This is what's left of the right. [Already a good line!]
They're willing to sneak around and slit throats in the night,
but they don't have the guts for a straight up fight.
The Poetry Corner
Grand Moff Texan is rising to new poetic heights in response to the current pony-fest. With a bit of formatting for clarification:
Can they draw a goose, too?
Again, bottleofblog sends me to an important story, this on the chilling letter from the Number 2 man in Al Qaeda.
Bottle, after guaranteeing that the reader of the letter will remain so unchilled as practically to be sweaty, comments on the remarkable number of number-2 men Al Qaeda has.
I'm mainly reminded of Robert Benchley.
This letter is so chilling, says the story, because of how "calm, clear, and well argued" it is. Isn't it remarkable? A senior leader at Al Qaeda can write a letter clearly! And "Isn't It Remarkable?" was the title of the essay Benchley wrote when he encountered a picture captioned "Remarkably Accurate and Artistic Painting of a Goose from Pharoah Akhenaten's Palace, Drawn 3300 Years Ago." Benchley asked why it was remarkable: "Why should we be surprised that the people who built the Pyramids could also draw a goose so that it looked like a goose?"
Benchley's sobering essay (or chilling?) should be read, for balance, along with his "Lucky World!" which begins, "When you come to think of it, the wonder is not that there are so many jammed automobile fenders, bad motion pictures, sore throats, divorces and wars, but that there aren't more of them." Both are in My Ten Years in a Quandary, Harper & Bros, 1936 (lots of reprints, cheap at abebooks.
Bottle, after guaranteeing that the reader of the letter will remain so unchilled as practically to be sweaty, comments on the remarkable number of number-2 men Al Qaeda has.
I'm mainly reminded of Robert Benchley.
This letter is so chilling, says the story, because of how "calm, clear, and well argued" it is. Isn't it remarkable? A senior leader at Al Qaeda can write a letter clearly! And "Isn't It Remarkable?" was the title of the essay Benchley wrote when he encountered a picture captioned "Remarkably Accurate and Artistic Painting of a Goose from Pharoah Akhenaten's Palace, Drawn 3300 Years Ago." Benchley asked why it was remarkable: "Why should we be surprised that the people who built the Pyramids could also draw a goose so that it looked like a goose?"
Benchley's sobering essay (or chilling?) should be read, for balance, along with his "Lucky World!" which begins, "When you come to think of it, the wonder is not that there are so many jammed automobile fenders, bad motion pictures, sore throats, divorces and wars, but that there aren't more of them." Both are in My Ten Years in a Quandary, Harper & Bros, 1936 (lots of reprints, cheap at abebooks.
Another hero gone
Vivian Jones; R. I. P. Thanks to bottleofblog. Apologies for pointing people to so much bad language lately; but bottle's caption to her picture should be in textbooks to illustrate the distinction between indecorous and disrespectful.
Paradise Lost, the Movie
No, really.
Or should that be John Milton's Paradise Lost as with Frankenstein?
But what you must not miss is the comments. Unless (spoiler) you just don't care about David Mamet.
Or should that be John Milton's Paradise Lost as with Frankenstein?
But what you must not miss is the comments. Unless (spoiler) you just don't care about David Mamet.
Hoping Tom Lehrer saw the item
Great news. There is now a proper explanation for short gamma-ray bursts. In case you missed out, these are short bursts of high-energy radiation from somewhere in the sky, which satellite devices started picking up several years ago; the atmosphere blocks the gamma radiation from getting down here. While it's flashing ("short" means less than two seconds), a burst is as bright as 100 quadrillion Suns.
BTW, this is the second time in a couple of days that I've seen a number like "100,000 trillion". What gives? Thousand million and million million have passed pretty well out of the language, especially since England decided to join Germany and the USA in defining billion and trillion, eliminating a possible ambiguity. Can it be that the reader isn't expected to know what a quadrillion is? Answer, I suppose: Until recently, trillions were something a person just hadn't heard of, except perhaps in the number of miles in a light-year; the latter was usually called six million million miles when I first heard the number, fifty-some years ago (finding the locution annoying even then). What with GDPs and national debts and national budgets, not to mention big amounts of money denominated in Yen, trillions are now considered familiar enough to use, but it will be a few years before even the US war budget hits a quadrillion Yen.
Oh, right, you want to know what does cause these things. Colliding neutron stars, according to the paper coming out today in Nature. (Subscription required, of course.) There's a mind-blowing thought. Also, a good name for a rock group.
