Queen Mary in the Mists

Queen_mary

Perhaps there is some odd synchronicity with Tim J's haunting post, but this is a picture I was moved to take from my hotel hallway early Sunday morning as I was getting reach to leave the Long Beach National Square Dance Convention for the drive back to San Diego.

That drive should be only two hours, but with traffic it can be four five (and has been!), so I wanted to get an early start, and I happened to get up early enough that there was a lot of fog in the area.

The fog was so bad that when I got on the toll road to bypass a bunch of early traffic, I could not read the signs announcing the oncoming toll booths, making me wonder about traffic safety. Nevertheless I got home fine, despite all the fog.

The kind of fog you could hit an iceberg in. 

This post isn't about that, though. It's about the ship that you can see between the palm trees in the center of the picture (look for the black and red smokestacks; click to enlarge). 

The ship is the Queen Mary, which sailed as part of the Cunard-White Star Line in the mid-20th century before being retired and permanently anchored in Long Beach as a tourist spot.

I've never been aboard the Queen Mary. That'll have to wait for another trip (traffic and all, y'know). But I have encountered it in various ways.

For example, its gorgeous interiors were used as the setting of the outstanding and cinematically dazzling X-Files episode Triangle (one of the very best of the whole series).

Beyond the way the X-Files treated the ship, it's also reputed to be haunted, with various reports of ghostly happenings since it was permanently moored in Long Beach, with past guests supposedly making posthumous appearances, including soldiers who were housed on the vessel when it was used as a troop ship during World War II. (Bunks, apparently, were stacked in the central ballroom, with some bunks reaching almost to the ceiling.)

On that basis, it's also the location of the climax of Tim Powers' novel Expiration Date, which is one of my most favorite Tim Powers novels. It's simply marvellous–chocked full of audacious inventiveness, action, and humor. I love it!

It also mentions the billeting of troops that took place on the ship during World War II.

And the ship has a connection (believe it or not) to my square dancing life.

One of the past presidents of my square dance club was named Vic. He passed away a couple of years ago, when I was president of the club (before I was its caller), and I spent time with Vic during his final illness, trying to provide companionship and making whatever conversation he felt up to.

One of the things he talked about was the fact that he had been housed on the Queen Mary during World War II. He was one of the soldiers billeted in the ball room. 

Of course, I told him about Tim Powers' novel as part of passing the time.

And so, though I haven't yet been aboard the Queen Mary, it still has a special status for me. I look forward to going aboard and seeing it for myself.

This weekend, though, I couldn't resist snapping a picture of it through the morning mists.

Oh . . . and what's that ghostly ring of light around the ship in the picture? An electronic image artifact? A reflection in the hotel hall's window of the iPhone's circular camera, caused by holding it close enough to the window that the hall lights wouldn't get in the picture? A spectral manifestation of Koot Hoomie Parganas, Thomas Edison, Sherman Oaks, or (shudder) Loretta deLarava?

You decide.


Startling Pattern Emerges

Cemetery
It's like they're all just waiting for us…

Hey, Tim Jones, here.

I
think my grandfather's death was the first that really affected me as
it happened, though I understood the concept of death, having seen a
lot of T.V. westerns, along with media coverage of the Vietnam War, the
Kennedy assassination, the Munich Olympics and other deadly events.

I've
seen a number of deaths, since, and taken note of many more, but the
tight grouping of celebrity deaths in the last week has made me look
back over my experiences of death, and I have begun to sense a pattern.

Stay with me, here. I'm no conspiracy nut, but it begins to appear that no one
is safe, and that the chances of death for any one of us – by my rough
figures – approaches 100%. For instance, the older I get, the more
people in my general age group pop up on the news, having died in one
way or another and it is most often treated as a surprise, if not a
shock.

But the shock, to me, may be unjustified. I don't want to start a panic, but it looks to me like we may all be headed for the cemetery.

"Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
Psalm 90:12

Last
week we heard first, of course, of Ed McMahon, then Farrah Fawcett,
then Michael Jackson… next, Billy Mays and this morning I read that
Fred Travalena and Gale Storm passed away.

I have no great
observations to make, except to say that the only genuine shock for me
would have been if Michael Jackson had somehow lived to a ripe old age.
I did not see how he could manage much longer. Over the past few years
he appeared to be a shell.

