RANGO

In the film, Rango is a pet chameleon who lives in a terrarium. He has long thought himself a hero, but then finds himself removed from his contemporary American southwest surroundings and ending up in an Old West town called Dirt, which is populated by various desert critters garbed like characters out of a spaghetti western. As he’s always thought himself a hero, Rango establishes himself as the lawman, strolling the streets as a sheriff like character.Unknown to him, the ‘good guy’ role doesn’t do very well in Dirt — with a whole cemetery filled with good guy tombstones. But that doesn’t stop Rango from trying, constantly seeking to fit in, with his surroundings, no matter how challenging — just like a good chameleon! At a certain point in the narrative, Rango will come to question everything about himself.

REAL STEEL

A boxing drama set in the near-future where 2,000-pound robots that look like humans do battle.

Apart from silencing opponents and enriching personal friends, the one thing Vladimir Putin was really good at was fixing elections. In this, he had a perfect track record since March 2000—until last Sunday. The Russian parliamentary election on December 4th was neither free nor fair. Several opposition groups had been barred from the ballot; officials pressured voters to support the ruling party; the vote-count was marred by ballot-stuffing and the rigging of protocols. But even in these conditions—and even by the official figures—most Russians voted against Vladimir Putin. His party, United Russia,received 49.3 percent of the vote, losing its two-thirds supermajority in Parliament for the first time in eight years. Compared to the last poll in 2007, when it registered 64.3 percent, United Russia’s result represents a net loss of 13 million votes and 77 seats in the 450-seat Duma (down from 315 to 238).

Being, Consciousness, and the Future of Europe

The eurozone is going to the wire in its struggle to preserve the euro. Although some criticize it for taking too much time, it is encouraging to see that it seems to have finally found the will to defend itself against a looming economic disaster stemming from the potential collapse of its common currency.

That radical steps toward a fiscal union are needed if the euro is to be preserved few would deny. It is another question, though, whether such steps should be seen as strengthening the political unity of Europe. It seems obvious to some that the two march hand in hand, but what seems obvious is in itself no guarantee of truth. Some critical reasoning seems to be in order.

The Autumn of the US-Russia Reset

Acolleague and I have described the post-Soviet era in Russia as the “age of impunity,” whereby even the most howlingly obvious crimes of man or state are implausibly denied or whitewashed in a manner redolent of Stalinist propaganda. Two such examples have furnished themselves in quick succession in the last month, one relating to the conviction of a notorious Russian arms dealer and the other to a Russian nuclear scientist’s facilitation of Iran’s atom bomb project. Both acts would have spelt the end of the US-Russian “reset” without the added complications of renewed brinkmanship over the placement of a US missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and the drubbing delivered to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in a transparently fraudulent parliamentary election on December 4th.