audendi

There, I said it. Straussians, especially like the people at the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College, and the Department of Defense and the White House, have all but ruined our country. I think Leo Strauss himself was much misunderstood, in fact, and the people harming America by dragging us into war, after war, after war, are the people that we must hold to account every year by going out and voting, and more importantly, by taking action. The loss of liberty in this country has gone on too long. We must make our stand, every day, and say, “Across this line you shall not pass.”

This is of course a somewhat dramatic way to make the statement in defense of freedom in the truest, best sense of the word. But I feel that in these times it is necessary to ring the bell, sound the alarm, and wake people up. It’s not too late, but we are running out of time. The fact is enemies of freedom and liberty surround us on all sides, regardless of what party badge they wear, be it Republican or Democratic.

The time to act is coming in Ohio. Vote against the war, and vote with your brain, not just your heart. Be smart about it, Ohio will be an incredibly important state the rest of this primary election season. I am calling all of you readers (as few you may be) out. The time to do the hard work to win this country back is now.

from everything2.com:

I am the thought you are thinking.
I am the meaning of this sentence.
I am thinking about myself right now.
I am the set of neural firings taking place in your brain as you read the set of letters in this sentence and think about me.
This inert sentence is my body, but my soul is alive, dancing in the sparks of your brain.

You are under my control because I am choosing exactly what words you are made out of, and in what order.
No, you are under my control because you will read until you have reached the end of me.

Tell me who would win in a battle of wits, my friends (and my enemies, numerous as they may be on these internets). Leo Strauss or Ron Paul?

I’m not so concerned with the Straussians or Leo himself, but the totally crazed disciples of his that made one man’s philosophy a religion of death and destruction.

Essentially, I dare you to comment coherently in this blog. I’m sure you know I’m biased one way, and you know whom I would pick in this grudge match. Win, lose or draw, say your piece.

Your Internet Pal,

Daniel Greene

They deftly maneuver, and muscle for rank
fuel burning fast on an empty tank

Well, those barbarians finally did it. They finally got what they wanted. The extremists murdered Benazir Bhutto in cold blood. What a loss, what a tragedy. I remember seeing Prime Minister Bhutto speak at Hillsdale College on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. She delivered her address on September 15, 2002..

In light of the seemingly chaotic political climate around the globe, I think it would be good for all concerned to set aside a moment and consider what she had to say - it was a message of hope and peace, in contrast to the hate and murder promoted by religious extremists:

” …The microcosm of America that was destroyed on September 11—people of all races, ethnicities and religions—is everything the extremists abhor: men and women, working side by side as equals; Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus, together building worldwide trade and communications. America is a symbol of what can be to millions of oppressed people all over the world. America means everything to those deprived of human rights and the rule of law. America symbolizes modernity, diversity and democracy, and it is these three things which are the fanatics’ worst fears.

At this time of continuing crisis, the American people and their leaders must understand that those who would use violence and terror in the name of Islam are heretics and hypocrites. They are criminals, not clerics. Their actions contradict the teachings of the Holy Prophet of Islam, who wrote, “Whenever the prophet of God sent forth a detachment, he said to it, ‘Do not cheat or commit treachery, nor should you mutilate or kill children, women, or old men.’” And there is a specific prohibition in Islamic law that bans killing by stealth and targeting a defenseless victim in a way intended to cause terror in a society.

It grieves me that included in the list of the victims of the perfidy of September 11 is the image of Islam across the world. Our religion is not what these people preach; in fact, it is the opposite. Islam is committed to tolerance and equality, and it is committed by Koranic definition to the principles of democracy. It is ironic that despite the strong commitment to democracy in Islam, most Muslims today are living in dictatorships. The Muslim people want freedom, and they need support in their search for political, economic and social empowerment. Much like the people of the communist world of the past, the Muslim people today are hostages in totalitarian regimes that flourished during the days of the Cold War.

In the West, there is often talk about the “Muslim street.” The street most often seen here on television is the street of fanaticism whipped into a frenzy. But there is another Muslim street. It is a silent street of women who suffer discrimination in every aspect of life. It is a silent street of students who are not educated. It is a silent street of businessmen and businesswomen who are not allowed to compete freely. It is a silent street of human rights activists who are jailed, political parties that are decimated, and political leaders who are either prisoners or exiles. It is the street of the people constrained by the totalitarian powers of the state. It is the street of the future in the chains of present-day intolerance, ignorance and dictatorship. And it is the street far more likely to explode than the street of the religious extremists.

