Law and order and Donald Trump

Three posts in one day! A new record! 

This one is about the matter of how Donald Trump claims himself to be the "law and order candidate," stuff like that, and the ironic fact that in many people's minds (or at least mine) the words "law and order" evoke the idea of a tv show about (dedicated) detectives who investigate crimes and district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.. These are their stories.. (episode begins). [I just had to.] 

I was on the New York Times' website where I saw a link to this article, which is about the history of the use of the term "law and order" in the political world. It's rather interesting. Of course, I had to take a look at the comments. This one struck me as particularly amusing: 

Television cop shows have gotten much more violent each decade since the days of Dragnet, Adam-12, and Andy Griffith! 
Starsky & Hutch and Miami Vice upped the violence significantly, as did Streets of San Francisco and 21 Jump Street.
Barney Miller and Columbo showed lots of petty and domestic crime, but were never in the violence range compared to the modern CSIs and Homicide: Life on the Streets, as well as NYPD: Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, and The Wire. 
So maybe the television violence is indeed actually higher these days contrary to this article's premise. So maybe they should heed calls to bring back television's Law and Order series which blended police procedural and courtroom drama created by Dick Wolf. The series ran for 20 seasons on NBC, from 1990 to 2010, with 456 episodes, spawning four American spinoffs and a movie.

Also, see this article here, titled, "If Donald Trump Were the Real Law and Order Candidate." This one I also found quite amusing. It even has Donald Trump photoshopped into various screencaps from Law and Order. 

The (un)ethicist, part 1 of ?

Recently I decided to go look up the New York Times' Ethicist column because I hadn't read it in a while. There is supposed to be a column published each week where the Ethicist answers two or three questions that people have sent in about their ethical quandaries. It's an interesting column and can be worth a read sometimes, although some believe that previous writers of the column did a better job of it than the current Ethicist. Firstly though, a sentiment that I expressed in a text message from 12/22/15 at 10:31 pm (apparently): "Also, I don't get why the Ethicist can only turn out one column per week. It can't be that hard to think of ethical answers. Anyways, if he wrote more columns, he would get paid more, presumably. (fixed ratio reinforcement!)"*
Again, it can't be that hard to think of ethical answers. Perhaps the reason there is only one column a week of two or three ethical answers is because there is a dearth of ethical quandaries being submitted? I wouldn't know. In the event that that is indeed the case, I invite my probably very few readers to submit some ethical quandaries for the Ethicist to ponder over. They don't even have to be real ethical problems that you're actually dealing with in your life. Make something up! Use your imagination. The contact information for submitting an ethical quandary (I like that word) is here, taken directly from the NYT's website: To submit a query: Send an email to ethicist@nytimes.com; or send mail to The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. (Include a daytime phone number.)

So now, with that information in hand, go on and send in some ethical quandaries! I look forwards to seeing some of them possibly published and answered in future columns. That was a pretty lengthy introduction. So now, on to the actual subject of this post. Because I had been looking at Ethicist columns earlier, I began to wonder if there were perhaps in existence somewhere an Unethicist, who answers questions with the "wrong," unethical answers instead of ethical ones as the Ethicist claims to provide. I did find some things from nearly 10 years ago, and something from more recently that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. This is supposed to take after the thing I found from nearly 10 years ago, in which someone answered the same questions that had been published in the Ethicist column, but with unethical answers instead. I have always wanted to become an Ethicist, although I don't believe the NYT is hiring for Ethicist positions at the moment. So I will take the next best thing that I can get, which is publishing on my little-read blog a parody of sorts of the NYT Ethicist column. I think maybe if I were the NYT's Ethicist, I would make an effort to provide a larger amount of ethical answers compared to the measly two or three per week that the current Ethicist provides. 

(Un)ethical answer number 1: "I used to work for an online publication where my salary (which was minimal, as it was more of a part-time hobby) was based on the percentage of the site’s hits that my articles garnered. From time to time, I would open up my articles in new tabs to rack up extra hits. I know that other writers did the same. Was it ethical for me to give myself the mildly dishonest advantage that others were giving themselves? S.K"

Yes. Of course. It was completely fine. In this cutthroat capitalist society, one must give themselves any and every single advantage that they can get, no matter how small or insignificant. Although the amount of money you got paid because of those extra clicks was probably rather small, every cent counts in today's economy. Those few cents could be the difference between... well, there isn't much you can buy these days for only a few cents, but it certainly is nice to have more cents (even if it's only a few) than fewer cents. 

