Browsing through today’s online edition of the Onion, I came upon this article:

Bush Told To Sign Birthday Treaty For Someone Named ‘Kyoto’

I will leave aside entirely the crude and stupid humor of pretending Bush has an IQ of 75, since his term is almost over and after eight years I’m just tired of arguing about it. But there is something I’m sufficiently peeved to point out…

The Kyoto Protocol has already been signed by the United States. Al Gore signed it in 1998. It has no effect without Senate ratification. The Senate has not ratified it. In 1997 the Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which expressed their sense that they would not ratify it unless there were binding targets and timetables for developing nations. There were no such targets or timetables.

Now one could certainly make the case that Bush has refused to submit the treaty for ratification to the Senate and that means he has responsibility for the U.S. not adhering to the protocol. There are serious problems with that argument (would the Senate actually ratify it? What would he get from it other than the everlasting hatred of his party?) but you can at least make that argument without completely ignoring the truth. But for the love of God, IT DOESN’T MATTER IF HE SIGNS IT. Full Stop.

[nerd alert, navel-gazing]

Ed recently overhauled his personal site and shared the history of how it’s been maintained and hosted. That got me thinking about the same question of my site.

My site started off as “Is The Answer In The Question?” in 2000 (still viewable at the Internet Archive). Featuring HTML 4.01 hardcoded, as well as a putrid neon green and black color scheme, it was meant to be a showcase of my writing portfolio from my first two years of high school. I eventually started including some of my opinion columns that I wrote for sketchy websites in my junior year. I received some absurd hate mail about these columns, which I of course (with teenage narcissism) posted as praise for myself.

With my admission to college I could finally move my website to a host just slightly more reliable and functional than Tripod…the University of Chicago offered shared hosting on Solaris 8 with Apache 1.3. I changed the color scheme to the official school colors of maroon (the HTML color code specified byt he University’s communication manual) and white, and used FrontPage 2003 to frame out a website whose HTML I cleaned up in SciTE and Notepad. I eventually validated it as XHTML and eventually added CSS. You can see this look here.

The summer after my first year of college I grew frustrated with the University hosting’s lack of dynamic page support (no ASP, no CSS, no Perl CGI or anything) and moved the site to 1and1. The front page stayed the same for a while, though I added a Wordpress 1.0 blog (originally named Amo Amas Amat) and a Gallery 1.x photo gallery. Eventually I reworked the front page to be a little less Spartan (see here), though the Internet Archive doesn’t show my awesome abstract quasi-stained-glass logo that I created with the GIMP.

This arrangement of the site stayed constant for the next two years. I used SciTE for editing the XHTML, slowly but surely upgraded Wordpress versions, switched themes that were incrementally less ugly, and largely ignored the photo gallery. 1and1’s absurd administration tools, randomly generated usernames and horrendous server latency made me a lazy administrator.

Finally, in Winter of 2007 I was fed up - I switched the site to Dreamhost and saw dramatic improvements in responsiveness, ease of administration and features. But I didn’t really feel like maintaining a separate XHTML site structure so I moved Wordpress to be the content management system for brianhinkle.com. I heavily tweaked this template - and here we are.

[that was boring even for me..but it was rather amusing to go back through my teenage website...]

For those who aren’t familiar with the BlackBerry AutoText feature, it’s a function of the operating system on a BlackBerry smartphone that looks inside your e-mails for unique keywords in an attempt to learn your vocabulary and make typing easier (especially important on the Pearl, which doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard). Vocabulary is also added when you type e-mails or text messages and tell the system what you intended to type. What eventually emerges is a disturbingly accurate vocabulary word list. A few choice selections from mine:

• ActivePerl
• Akamai
• Anthemic
• Ashcroft
• Asimov
• Binny’s
• Borked
• Bourdeaux
• Chicagoland
• Cisco
• Cluebat
• Contrarian
• Datacenter
• Depromote
• Escheatment
• Expiry
• Firefox
• Gelato
• Indices
• Lollerskates
• MacBook
• Merlot
• Mersault
• Mojitos
• MySQL
• Neocon
• NewEgg
• Osama
• PhD
• Pimping
• Silverlight
• Starbucks
• Syslog
• TTYL
• Tannins
• Ticketmaster
• UChicago
• Uninstalled
• Wiki
• Wordpress
• WTF
• Y’all
• Yowza
• XKCD

Today, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89.