It has been known for some time that these big explosions were a long way off. Good thing. If one happened in our galaxy, and the beam of gamma radiation happened to point our way, it could knock out the ozone layer completely, causing us all to be fried with short-wave unltraviolet from our friendly neighborhood Sun. Unlikely, however, so "don't buy gamma ray burst insurance," says Edward "Rocky" Kolb of Fermilab.
Besides,
BTW, this is the second time in a couple of days that I've seen a number like "100,000 trillion". What gives? Thousand million and million million have passed pretty well out of the language, especially since England decided to join Germany and the USA in defining billion and trillion, eliminating a possible ambiguity. Can it be that the reader isn't expected to know what a quadrillion is? Answer, I suppose: Until recently, trillions were something a person just hadn't heard of, except perhaps in the number of miles in a light-year; the latter was usually called six million million miles when I first heard the number, fifty-some years ago (finding the locution annoying even then). What with GDPs and national debts and national budgets, not to mention big amounts of money denominated in Yen, trillions are now considered familiar enough to use, but it will be a few years before even the US war budget hits a quadrillion Yen.
Oh, right, you want to know what does cause these things. Colliding neutron stars, according to the paper coming out today in Nature. (Subscription required, of course.) There's a mind-blowing thought. Also, a good name for a rock group.
It has been known for some time that these big explosions were a long way off. Good thing. If one happened in our galaxy, and the beam of gamma radiation happened to point our way, it could knock out the ozone layer completely, causing us all to be fried with short-wave unltraviolet from our friendly neighborhood Sun. Unlikely, however, so "don't buy gamma ray burst insurance," says Edward "Rocky" Kolb of Fermilab.
Besides,
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go.
Not Fine, thank you
Magnificent is better than Important. We no longer do Fine.
--Overheard at Christies: the official hermeneutics of the titles given to auctions.
--Overheard at Christies: the official hermeneutics of the titles given to auctions.
He lies like an eyewitness
The late Professor Bergen Evans of Northwestern University wrote two debunking books in the 1950s, The Natural History of Nonsense and The Spoor of Spooks, both of which will repay reading after 50 years. Too early for von Daeniken and spoon bending, but those are kind of out of date by now anyway, aren't they? But astrology and psi powers and misconceptions of history and law go on forever; and Evans will show you how little change there is in Things of Permanent Value like these.
When speaking of law and evidence, Evans cites a saying that he says is common among police and lawyers: "He lies like an eyewitness." Unless I am getting it all wrong (impossible, as I'm getting the information from The Guardian), we have a truly classic case concerning the man recentlly executed in London for the crime of Looking As If You Might Be Muslim.
(Now I'm the one that's lying. The soldier who was on stakeout classified him as White when he saw him leave the building. In a picture in The Observer today (21 Aug, but I can't find it on the website) he looks as Muslim or Asian (not to say African, which the actual suspect was) as I do. But at the time we thought that was part of his crime.)
We all knew how he was wearing unreasonably bulky clothes in warm weather; it looked as if there were wires and things sticking out of the clothes; he ran into the station pursued by numerous heavily-armed police and jumped the barrier, as the cops also did, sensibly enough; and so on.
I suspect, from a conversation or two, that the English, with their tradition of law-abiding police, do not fully grasp the distinction between running away from a real policeman wearing a friendly Bobby-helmet and running from a couple of armed goons, looking like anybody else or worse, who may or may not identify themselves verbally as being on the payroll of a police organization and may or not be speaking the truth. There will be plenty more opportunities to learn; September 11 has changed everything. But in the July accounts of the matter, there was no mistaking that these guys were Government; at least, if you are used to a country in which large gangs of heavily armed men are not the norm.
This week we learned that that story was a lie from beginning to end. One bit was related to the truth: after walking calmly into the station and stopping to pick up a free newspaper, he ran for the train. To be sure, we know that no Englishman would do that, but he was, alas, an Illegal Alien who didn't know better. Right.
All Americans understand this: the story was the standard set of police lies to cover up a criminal dereliction of duty. Well, all Americans who aren't complete drooling idiots. Nothing new here, except that this was maybe beyond the expected American norm for police malfeasance. And maybe that gives us an excuse, along with a general trust in British legal institutions, for our believing the whole story and interpreting the incident in terms of it.
But wait! Here comes the surprise: it was not a police fabrication. It was the eyewitness account of one Christopher Wells (along with one or two others), who was right there on the train and saw it all with completely unbiased eyes. (You'll have to read down to near the end of the story to find this.)
The officials in London are thinking hard about the case, and may come up with better solutions to operational control of these dangerous operations, and even to a problem which they had quite brilliantly kept irrelevant for a copule of centuries, how to manage trigger-happy cops. The rest of us can relearn a lesson about eyewitness accounts rendered by whatever self-aggrandizing fabulist may have happened to be on the site.