Here is the link to the column that today's question was taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/magazine/when-a-friend-cheats-often-on-her-husband-should-you-keep-quiet.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-ethicist 

*fixed ratio reinforcement is a term from a psychology class that I was taking at the time of sending that text message. It has to to with behavior modification/conditioning. If you want to know more, look it up for yourself. 

BONUS ethical question for you to ponder: Is it ethical to send in fictitious ethical problems to the Ethicist? Or should the Ethicist's advice be left to only people with actual (presumably) ethical problems that they are trying to deal with in their lives? 

After looking through a number of Ethicist columns, it seems that it is kind of hard to find ones that would be well suited for unethical answers. So it's possible that I may take some questions from Slate's advice column and give bad answers to those as well, even though that column is just a generic advice column rather than one centered on ethical problems. 

Disclaimer, in case perhaps I am afoul of some kind of copyright law(s), or something: the questions answered in this post are taken from the NYT's Ethicist column. I didn't come up with them. I don't intend to be committing some kind of plagiarism or something. Please have mercy on me. 

Murder shows

Finally, a new post!! Wow! 
This post will cover the subject of murder shows. "Murder shows" is my affectionate name for a series of crime dramas/procedurals that involve, well, murder, usually. However, these shows are not of the Dexter/Hannibal type, where the murderer is in a way, the protagonist. Sort of. I guess. I've never watched Dexter and only have watched a little of Hannibal which was not too recently. But regardless. You probably get the point. These shows depict some variety of law enforcement trying to solve the murder(s) and obtain justice (in the case of the Law and Order shows) for whoever has gotten murdered/is the victim of some other type of crime during the course of an episode. 

Over the summer, which is defined as the time period between late May (sorry for not having a specific, exact date) to August 28, 2016, I watched, to the best of my calculations/knowledge, 118 episodes of various murder shows. The shows I watched include Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Law and Order original flavor and Criminal Minds. I did probably watch a very few episodes here and there of other crime shows, but those are insignificant. Over the course of about 90 days (three months), I managed to watch 118 episodes. This ends up being a little over one episode per day. Some days I didn't watch any episodes and other days I watched many episodes, so the actual watching was not spread out nice and equally as one episode and some per day. 

I think it was sort of interesting to have kept track of the episodes that I watched since it isn't really a thing that a person would think to keep track of, unlike, perhaps, how many calories they eat in a day or something like that. I sort of wish that upon starting to watch these shows from the beginning that I had kept up a count of however many deaths occurred in each episode, but alas, that did not come to my mind months ago when I started watching Law and Order. It would be interesting though, to have a list of how many deaths/murders per episode and perhaps the method of each murder so after having the data for all the episodes, I could analyze what the most common method of murder overall is in the show and also perhaps if some seasons ended up being more homicidal than others. I did once read an article that compared the fictional murder rates in a few shows set in New York City to the actual murder rate that year, and that was interesting. The fictional murder rate was much higher than the actual murder rate. 

An aside is that I feel that I may sometime in the not too distant future grow bored of the show Criminal Minds. It doesn't have the depth of the Law and Order shows and is rather poorly written in some places/episodes compared to Law and Order. The characters in Criminal Minds seem to somehow lack a quality that the characters in Law and Order have. I can't quite put my finger on it exactly, but I think it's something having to do with the occupational chemistry of the characters in their respective groups of people they work with. I can't really say exactly. I wonder if other people who have watched these shows as well have also noticed such a thing. I've gotten to the middle of season 6 of Criminal Minds and I'm not sure that I'll be able to finish it and watch all the way through the... 11? 12? seasons it has in total. We'll just have to wait and see. 

Random text generators and my text messages

Wow, it's been nearly a whole month since I last posted. I didn't intend to go that long without writing something for here. I guess I can't be a professional blogger then. So greetings, readers, even though it's quite likely that I am posting to an audience of one (not including myself), that one being... well, you know who you are. Actually, this person is rather relevant to the content of this particular post. I'm getting to the point, I swear I am. Random text generators. 

For awhile, I'd been wondering if there was something out there that could generate a sample of text based on some input text - the generated text would be comprised of text from the input. And finally, I've found one and had some fun with it. It is here if you would like to try it out for yourself and/or see an explanation of how it works. (to whoever created that: it's really cool!) 