I will always remember when I first picked up his book The Gulag Archipelago, which had been recommended to me by my father. Up to that point I understood the USSR to be an ominous part of history but one whose true nature was obscured to me, as I was in kindergarten when the Berlin Wall fell and only one globe in my elementary school library was old enough to still show Soviet borders. But as Solzhenitsyn described, with devastating precision, the crimes of that regime, I began to understand the absolute depths of depravity and evil that were encouraged by collectivism and totalitarianism. I read of forced confessions, of vicious interrogations and torture with cigarettes, of starvation and cruelty in the work camps - but most of all I found a sense of the vast and seemingly impenetrable nature of the Gulag. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had the courage to point out the particular cruelties and massive extent of this system, and by shedding light upon the crimes of the Gulag he gave final dignity to those who were consumed by it.

A few months later, I read his book Cancer Ward and found myself recognizing his abilities as a novelist were a complement to his dedication as a researcher and activist. A dark and psychologically penetrating novel, Cancer Ward also drove home to me the indignity and hopelessness of life under the Soviet system. As it was, to the best of my memory, the first Russian novel I ever read, it also introduced me to a body of literature that I have enjoyed ever since.

Solzhenitsyn’s work was not limited to novels and The Gulag Archipelago. He also dedicated himself to speaking on behalf of the citizens of the USSR and the prisoners of the Gulag even after he was forced into exile by a hard-line government, and his abilities as an orator continue to show the depth of his understanding of the human condition. I offer a representative example below, from his address “A World Split Apart” to the Harvard graduating class of 1978:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

I find solace in the fact that the Berlin Wall fell eleven years after Solzhenitsyn delivered his remarks at Harvard, and that the decline and disintegration of the USSR was aided by men and women who displayed (and continue to display) the moral fiber that feared we had lost. Regardless, with his death there is indeed a decline of courage in this world - we will have a high standard to meet to regain it.

Ross Douthat speculates over at the Atlantic that the Republican’s “Carter moment” is about to come:

Of course there’s some truth to Gramm’s remarks about America’s fundamentals remaining strong (though the claim that “we’ve never been more dominant” seems like something of a stretch - the post-World War II era says hello), just as there was truth to the late-’70s anxieties about what America’s dependence on foreign oil portended for the future. But there are other relevant truths as well, the art of politics involves striking a balance, and a political party that lurches too far toward either Panglossianism or pessimism isn’t long for power. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

Indeed, suggesting that we live in “the best of all possible economies” (qua Pangloss) is a rather ignorant suggestion. The economy is in an ugly phase. It is one of many ugly phases the economy has gone through, it is by no means the worst, and it is quite possible to recover from it - but ugly it is. To illustrate, see figure 1 (the price of one barrel of crude oil for September delivery, as traded on NYMEX):

Figure 2 (the share price of MBIA, a bond insurer who also insured collateral mortage securities, from July 07 to present):

Here we see the two major problems with the U.S. economy illustrated in terms that should make any investor, worker or CEO sweat blood at least momentarily. Problem 1: Oil, an asset which affects the price virtually every consumer and business good known to man, has rocketed to a level nearly as precipitous as the 1973 oil crisis. This has nearly destroyed the business model of airlines and long-distance trucking companies and will exert a drastic inflationary effect on the economy. Problem 2: due to the availability of cheap credit and an absolute and ghastly abandon in the writing of subprime mortgages, any company involved in the resulting hailstorm of foreclosures (be it Countrywide who wrote the loans, companies that brokered the loans or firms like MBIA who insured them) is eating fruit from the poisoned tree. They’re getting sick as a result. They should be.