I have good memories of Fred Travalena, who often appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, was all over the variety show circuit, and also starred with Rich Little, Frank Gorshin and other master impressionists on The Kopycats
– a comedy show (which I never missed if I could help it) built around
impressions. He was also an extremely prolific and successful voice
actor.

Most people may not know anything much about Gale Storm, but my wife will remember My Little Margie (which was old already when we watched it) from our days as college students, when we could count our TV channels on one hand.

For
a long time, when driving by a cemetery, I have had the distinct
and unshakable sense that those dwelling under the tombstones are
watching and waiting and maybe chuckling a little… laughing at the
living and their frantic and petty preoccupations. Sometimes, I can't
help but laugh, too.

This idea of the connectedness of the living
and the dead runs deep in the human heart, and is confirmed in the
doctrine of the Communion of Saints… which is just the Church
expounding on the teaching of the Lord that "He is not the God of the
dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."  (Luke 20:38).

(This post has been carefully cross-posted by hand at Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine, for double your blogging pleasure)

Political humor

This cartoon reminds me of something from the Team America movie that someone told me about (I didn’t see it myself), a satiric pro-American song that I can’t even repeat the title of here. (The cartoon below also has an objectionable word in it.)

Or, at least, that’s how many Americans would view the rest of the world, if they had even that much geographical awareness.

In reality, I think many Americans see the world through the same sort of lens (though not of course from the same perspective) as Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover map of the world cartoon:

Oh, and JibJab is at it again!

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

The Great Chain of Being Goes To Heaven

CHT to the reader who sent in the following church sign debate. It's currently being circulated around the Internet in the form of an e-mail that suggests it's real, but it's not (note that the leaves of the plants don't move from one picture to another). That doesn't stop it from being hilarious–if you don't take it (or its theology) too seriously.




















Decent Films doings, 6/2009

Latest reviews, both about thoughtful films for adults in limited release:

Moon, a science fiction throwback to the philosophical sci-fi of the late 1960s and early 1970s (2001: A Space Odyssey and its ilk), starring Sam Rockwell and directed by first-time filmmaker Duncan Jones. (Yes, he’s the son of David Bowie.)

Summer Hours, French director Olivier Assayas’s extraordinary family-drama meditation on legacy and loss, the meaning of art and the relentless march of time, and the fragmentation of families and erosion of culture in an age of globalization.

Although both films are philosophically freighted, both engage the world of ideas in a way organic to the spare, small-scale stories they have to tell — stories about the personal dilemmas of a small number of characters (in the case of Moon, a very small number). Both well worth tracking down.

Up to Heaven

SDG here with a heart-rending yet uplifting real-life story about life imitating art in a beautiful act of kindness from Pixar, makers of Up.

HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie.

From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

Colby died only seven hours after experiencing Up.

Up‘s story of bereavement and hoped-for adventures that would never be must have had shattering poignancy to that dying girl and her family. The story reports that Colby’s mother later said she had no idea how close the film would hit to home: “I just know that word ‘Up’ and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven.” (Colby’s funeral was held at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church.)

The overlap of the film’s themes and Colby’s circumstances was especially brought home by one of the bits of Up memorabilia the Pixar employee brought to the family: an “Adventure Book” much like the one Ellie leaves Carl with, with its blank pages. “I’ll have to fill those adventures in for her,” Colby’s mom said. (Another point of contact: Colby’s parents are divorced, like Russell’s parents. But where Russell’s dad seems to have dropped out of his son’s life, Colby’s dad came to the house after the screening and was with his daughter when she died.)

A family friend reported that the Pixar employee “couldn’t have been nicer … His eyes were just welled up.”

A heartbreaking detail: A few days earlier, Colby’s mother had asked a hospice company to bring a wheelchair so that Colby could see the film in the theater. But the wheelchair never arrived, and Colby quickly became too sick to get out to a theater, necessitating Pixar’s supererogatory intervention. (By the time the movie came to Colby, she was in too much pain to open her eyes and look at it, so her mother gave her scene-by-scene commentary. She did, however, respond to a query about whether she enjoyed the film by nodding her head yes.)

By the way: “Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved.” Beyond class. That’s all I can say.