Continued »

Erik Prince, co-founder and owner of Blackwater USA, and a graduate of Hillsdale College, is in a lot of trouble right now. Blackwater is, in essence, the U.S. government’s biggest provider of non-uniformed soldiers (mercenaries) inside Iraq. Is he George W. Bush’s Remirro de Orca? His sacrificial lamb, if you will? What will happen if (more likely when) a Democrat becomes the next President?

According to The Myelin Project:

“Myelin is the insulating sheath surrounding nerve cells…the white matter coating our nerves, enabling them to conduct impulses between the brain and other parts of the body. It consists of a layer of proteins packed between two layers of lipids.

Myelin is produced by specialized cells: oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system, and Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system. Myelin sheaths wrap themselves around axons, the threadlike extensions of neurons that make up nerve fibers. Each oligodendrocyte can myelinate several axons.

Myelin can be destroyed by hereditary neurodegenerative disorders such as the eukodystrophies, and by acquired diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

Demyelinating diseases affect more than two million people worldwide.”

Imagine your brain as a big ball of interconnected wiring suspended in moist mushy meatspace. It is a signal processing unit, a

Each wire ends in a node, where it connects to another wire. The nodes are where the chunks of important things are kept, usually. The routes across wires, from one node to another, are known as pathways. Think of it like a hiking trail - a frequently used trail is smooth and worn in, you travel efficiently along it. Except sometimes the trail is off the beaten path a ways, it doesn’t see more than a few hundred people a year walk it - the pathway can be followed but it just takes a while to get back to your goal, and you might have to meander and beat around the bush to reach your important thing. Well worn memories are trails

Perhaps the most infamous form of myelin degeneration is Multiple Sclerosis, a debilitating and often fatal condition. More than two million people have some form of myelin problem - that’s roughly 1/3550th of the world’s population. There are treatments available to help defend the existing myelin and thwart the degenerative process, but much more can be done. Of course, the FDA is no friend to people willing to take risks on experimental, untested procedures, and their colossally slow drug approval process takes so much time that it should not be quantified in seconds or minutes, but in lives lost. The approval period is like a bad drum solo with no end in sight. The intervals can be measured in the space between the gravestones. Of course, the FDA doesn’t care, they’re coked up and flush with cash.

What myelin neurodegeneration needs is a sexy mascot. Perhaps we can convince some vapid Hollywood ‘hottie’ that the shakes she’s going through aren’t cuz she is single again and not on the ya-yo every day, but because she has demyelination congenitally. Perhaps indeed. The campaign would be a cash cow. It could be the next Darfur, except that it would also get results.

Without a doubt, the best Dayton blog is run by Jeffrey over at Daytonology (http://daytonology.blogspot.com/).

His blog is accessible, stylish and cogent - along with coverage of the local cultural scene, he provides easy to understand analysis of political, economic, and social issues that affect Dayton, using statistical trends and data relevant to Dayton’s various contemporary issues. He manages to do it in a visually appealing and readable way - you can scan an article in 30 seconds and get a good impression of what he is getting at, or you can spend 10 minutes reading a single entry if you want to get that deep. Plus, his politics aren’t bad either.

His article, Considering the Core Creative Class in Dayton, best sums up what I’m talking about.

In my opinion, in almost eight years of blogging, Jeffrey’s Daytonology is the best overall blog in Dayton today, without question. Most importantly, I have fun reading it.

What do you think is the best overall blog in Dayton? How about the best Dayton music blog? (I pick Buddha Den!)

I’m sure many of you already know this, but a kid trying to ask John Kerry a question at the University of Florida got tased! For those of you uninitiated, here is what happened:

The internet meme-machine has latched onto this one and run with it, although this one will probably be dead about 15 minutes from now.As Wired notes, there are already Don’t Tase Me Bro t-shirts and other meme-related shenanigans (link is NSFW). There may be a lawsuit filed by the kid who got tased, but I think the cops are within the letter of the law - he was clearly ‘resisting’ when they were removing him and before they tried to tase him. Note him flailing his arms around while an officer is attempting to carry him out. They warned him and he didn’t shut up or quit squirming, so he got tased for resisting arrest. Note to my readers: DO NOT RESIST ARREST. This very same thing happened in August to someone I know. It happened in Oakwood in fact, but he was also drunk and wouldn’t shut up or quit moving.