So what’s the solution? It’s not pessimism - we’ve been through worse crises and fear and panic will allow for harmful intrusions of state control. Gas prices may be high but we’re not seeing lines for gasoline because, unlike the Nixon administration, President Bush has refused to authorize price controls. But the solution is not Panglossianism either - only the most blind fail to see that there is a problem, and most of the voting population is not that stupid. The direct result of an overoptimistic attitude about the economy is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This will inevitably lead to pessimism and its antecedent attitudes of price controls and economic malaise.

The solution I propose is simple - acknowledge, watch, and wait. We know there is a problem and we can already see the market acting swiftly to correct it. MBIA threw away its reputation for risk control and its sterling reputation for credit in favor of returns from collaterized debt obligation and mortgage-backed securities - the market and its shareholders are thrashing it for having undertaken such a tremendously stupid act. Lenders are now requiring more than double the usual number of borrowers to take on primary mortgage insurance as they see the end results of risky subprime loans. The only airline in the U.S. with the foresight to hedge against rising fuel prices - Southwest Airlines - is rewarded with a reasonably steady stock price and the honor of being the only profitable airline in the midst of an industry that is bleeding cash. Drivers are reducing the number of miles they drive and purchasing more efficient vehicles. Banks are refusing to make loans without proof of income and down payments.

This is the beauty of capitalism - even when things are at their ugliest we can begin to see the signs of recovery and rationality. If we acknowledge both the extent of the damage that has been done and praise the steps that the market is taking to correct it, we will walk the knife edge between Pangloss and pessimism; that will be a healthier solution for consumers, and for the economy.

John McCarron writes in today’s Chicago Tribune that “Milton Friedman was a great thinker…but the Chicago school of economics he made famous applies mainly to a world that does not exist. Worse, it has given intellectual cover to lesser, self-serving men who have inflicted considerable harm to those of us who do live in the real world.” McCarron’s thesis for the piece is essentially structured around two broad points - that the acolytes of Friedman have attempted to make his theories describe and govern human behavior in ways never intended by the author, and that the world improved by Friedman’s capitalism is not the one we live in today, and is in fact a world that is harmed by our hewing to his ideals. It is an appallingly shallow and ignorant piece that shows its author has paid little attention to what Milton Friedman actually wrote and believed, and demonstrates his ignorance of the current restrictions incumbent on the free market.

On the first point, McCarron acknowledges that free-market capitalism was aided by the force of Friedman’s research and rhetoric as he “literally turned the world on to the enormous power of free markets, the power to deliver what government-controlled economies rarely have: widespread improvement in a peoples’ standard of living.” He goes on to describe how the the technological innovations and agility allowed by the free market has been a considerable benefit to Western economies. But he believes Friedman’s ideology is ignorant of non-economic motivation - that individuals might be motivated “not by economic maximization but by religious fervor or ethnic tribalism, by whimsy or ignorance.” A selection from Free To Choose, written by Friedman and his wife Rose in 1980, will rapidly show that to be untrue:

Narrow preoccupation with the economic market has led to a narrow interpretation of self-interest as myopic selfishness, as exclusive concern with immediate material rewards. Economics has been berated for allegedly drawing far-reaching conclusions from a wholly unrealistic “economic man” who is little more than a calculating machine, responding only to monetary stimuli. That is a great mistake. Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy - all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values. (Free to Choose, “The Power of the Market”, p. 27)

As Friedman points out, McCarron’s complaints about free-market capitalism have less to do with a disagreement on philosophy than they do a misunderstanding of terms. Even highly quantitative economics measures utility, not money specifically when it speaks of the effects of price change on human behavior. Utility, simply put, is human happiness and the pursuit of our untrammeled self interest. That freedom is never unlimited but does describe human motivation far beyond the profit motive, and economists from all walks of the profession right of Marxism recognize that fact.