Oh, and Mr. Wells should call some Yank talk-radio site, which will surely be glad to give him a hero's tour of Red-State America.
When speaking of law and evidence, Evans cites a saying that he says is common among police and lawyers: "He lies like an eyewitness." Unless I am getting it all wrong (impossible, as I'm getting the information from The Guardian), we have a truly classic case concerning the man recentlly executed in London for the crime of Looking As If You Might Be Muslim.
(Now I'm the one that's lying. The soldier who was on stakeout classified him as White when he saw him leave the building. In a picture in The Observer today (21 Aug, but I can't find it on the website) he looks as Muslim or Asian (not to say African, which the actual suspect was) as I do. But at the time we thought that was part of his crime.)
We all knew how he was wearing unreasonably bulky clothes in warm weather; it looked as if there were wires and things sticking out of the clothes; he ran into the station pursued by numerous heavily-armed police and jumped the barrier, as the cops also did, sensibly enough; and so on.
I suspect, from a conversation or two, that the English, with their tradition of law-abiding police, do not fully grasp the distinction between running away from a real policeman wearing a friendly Bobby-helmet and running from a couple of armed goons, looking like anybody else or worse, who may or may not identify themselves verbally as being on the payroll of a police organization and may or not be speaking the truth. There will be plenty more opportunities to learn; September 11 has changed everything. But in the July accounts of the matter, there was no mistaking that these guys were Government; at least, if you are used to a country in which large gangs of heavily armed men are not the norm.
This week we learned that that story was a lie from beginning to end. One bit was related to the truth: after walking calmly into the station and stopping to pick up a free newspaper, he ran for the train. To be sure, we know that no Englishman would do that, but he was, alas, an Illegal Alien who didn't know better. Right.
All Americans understand this: the story was the standard set of police lies to cover up a criminal dereliction of duty. Well, all Americans who aren't complete drooling idiots. Nothing new here, except that this was maybe beyond the expected American norm for police malfeasance. And maybe that gives us an excuse, along with a general trust in British legal institutions, for our believing the whole story and interpreting the incident in terms of it.
But wait! Here comes the surprise: it was not a police fabrication. It was the eyewitness account of one Christopher Wells (along with one or two others), who was right there on the train and saw it all with completely unbiased eyes. (You'll have to read down to near the end of the story to find this.)
The officials in London are thinking hard about the case, and may come up with better solutions to operational control of these dangerous operations, and even to a problem which they had quite brilliantly kept irrelevant for a copule of centuries, how to manage trigger-happy cops. The rest of us can relearn a lesson about eyewitness accounts rendered by whatever self-aggrandizing fabulist may have happened to be on the site.
Oh, and Mr. Wells should call some Yank talk-radio site, which will surely be glad to give him a hero's tour of Red-State America.
The very last Terry Schiavo item
One should let the poor woman die and rest. Yes. And that is done.
But the case--is that laid to rest? Not yet: Governor Voodoo-Medicine so loved it that he brought it back for one more bow as a zombie. Now you've seen the news stories about how his Attorney General has dropped the case, and that's all. Isn't it?
Do you really think you can bury one of the Undead without bothering to put the stake through its heart? Out of boredom and perhaps even decency, the respectable media are trying to do that. But maybe the thing will stay buried longer if people see what the AG said. Thanks to JRH (and thanks to Shakespeare's Sister for pointing me to his blog), you can read the handwriting on the stake.
I'd take exception to JRH's description of the tone, which he says sounds like a lecture. The affect of the piece (as we 18th-century music types like to say) is not pure academic exposition; it is exasperation. Here you can find out how, if you are a lawyer holding a responsible office, speaking with dignity and coherence and full backing of evidence, you pronounce B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.
But the case--is that laid to rest? Not yet: Governor Voodoo-Medicine so loved it that he brought it back for one more bow as a zombie. Now you've seen the news stories about how his Attorney General has dropped the case, and that's all. Isn't it?
Do you really think you can bury one of the Undead without bothering to put the stake through its heart? Out of boredom and perhaps even decency, the respectable media are trying to do that. But maybe the thing will stay buried longer if people see what the AG said. Thanks to JRH (and thanks to Shakespeare's Sister for pointing me to his blog), you can read the handwriting on the stake.
I'd take exception to JRH's description of the tone, which he says sounds like a lecture. The affect of the piece (as we 18th-century music types like to say) is not pure academic exposition; it is exasperation. Here you can find out how, if you are a lawyer holding a responsible office, speaking with dignity and coherence and full backing of evidence, you pronounce B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.
Moratorium?
