A confluence of recent events provoked me to acquire and watch a copy of the Fox Film Noir DVD of Laura (1944). Included on the disc are some commentary from David Raksin (who scored the film), from film professor Jeanine Basinger, and from historian Rudy Behlmer. Some of these comments add real value, but I was unhappy about things that the commentaries missed, and am thus provoked to write this entry.

Most useful discussion of this film entails some spoilers, and will further presume familiarity with the film. Behlmer strongly urges his listeners to have watched the film with its ordinary soundtrack before listening to his comments. Similarly, I suggest that, if you haven't watched Laura, you stop reading this entry right after I give you just one piece of advice.

That advice is that, while you watch Laura, you dismiss if you can the lyrics that Johnny Mercer later wrote for the theme melody, which impose a new significance to the melody that it wouldn't have had when the film was first made and shown. The melody actually figures within the story (at least in a minor way), and within the story is not about Laura. (By all means, recall and enjoy the Mercer lyrics after watching.)

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(Here Be Spoilers!)

I'm rather a fan of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), and the reasons are largely to be found within about 8 ½ of its 97 minutes. I offer those 8 ½ minutes here in a clip. The excerpt can be understood without being set-up; all the essentials can be inferred as one watches. So you may want to skip ahead to watch the video. But, for those of you more comfortable with more context, I'll provide some:

La Révolution française is cutting-off heads by scores daily. (There is some confusion in the movie over the year in which la Terreur began.)

Percy Blakeney had married Marguerite St. Just about a year earlier. Some time after the marriage, he learned that Marguerite had been instrumental in bringing-about the execution of a French aristocrat and his family. Not knowing that she had been tricked into providing the information that had led to that execution, Percy asked her about it. Marguerite, given to impetuosity, did not explain, but angrily admitted that she had. Percy began paying for the fact that he loved — that he still loved — Marguerite, by adopting the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel (the red pimpernel being a wildflower) and forming a team, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who enter France in disguise, to steal political prisoners from la guillotine. The identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel is unknown to all but members of the League. Blakeney further secures his secret — and pushes away his wife — by adopting the persona of a fop.

Marguerite's brother, Armand, part of the League, has been taken prisoner in France. Chauvelin, an agent of the French, has offered to surrender a key piece of evidence against Armand if she will reveal to Chauvelin the true identity of the Pimpernel. Unaware that the Scarlet Pimpernel is Percy, she has done what she could. Last night, she learned and reported to Chauvelin that the Scarlet Pimpernel would at mid-night be in the library of an estate where a party was being held.

When Chauvelin went to the library, Percy was there, pretending to sleep on a love-seat. Chauvelin eyed him suspiciously, but then adopted a derisive expression. Shortly after mid-night, Chauvelin himself briefly fell asleep, then awoke to find a mocking note from the Pimpernel, with Percy still apparently asleep. Chauvelin glanced at Percy as if dismissively, and then left. Percy arose, and wondered how Chauvelin had come to be there and whether his dismissal were sincere.

As the clip begins, Lord and Lady Blakeney are returning home.

There's all kinds of things right with the scenes in this clip.

When Marguerite comes to speak with Percy, we see that his affectation of effeminacy is, as much as anything, a very bitter way of rejecting her. Harry Stack Sullivan once wrote Hate is love turned angry, and when Marguerite says You … hate me. she's not far from the truth. However, Percy's question in reply isn't merely rhetorical; he truly wants to know why she denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr. At the least Percy wants to see what sort of person she really is, but what he really wants is some vindication for her actions, so that his love for her will not have been — will not be — wrong.

After he hears her explanation of what really happened with respect to the Marquis and his family, there remains the issue of Marguerite's trade with Chauvelin. Note the desperation in Percy's voice. He doesn't just need the information qua Scarlet Pimpernel; he wants to know whether, after all, she's still done something dreadful. He want to feel free to love her. When he learns what she gave to Chauvelin (a report that the Pimpernel would be in the library at mid-night), Percy is almost ready to laugh aloud from relief. And watch Leslie Howard's left hand, as he raises it up, partly into frame, almost to his heart, his fingers flexing; his character wants to reach out and take hold of Marguerite.

When Marguerite says that the Pimpernel might be going to his death, and Percy says Well, that's all the fellow lives for, he's really now talking of how he has been living. That demmed, elusive Pimpernel has not been in Heaven. But now he's climbing out of Hell.

The subsequent meaning of Percy's body language is obvious to the audience. The rest of their interaction is, of course, two people speaking of their love one for another, with one of them almost oblivious to what is being said, as she doesn't recognize the relationship amongst referents. Almost oblivious, but as Percy leaves the room, Marguerite knows that there's something that she isn't seeing clearly.

The principal reason that the story-telling in this clip stays with me is because it has a moment where pieces all click together in the mind of one of the characters, revealing something important.

For a moment of this sort to work, it's important that the character not have been positioned for the reälization before hand. Rather than having some twit finally see something that he or she should have seen all along, the story needs to put that character in possession of a new datum (preferably no more than one) and then have the character's mind move with fair intelligence towards the reälization.

I love the way that Merle Oberon presents Marguerite's reäctions, all within a matter of seconds. She questions her reasoning. As she looks again at the painting, her mouth is asymmetrical as she moves towards laughter at the deception Percy has effected. But the joke is displaced in her mind and her expression moves towards a smile of a different, symmetric sort as she starts to think that her Percy is a better man than she had come to think him, and indeed a better man than she had thought him when they married. She doesn't get very far with that thought, as it hits her that Percy has sailed off not only into danger but into danger that she has caused to be greatly increased.