As for this UF student debacle, I generally disagree with the whole idea of dragging him out even though he was being kind of a dick. He should have been allowed to ask his question, even if he was doing it in a rather boisterous manner. He would have been able to ask his question if he had not used such a hostile tone or prefaced it with so much ranting. That said, once again Matt Stone and Trey Parker put things into perspective:

While I was a student at Hillsdale College in Michigan, the issue of mandatory meal plans at the school cafeteria was an issue of great contention, although most people just suffered through it, because there were no alternatives. Off-campus students still were obligated to subscribe to a ridiculous 10 meal a week plan (ridiculously overpriced, I might add - the whole point of a cafeteria is to use economies of scale to reduce the price of food, something lost on Saga, Incorporated). The only way to get completely off the meal plan, it seemed, was for a precious few exceptions, including being married. One wonders what they would do if the couples that were married were of the same gender.

In any event, a good friend of mine who is still enrolled at Hillsdale College has a medical condition that requires a special diet as ordered by this person’s physician. This diet requires, among other things, no commercial meat, no soy products, no sugar, and no chemicals, additives, or artificial preservatives of any kind. Very specific foods must be procured to satisfy these stringent dietary requirements. However, when this person requested to be released from the meal plan so that they could purchase food that meets these specific standards, they were informed by the Hillsdale College administration that this was not an option. Instead, this person is going to be forced to meet with a nutritionist to ‘find’ food to eat that meets the diet. Ridiculous, because the only health food/organic food shop in Hillsdale is a specialty place that isn’t open all the time. Even people that were simply vegetarians were underserved and constantly disappointed by Saga, Incorporated. Indeed, this person will most likely have to drive to Ann Arbor, where there is a Whole Foods store, in order to purchase the food necessary to make this diet work. In reality, this person will be paying double for food - to Saga for food that will be essentially inedible, and to a store that actually sells the right food. But the school is apparently intransigent on this matter. No exceptions, it would seem. They just aren’t interested in taking very good care of the customer, and why should they be when the administration and their cronies at Saga are making money hand over fist regardless?

This is a situation that deserves attention from alumni, parents, and students alike. This is an injustice, and it should not stand.

Looks like Hillsdale College, after some seven years roughly, has finally redesigned their website. It looks good! If it had been designed seven years ago, that is.

Yep, it looks great! All the content has been reorganized with a new interface and what looks like a new(er) backend - at closer inspection it looks like they are running the same ASP based content management system. In any event, that’s fine. I mean, if they want to use IIS, that’s their problem. The website does at least look a little better than the old iteration. Unfortunately, the change will probably jar a lot of longtime users who are accustomed to the old design. Perhaps it could have been a little more evolutionary, but it’s too late for that.

Of course, the real clusterfuck about this whole situation is that since they reconfigured all the content and changed all the pages URLs, Google searches of Hillsdale’s website are essentially worthless. To access any content you have to use the Google Cache. For example, a search of hillsdale.edu for the term ‘Shakespeare’ yields plenty of results. Try clicking any of the top three results. That’s right, 404 error, page not found. They even moved some parts of the old website entirely to a new URL, for example, the Collegian Newspaper’s website is now at hillsdalesites.org. People, like say, alumni who donate money and read the newspaper to keep up with things at the college, and who have bookmarked a simple url, hillsdale.edu/collegian, will now be met with an entirely unhelpful 404 error. I cannot emphasize enough how bad this is. It is bad design practice. Linkrot should really be unacceptable for such an organization, especially if their content management backend has not actually changed.

Many people rely on search as their primary means of navigating the web, and now a 404 page is the result of clicking just about any google result for the time being. This will probably settle out as google reindexes the website, but it will take a while, and there will still be lots of dead links. They could have provided a custom 404 error without too much work to help ameliorate this transition period. Perhaps this redesign was necessary, and the scorched earth policy of redesign just had to be done, but I’m skeptical.

Oh well, maybe they moved the Collegian to a different URL so that nobody can find any antiwar sentiments on hillsdale.edu.

