My thoughts on SUPERMAN

"Superman? Superman sucks." That's what I told Geoff Johns one Wizard Con night in Philadelphia. "Superman is passe'. He's been split up into every superhero now out there. He's just not relevant anymore."

Geoff at the time, was just getting the Secret Origin machine up and running with James Robinson, with whom he had just finished having dinner. Geoff protested, but I wouldn't budge. "Who's better?" he asked. "Batman. Batman at least has something going on besides his costume that works." That was my answer and I was sticking to it.

My sentiment was based on Superman as he had become. When I was a kid, Neal Adams was the man on Superman. Despite the stories being as milk toast as I could stomach them, he, like he always does, took what was happening and elevated it. But since then Superman seemed to stay in this redundant vacuum of  'boyscout laughing at feeble attempts by Luthor and robots trying to knock the smile off his perfect face'. Bleh. Moreover, he was becoming more and more omnipotent to the point that villains were having to go to increasingly absurd lengths just to give him a reasonable challenge.

Then he got married.

What? Talk about jumping the shark.
See, when a character, whose whole existence is to sacrifice a normal life for the sake of humanity, becomes domesticated he loses his teeth. His concern doesn't become the world, but his own personal world. Back in the day, when Lois would be in danger, she was the metaphor for all of us. Humanity personified who was rescued, returned to safety, then left wondering 'who was the masked man?' Now Lois became his only world that was to be balanced with the rest of us. This changed Lois as well. She went from being this snarky, stubborn, beautiful pain in the ass, to the wife wondering if her husband would survive the current omnipotent menace challenging him, and still make it back home for lasagna. Any attempts to bring them back to what they were, felt clunky to me. He was a hero, husband, or brow beating dad, depending on who he was interacting.

There's the nutshell. Superhero who increasingly becomes more powerful as he is challenged, brought back down to earth as a spouse as his origin gets re-envisioned over and over again.

He had so many layers to him, that it threatened to blow him up like Krypton.

I simply had no affinity with him. Maybe that's why many of my attempts to draw him failed. I've done some "decent" drawings of him and a whole lot of lousy ones. I wasn't Neal Adams, or Curt Swan, or Jerry Ordway simply because I didn't get him. Wasn't my kind of hero.

Now, if you go back to the Max Fleisher films, THAT was Superman to me. He got hit hard by stuff and exerted effort. There was a sense of danger to himself and with Lois playing the damsel in distress for all of us, made it exciting to see if Superman could not only survive but manage to save Lois too. It was a simple formula that was perfect.

So why would someone like me even accept an assignment to a character that I felt I couldn't contribute?

The answer was issue #1. Not that it wasn't a badge of honor to have the entire industry's seed in my hand. I assure you it is. Not that having it at issue #1 wasn't an added thrill. It is. It's that I can do my job without having to have 70 years of backlog to think about and try to address and honor.

If you look back to the first image of Grant's and my Superman in jeans and a tee shirt, you can see the Superman as he had become to me. He was beyond Hercules and even in shadow you can see the miles and miles of history in his profile. That image was for, I thought, the brass to measure not only my ability with the character, but to see what the hell he looked like in his dungarees and work boots.
I didn't know, or even think, it was something I could do issue for issue. But then I figured it would work it's own problems out eventually.

When I got the script and saw that Grant wanted to harken to the Shuster image of Kal-el, it completely clicked for me. Max Fleisher here I come! And what, he's not omnipotent? All right! And he's not married? Get out of my fucking way and let me draw!!

THAT is Superman to me. Back to Hercules! Back to the feelings I had as a kid when I saw the reprints of the 40's stories in treasury editions.

Back to the Man of Steel, because that's the only fucking thing that matters. 

I agree with him on bringing Superman back to the Max Fleischer days, but his take on Lois and the marriage is way off the mark.

The Day Comcast’s Data Cap Policy Killed My Internet for One Year

andre vrignaud — Today I came home to find my 15 MB down/3 MB up Comcast broadband service had been shut off due to exceeding their 250 GB/month data cap policy.

This had happened the month before, and I called and had a polite but irritated conversation with Comcast's "Customer Security" department (since the regular customer service folks could not help.) According to them I had exceeded their 250 GB monthly cap, and they asked how that might have happened.