Kevin Drum made a very decent and reasonable suggestion that all the blogosphere should lay off the politicking, the "political point scoring over the London attacks. Just for a day." Other good people followed.
Dadahead thinks otherwise, that politics is not a parlor game, but a matter of life and death. He's right. Of course the Right came out running in all directions and screaming political obscenities, and that would make it harder to behave oneself; but that's not the point.
The rules naturally do not apply so strictly to those who are there and suffering. And the one about jokes doesn't apply at all to Londoners, God bless 'em, who, it's said, were coming up with jokes two hours after the bombs went off.
Back here where nobody's getting hurt, Debra Saunders, our own aspiring Michelle Malkin clone, really rose to the occasion. Read it yourself if you're a masochist. Her general idea is that if the people who bomb Planned Parenthood offices and murder doctors were to do something this bad to us, we Liberals would can all this dumb civil liberties stuff and understanding-the-reasons, and we'd go and hang us some Christians from the nearest lamppost. At least, that's what's implied by her knowledge that we'd have the sense to go out and kill somebody who's somehow vaguely or tenuously or fictitiously connected with the crime, the way she wants to do and George does. Perhaps she's mistaken.
So you can tell, the day is over. Now I want to ask anyone who has the stomach to follow these things: did someone, somewhere on the Right, say anything decent yesterday? There is a sort of Anglophilia that's obligatory in the respectable Right, after all; so, was anyone at the National Review, or a Boston brahmin who speaks only to Cabots or possibly to God, or a pillar of the Eastern prep schools, or any of the people who love Winston Churchill not only for saving civilization but for trying to preserve the Empire in India and upholding the Gold Standard, moved to express himself about England, and London, even before thinking what a good time it would be to buy on the market's downtick or writing about how it all proved that Liberals are evil?
Lefties who have no use for aristocracy or empire were moved to express themselves about the sceptered isle with Shakespeare's help, or on their own (see below). Surely some Righties did the same; I'd be glad to hear about it.
Meanwhile, are the terrorists getting it wrong? New York is not the first place to choose if you want to imtimidate people or drive them to despair. Lots of media action, but quite disappointing effects as to toppling New York. Or London! The Blitz (42,000 dead) and the past 30 years of terrorism from their own archipelago: a great prospect for demoralization and chaos there.
And I can't write Madrilenos without hearing:
Madrid, qué bien resistes,
Madrid, qué bien resistes,
Madrid, qué bien resistes,
mamita mía,
los bombardeos.
los bombardeos.
De las bombas se ríen,
de las bombas se ríen,
de las bombas se ríen,
mamita mía,
los madrileños.
los madrileños.
Well, they didn't laugh at the bombs in Madrid; but there's something about these cities that's hard to beat down. (Text is from "Los Cuatro Generales", song from the Spanis Civil War.)
Dadahead thinks otherwise, that politics is not a parlor game, but a matter of life and death. He's right. Of course the Right came out running in all directions and screaming political obscenities, and that would make it harder to behave oneself; but that's not the point.
'Politics' is, for most of us, simply the practice of critically analyzing the most important issues of our time. Asking us to put aside politics for the day is tantamount to calling for a moratorium on rational thought.It's not too early, though, to think about what one will do the next time. Here is a modest proposwal that would show respect for the dead and for the living. For one day, anyway: No gloating; no invective; no demonstrating how your favorite irrelevant issue is proved by the day's unpleasant events; no clever jokes, please.
Which, of course, is precisely what the Right would like, and precisely what they got in the aftermath of 9/11.
The rules naturally do not apply so strictly to those who are there and suffering. And the one about jokes doesn't apply at all to Londoners, God bless 'em, who, it's said, were coming up with jokes two hours after the bombs went off.
Back here where nobody's getting hurt, Debra Saunders, our own aspiring Michelle Malkin clone, really rose to the occasion. Read it yourself if you're a masochist. Her general idea is that if the people who bomb Planned Parenthood offices and murder doctors were to do something this bad to us, we Liberals would can all this dumb civil liberties stuff and understanding-the-reasons, and we'd go and hang us some Christians from the nearest lamppost. At least, that's what's implied by her knowledge that we'd have the sense to go out and kill somebody who's somehow vaguely or tenuously or fictitiously connected with the crime, the way she wants to do and George does. Perhaps she's mistaken.
So you can tell, the day is over. Now I want to ask anyone who has the stomach to follow these things: did someone, somewhere on the Right, say anything decent yesterday? There is a sort of Anglophilia that's obligatory in the respectable Right, after all; so, was anyone at the National Review, or a Boston brahmin who speaks only to Cabots or possibly to God, or a pillar of the Eastern prep schools, or any of the people who love Winston Churchill not only for saving civilization but for trying to preserve the Empire in India and upholding the Gold Standard, moved to express himself about England, and London, even before thinking what a good time it would be to buy on the market's downtick or writing about how it all proved that Liberals are evil?