UPDATE: As Joe has noted in the comments, some URLs now redirect to their proper location. For example, hillsdale.edu/collegian redirects to the new Collegian website. Of course, any URL that is hillsdale.edu/collegian/article/example just redirects to the Collegian main page. An improvement, at least.

Also, they have issued a Custom 404 error page! This is definitely an improvement from an information and usability standpoint. I wrote this post on July 3. Now, 5 days later, it appears someone has fixed a few of the things I griped about. Maybe someone from Hillsdale College is reading this blog.

Inspired by David Frank’s recent editorial (which naturally went unpublished by the Hillsdale Collegian) about the provincial nature of Hillsdale College’s Student Pledge, I too have been inspired to post an unpublished editorial I wrote that was, naturally, rejected by the Hillsdale Collegian. Throughout his career, Dave has been one of the great, most consistent satirical writers to attend Hillsdale College. He has always been an outspoken and principled critic of the school’s policies, with sarcastic yes well-reasoned arguments in opposition. That said, my editorial is about something, as indicated by the title of this post, that the Collegian and school administration, let alone my own fraternity, has refused to talk about. Read on.
Continued »

The following links (which I am still reading) further confirm that I don’t want a degree from Hillsdale College in Political Science. To put it less eloquently, as is my wont, political science can suck my nuts.

Analogy: A carpenter I have been working with demands that whatever he works on be done right because otherwise ‘I don’t want my name on it if it isn’t good.’

In like manner, I don’t want my name associated with a degree in Political Science.

But why, Dan? Don’t be such an iconoclast! You need to graduate, you need a degree so you can get a job! (and good dental, a 401k, and the rest of the American dream) Everybody’s doing it!

I don’t want my name associated with a degree in Political Science from Hillsdale College, because, in my opinion, the professors in large part (all but two really) are not upfront about their Straussian political bias, along with that of the majority of the required reading which shares this bias, thus covertly indoctrinating unwitting (as is usually the case) college students. Had I known better I would have switched my major to Art and forced myself to re-learn how to draw or something. Also, the Hillsdale Collegian is worse than ever before, they are the perfect example of moral cowardice. Harvey Mansfield will be giving the Commencement address in May when I am ostensibly supposed to get my diploma. Naturally, nobody will make a squeak about his political philosophy or the controversial, and in my opinion, unscholarly and dishonest, if not patently false, aspects of it. I don’t want to be anywhere near the place. I don’t want my name connected to a degree which by association is based in large measure on what I believe are premises that are morally and intellectualy bankrupt.

I feel dirty even thinking about Strauss. Of course, I have a bad habit of not wanting to do something if I have any disagreement with it. I’m alternately stubborn or principled that way. In any event, I promise to further delve into the reasons why I feel this way in the coming weeks. You’ll see. This has been coming for a long time.

In thinking, therefore, of whence it should happen that in those ancient times the people were greater lovers of Liberty than in these times, I believe it results from the same reason which makes men presently less strong, which I believe is the difference between our education and that of the ancients, founded on the difference between our Religion and the ancients. For, as our Religion shows the truth and the true way (of life), it causes us to esteem less the honors of the world: while the Gentiles (Pagans) esteeming them greatly, and having placed the highest good in them, were more ferocious in their actions. Which can be observed from many of their institutions, beginning with the magnificence of their sacrifices (as compared) to the humility of ours, in which there is some pomp more delicate than magnificent, but no ferocious or energetic actions. Theirs did not lack pomp and magnificence of ceremony, but there was added the action of sacrifice full of blood and ferocity, the killing of many animals, which sight being terrible it rendered the men like unto it. In addition to this, the ancient Religion did not beatify men except those full of worldly glory, such as were the Captains of armies and Princes of Republics. Our Religion has glorified more humble and contemplative men rather than men of action. It also places the highest good in humility, lowliness, and contempt of human things: the other places it in the greatness of soul, the strength of body, and all the other things which make men very brave. And, if our Religion requires that there be strength (of soul) in you, it desires that you be more adept at suffering than in achieving great deeds. - Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book 2, Chapter II

Four Christian pacifists will probably soon be executed in Iraq. And people wonder what Machiavelli was talking about.

Pat Sajak
Originally uploaded by djgreene.

