Beasts of No Nation (2015)

IMDB

Beasts of No Nation (2015): African child soldier. Violent, brutal, dehumanizing, heartbreaking. Powerful film-making. Why no Oscar nom? A+

POTD: Belly Flop

From 2015 11 13 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the cruise ship Liberty of the Seas. It's self-explanatory. Well, maybe one thing needs explanation. That's not me in the photo or anyone else I know.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

IMDB

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): One long desert car chase with crashes, explosions and grunts. Mind-numbing. Cartoonish. Sexist. "Mediocre." D+

POTD: Come Back to Jamaica

From 2015 11 13 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the cruise ship Liberty of the Seas sailing from the port of Falmouth, Jamaica. Cheers and a fond farewell.

Come Back to Jamaica
Come back to Jamaica.
What's old is what's new.
We want you to join us.
We made it for you.
So make it Jamaica.
Make it your own.
Make it Jamaica.
Your new island home.

Review: Thomas Becket

Amazon

From Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel, by John Guy

The truly remarkable sequence of events that would allow a middle-class Londoner to rise to a position where he would become the equal of barons and knights, converse regularly with kings and popes, and one day come to defy a king was yet to begin."

That middle-class Londoner was Thomas Becket. This biography lays out that sequence of events from nine centuries ago. As John Guy promises, they truly were remarkable.

After the jump, my review.

Tangerine (2015)

IMDB

Tangerine (2015): Christmas Eve on LA streets with trans prostitutes. Gritty, explicit and alien to this old straight guy. Great acting. A-

OTBR: Gun Club in Nevada

Latitude: N 35° 57.324
Longitude: W 114° 54.396


A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".

POTD: Jamaican Tam

From 2015 11 13 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Montego Bay, Jamaica. Previously, I gave a vacation rule of thumb: your comfort level wearing local fashion is inversely proportional to your distance from your vacation destination. That goes double for hair styles. I never could pull it off, but dreadlocks or not, this unknown gentleman looks kick-ass in a Jamaican tam.

Repeat Tweets: Can You Say "Pander"?

Repeat tweets from January, 2016:

• Jan 1 2016: RT @CarlyFiorina: "Love my alma mater, but rooting for a Hawkeyes win today. #RoseBowl" Can you say "pander?"
  
• Jan 2 2016: RT @GroverNorquist: "To understand what Obama wants in our future...Watch the Star Wars movies and imagine that only the storm troopers have guns." Did he just equate the US military and American police to Star Wars storm troopers? Despicable.
  
• Jan 2 2016: RT @justinc: "Idea: never go for two." Neither team went for two without being required to. Oregon should have gone for two to win but didn't and lost.
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Decoherence and Disharmony

In October, I mused on an essay by Brookings scholar Philip A. Wallach on the subject of "decoherence", the notion that American governance is coming apart at the seams. Some evidence on the left is in President Obama's use of executive orders to get anything done in the face of an obstructionist Congress. And on the right it's in the curious admiration many Republicans express for Russian President Putin for his defiance of international law to further Russian interests.

Today's musing is on a related article that connects today's mood in America with a recurring phenomenon in American politics identified by Samuel Huntington in a 1981 book, "American Politics: Promise of Disharmony." Again, Lee Drutman of Vox Media reviews it.