I told them the simple truth-–no idea, other than regular people were probably using it a lot for reasonable things. I have roommates, we stream Netflix HD movies and Pandora music incessantly to multiple devices in the home, and I also have an open access point (in addition to a secured AP that I use to access internal network resources) for guests. I asked if they could share what was using the majority of the data so I could go address it directly, but Comcast refused to share any information there (which is probably appropriate).

I made very clear to the gentleman I spoke with that I thought Comcast's data cap policy was arbitrary, unfair, and extremely irritating… and that if I had any decent competitive options in the neighborhood I'd dump Comcast in a heartbeat. Since I don't, I listened to him read his canned warning that if I exceeded their cap again I'd be cut off again. I do not recall details on how long the cut off would be, likely because I spent the next few minutes working with the service agent to add notes to my record about my detailed displeasure with Comcast's policy here. I specifically noted (and asked that it be recorded) that if this happened again I would contact the FCC, various news organizations, and otherwise make a stink. The CS agent was polite and reactivated my broadband. After hanging up I chatted with my roommates, asked them to keep an eye on bandwidth use, and also deactivated the open AP I had maintained for visitors (with regret, but this was the only area I could think of that I couldn't completely account for bandwidth use.) Then I forgot about the whole thing until today when I found I'd been cut off again.

I called up Comcast and went through customer service hell – a Comcast special, I might note. First their regular customer service agent couldn't help me, and sent me to their "Customer Security" group again. The Customer Security agent was polite, and after the standard identification questions notified me I was cut off for a year due to exceeding Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy limits on their bandwidth cap. I asked for details on what had been using bandwidth, and again, Comcast would not share. In a sudden brainstorm, I then asked whether the 250 GB bandwidth cap applied to just downloads (which I had assumed, as the majority of most bandwidth used in households is downstream bandwidth), or download and upload bandwidth. Surprise, surprise! Comcast measures both upstream and downstream bandwidth – and it suddenly clicked for me.

I'm a photographer and audiophile. I shoot all of my pictures in RAW format, and I store the many hundreds and hundreds of CDs I've purchased over the last 20 years or so in a variety of lossless and lossy music formats. In the case of music I rip my CDs to WMA Lossless (for ease of streaming to Windows), FLAC (another lossless format, so I can stream losslessly to my Sonos system), and M4A (also known as Apple's iTunes AAC format, so I can import my music from the media server to iTunes). I'm a big believer in storing the original, lossless digital content so that I can access it in full fidelity in the future no matter how technology evolves. In some ways that makes me a bit archaic as I still buy (used) CDs from Amazon for all of my music so I can rip it losslessly – I'm not a fan of the compressed music formats you buy and download. But the ramification is that I have terabytes of storage in my basement RAID server – each music track is duplicated three times, I have all of my original RAW photos, plus processed JPEG versions of those RAW photos, as well as a variety of other miscellaneous content – documents, spreadsheets, that sort of thing.

This stuff is valuable to me, and I recently purchased a three-year subscription to Carbonite so I could back all of this content up to the cloud. I also recently saw Amazon's announcement of being able to upload unlimited M4A/AAC tracks to their Cloud Drive service, and decided to upload my library there so I could access it when on the road. And it turns out uploading all of this content to the cloud triggered Comcast's bandwidth cap and caused me to be cut off from the internet-–again. It was never clear to me that Comcast measures both upload and download bandwidth, and I suspect many people are going to be surprised by this in the coming years, especially as the cloud continues to become more and more a part of our lives.

Anyway, to close out the Comcast call, I asked to be reinstated and he said it was final-–no appeal. I asked to escalate to a manager so I could explain my situation, and he stated there was no escalation, and repeated there was no appeal. I then asked for customer service email or other contact information so I could CC the company on a blog post (which you are reading now) and letter I would be sending to the FCC, Public Knowledge organization, New Media Foundation, the city of Seattle's Mayor's Office, and my Seattle City Council representative. He said he could connect me to the customer escalation line, but also stated it would not help – they wouldn't consider removing the cap. At that point I said I wouldn't bother wasting my time with the customer escalation line, and that I'd like to cancel my broadband. He politely said he understood, and that he'd transfer me to the appropriate department.