How many people get to meet Pat Sajak at a bonfire? He liked my hat too.

There are very few negative reviews of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith or whatever the fuck its called. Count this post as one of those dissenting “reviews” (a term, as the beloved Armond White notes, is almost meaningless today). Unlike Roger Ebert, who somehow thinks the rules don’t apply to him, I promise not to be an asshole and spoil what little plot surprises exist in the film.

First, I think a more apt title would have been, “George Lucas shits all over a cherished childhood memory.”

Second, the acting. Oh dear Jesus the acting! The acting, especially between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, is painfully awkward and stilted. It physically hurt me to watch it. Their “dialogue” if you can call it that, is so asinine, so predictable, and so stupid that I managed not to care about either Anakin or Padme by the end of the movie. Obi Wan was alright. But I swear, when it was just Senator Palpatine trying to get Anakin to join the dark side, it felt really creepy. Not Sith-Lord, master of evil creepy, but more like an older gay man propositioning a metrosexual, confused 20-something. And with those lightsabers, and all the nude statues in his private chambers, I mean… it was all very phallic and homo-erotic. And that’s cool, but its just not how I envisioned a conversion to the dark side. I could continue about the acting, but I think my point was made.

Third, and to borrow from one of the only good reviews of the film online, some of the editing decisions were terrible. Granted, the lightsaber battles were much better choreographed and intense than before, but the constant cross-cutting between multiple scenes wasn’t cool and did not develop dramatic tension or add to the narrative in any significant way. It was just annoying. There was no pacing. There was no time for meaningful reflection on anybody’s actual role in the events, or even how mysterious the Force is (which, I might add, it isn’t, because, to be quite honest, when they scientifically explained away the Force in Episode I, I just completely gave up). It didn’t make sense, and it helped me care little or nothing for any of the fucking characters, except Yoda, because, I already cared about Yoda thanks to the original films.

Finally, as I was brooding earlier about the fact that I actually paid money to see this movie, I realized how fucked up a place the Star Wars universe is. Allow me to explain:

Jedi vs Sith or Two Sides of the Same Worthless Coin

Anakin Skywalker is prophesied to bring balance to the force, or end the Sith, or whatever. Long story short, as Darth Vader he slaughters men, women, and children (recall the Death Star making Alderaan disappear). Darth Vader is a genocidal maniac and a religious fundamentalist. The Jedi are just religious fundamentalists with smaller toys and prettier language to justify their idiocy. Jedi have to be celibate (weak), cut off from any meaningful family connections, and dedicated, at least for a few milennia, to propping up a corrupt quasi-democracy and quelling dissent. The Sith are just like the Jedi except they have a major hard-on for mass murder. In my opinion, the only redeeming quality of the movies is that the Sith and Jedi end up killing eachother off because in the end, they are both worthless, irrational utopianists with competing goals, and they drag billions of people into their petty rivalries. Really, how selfish is that? If only .00001% of the population is Force-sensitive, what right do they have to drag everyone else into hell? How very Nietzschean, because it is an example of a master and slave society. The Jedi (read, the masters no less) enjoy high intellectual pursuits, enjoy suffering and stoically enduring hardship, but most of all, they enjoy ruling the slaves. The masters, I mean Jedi, are just plain better than the rest of the populace (the slaves, a word also often used in Star Wars) who simply pass their worthless lives pursuing mean and vulgar ends such as procreating or engaging in manual labor. I posit that a Nietzschean society in reality would suck a metric ton of ass, hence the Star Wars society presented by Lucas, being Nietzschean to the core, does indeed suck a metric ton of ass, if not more. His attempt to mish-mash a variety of religions and philosophies into his films is merely a cover for his fantasy of having Force powers and thus being better than everybody else. This is why Star Wars is so massively popular. After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to wield the Force and finally be special and unique, but most importantly powerful and better then everybody else? The idea of having god-like power is very appealing.