So, I looked in my email where I have backed up aaaall my text messages (love you, android, for being open source and therefore having the capability of having an app that can back up all your texts to a gmail account... also the text message search feature is way better and more functional than on ios. Okay, I'll stop with that for now, but yeah, everyone ought to stop using iphones and switch to android! At least if you're particular about text messages the way I am. I'm not sure a lot of other people are like that. But hey, if you are, you're not alone!) 
... what a tangent. In any case, I chose a variety of texts that I've sent in conversation with a particular person from the past few months. An assortment. It ended up being about 8.5k characters, apparently. Then I chose how long I wanted the generated text to be (1000 characters) and also how comprehensible I wanted it (there's a longer explanation about that at the link to the website). I'm not publishing the source text, since it's... it can get pretty weird. But the generated samples, sure. That's what this post is all about. Apparently they need a pretty extensive introduction. 

So, here they are. I ran the generator a few times and got some different generated texts... 

- - -

1. Yes, maybe hard to frighten this, there is just him to try it was happened thinking from reddit? Did you think then I think it wasn't that were interesting. Although? I was able this person in the episode didn't follow that I need to fright? nd then. But the past, at their teeth I could also be if I thing. And well, I saw a police officer someone who see plenty of people whose video clips of you quite well, his hands. You should.. tomorrow? If you know. Seeing plums dream I though. I'm better of people's teeth quite a break from like a fat egg. You probably could be nice hands? And I wrote that's how fascinating "death the later you decide to predict the idea came to mind. Also, in the episode didn't follow the doctor tells Bob he is for me. And well compliment Insightful. I would be if you decide to predict their reactions are 50 somewhere are 50 somewhere where in this, the game decent have death therapy. Except in Russia does Vincent D'Onofrio. Also, in the picture of them.),

2. out 15 years where are Catholic, some blog post. It angered by the employee had before Donald Trump started running over about, like money but it meaning of Law and he's an uncensored version. Which I'm not very ambitious of you ever the top that he's played. Isn't started to find of 2nd period, I wasn't super rude the person, as indicate looked teeth rotted when he ties him as much of an interrogating costs would grow some developers me a lot. Last semester I watched you in thought, but it could use actually this came that. Did you thing... it'd be interesting. I miss watched you in the past.. also an uncensored version. Which I'm better of people's teeth in the same in the victim of they were spread out what he's an uncensored version. Which made your life, like two teeth. For example. He is only increased with therapy, means if you quite well, I could thing to see. I should.. tomorrow. I should grow sometime in thing.. Ah. I see. What made me reaction? I should maybe hard to be if you ma

- - - 

"He is only increased with therapy" "Except in Russia does Vincent D'Onofrio." 
Very interesting, eh? I might try it out with some other input text (Wikipedia articles maybe? Pieces from the New York Times? Who knows!) in the future. 

Vincent D'Onofrio mentioned in this post: yes / no 
I just keep happening to write posts that somehow involve him.. 

Movie review: Mr. Brooks

I know, I know, another one... I promise I'll at least try to think of other things to blog about instead of just an endless stream of movie reviews/musings about Vincent D'Onofrio/fawning and having cognitive dissonance over the (conservative) guy from the news with the eyelashes. Now that that's out of the way.

I watched this movie on a whim; in fact, I didn't know that it existed until tonight, the same night I decided to watch it. I was reading r/unresolvedmysteries and someone happened to comment that the plot of this movie was similar to something someone else had commented about. I was drawn to this movie because the title and the eponymous (I love that word) character shares the name with someone I actually know. I will see this someone on Monday and at current I am debating on whether to share this information with them, that there is a movie with the same name as them. The reason I am debating over it is because the movie is about... a serial killer. I am not completely sure that the Mr. Brooks I know would be thrilled to learn that he shares a name with a fictional serial killer. (I wonder if he's already aware of the movie, either of his own accord or someone else has already informed him of this namesake) I don't really think many people would be particularly enthused about that, honestly. (also, watching this movie has made me sort of try to imagine the Mr. Brooks I know as a serial killer, but I just can't do it. He's too nice. [if you ever read this, Mr. Brooks, which I am really pretty sure you won't, but if you theoretically do, you're too nice for me to be able to imagine you as a serial killer, which is a compliment! A strange one at that, but a compliment.])