Time to return to Comcast customer service hell! After a few minutes I spoke with another gentlemen in the Technical Support and Billing division I'd been transferred to who, surprise, couldn't help me since I was cancelling my (now defunct) service. He then transferred me to (wait for it!) the Retention department, since they're apparently the only ones who can cancel a Comcast cable account. Yes, after Comcast applied their ridiculous policy and told me they didn't want me as a customer, I was transferred to the Retention department where they insisted on driving through their spiel until I could finally interrupt, say it wasn't going to work, and explain my situation. At which point the agent said: "Oh. I'll take care of it, thank you for calling Comcast ." As of this moment I have no idea if I've been cancelled or not.

[Update, added July 12: To clarify, Comcast has cut my broadband with no appeal. The text above about my attempting to cancel my account was my attempt at making sure I don't get charged for a service Comcast is no longer giving me. But right now my cable modem is dead, with no signal going into it.]

My Opinion:

My opinion on all this is simple. The ability to access broadband internet is a right, and should be defined as an essential utility. Just as you're surprised when you flick a light switch and the light doesn't come on so are you surprised when the internet goes away in your house. The internet is used for communication, entertainment, business - an entire panopoly of humor endevours. Just as there are protections to keep water and electricity flowing to your house, so should the internet be protected.

Now the broadband companies would strongly disagree with me here. They're terrified of being turned into dumb pipes that only deliver data. This is why you see such vicious fights over the definition of internet neutrality, and cable companies fighting to be able to restrict services that flow over their pipes, inspect packets, or have the right to charge more for differing levels of service. They try to spin this as protecting the integrity of the network for other customers, and not having to charge more to offer service that some small percentage of their users overuse. However, these same companies are also strangely quiet when you ask them why (as in Comcast's case) they're able to keep boosting my broadband speed tier year after year for no additional charge. Or why their quarterly filings show their cost of providing broadband service continues to drop year after year, while rates keep going up. It doesn't add up.

[Update, added July 12:: Some disagree with my opinion above. To reiterate, I believe that internet access is a right, and an essential utility that's needed in today's life. That's not supported in any legal definition in the US (though Finland recently made it a point of law, and the United Nations believes broadband access is a basic human right), but I do believe that most people would intuitively agree. Put another way, internet access long ago passed the stage of "new tech that's interesting" to "something everyone uses and assumes you have". Hence my electricity and water points – I believe internet falls in the same vein, and also think the current battles/discussions over the ability to control the internet are emblematic of that.]

Several commentators have also noted that internet access is a requirement in some states for food stamp access, to attend some (offline, not internet-only) universities, and even for VoIP over fiber in some communities. This also supports my opinion that internet access is right and should be regulated as an essential utility.]

Ramifications:

Here's what's frightening about all this: today Comcast blocked me from using a potentially competitive music service from Amazon. Even worse, today Comcast disconnected me from the ever-evolving cloud services I use each and every day for life and work.

Amazon deserves a lot of credit for pushing the bounds on what we can do on the internet. Their recent announcement of storing unlimited music in their Cloud Drive service is a compelling alternative to Apple's iCloud solution, and one that many might choose to use-–if Comcast allows it. Are you listening Amazon?

And it gets worse-–I work as a entertainment industry consultant, and depend on cloud services such as Dropbox, Simplenote, Google Apps, and Google Docs for day to day work. I use streaming online services such as Netflix, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and Pandora every day for both work and play. I send and receive data all the time and have never had a problem with my $60/month broadband plan until A) Comcast added their data caps, and B) I really started engaging in using new cloud-based services (meaning uploading data to those services so I could get value from them).

Comcast will try to spin this, and say 250 GB is plenty for anyone – and in fact, a large percentage of their network users today probably really don't hit this cap right now. What they don't want to say is that streaming services such as Netflix now consume a quarter of network traffic monthly, and is projected to rise – all of which impacts the cable TV services they sell.

The last report in October suggested it made up around twenty percent of internet traffic during prime time, but this time around the stats say it accounts for 30% of traffic during prime time, and 22.2% of daily internet traffic. Sandvine gets the data from ISPs using its broadband technology and now foresees "Real-Time Entertainment" (which includes Netflix) shooting up over 55% of peak internet traffic by the end of this year.
- Engadget: Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America

And in the Netflix case, 99% of that data is downstream data. Comcast doesn't broadly advertise the fact that their cap also counts upload data – and I strongly believe as more and more people begin to "get" the cloud they're going to want to upload their valued data to services where they can engage with it in new and interesting ways. And until broadband is deemed an essential utility, and broadband providers like Comcast can't set an arbitrary limit and cut people off, our shared cloud-enabled future is at risk. To this end, I will be contacting various political entities in Seattle in the hope of trying to encourage either greater competition and choice in the broadband market (break Comcast's cable monopoly, and allow fiber to the home!), as well as greater investment in a citywide, city-run broadband network.