Really, it's a shame that Starman never made an appearance on The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, on Aquaman, on The Batman/Superman Hour, or on Super Friends.

Those of you who've followed this 'blog for a while might be wondering what happened to the paper that I started submitting to journals in mid-June of last year. Well, yeah; me too.

As previously reported here, it was rejected by three journals as unsuitable to a general audience of economists, after being rejected by one without any reason being given. As it was rejected for being too specialized by one journal, I would then submit it to a more specialized journal. I submitted it to a fifth journal in early September. That process had to be repeated as their representative wanted me to purge the acknowledgments before the paper were passed-on to an editor (I'm not sure why someone there didn't delete them from the LAΤΕΧ file that they'd had me submit, nor why their submission template provides for acknowledgments, with no guidelines on when not to include them), but the paper was then officially recorded as submitted on 8 September. And I've been waiting since for a yea or for a nay.

They have an on-line site at which I can check on the status of my paper. After a while, the site reported that an editor had been assigned; then, in early January that reviewers had been assigned. Anthony suggested that perhaps they had had trouble finding reviewers who would be sufficiently comfortable with the sort of mathematics used. In late March the status report was changed to say that reviewers were assigned at that time, as if perhaps one or more of the original reviewers had left without returning an evaluation.

This journal doesn't really provide any guideline about querying them concerning the status of a submission. A common guideline from economics journals (as some others) is to contact them if one hasn't received any word after six months. I couldn't really claim that I'd not got any word for six months, but what I'd got surely didn't seem informative. Towards the end of June, after getting an opinion from Anthony, who said that I should feel free to query them, I did. The person whom I contacted said that, much as Anthony had suggested, there seemed to have been a problem finding reviewers, and that my query had been forwarded to the editor.

I've received nothing further. So, I don't really know the status of my paper.

Seth:	What'd you get your mother for two hundred bucks?
Smity:	Two hundred bucks.

When some party attempts to communicate, there are conceptual differences amongst

• what symbols were transmitted
• what conceptual content is appropriately associated with those symbols
• what conceptual content the party desired to convey

Put more colloquially,

• what someone literally said is one thing
• what the words mean is another
• what someone intended to say is still another

though, ideally, perfect agreement of a sort would obtain amongst them.

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People who won't distinguish amongst these are a bane. They'll claim that they said something that they didn't; that you said something that you didn't, that their words meant something that they couldn't; that your words meant something that they couldn't. They expect a declaration That's not what I meant! to shift all responsibility for misstatement to the other person. They expect to be able to declare That's not what you said! when it's exactly what you said but not what they had thought you intended or not what they had wanted you to say.

It's of course perfectly fair to admit that one misspoke with That's not what I meant!, so long as one is not thus disavowing the responsibility for one's actual words. I'm writing of those who avoid responsibility by the device of refusing to acknowledge anything but intentions or supposèd intentions.

Some of them are even more abusive, attempting to use That's not what I meant! to smuggle ad hoc revisions into their positions. By keeping obscured the difference between what was actually said and what was intended, they can implicitly invoke the fact that intent is less knowable than actual words, while keeping misstatement unthinkable, so that the plausibility that there was a misstatement cannot be examined.

One thing that I certainly like about the 'Net (and about recording equipment) is that it has made it more difficult for people to refuse to acknowledge what they have or another party has actually said. They'll still try, though. I've repeatedly participated in threads where someone has denied saying something when it's still in the display of the thread. (And, oddly enough, it seems that I'm often the only person who catches this point. I don't presently have much of a theory as to why others so frequently do not.)

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Setting aside those who won't distinguish amongst these three, there are people who more innocently often don't distinguish amongst them. I was provoked here to note the differences as they will be relevant to a later entry.

20 May is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! It's a special opportunity to reject claims against our words, against our art, and against our minds!

For a couple of weeks, I have been in the process of changing the e.mail address that various parties have on file for me. Initially, a considerable amount of each day went into this chore. Now, it's just a few minutes here-and-there, when I am reminded of somewhere that I need to effect a change.

I think that it would probably bore the reader to relate the history of my e.mail addresses, so suffice it to say that I greatly value having a persistent e.mail address, and have had the same address for something on the order of 15 years, but it has been provided by a firm, AT&T, with which I can no longer comfortably do such business. I'll be using oeconomist.com for my email domain now, and hope that I can do so for at least 15 years.

I am visiting my parents because they were using the same firm for e.mail and for their webpage hosting, and are leaving it for similar reasons. I handled configuration of accounts and of e.mail handlers, and transferred WWW content.

I had been using that same firm as my ISP for about that same span, and as my land-line service provider since the acquisition of AT&T by SBC Communications. I have had my land-line disconnected, and turned to Sprint, my cellular telephone service provider, as my ISP. I'm using a Novatel Wireless™ MiFi™ 2200 Mobile Hotspot to connect to the 'Net. For about $100 more, I could have got a Sierra Wireless™ AirCard® W801 (AKA Overdrive™ 3G/4G) Mobile Hotspot, but Sprint doesn't provide and doesn't seem scheduled to provide a 4G network anywhere that I expect to find myself for a few years (after which time there will be new choices in such devices).

There's a huge amount of utterly useless meta-discussion in Gillies' book. He writes about his writing without providing any meaningful enlightenment whatsoëver.

An editor should have put his or her foot down, and told Gillies to trim away all this fat. But, again, there doesn't seem to be much editing of books these days, except when done by authors themselves.