Anyways, on to what I thought of the movie. Having just recently watched Shutter Island, which was brilliant, this one didn't exactly compare. It was supposed to be a thriller, apparently, but it was rather/somewhat boring. I wouldn't say it was a complete waste of time or anything, but it certainly wasn't great by any means. There was sort of a dual plot going on, partly about Mr. Brooks and his addiction to murder (which is how he described it himself) and partly about a female detective who is after him and also going through a gnarly divorce. This caused the movie to feel disjointed, even though the detective is supposed to be hunting for Mr. Brooks. I didn't particularly enjoy the parts about the detective; she just didn't really click for me. She did however look sort of like the character Emily Prentiss from Criminal Minds. And also sort of like one of my mother's friends who is a Republican. For that matter, Mr. Brooks the murderer looked sort of like Daniel Craig (ever so faintly) in some instances and at other times (also ever so faintly) like James D'Arcy. If the pursuit of Mr. Brooks had been more explicit, it might have been better - if the detective had gotten a bit closer to catching him, I guess. Something like that. In one part, the detective and someone who has been assigned to bodyguard her are entering a house where they expect to find a suspect, with guns drawn and holding flashlights. And here is a nitpicky little detail (error, perhaps, in my opinion) I happened to notice. They are holding the flashlights wrong. In other things I have watched that involve law enforcement characters, they hold their flashlights in an overhand sort of grip (the fingers go around the top of the flashlight as opposed to the thumb being on top). In fact, in a certain episode of SVU you can see John Munch explain this very principle for yourself. I believe the reason cops (are supposed to, I guess, at least according to tv!) hold their flashlights like this is so that if necessary, it's easier to clobber someone with them. Try it for yourself, holding a flashlight in both ways, and it really would be easier to hit someone if you needed to if you hold it in an overhand manner. The SVU scene I remember specifically, but I'm pretty sure there have been some other scenes (in Criminal Minds, Law and Order CI, other episodes of SVU) where you can see some "proper" flashlight holding in action. I digressed there. A lot. (for the record, I did end up googling about this in the past, probably after seeing that SVU scene, and there was an article that came up about flashlight grips. Probably just google "flashlight grips" or something along those lines and you can read it for yourself.) 

I don't really have anything else to say here about this movie, except that next I think I'm going to watch Se7en, a movie also about a serial killer. Sometime in the nearish future, there'll probably be a review of that. 

tl;dr: a quick note about the content of this blog, I actually know someone named Mr. Brooks, the movie was average, it could've been better/more interesting but wasn't a complete waste of time, I go on a long tangent about how there is a scene where the detectives hold their flashlights wrong, this tl;dr, some ending notes. 

This was a better movie than Full Metal Jacket/Apocalypse Now because it didn't leave me with the feeling that I missed the point. I would even probably say it was a little better than Zodiac, perhaps because I didn't really know what to expect with this one, whereas with Zodiac I was familiar with the case and thought that they could have made an interesting movie out of it, yet they just weren't able to and it was a disappointment. 

Movie review: Shutter Island

Yes, another one. I didn't exactly intend for this blog to be fully about movie reviews, but there have been quite a few of them. It just so happens that I watch movies and then feel compelled to write about what I thought of them on this blog that probably nobody reads, but whatever. Maybe I like shouting into the void. 

In any case, let's get to the point. First, I have to say, whoa. This movie was quite something. It was a bit of a mindfuck but in a good way. Really brilliant. It's a good thing too, since I was getting sort of fed up with watching movies that left me with the thought "that was strange..." and not in a good way. It reminded me of sort of a combination of the movie Dream House (which had Daniel Craig in it) and American Horror Story: Asylum. And maybe some other stuff too. Leo was lovely in this movie. He was quite pretty to look at, among other things. His character reminded me sort of of Goren from Law and Order CI, which I certainly didn't mind. I kept thinking of him as either Leo or Goren even, although that actually did not detract from my enjoyment of the movie. 

I'm writing this fresh off of seeing the movie, having not yet read anything about it like I like to do after I watch movies/read books. Apparently this was based off of a book, which I didn't know about until the end where it said so in the credits. I'm going to have to try and read that book, perhaps. This movie reminded me a bit of Stieg Larsson's work, which again, not a bad thing at all. There weren't any boring parts and it really kept my attention. The cinematography I think was sort of understated (not super obviously gorgeous/grandiose like in Skyfall, for example) but I did like it; it was nicely done. It was sort of interesting to see Mark Ruffalo again, this time in a movie that actually turned out to be good. His hair was shorter in this movie than in Zodiac so I think maybe that made him look a bit less like Vincent D'Onofrio. I think it sort of would have been cool if Vincent had played Mark Ruffalo's part, but that's not surprising coming from me. 