Lefties who have no use for aristocracy or empire were moved to express themselves about the sceptered isle with Shakespeare's help, or on their own (see below). Surely some Righties did the same; I'd be glad to hear about it.
Meanwhile, are the terrorists getting it wrong? New York is not the first place to choose if you want to imtimidate people or drive them to despair. Lots of media action, but quite disappointing effects as to toppling New York. Or London! The Blitz (42,000 dead) and the past 30 years of terrorism from their own archipelago: a great prospect for demoralization and chaos there.
And I can't write Madrilenos without hearing:
Madrid, qué bien resistes,
Madrid, qué bien resistes,
Madrid, qué bien resistes,
mamita mía,
los bombardeos.
los bombardeos.
De las bombas se ríen,
de las bombas se ríen,
de las bombas se ríen,
mamita mía,
los madrileños.
los madrileños.
Well, they didn't laugh at the bombs in Madrid; but there's something about these cities that's hard to beat down. (Text is from "Los Cuatro Generales", song from the Spanis Civil War.)
Something rather different
Would someone like to recommend a blog-consolidator other than Bloglines? I am damn well sick of seeing their freakin Bloglines Plumber. If they can't afford a backup system or just can't make their software work for two or three days at a time, I'm willing to pay [gasp] for someone who can do it.
Exploding flypaper
In case it's not immediately obvious, the title refers to the Flypaper Theory, under which we're drawing the enemy into Iraq where we wipe them out and keep them from attacking us here at home (sorry about that, Iraqis, but at least we're safe).
The best I can say to the horror is what Billmon said over at This Modern World:
"We are all New Yorkers, we are all Madrilenos, we are all Baghdadis. But I was a Londoner from the time I learned how to read. I know it shouldn't make any difference, but it does."
Meanwhile, the discontent of the American people with the war was leading, even before the failure of the great Presidential bucking-up speech and its lukewarm reception by the soldiers, to more speculation about Vietnam. I was reading in the last 24 hours about the historical parallels, and how the Tipping Point for public opinion (not policy, of course) was reached suddenly with the Tet Offensive: the enemy made a hugely successful attack which the public knew was simply impossible because we had been making such progress; and the game was up. Later, the authorities managed to prove the TO was a failure; an exercise in irrelevancy that's a candidate for Guinness.
The Iraqi insurgents, or resistance, certainly can't duplicate such an offensive now, as the commentators were saying. So the Tipping Point will be reached more gradually.
Or something.
The best I can say to the horror is what Billmon said over at This Modern World:
"We are all New Yorkers, we are all Madrilenos, we are all Baghdadis. But I was a Londoner from the time I learned how to read. I know it shouldn't make any difference, but it does."
Meanwhile, the discontent of the American people with the war was leading, even before the failure of the great Presidential bucking-up speech and its lukewarm reception by the soldiers, to more speculation about Vietnam. I was reading in the last 24 hours about the historical parallels, and how the Tipping Point for public opinion (not policy, of course) was reached suddenly with the Tet Offensive: the enemy made a hugely successful attack which the public knew was simply impossible because we had been making such progress; and the game was up. Later, the authorities managed to prove the TO was a failure; an exercise in irrelevancy that's a candidate for Guinness.
The Iraqi insurgents, or resistance, certainly can't duplicate such an offensive now, as the commentators were saying. So the Tipping Point will be reached more gradually.
Or something.
Le quatre juillet. Please rise and sing the Marseillaise
Everyone knows how France financed our Revolution, which could not possibly have succeeded without money to buy esssential supplies, particularly gunpowder.
When I say everyone, I mean, of course, at least half a dozen people in each state. Each of the larger Blue states.
But I had failed to notice, till I read a review of Lavoisier in the Year One by Madison Smartt Bell, who it was that provided that gunpowder. After some embarrassments in the Seven Years' War (which we call the French and Indian War), France decided to expand its gunpowder-making facilities by applying the latest Enlightenment science. The new production came on-line in time to supply the Americans, thanks to its director : Antoine Lavoisier.
Well, this republic, at least, had need of savants; and on this day we should thank him of whom (according to the apocryphal story) the French one decided it had no need.
Nations, of course, never do good things for entirely pure motives. France did not support our revolution out of devotion to Enlightenment ideals of Liberty, whether those of Locke or of Voltaire et al; nor out of fondness for the British colonists, their recent enemies on the North American continent where the French empire suffered such a disastrous loss. It wanted to weaken the British, that's all. Nor need we overlook that the money provided for purchase of powder went right back to France to buy powder, setting the classic pattern for 20th-century American foreign aid.
