Jason Clarke

During the course of the year, I watched 18 movies released in 2008. Here’s my list, ranked least to most favorite. Here’s my 2006 recap; I did not make a list in 2007.

I came up with this list in a hindsight view looking back on the year. To see how this list compares to my immediate post-viewing thoughts, you can compare this list to my IMDB ‘Recently Seen’ movies list, where I kept a log of movies as I watched them and ranked them within a day or so of the first viewing.

LEAST FAVORITES:

18. Cloverfield
17. Definitely Maybe
16. Semi-Pro
15. Space Chimps
14. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

I LIKED THESE:

13. Zach and Miri Make a Porno
12. Be Kind Rewind (Top Drama)
11. Step Brothers
10. Horton Hears a Who
9. Baby Mama
8. Indiana Jones 4
7. Tropic Thunder

THE BESTS:

6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
5. Role Models
4. Iron Man
3. Pineapple Express (Top Comedy)
2. Quantum of Solace

MY FAVORITE:
1. The Dark Knight (Top Action)

Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama.

On this election day, Glenn Reynolds dispenses the best political advice I’ve heard in years.

For some reason, my Gmail address (jgclarke@gmail.com) receives a surprising amount of mis-directed emails from people who apparently meant to send to jclarke, or jgclark, or some other variation on my particular address. This isn’t totally surprising, as first names which start with “J”, and Jason in particular, are pretty popular.

In any case, these wrong emails arrive to me with some regularity, enough that I have a label in Gmail to group them. Individually they may seem mundane, but taken as a slice of a stranger’s life they can be quite interesting.

I’ve thought about the privacy implications of publishing some of these emails in a series, and I think the process of removing people’s email address or any personal details (and in fact I’ve changed names where I see fit) essentially renders the emails ‘found items’ and makes it reasonable to publish them. If you disagree, please do so respectfully in the comments.

Now, on to the first few in a series. First up, a woman whose return home is apparently imminent, perhaps from a business trip? And who is Bridget? Their nanny?

To: [hidden]
From: [hidden]
Date: 9/20/2007, 10:07am
Subject: I really miss Goldie and you and home

Oh, coordinate whatever is going on with Goldie with Bridget please.

Here’s another one- apparently the correspondents were debating the provenance of the famous Christmas song?

To: [hidden]
From: [hidden]
Date: 10/09/2007, 12:09am
Subject: Cantique de Noël

“O Holy Night” (”Cantique de Noël”) is a well-known Christmas carol composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem “Minuit, chrétiens” by Placide Cappeau (1808-1877), an accomplished amateur. It has become a standard modern carol for solo performance with a operatic finish.

MaineOpenGov.org is a revolutionary new website which creates some amazing opportunities for enterprising journalists, bloggers, and citizens to ask questions in public and among friends about our state government and back them up with facts.

How and why? The how is simple: Sponsored by the Maine Heritage Policy Center, the MaineOpenGov.org website provides a powerful, usable search engine which allows for thousands of public records to be searched on a variety of metrics. From state employee salaries to state payments to outside contractors, citizens can access a variety of information previously difficult to obtain, or unavailable altogether.

The why is equally simple: Transparency and accountability, two forces which are not only severely lacking in almost every government enterprise, but which can be powerful change agents for citizens to hold their elected (and non-elected) officials accountable.

Anybody with an internet connection (or access to a library) can search for patterns- or even single instances- of data, and use that information to tell their friends, publish it on a blog, or contact their representative(s).

This is big stuff, people of Maine- I hope to dive more into it in the coming weeks, and I encourage other Maine citizens to do the same. It’s at MaineOpenGov.org- give it a minute of your time today, even out of curiosity’s sake.

And on a side note, how have I not heard of the Maine Heritage Policy Center before? Judging by the MaineOpenGov site, as well as their organizational website, they are definitely an organization to watch, right in our own backyard.

The Bangor Daily News, my hometown paper, released the results of a poll today for the Maine senate race between Senator Susan Collins and Representative Tom Allen. If you’re not from Maine, you may vaguely know the race started off generating a ton of interest by out-of-state organizations such as MoveOn.org, but it has since been relegated to the lower tiers of watched races, as poll after poll have shown a large lead by Sen. Collins over her challenger, Rep. Allen.

