly detailed and complicated look at teenage sexuality and how it has changed over time. She describes recent trends and media scares (I was unaware of how big of a deal oral sex has become among 13-year-old girls, and their parents) and traces a path of awakening and shifting cultural mores from Judy Blume’s original groundbreaking work in the 1960s right up to the culture and media of today. The pictures she paints — complicated, conflicted, tinged with self-doubt and uncertainty — is an upsetting one. But in many ways, as much as I don’t like to admit it, she is probably right.

A la carte economics and the pod people future

My cable bill is very confusing. Comcast charges all sorts of fees and then gives a bunch of discounts and credits and it ends up at a number which I pay without trying too hard to comprehend it. Right now my roommates and I are paying about $125 a month for digital cable with HD channels and high speed internet. This, to me, feels very, very high.

The first thing I’d like to do to that number is knock out the internet — that we need. However, doing so is difficult. While it costs $43 a month, with a “multi product discount” we get $15 off of that amount. $28 does seem reasonable to me for high speed internet, although I think for that price we should be getting something even *higher* speed. So let us say it should cost $30 a month for reliable high speed internet. Now the cable bill is down to $95. The HD recorder itself plus the remote control accounts for $5 of that, so let us pull that out as well, and we’re down to $90.

Ninety dollars is the figure we will use. Before we continue, let me explain my alternate proposal for a la carte programming. It is really quite simple: we have “podcasting” which is an easy way of checking web site feeds to see if new audio files are available and, if they are, downloading them automatically. There are even some “video podcasts” which is the same thing, only with video files. It is straightforward, it is easy to use, and it is built into iTunes. ITunes also now allows you to purchase some television shows at a low quality suitable for iPod viewing at $1.99 per episode.

I want to podcast television shows. I would like to sign up for, say, _Lost_, and every week iTunes would download the show for me and debit me $1.99. Then I could watch the show at my convenience, without commercials. However, I want my shows to be equivalent quality to what I can see on my fancy new television, which means beautiful high definition. Each night my computer will check for new shows on my list and download them in HD, each time charging me $1.99. Each morning I’ll have fresh content to watch on my iPod, my computer, or my television when it is convenient to me. This, I believe, is the future of television. Broadcast as a concept will gradually cease to exist.

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