Then, as to repaying our debt to France (people really did use that phrase once upon a time), the United States did not come running to save European civilization in 1914 and 1939, but held out, as our English friends never tire of telling us, for years in the First war, and until the other guys declared war on us in the Second.
But, T. S. Eliot or none, there is something to be said for eventually doing the right thing if your reasons aren't entirely wrong. Some people who were also France did love Liberty; and the US got around to doing some damn fine things in Europe when it got around to it. (Shall we just forget Versailles? No one comes out a winner there. Well, maybe John Maynard Keynes.)
Jacques Chirac is said to have had very naughty profit-seeking motives in 2002-2003; but in fact the French made a serious effort to stop our government from pursuing a disastrous military adventure based entirely on the most dubious grounds, except for those grounds that were not even dubious. They failed; had their hearts been pure enough to give them the strength of ten, they still would have failed; but they seriously tried. Today I'll raise a toast to them; maybe I'll save the Marseillaise till the 14th when I run a video of Casablanca.
When I say everyone, I mean, of course, at least half a dozen people in each state. Each of the larger Blue states.
But I had failed to notice, till I read a review of Lavoisier in the Year One by Madison Smartt Bell, who it was that provided that gunpowder. After some embarrassments in the Seven Years' War (which we call the French and Indian War), France decided to expand its gunpowder-making facilities by applying the latest Enlightenment science. The new production came on-line in time to supply the Americans, thanks to its director : Antoine Lavoisier.
Well, this republic, at least, had need of savants; and on this day we should thank him of whom (according to the apocryphal story) the French one decided it had no need.
Nations, of course, never do good things for entirely pure motives. France did not support our revolution out of devotion to Enlightenment ideals of Liberty, whether those of Locke or of Voltaire et al; nor out of fondness for the British colonists, their recent enemies on the North American continent where the French empire suffered such a disastrous loss. It wanted to weaken the British, that's all. Nor need we overlook that the money provided for purchase of powder went right back to France to buy powder, setting the classic pattern for 20th-century American foreign aid.
Then, as to repaying our debt to France (people really did use that phrase once upon a time), the United States did not come running to save European civilization in 1914 and 1939, but held out, as our English friends never tire of telling us, for years in the First war, and until the other guys declared war on us in the Second.
But, T. S. Eliot or none, there is something to be said for eventually doing the right thing if your reasons aren't entirely wrong. Some people who were also France did love Liberty; and the US got around to doing some damn fine things in Europe when it got around to it. (Shall we just forget Versailles? No one comes out a winner there. Well, maybe John Maynard Keynes.)
Jacques Chirac is said to have had very naughty profit-seeking motives in 2002-2003; but in fact the French made a serious effort to stop our government from pursuing a disastrous military adventure based entirely on the most dubious grounds, except for those grounds that were not even dubious. They failed; had their hearts been pure enough to give them the strength of ten, they still would have failed; but they seriously tried. Today I'll raise a toast to them; maybe I'll save the Marseillaise till the 14th when I run a video of Casablanca.
A master of meiosis
Lord Peter Wimsey, sensing that a break is needed in the growing tension among the group in his parlor, calls for liquid refreshment all around, even though it's still morning. Offering some sherry to Miss Twitterton, he quiets her protestations about taking a drink at that time by assuring her, "you will find it as mild as your own parsnip wine."
The new-wedded lord then gives a glass to Lady Peter, who has also sampled that lady's parsnip wine, and who comments, sotto voce, "You are a master of meiosis."
In case any of the rabid evolutionists should stop by, let me note that meiosis is "a figure of speech by which the impression is intentionally conveyed that a thing is less in size, importance,etc., that it really is"; also, a synonym for litotes. And the meaning goes a long way back before biology latched onto it. (Cf. ellipsis, parable, and hyperbole.)
In other news, Russia and China had a friendly summit meeting and issued a friendly communiqué decrying monopoly and domination in world politics and calling for an end to "attempts to divide nations into leaders and those being led." This, coming from Russia and China, is as hilarious as is the idea of long-term cooperation between those two imperial powers. But hey, a politician's gotta do what a politician's gotta do.
The hilarity dies down when you contemplate the specific issues on which they pledge cooperation against unnamed hegemonists' evil interference: Chechnya and Taiwan.