Today’s poll completely supports the entire vibe (and the several other polls) in the race so far, this time with Collins leading Allen by 55-39 in a poll of 675 “likely voters” by the Daily News and local news stations WCSH and WLBZ.

In a textbook attempt to respond to these poll numbers (or actually, not respond to them), Allen spokesperson Carol Andrews told the Bangor Daily News that:

“Reliable polling conducted internally [by the Allen campaign] shows this race to be very much in play and far closer than those margins.”

Of course, no specifics were included with her comment. Possibly because Andrews is mis-representing her campaign’s polling in order to try and de-emphasize the media report. If that’s the case, it’s an unfortunate example of posturing on behalf of Allen’s campaign. If the internal polling is true, why not release the numbers in an effort to try and boost Represenative Allen’s standing in the race?

To try and resolve this question, I reached out to Andrews and the Allen campaign and see if they want to qualify their claims that internal polls show Rep. Allen much closer to Sen. Collins in the race.

In response to Andrews’ claim, here’s the email I sent to the Allen campaign’s press department today:

Dear press dept:

In today’s Bangor Daily News, Allen For Senate campaign spokesperson Carol Andrews stated that “Reliable polling conducted internally shows this race to be very much in play and far closer than those margins.”

Please send me specific results from the poll(s) referenced by Andrews, along with dates and sample. I will be happy to publish this data on my blog so that the people of Maine can see what Andrews is claiming about the race.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best,
Jason

I’ll post an update here if I receive any response.

It’s this time of year in Maine. What time of year is it where you live?

I’m still undecided on the bailout (though I’m 98% opposed to it), but I do like Jeff Jarvis’ perspective on the $700 billion. Among a list of national initiatives which would cost less than $700 billion, he highlights:

• We could be spending a lot less to get a lot more. A national wi-max buildout would cost between $5 billion and $14.5 billion.
• We could provide broadband access to every one of those homes for about $300 a year.
• We could buy 3.5 billion One Laptop Per Child machines.
• Or we could give 4.4 million Americans free college educations at private institutions.
• we could more than triple total annual R&D spending in the U.S. I can’t find total R&D on alternative energy but with this money we could multiply what Google.org is spending by a factor of 35,000.

Of course, I’d be almost sure to oppose any kind of government-based distribution of $700 billion (especially assuming that’s taxpayer funded), but Jarvis’ ideas definitely pique my continuing interest in large-scale private, action-based wealth distribution plans and how they might shape our world.

At the beginning of the summer, I unsubscribed from Andy Baio’s Waxy.org, one of my favorite all-time blogs, because he linked twice to a blog which continues to push at times lame, and other times outrageous, ageism (scroll down to May 16th) aimed at Senator McCain.

It’s been four months since Baio linked the site twice (the second time defending ageism as a tactic against McCain), and since Senator McCain nominated Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate last month, I thought I’d pop in on Baio’s site, Waxy.org, and see if the liberal (and thus supposedly tolerant) Baio had decided sexism might be an acceptable tact against Governor Palin.

Gratefully, my non-scientific search of Baio’s blog archives, as well as his Links Archive, turns up not a single mention of Palin, suggesting Baio feels ageism is acceptable but sexism is not.

To test my suspicions, I dug through Baio’s Link archives since the ageism began, looking at June, July, August and September (as of 9/15), for any mention of the word “McCain”. I found 9 links total, one of which took aim at McCain’s age, this time with an entirely unfunny and decidedly lame joke (perhaps worse, it was a link to Daily Kos).

I am disappointed that somebody as smart and as respected as Andy thinks its appropriate- not to mention funny- to attack a person based on their age. I hope Andy can recognize that thoughtful people can disagree on why the person they support is better suited to the job of President, without resorting to any -ism, no matter how fashionable it might be.

UPDATE: Please see the comments for two thoughtful responses to my post, including one from Waxy.org’s Andy Baio.