What am I Doing:

Well, first off, I'm writing this post to lay out the facts, as well as my opinion, as to the ramifications of broadband companies like Comcast being allowed to enforce data caps and cut people off from the internet. As I mentioned earlier, I will be sending a copy of this blog post to the following people and agencies:

• FCC: Sharon Gillett, Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau
• FCC: Chairman Julius Genachowski; Commissioner Michael Copps; Commissioner Robert McDowell; Commissioner Mignon Clyburn; Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker
• Public Knowledge Interest Group (Their letter to the FCC is here, and good reading.)
• Harold Feld, Legal Director Public Knowledge
• Sascha Meinrath, Director New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative
• City of Seattle Mayor's Office
• Tom Rassmussen, Seattle City Council Representative
• Stop the Cap!

I've also tweeted out a summary of what happened, will tweet a link to this blog post, and will also reach out to a few media folks I know in case they're interested in writing this up. I'll also be exploring what other broadband options I might have in Seattle – but thanks to Comcast's monopoly, my choices aren't great.

That said, if Qwest/CenturyLink (or any other broadband provider) wants to run fiber to my house on the top of the hill in Montlake, Seattle, and put up a broadcast antenna to serve the neighborhood – I'm in. Contact me at the links on this blog, or at andre at ozymandias.com. Seriously.

Andre Vrignaud has worked in the interactive entertainment industry for over 20 years at companies such as Intel, Microsoft Xbox, and Amazon. He currently works as an independent game industry consultant doing game, platform strategy, and media/PR consulting for a variety of firms.

NEW YORK -- Spike Lee is not feeling the love from Hollywood’s money men.

“I haven’t made a feature film in three years,” said Lee.

Lee has lately focused on documentary work with two films about post-Katrina New Orleans for HBO. But he had designs on biopics about Jackie Robinson – the Brooklyn Dodgers slugger who broke baseball’s color line – and soul icon James Brown. And he was in discussions a while back for a sequel to thriller Inside Man, which starred Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster. But he's been unable to secure financing.

“Inside Man was my most successful film,” he said, adding that he had Washington and Foster on board for the sequel. “But we can’t get the sequel made. And one thing Hollywood does well is sequels. The film’s not getting made. We tired many times. It’s not going to happen.”

Lee’s comments came during a free-wheeling Q&A session with public television’s Charlie Rose at PromaxBDA, the annual marketing, branding and design conference here. Lee received the organizations lifetime achievement award for his work in film and television, including a series of groundbreaking commercials for Nike that featured Michael Jordan and Lee as Mars Blackmon, the character he played in his 1986 breakthrough film She’s Gotta Have It.

“First of all, what in this world does not revolve around money? But money is a big part of film, unlike a lot of other art forms.”

Lee wore a tan seersucker jacket over a T-shirt and a straw pork pie hat. And when Rose’s cell phone rang at the beginning of the presentation, Lee jumped from his seat as the crowd in the New York Hilton ballroom cheered him on.

“I just want you to know,” said Lee, as he walked to the front of the stage. “On my sets, when the camera is rolling and the phone rings: $50.”

“Will you take $5?” asked Rose, rising from his chair and fishing in his front pockets.

“I’ll let you slide,” Lee laughed. (Later in the presentation, Rose’s phone rang a second time. “I owe you $100,” said a contrite Rose. It did not ring a third time.)

Lee – whose cinematic heroes include Akira Kurosawa, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, Federico Fellini and Martin Scorsese – has never won an Academy Award. But he likened Academy voters to basketball referees who attempt to make amends for a bad call with what is known in the sports world as a subsequent “make-up call.”

By way of some examples of this theory, Lee offered Al Pacino and Denzel Washington. Pacino turned in numerous Oscar-worthy performances in Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Godfather, The Godfather II, etc. But he won his only Oscar for Scent of a Woman. Washington did not win a best actor trophy for Lee’s Malcolm X, though he was nominated. He received his best actor trophy nearly 10 years later for Training Day.