McCarron has another complaint about the limits of Friedman’s market philosophy - he believes that “the Friedmanites never comprehended that perfect markets, in which free men and women make well-informed decisions that benefit everyone over time, never existed and never will. Some have much better information than others. Some are more shrewd. Some are crooks and swindlers.” In response, let us again let Friedman speak for himself:

Just as no society operates entirely on the command principle, so none operates entirely through voluntary cooperation. Each society has some command elements…they may be as straightforward as military conscription or forbidding the purchase and sale of heroin or cyclamates or court orders to named defendants to desist from or perform specified actions. Or, at the other extreme, they may be as subtle as imposing a heavy tax on cigarettes to discourage smoking - a hint, if not a command, by some of us to others of us…we hasten to add that voluntary exchange is not a sufficient condition for prosperity and freedom. That, at least, is the lesson of history to date…but voluntary exchange is a necessary condition for both prosperity and freedom. (Free to Choose, “The Power of the Market”, p. 11)

Again we see McCarron’s dependence on the strawman argument of the “economic man,” who is dismissed in a peremptory fashion within the first chapter of Friedman’s book and cleared away thereafter to make room for a subtle and truthful treatment of human motivations. Just as Friedman (and Friedrich Hayek, and Adam Smith) were aware that the pursuit of utility without restraints is not necessarily the best form of economic organization, every modern economist (left of David Friedman and the anarcho-libertarians) agrees.

I could spend more time demonstrating (with copious quotations from Friedman’s works) why McCarron is misinformed on the limits of free-market capitalism and its ability to describe human behavior. I am, however limited by my inability to find my copy of Capitalism and Freedom which is his masterwork on the intersection between economic theories, human behavior and government. I suppose I could have worse problems though - I could have no copies of Friedman’s works whatsoever, and be in McCarron’s shoes. I do at least feel compelled to address his assertion that “the Chicago school of economics he [Friedman] made famous applies mainly to a world that does not exist.” I find this statement rather surprising considering the numerous parallels between our current time and the latter years of the Carter administration when Milton and Rose Friedman first made their entry into the vocabulary of the common man with their Free to Choose PBS series and the accompanying book. A drastic rise in oil prices spurred on by a cut in production and a drop in the buying power of the U.S. dollar produced rampant inflation and crippled industries that had depended on the supply of cheap power, and we see this pattern repeating again today along with the calls by major politicians to nationalize oil producers and enact price controls on gasoline. These instincts towards protectionism and central control are a direct analogue of the authoritarian sentiment Friedman saw in his time, and we ignore his plain and compelling lessons at our peril.

The ink is barely dry on the Heller decision and the Illinois State Rifle Association and Second Amendment Foundation have filed suit to overturn the handgun ban in Chicago.

A choice quote from the complaint in McDonald v. The City Of Chicago:

By banning handguns, Defendants currently maintain and actively enforce a set of laws, customs, practices, and policies under color of state law which deprive individuals, including the Plaintiffs, of their right to keep and bear arms, in violation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Plaintiffs are thus damaged in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Plaintiffs are therefore entitled to declaratory and permanent injunctive relief against continued enforcement and maintenance of Defendants’ unconstitutional customs, policies, and practices.

Complaint is here. It’s interesting to note that the suit specifically claims incorporation of the 2nd Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment, and also claims that Chicago’s current licensing regime (which allows for long guns in the home subject to prior registration and annual renewals) is itself contrary to the 2nd. This seems to go against the Court’s reasoning in Heller that licensing schemes are not necessarily unconstitutional as long as they are only restricted to serious disqualifications like mental illness and felony convictions…though the named plaintiff McDonald was denied a license after purchasing a Civilian Marksmanship Program rifle, which might be “arbitrary and capricious” (Scalia’s words). Also of note - Alan Gura of Gura and Possessky is co-counsel in the case, and he argued Heller before SCOTUS. I have a feeling this will be a fascinating case to watch - Gura is updating on the progress of the case at ChicagoGunCase.com.