READ THE (HEART-RENDING, UPLIFTING) STORY.

Workplace Copyright Scruples

A reader writes:

I have a dilemma at work. I work in a school. Part of my job is to do photocopies for teachers. I am sometimes asked to make photocopies of worksheets whose legal status – whether they are copyrighted or not – is unknown to me. The teachers, who don't seem to know about the copyright issue, generally intend to distribute the copies at a later time. That gives me the chance to do a little research to check the legal status of the document and get the nerve to refuse to do something which is certainly wrong, if it is the case.

This situation of uncertainty gets thougher to deal with when, out of the blue, one of the teachers asks me to copy a worksheet for a kid who was absent at the time the sheet was distributed, on a previous day. The teacher expects me to come back as soon as possible so that this kid can do his work like the others.

If the copying were clearly a violation of the author's copyright, I could stand up to the teacher and diplomaticly say "I'm sorry but I cannot do this because …". And if it were okay, I'd go ahead and make the copy.

But in a case of uncertainty, what should I do ? Is it a case of remote material cooperation with evil with a proportionate reason, the proportionate reason being the need for the kid to get an education ? I do not want to infringe copyrights nor make a trouble in class without "sufficient" reasons.

Also, I wonder if making a copy of a collection of images previously copied by the teacher herself would change anything in the remoteness of my cooperation. (Pffeeww! I hope it is clear to you).

First, I'm pleased to say that I think I can cut the Gordian knot on your dilemma by noting that in U.S. copyright law fair use is considered to include significant copying of copyrighted works for classroom distribution. According to the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

So . . . work sheets, collections of pictures, whatever . . . if you're making copies for educational purposes, it looks like the activity is covered by fair use. I thus wouldn't scruple about it.

While this would seem to take care of the reader's issue, not everybody works in a school, so let's look at the moral principles that would apply if one's employer asks one to copy copyrighted material and it is not covered by fair use. What then?

If one is not approving of the act then one is not formally cooperating, which satifies one element of the moral calculus. One's cooperation would be material.

For material cooperation in evil to be justified it is traditionally held that it needs to be remote rather than proximate and that there needs to be a compensating reason of sufficient weight. Also, the act you are doing must not be intrinsically evil.

Making a copy is not intrinsically evil–it's something that can be justified by the circumstances, so that criterion seems satisfied.

What is not satisfied is the traditional remote/proximate distinction. One's action in this case is not remote. If the law one is breaking is against copying and if you are the one doing the copying then your action seems proximate (or more than proximate), violating the traditional requirement that the cooperation be remote.

So I don't think that at least the traditional understanding of the doctrine of cooperation provides a defense.

What I do think provides a defense, morally speaking (the civil law is another matter), is this:

Copyright violation is a species of theft, and the definition of theft is as follows:

CCC 2408 The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.

Now, if you're in a situation where the copying your employer is asking you to do will not strongly affect the income of the copyright holder then you could presume the consent of the owner. Few copyright holders would want people to lose their jobs or be denied promotions because they stood up to their bosses and refused to do the copying. I know I wouldn't want someone losing a job or being denied a promotion because they were defying their boss in defense of the copyrights I hold. My problem is with the boss issuing the order, not the employee carrying them out.

But suppose that you know you're dealing with an inflexible, irrationally strict copyright holder, or suppose you're doing something that will substantially impact the copyright holder's income–like making ten thousand illegal copies of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. What about those cases?

The irrational copyright holder situation is taken care of by the "reasonable will of the owner" condition. He's not reasonable, so you can act on what a reasonable owner would say.

That leaves the case of substantially affecting his income. Here you might have to refuse the order even at the cost of a promotion or a job. The decision would be based on the relative harm to you of having to find another employment situation versus the harm being done to the copyright owner. That's something that could go either way. 

I point it out not to encourage people to scruple over this question–quite the opposite. The great majority of the time one will not be morally at fault for complying with an employer's orders, for the reasons specified above. I merely mention it to point out that these considerations would not (apart from extreme circumstances) justify one working for a business whose principle purpose is copyright piracy, like a mass video or software bootlegger.

That, of course, all deals with the moral aspect of the question, apart from considerations of civil law. If you break the civil law you still run the risk of getting nailed by the authorities.