“In 1989, Do the Right Thing was not even nominated [for best picture],” said Lee, with some mock outrage. “What film won best picture in 1989? Driving Miss Mother F---ing Daisy! That’s why [Oscars] don’t matter,” said Lee. “Because 20 years later, who’s watching Driving Miss Daisy?”

(Lee was nominated for best original screenplay for Do the Right Thing, though he didn't win. And in 1999, the film was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.)

“There are many times in history where the best work does not get awarded," he said. "And I’m not even talking about my own work. So that’s why [the Oscars] don’t matter.”

Lee also talked about the election of Barack Obama, whether he’d ever work with LeBron James and acting in his own films – something that earned him a comparison to Woody Allen.

On controversial Miami Heat superstar LeBron James:

“LeBron’s having a tough way to go now. And a lot of that I feel he brought upon himself. But I would work with him. I think he’s a good guy. He’s always been very respectful to me personally. And he’s funny. In a comedic role, I think he would do very well.”

On acting in his own films:

“I don’t like acting; not in front of the camera. The only reason I was in She’s Gotta Have It is because we couldn’t afford anybody else. But with the success of Mars Blackmon, I said, ‘I’ll continue to do it.’ At the same time, it was not something I enjoyed doing. Once it got to point where it wouldn’t hurt [the film] if I weren’t in it I [stopped].”

On actors in general:

“You’re out there buck-naked and that is hard. The reason why actors are f---ed up; can you imagine having a job where someone is, ‘No, no, no. Your butt’s too big. Your heads to big. You’re too skinny. Your nose is to big?'”

On Barack Obama:

“There were people who thought that racism and prejudice would be eradicated [with the election of the first African American president.] The moment he put his hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible it was going to be abracadabra, presto chango, poof! I was there that night [in Chicago’s Grant Park on Election Night.] It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I was swept up in the euphoria; drinking the Kool-Aid like everybody else. And here we are: racism and prejudice have not disappeared.”

On President Obama’s re-election prospects:

“It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be a fight.”

 

Email: Marisa.Guthrie@thr.com

Twitter: @MarisaGuthrie

Tuesday, June 28 / 10:25 AM

by Dennis Owsley

Commentary: Dumbing Down the Culture

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

Dennis Owsley

In the last 20 years or so, our public discourse has become less civil on just about every issue. While there have been many hypotheses as to why this has happened, I believe that we are afraid to discuss a very important component of this incivility: a deep and long standing dislike of education and educated people that has been part of our culture since the country was founded. This post discusses how this dislike of education is reflected in our arts.

Commentators over the years have remarked that a country’s psyche can be understood by observing the popular arts. As one who is heavily involved in the arts (music, photography and writing), I have been observing this very closely. When we look at the characters played out in films, in television and in popular music, we see something that tells us about what we really are. While there are exceptions, we rarely find an educated person in any comedy or drama who is not an object of derision. Scientists, even in the most popular CSI shows on TV are portrayed as people who have few social skills that should really stay in their labs. The “evil genius” is a common archetype in TV and movies. While some teachers are portrayed sympathetically, most are portrayed as being clueless as to what is really going on in their schools.

This nation has had a “frontier mentality” since its founding. I suspect that people in this country believe the Horatio Alger story, which is an outgrowth of the frontier mentality. This story is the basis for a belief that through hard work, perseverance and pluck, people can be successful and rise above their station in life. Education does not seem to be part of this story, except in a peripheral way. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, suggests that success comes from being in the right place at the right time, having good mentors, from thorough preparation including a lot of education when needed and being born at the right time of the year, in addition to the other attributes noted above.

I believe that one of the outgrowths of our frontier mentality and our Puritan roots is a mistrust and dislike of education and educated people. While I can find no studies that substantiate this idea, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence. In jazz, there are a number of myths in line with these ideas. One myth is that the earliest jazz musicians were dirt-poor people who just picked up horns without musical training and played this complex music. The evidence is that the vast majority had a lot of training from books, lessons and mentoring from older musicians. I have actually had people tell me that they think an education gets in the way of a musician’s “natural talent.” In addition, most of the early jazz musicians, black and white, came from a middle class background. These facts are in line with Gladwell's thinking, not the myth.