Justice Scalia, responding to Breyer’s minority opinion in Heller:

We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad. We would not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibition of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 (1977) (per curiam). The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people—which JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew. And whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.

So, now that the Heller decision has renewed our recognition of Second Amendment rights and the Chicago handgun ban is next in line to get whacked, I should start deciding which pistol to purchase the moment that our ban is struck down. Now, dear readers - what will it be?

The Springfield XD9701 (chambered in 9mm Parabellum)?:

Or the venerable Browning Hi-Power which is also chambered in 9mm?

Keeping in mind the following criteria:

• No concealed carry (yet) (drat).
• I need a defensive caliber for good takedown with hollowpoint ammunition.
• I do not have the muscles to deal with .45 ACP (yet)
• I am not going to buy a Les Baer M1911 or Sig Sauer or anything else that is to the rest of handguns as a Mercedes is to the rest of cars.
• I hate revolvers.

I am, of course, open to suggestions.

Tonight I finished work on a script that’s been bothering me for a while. I wanted to run a script in one Active Directory domain that would restart a service on a server (well, servers - but that’s irrelevant) in another AD domain. I wanted to do this with Powershell because I’m more familiar with scripting in that language.

I’ve spent hours trying to make it work - I’ve tried to invoke WMI Win32_Service objects on the remote server, tried to instantiate .NET System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController objects to manipulate the server with .NET remoting, and in an inspiration from another script I’ve seen I tried to create a batch file that stops/starts the service locally, set it as a scheduled task - disabled - with appropriate credentials, and then use schtask.exe to invoke the service remotely with the other domain’s credentials passed at the command line. No dice.

After a while experimenting and trawling Google for ideas, I decided to try using PSExec - this is a tool written by Sysinternals at Microsoft to remotely execute files (mostly EXEs but batch scripts will work) on another computer. Conveniently, it accepts AD credentials as parameters so it can cross the domain boundary. Since I had already created a batch file on the remote server to stop and start the service locally (a simple NET STOP FOOSERVICE and NET START FOOSERVICE), I called PSExec from my PowerShell script like this…

psexec \\uncpathtoserver -u username -p password c:\directory\batch.bat

…which runs the batch file and successfully restarts the service. And there you have it - restarting services across the domain boundary with the help of PowerShell and PSExec! (And yes, strictly speaking you don’t need Powershell for this as you could just call PSExec from its own batch file, but I used Powershell for automation and wait timing in the rest of the script).

Mark Steyn is a Canadian national treasure…

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It’s one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that’s what civilized nations like doing — chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It’s easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything. And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That’s why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he’s their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States.

Below follows the text of a letter I just wrote to the 5th Ward Alderman, Ms. Leslie Hairston:

Ms. Hairston-

I am a resident of the 5th Ward, and I am asking you to vote against the “Event Promoter’s” ordinance when it comes before the City Council this week.

I am proud to call myself a Chicagoan in large part because of the cultural vitality of this city, which in turn springs from thousands of small bands, independent events companies, local venues and local theater productions. One of my good friends here is involved with a small improv comedy company. The road is never easy for this sort of group, who must already overcome hurdles of money and of publicity in order to hold any sort of event. Yet despite this, the cultural scene in Chicago is thriving!

I am afraid to contemplate what would happen if this proposed ordinance passes. With the definition of an “event promoter” so vague that it could include bands or theater companies themselves, and with the licensing review requirements and fees so onerous, I think it will be a gut blow to the vitality of this city’s culture to have this ordinance signed into law. Imagine being in the shoes of a band practicing at a friends’ apartment and contemplating playing at the local hideout - they would have to be fingerprinted, undergo a background check, spend hundreds of dollars in fees and wait weeks (or months, more likely) for a permit to be issued. All for the audacity of wanting to handle their own publicity! In the face of such requirements, they would - no doubt - decamp for the suburbs or perhaps never even bother to reach for the stars and hold a show at all.

I am horrified to think the city (in response to the E2 tragedy, which was a result of not enforcing the existing rules) would stamp on human creativity and the wonderful unpredictability of Chicago culture. I hope that you will agree with me and vote against this proposed ordinance.