But the commentators bring the fun back. At the New Eurasia Foundation in Moscow, Andrei Kortunov tells us that the statement means that Russia and China "don't quite believe the sincerity of the second Bush administration's attempts to break its image of being a proponent of unilateral actions and decisions." As if that weren't enough, he adds that "This may be connected with the unilateral actions of Washington in the Middle East, its latest decisions on increasing its defense budget and some others."
A master of meiosis.
The new-wedded lord then gives a glass to Lady Peter, who has also sampled that lady's parsnip wine, and who comments, sotto voce, "You are a master of meiosis."
In case any of the rabid evolutionists should stop by, let me note that meiosis is "a figure of speech by which the impression is intentionally conveyed that a thing is less in size, importance,etc., that it really is"; also, a synonym for litotes. And the meaning goes a long way back before biology latched onto it. (Cf. ellipsis, parable, and hyperbole.)
In other news, Russia and China had a friendly summit meeting and issued a friendly communiqué decrying monopoly and domination in world politics and calling for an end to "attempts to divide nations into leaders and those being led." This, coming from Russia and China, is as hilarious as is the idea of long-term cooperation between those two imperial powers. But hey, a politician's gotta do what a politician's gotta do.
The hilarity dies down when you contemplate the specific issues on which they pledge cooperation against unnamed hegemonists' evil interference: Chechnya and Taiwan.
But the commentators bring the fun back. At the New Eurasia Foundation in Moscow, Andrei Kortunov tells us that the statement means that Russia and China "don't quite believe the sincerity of the second Bush administration's attempts to break its image of being a proponent of unilateral actions and decisions." As if that weren't enough, he adds that "This may be connected with the unilateral actions of Washington in the Middle East, its latest decisions on increasing its defense budget and some others."
A master of meiosis.
Requiem for an airhead
Bill Kaysing, who originated the hoax that the Moon landings were a hoax, is dead. Has been for months, but it was just announced. The Bad Astronomy blog has a report that has an interesting take: in addition to being a gentleman who observes de mortuis nil nisi bonum, the BABlogger finds that that abominable bit of work has had good side effects in getting many people interested in the reality of the Apollo program.
Read the comments, too. It's a bit of a shock to see how many people testify to their own birth or rebirth of interest thanks to Kaysing et al. Even more of a hoot: when a comment finally treats the old fraud as roughly as he deserves, it's by a Canadian! Sorry about the stereotyping, and happy Canada Day; Porlock Senior didn't take out Canadian citizenship for nothing.
Read the comments, too. It's a bit of a shock to see how many people testify to their own birth or rebirth of interest thanks to Kaysing et al. Even more of a hoot: when a comment finally treats the old fraud as roughly as he deserves, it's by a Canadian! Sorry about the stereotyping, and happy Canada Day; Porlock Senior didn't take out Canadian citizenship for nothing.
The truth about blogging
You've probably seen this already, but if not, Leiter Reports now has the real story on blogs, persuasion, and invective.
I cling to the hope that it may be right not to agree 100% with his view. There is always the chance that some person who isn't already a partisan might drop by and possibly be persuaded. Or maybe not, in blogs. More likely in newsgroups, and I'm well aware of what I'm saying when I say that.
Thomas Jefferson and C. S. Lewis both wrote of the uncertain nature of persuasion; and they were talking about the reactions of reasonable people. I think John Locke did also, though I doubt I could ever find the quote.
But hey, as long as persuasion is such a completely uncertain business, why not just blast away at the idiots and criminals and not worry about wounding the feelings of innocents who happen by? There are hard questions and easy questions, as Leiter says. So off I go to indulge my current favorite guilty pleasure, the Rude Pundit.
Update: Been hearing enough lately about how Baghdad is just like Houston? Oops, I wouldn't want someone to read a hidden attack on Houston into that; we pundits just mean Baghdad has this crime rate that's not so bad compared to this or that US city. Now, with a tip of the hat to Leiter again, read what the United States government says about vehicular travel in Iraq.
I cling to the hope that it may be right not to agree 100% with his view. There is always the chance that some person who isn't already a partisan might drop by and possibly be persuaded. Or maybe not, in blogs. More likely in newsgroups, and I'm well aware of what I'm saying when I say that.
Thomas Jefferson and C. S. Lewis both wrote of the uncertain nature of persuasion; and they were talking about the reactions of reasonable people. I think John Locke did also, though I doubt I could ever find the quote.
But hey, as long as persuasion is such a completely uncertain business, why not just blast away at the idiots and criminals and not worry about wounding the feelings of innocents who happen by? There are hard questions and easy questions, as Leiter says. So off I go to indulge my current favorite guilty pleasure, the Rude Pundit.