Our current education woes are blamed on the educators, not on the lack of community and parental support for education that seems to be rampant in this country. While politicians say that education is important, most of them gladly cut funds for education when the financial going gets tough. The salaries of teachers reflects the value we place on them and their work.

An educated person has training in the arts, the humanities and the sciences. We know of the dismal performance of our students in science and math since the 1960s, when the ethos of that time asserted that these subjects were irrelevant. Of more importance is what an education in the arts can do for a student. Studies have shown that students who take arts courses in high school score an average of fifty points higher on the SAT than those who don’t take such courses. Students learn discipline and focus in doing something that is creative and engages them. In many segments of our society, such courses are considered frills. Often, arts courses and arts teachers, certainly not football, are the first to go when budgets get tight. According to St. Louisan Lester Bowie, one of the greatest trumpeters in jazz history, rap music happened because the New York schools cut out instrumental music; the students had no outlet for their creative impulses. Arts classes provide a refuge from the bullying that most intelligent children experience in school.

While there are exceptions to these observations, I believe that anecdotal evidence of the decline in an educated populace since the 1960s is all over the arts. I see a lot of visual art and photography that I believe is deliberately dumbed down to look as if the artists have little or no training. As a people, our rhythmic sense has been dumbed down to where dancing seems to consist of jumping around in one place to tunes that have no melodies and consist of “hooks” that are repeated ad infinitum. To me, most of the rhythms sound like someone chopping wood with an axe. Our most successful films are special-effects films with very rudimentary plots and are sequels to already successful special-effects films. Much of our popular comedy sounds like 14-year old bathroom humor.

In jazz, the arrival of Wynton Marsalis in 1980 was not a coincidence. The country was taking a turn to the right, and Marsalis provided a conservative voice in jazz that the press exploited to the detriment of the music. One of Marsalis’ biggest supporters, Stanley Crouch, has written an essay called “The Jazz Tradition is Not Innovation.” Since 1980, too much of jazz is tributes to past jazz greats and imitations of what has gone before.

An under-educated populace lacks critical thinking skills, among other things. This lack of critical thinking skills has allowed our public discourse to be hijacked by “trials of the century,” political bullies, sex scandals and fear mongerers of all political stripes. As the populace becomes less educated, we need to know the consequences of losing our critical thinking skills as we face the problems of our financial woes as a nation. Deliberate distractions, slogans and political beliefs on both sides that have no basis in fact about taxes, revenue and the cost of our entitlement programs will never solve these problems. Due to the lack of critical thinking skills in this country, our politicians are allowed free rein to do whatever benefits their friends and moneyed supporters. Our press does not ask the right questions. Possibly they do not possess the skills to know the questions to ask.

One consequence of our dislike of education is that we have to import scientists and engineers because there are not enough young people in our own country entering these professions. Many don’t go into these professions because the training is too hard or they are not prepared intellectually for it.

A second consequence is that states with lower education rates have higher rates of rape, spousal abuse, divorce, teenage pregnancy and abortion. These seem to preoccupy the minds of many people in those states, spilling out into the rest of the nation.

A third consequence is that all the well-paying new jobs will be ones that go to wherever there is a better-educated work force. No politician, no government stimulus, no more laws and no political sloganeering can reverse this trend. We are so distracted by all of the peripheral issues that we cannot or we are not allowed to discuss this issue in a rational manner. Manufacturing jobs that were the backbone of this country have left and will not be replaced. If we don’t have an educated workforce, we, as a nation are in deep trouble. I believe that our only hope is to somehow overcome this ingrained dislike of education, a tough job since I believe that most of our politicians would prefer an electorate that cannot think critically.

The arts have reflected on what is going on with the psyche of this country, and it is not pretty. I believe that a lot of our decline in education levels in our nation is parallel to the decline in the quality of our arts. I also believe that much of this decline can be traced to our dislike and mistrust of education. The other night, my fiancée and I were watching the movie Idiocracy, a comedy about a future in which the education level has sunk so low that people believe whatever they see on television and the Internet, spend their time making jokes about bodily functions, drinking, drugging and having lots of children. What was interesting was that as we fast-forwarded through the commercials, we had trouble deciding where the commercials ended and the movie began again. Are we there yet?

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU-FM) continuously since April 1983. Professionally, he holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His current show, “Jazz Unlimited,” is heard every Sunday night from 9 p.m. to midnight.