Sincerely,

Brian Gregory Hinkle

So I realized today that it’s been a good two months since I’ve even posted on my blog and things have been rather thin since then. This calls for a brief summary of how things have been going:

• I am enjoying work, and continue to learn at a ferocious rate (thanks largely to the patience and wisdom of my coworkers).
• It’s warm outside, finally! Since I no longer have to view going outside with the same disdain as visiting the dentist, this has resulted in a commensurate boost to my morale.
• I am planning to stay in this apartment for another year, to save the ridiculous amount of money and time it would cost to move in June.
• I am actually willing to talk or think about politics again. I think my early obsession with the minutiae of primary politics burnt me out - I felt the same way I did in October of 2004 but before the conventions. Meanwhile I’ve grown a great deal more accepting of a John McCain presidency when I see Obama transition from vague mealy-mouthed platitudes into the upper-class Hyde Park liberal I always knew he was. I’ve also grown decidedly less depressed about the general election as Clinton and Obama seem intent on dragging out this fight into the second ballot at the Denver convention, while McCain tap-dances his way into the hearts and minds of the Right. There have been precious few good times in the past couple of years to be a conservative, but this (at least in political aspirations) is one of them.
• I am looking forward to my first summer in Chicago that hasn’t involved living below the poverty line. The ebullient atmosphere (even though the steamy heat) of summertime in the Windy City rings rather hollow when you can’t afford to live a summertime lifestyle…and when you can’t do laundry because you had to buy groceries.
• I will be attending my first Seder dinner tomorrow night (thanks to Ali and Rachel).
• I managed to salvage my pushing-three-year-old computer from hard drive controller errors by reformatting and reinstalling Windows. Although it still retains an endearing habit of refusing to turn on from power-off unless you wait a half an hour or so…needless to say, I don’t turn it off. Power bills be damned.
• I’m turning 23 next week, and it has to be the least exciting birthday so far in my life. At least last year was my golden birthday…I’m dredging my mind trying to come up with benefits, and have found nothing more than a) it’s two consecutive integers! and b) you only have two years left before you can rent a car without an underage surcharge. Wahoo.

Hopefully my summer will not be as hideously boring (work, beer, Futurama, sleep, coffee, work, repeat) as my winter, and I’ll actually have something to post here. Until then, au bientot!

If you can go past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of the human intelligence; if you can stand the hailstorm of flash bulbs popping at the poor patient actors who, like kings and queens, have never the right to look bored; if you can glance out over this gathered assemblage of what is supposed to be the elite of Hollywood and say to yourself without a sinking feeling, “In these hands lie the destinies of the only original art the modern world has conceived “; if you can laugh, and you probably will, at the cast-off jokes from the comedians on the stage, stuff that wasn’t good enough to use on their radio shows; if you can stand the fake sentimentality and the platitudes of the officials and the mincing elocution of the glamour queens (you ought to hear them with four martinis down the hatch); if you can do all these things with grace and pleasure, and not have a wild and forsaken horror at the thought that most of these people actually take this shoddy performance seriously; and if you can then go out into the night to see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats but not from that awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do all these things and still feel next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong, because this sort of vulgarity is part of its inevitable price.

–Raymond Chandler. “Oscar Night in Hollywood”, The Atlantic Monthly, 1948.

Of course most motion pictures are bad. Why wouldn’t they be? Apart from its own intrinsic handicaps of excessive cost, hypercritical bluenosed censorship, and the lack of any single-minded controlling force in the making, the motion picture is bad because 90 per cent of its source material is tripe, and the other 10 per cent is a little too virile and plain-spoken for the putty-minded clerics, the elderly ingénues of the women’s clubs, and the tender guardians of that godawful mixture of boredom and bad manners known more eloquently as the Impressionable Age.

Raymond Chandler. “Oscar Night in Hollywood”, The Atlantic Monthly, 1948.