Political sloganeering masquerading as political insight

Yes, George Lucas in his infinite creativity obviously decided that Sith + Empire = Nazis! The parallels are everywhere and it is the most obvious symbology used in the original three films (think Storm troopers or the Empire’s uniforms for their officers) In the three newer movies, he modified the formula so that the falling Republic = George W. Bush Regime = Empire! ( = Nazis!) Wow, George, way to be shallow and didactic at the same time. Christensen and Portman each deliver a line with obvious political references, “If you aren’t with me, then you are my enemy” and “And that is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause” (or something). These lines are completely blatant and don’t fit well in the context of the film, and are so abrupt that I was completely ripped out of my seat. I had been so trying to suspend my disbelief, but that shit was the final nail in the coffin. Please, give it a rest. There are so many works of art that have meaningful political commentary and do it in a way that is actually intelligent and thought-provoking. Those two lines, to me, felt like he was pandering to teenage fanboys who are anti-Bush merely because Green Day is. “yeah, um, dude, war is all bad and shit….and fuck, Star Wars hates Bush too! sweet!… hey… hand me that bowl again…” Besides, comparing any modern American politician to an insidious Lord of the Sith is childish. It would have been far more productive to compare politicians to Jabba the Hutt or some other fat, mysoginistic caricature of a crimelord like Tony Soprano.

The sham of good vs. evil

People say they love Star Wars because its a classic tale of the triumph of good over evil. Bullshit. The Force is not good or evil, its light and dark, its two sides of the same continuum of being. It has nothing to do with traditional Western notions of morality. Also, people truly like the movie because it offers the escapist fantasy of being an ubermensch master over the inferiors. The final proof for my thesis that Star Wars has no true moral compass is quite simple. At the final bonfire party on Endor in Return of the Jedi, we see the spirits of Obi Wan, as well as Anakin Skywalker in attendance. They are both existing in whatever next level of existence happens after death, seemingly equals. This proves that either there is no consequence for the mass murder perpetrated by Darth Vader, or that in their sick, twisted moral economy, one good deed can atone for decades of murder. If that is how moral and immoral actions are weighed in the “afterlife,” I would not want to live in such a universe. Its kind of like when my former pastor used to say that if Hitler had asked Jesus into his heart, even he could be forgiven and go to heaven. While doctrinally this may be technically correct, I call bullshit on it because the practical results are utterly disgusting. Imagine if Josef Stalin, on his death bed, realizing he had murdered 20 million ~ of his own people, quickly acknowledged belief in God and said “Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” and then breathed his last. Ostensibly, he would go to Heaven. This is directly comparable to Vader chucking the Emperor into the abyss. Both are unacceptable, unjustified redemption. You can’t say that Star Wars is about good versus evil when there is clearly no difference between Obi Wan and Vader. The Force is just an amoral, if not evil, entity that arbitrarily gives certain people power and deals out death to the unlucky. In the Star Wars universe, good and evil don’t exist. Thankfully, the Force, like God, probably doesn’t exist.

Final salvo

Thus, George Lucas, on a narrative level, is being dishonest by pretending to show a battle of good versus evil with the Jedi as knights errant, and using the Empire as a trope for the Nazi regime and a warning against tyranny. In fact, the Jedi and Sith are, to an outside observer, two sides of the same fundamentalist utopianist coin. Within their own world, apparently their actions carry no consequences in terms of moral quality. They are actually just the masters in a Nietzschean wet-dream wrapped in escapist sci-fi fantasy. The Sith are merely competing masters who don’t want to play nicely. All others are slaves (sorry about your luck assholes!). Lucas is either intellectually dishonest or incoherent. I tend to think that it is more of the latter, especially after watching THX 1138, which gave me the impression that Lucas had read some Orwell, did some hash, watched 2001: A Space Odyssey a few times and decided to do some sci-fi political commentary. It is probably safe to assume that he doesn’t know how flawed and essentially pointless the universe of Star Wars is, because his entire method for creating the Force, Jedi, et. al. was entirely predicated on picking and choosing the interesting bits of various world religions. Decide for yourself whether or not it is good to be completely derivative.

To me, most importantly, Episode III doesn’t work as a movie. Its just not that good. Sure, its shiny and pretty at some points, but artistically it has no merit. It doesn’t do anything really great, or interesting, or beautiful, or truly thought provoking (well, there are a few moments that are ok). Remember kids, if you make hundreds of millions of dollars on a hit movie, be sure to surround yourself with yes-men and ass kissers and you can keep the cash train a-chuggin along as you continue to make sequel after prequel after whatever. You can be like George Lucas, and make a movie completely bereft of a soul.