I would certainly recommend this movie for people who are fans of thriller type stuff. I thought it was really good and it's another Leo/Martin Scorsese film, like The Aviator and I think Gangs of New York. I watched at least part of The Aviator years ago; I think it must have been on television or something. I haven't seen Gangs of New York but I might watch it in the future. I'd like to watch David Fincher's Se7en sometime in the future, since I've heard that one is supposed to be good. Hopefully it'll live up to my expectations and not be a disappointment like Zodiac was. And Requiem for a Dream is on my to watch list. Someday. Still haven't finished reading the book that's based off of, which I'd like to do before I watch the movie. And Inception I guess. That one is also supposed to be good. And it has Leo. Maybe someday I'll finish watching his entire filmography. Anyways, now I'm off to go read about Shutter Island, see what people have said about it. At the time of writing this, I'm sort of leaning to the view that the guy was delusional and insane, although the last part of the film is most fresh in my mind where they presented that perspective, so maybe if I went and watched the beginning again, I'd think differently... really interesting way to frame the plot; it really makes you think.. 

Related in some way to Vincent D'Onofrio: yes
Mentions of Vincent D'Onofrio: 1 (or two?) 

You give me cognitive dissonance

I was going to write a new post about something else awhile ago, but then this just came to mind now. First off, let's take a look at the definition of cognitive dissonance: 
the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes

An (particularly striking) example would be believing that murder is wrong, yet happening to kill someone for some reason that I won't specify in this example. Use your imagination. Maybe it was self defense. Anyways, this person who has murdered someone else is going to have cognitive dissonance because they killed someone, despite believing that murder is wrong. We try to get rid of cognitive dissonance by justifying our actions that were in opposition to what we believe and/or changing our beliefs. The degree to which we experience cognitive dissonance is based on how strong our beliefs are and how much our action is contradictory to our beliefs. As an aside, I'm sure there are people out there who do not believe that murder is wrong. I'll leave it at that for now. This post isn't intended to delve into a discussion about the morality of murder. Maybe some other time in another post. 

So now that I've (hopefully) explained what cognitive dissonance is properly, back to the topic at hand... the "you" referred to in the title is the yet unnamed commentator on CNN with the lovely eyelashes and eyeballs. Seriously, they're brilliant. He is going to remain anonymous because I have the inkling of a suspicion that this whole eyeball/eyelash thing (mind you, the rest of his face is pretty nice too) would be even weirder if I mentioned exactly who he is. I dearly hope he never reads this stuff. 

This brilliantly eyeballed and eyelashed man (you can say things like "pale skinned" or "golden haired" so I'm sort of extending that to the words eyeball and eyelash..) is, (sort of unfortunately, see here, is the source of the COGNITIVE DISSONANCE)... a conservative. (*gasp!*)  

The contradicting beliefs here are: 
a) He is a conservative (I am not. I am a liberal.) 
b) His eyeballs and eyelashes are wonderful. 

Being a liberal, it's... decidedly cognitively dissonant for me to appreciate conservatives for whatever reason. I realize that his political orientation has no (probably? Maybe there's a correlation? Look at all that psychology vocabulary.) bearing on his physical appearance. Yet, it still feels weird (cognitively dissonant) for me to think, wow, his gorgeous eyeballs and eyelashes!! and also (gingerly) he is a conservative. Now, my mother has a conservative friend who I don't really have this problem with. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I've known her for much longer than I've seen this commentator on the news, or that political discussions are not the focus of the friendship. Perhaps it's a combination of both. This commentator, it's literally his job to be on the news and talk about his opinions (as a conservative). So the conservativeness of this guy is a bit more in your face if you will; it's harder to ignore. 

Now, onto how I might resolve this cognitive dissonance. The likelihood of me (or him, for that matter) changing my political beliefs (ie, becoming a conservative) is very low. I guess currently I am justifying my belief about his eyeballs and eyelashes by thinking that his political beliefs are irrelevant to his appearance. It doesn't get rid of the cognitive dissonance entirely though (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post..), so it would be ideal if he just weren't conservative. But alas, he is, and that's just how it's going to be. 

So there you have it, a personal anecdote about an experience that I am currently experiencing regarding the concept of cognitive dissonance. 

(ps: this post didn't really have anything to do with Vincent! Maybe sort of, tenuously, since Vincent also has nice eyeballs and eyelashes [no, I promise I'm not going to go on about that again here] but it's more about this other guy and the cognitive dissonance that he's causing me.)