Last night I was totally blotto and depressed, took myself to a favorite restaurant to dine alone (I was looking for “a place where everybody knows my name” because the owner and some of the staff knew me and Grace because we started going there the week it opened, but none of them were around. Or were avoiding me…). I even had a stiff drink, my third this year.
I didn’t help. When I returned home, I decided to watch a semi-Christmas movie, the 1942 Irving Berlin movie musical “Holiday Inn” with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire that I realized I hadn’t watched in decades, and never critically. The movie spawned several Irving Berlin classics, “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” among them, as well as the movie “White Christmas,” which shares several ingredients with its predecessor—it’s a musical, it takes place at a resort inn in the country, Bing’s the star and sings his iconic Christmas song, he has an old friend and partner who dances, and there are two women who perform with them—but the movies have completely different plots.
And “White Christmas” has no blackface number….
One of the few moments I remembered from the film was Astaire’s number above, which is spectacular. In the movie he improvises it on the spot when his dancing partner doesn’t show up, which is of course impossible, even for Fred. In fact, the entire movie is so ridiculous and contrived that suspension of disbelief is out of the question: It makes “White Christmas” look like a documentary by comparison. Another realization: As well as Bing Crosby sang in the Fifties, his freak voice in the Forties was much better. Wow.
And yes, the movie was the inspiration for the founders of the motel chain to call it Holiday Inn. Apparently they didn’t pay Irving Berlin a penny, the cheap bastards.
“Holiday Inn” is definitely not about ethics, as it is completely mindless.
But you’re going to make your contributions to day about ethics, right?
Ethics Alarms 
From the dramatic stylings of Reddit comes a topic I’ve pondered occasionally: the subject of “workwife”/”workhusband”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1hhqfli/aitah_for_setting_a_woman_straight_when_she/
There’s been a time or two in the last 15 years when I’ve seen two coworkers of the opposite sex – each married to other people – play pranks on each other at work or otherwise pal around a lot refer to each other as a “workwife” or “workhusband”.
I’ve never liked it. Perhaps, I’m old fashioned, but, to me, wife means wife and husband means husband. The workwife/workhusband seems like trouble waiting to happen.
In the story above, coworkers visiting another’s home witnessed a mild confrontation when an actual wife – never having heard the term – puts a self-proclaimed workwife in her place. The husband apparently hadn’t thought of the work relationship along those lines either.
Some of the comments, though, have got me thinking more deeply. More than one person believes that workwife/workhusband characterizations are close to sexual harassment.
What do you think? In this case, since the husband hadn’t heard the term either and agreed with his wife that his female coworker was not a wife in any sense of the word, would the female coworker’s assertion that she was be a sexual harassment situation? It most certainly seems to me to be an example of inappropriate workplace behavior. Would it make a difference if the husband had shrugged it off and said it was no big deal?
Who would have thought basing pandemic policy on a 14-year-old girl’s science fair project would not work out too well?
Just because I know you like the song, and it feels like you could use a little pick me up, Good Morning to you Jack.
In “tell us something we don’t already know” news, the WSJ has reported that Biden’s staff, from day one, kept him away from press and public on “bad days” where his mental and physical decline was more evident. WSJ is behind a paywall, but the story is now in other outlets.
In related events, don’t we have to wonder whther SloJo is even aware of he particulars in his extraordinary flood of pardons and commutations, or is just signing what’s placed in front of him. After promising not to release violent criminals, one of his new ones goes to a “black widow” who murdered three men to collect on their insurance.
Rat’s, the link didn’t take https://freebeacon.com/biden-harris-administration/black-widow-who-murdered-3-ex-lovers-freed-in-bidens-historic-clemency-spree/
Technically, she was convicted of insurance fraud, and not tried for murder because it was assumed she would not outlive her 40 year sentence. Still, shouldn’t someone hve caught this? Seems to support that Biden wasn’t given (or didn’t read or understand) any relevant context, just a stack of papers to sign.
Could she now be re-arrested for the murders and tried?
Well, we could hope, but who wants to take bets that those in charge in blue Maryland will jump on the prospect of reaching back over 20 years to couter one of Biden’s final actions?
It depends on what immunity agreements exist.
Oooh, you’re spoiling my next post/
Sorry…Are you going to do the child-selling judge, too?
Forty-something years ago, I was business manager for a summer stock company in New Hampshire. I remember selling a program ad to the Holiday Inn, which was not part of the chain. I don’t remember exactly where they were located–somewhere in the White Mountains area along the Maine/New Hampshire border, but I can’t get more specific than that. I don’t know whether the place pre-dated the movie, but they did pre-date the chain. I doubt that the corporation passed on the opportunity to lock down the trademark, so I’m curious how they were able to keep the name. They may be long gone by now, of course…
The recent story about ChatGPT reminded me of a trend. Foreign media, particularly Japanese media, has become much more popular with English speaking audiences these past few years, despite most English speaking fans being unable to understand Japanese.
Over the last year, some fans who could actually understand Japanese noticed that the subs the large company didn’t always follow what the Japanese said, with the dubbed versions changing things as well. This led to a backlash against what fans called localizers, people hired by larger licensing companies, or sometimes the original studio, to translate their media for a new market. Some alleged localizers commented on social media, with a few claiming that they were purposely changing the meaning of the original media, and others claiming that they were attempting to stay as close to the original meaning, while understanding that not everything can be translated one to one.
Fans that were angry with these localizers demanded that companies either hire people who would only do a one to one translation with translator notes to explain concepts that couldn’t be translated one to one, or cut out human translators altogether, and use large language models to generate subtitles.
Would using large language models to generate translated subtitles from foreign media be unethical? Would localizing while trying to stay close to the original intention be unethical?