Signs of the times V

Capture and control?

This 2002 article by H. Keith Henson provides a lot of food for thought for those who would understand human behavior, particularly the psychological aspects of religious cults and captor/captive relationships.

Law and the Multiverse

A few works of pop culture, most notably The Incredibles, have speculated about how superheroes might be affected by the legal system. Few have actually attempted to apply the real-life legal system to such sticky superhero problems as testifying in court, maintaining a secret identity, or accumulating and holding property for longer than a normal human life span. And these are simple when compared to the huge snarl of legal difficulties that might arise from dying and being resurrected even once, let alone spinning around in a revolving door of temporary mortality the way some denizens of the comics multiverse seem to do. This very interesting blog, apparently written by an attorney or law student who is also a raging comics fan, attempts to fill the gap.

The political populist in me notes that corporations, which lack not only mortality but most of the other positive attributes of human beings, have rather neatly managed to evade all of these difficulties. Perhaps superheroes should simply incorporate themselves.

Recent reads:

Losing Mum and Pup, by Christopher Buckley. The author of several successful novels of political satire (Thank You For Smoking, Boomsday, etc.) tackles a much bleaker subject: the deaths of his mother and father within a year of each other, and his own memories, thoughts and reactions to those losses. His parents, of course, were notable in their own right. William F. Buckley was one of the most influential political writers of the twentieth century, founder of National Review and a leading figure in the decades-long attempt to give political conservatism a respectable intellectual foundation. Patricia Taylor Buckley, though less well known to political mavens, was a prominent social figure in New York and a formidable personal presence to her family.

Buckley's reminiscences of his parents are both illuminating and entertaining, and some portions of the book read like the humorous stories told about a person at their wake. A chapter about his father's love of sailing, and of the many adventures and mishaps which resulted from his almost recklessly sanguine approach to seamanship, had me laughing out loud: "Over the years, my father took out entire sections of docks up and down the eastern seaboard. His crew bestowed on him the nickname 'Captain Crunch'...." And yet Buckley also has the respect and the awareness to note that "Pup's greatness was of a piece with the way he conducted himself at sea. Great men always have too much canvas up. Great men take great risks."

The literally morbid subtext of the book also gives Buckley plenty of room to exercise his bleaker, blacker sense of humor, as when he describes the unctuousness of funeral directors or the very strange world of funeral price accounting. And also discuss much more serious matters, such as his famously intellectual father's struggle with the gradual loss of some of his physical and mental agility.

Would that all of us accomplished so much with the time available to us, and were remembered in such fashion.

Neat link of the day:

FedFlix. Free downloadable US government films, including documentaries, training films, etc. "Duck and Cover!"