Update: Been hearing enough lately about how Baghdad is just like Houston? Oops, I wouldn't want someone to read a hidden attack on Houston into that; we pundits just mean Baghdad has this crime rate that's not so bad compared to this or that US city. Now, with a tip of the hat to Leiter again, read what the United States government says about vehicular travel in Iraq.
Look down, look down
and see my pretty little blog formatted decently again. Thanks to Zachary for getting me off dead center.
was:
that lonesome road, and you'll find my text.
Blogspot seems to have mucked up something. I'm not the only one whose text has suddenly been forced down below the sidebar. Meanwhile I need to keep assigning new dates to this silly text to keep it on top.
was:
that lonesome road, and you'll find my text.
Blogspot seems to have mucked up something. I'm not the only one whose text has suddenly been forced down below the sidebar. Meanwhile I need to keep assigning new dates to this silly text to keep it on top.
Reader, if you require a foreign policy disaster,
look about you, or to the South.
Latin America: our own backyard. Latin America: an official exclusive United States sphere of influence for 180 years. Latin America--
Without Denis DeKat's pointer, how long would it have been before I knew how stunningly the boggle-headed klunks in charge of telling the rest of the world what to do have been screwing up in that obscure little backwater of the modern world?(Less than 90 miles from home!) Read it and barf. Then cheer. They are simply losing this one, and there's no army available to invade anybody about it.
Latin America: our own backyard. Latin America: an official exclusive United States sphere of influence for 180 years. Latin America--
Without Denis DeKat's pointer, how long would it have been before I knew how stunningly the boggle-headed klunks in charge of telling the rest of the world what to do have been screwing up in that obscure little backwater of the modern world?(Less than 90 miles from home!) Read it and barf. Then cheer. They are simply losing this one, and there's no army available to invade anybody about it.
But seriously, folks
RangelMD, an actual physician, not just playing one on TV or in the Senate, gives us this:
If that gets you down, cheer up with the comments at Orac, where I picked this up. Sorry, I have to quote one comment here, from Ron Sullivan: "I did not have diagnosis with that woman."
Read the rest for his case that Frist needs to lose his medical license."I'd like to close this evening speaking more as a physician than as a United States Senator and really speak to my involvement as a physician and -- and as a Senator and as leader in the United States Senate in what has been a fascinating course of events for us over the last 48 hours."As someone who identified themselves and emphasized their role as a physician Dr. Frist broke several ethical rules that March day. He claimed to make a diagnosis on a patient without directly examining her or reading her medical records. He did not make or keep any formal patient record of his medical evaluation of this case. He gave his professional opinion on a patient who resides in a state where he has no license to practice medicine. He misused his professional opinion (as officially entered into the Congressional record) and abused and misrepresented his stature as a licensed physician for the purposes of influencing a major legislative body during debate on pending legislation.
If that gets you down, cheer up with the comments at Orac, where I picked this up. Sorry, I have to quote one comment here, from Ron Sullivan: "I did not have diagnosis with that woman."
The Hitler Zombie
"When you compare your opponent to Hitler, you demean your opponent, you demean yourself, and you demean Hitler."
--Jon Stewart
Today Orac defends his position on the brain-eating Hitler zombie. You don't have to have read the post he's defending, much less disagree with the point Durbin was trying to make (Orac doesn't), in order to benefit from reading it.
Nor is there any real need to parse that sentence and figure out who is on which side.
I wonder if the zombie is related to the worm in the brain, discovered by Richard Mitchell in Less Than Words Can Say, which devours the part of the brain that governs the use of the active voice, and thereby causes a move into administrative jobs. How do you analyze a zombie's DNA?
--Jon Stewart
Today Orac defends his position on the brain-eating Hitler zombie. You don't have to have read the post he's defending, much less disagree with the point Durbin was trying to make (Orac doesn't), in order to benefit from reading it.
Nor is there any real need to parse that sentence and figure out who is on which side.
I wonder if the zombie is related to the worm in the brain, discovered by Richard Mitchell in Less Than Words Can Say, which devours the part of the brain that governs the use of the active voice, and thereby causes a move into administrative jobs. How do you analyze a zombie's DNA?
How to write a spoof
Yesterday's ruminations by the head of the CYACIA remind me to look for historical precedent. Before getting to the point, here are the history and the generalities.
Mark Twain wrote a number of outrageous hoaxes, or satires, depending on how you take them. In his early days in Nevada, he reported a bloody multiple murder that shocked everyone in town, since they didn't notice details such as that the man who murdered his family was a well-known bachelor. And there was the Petrified Man, described in great detail, with some obvious impossibilities in the geography, and the small matter that he was petrified in the position of thumbing his nose.
Then, later, there was a wonderfully stuffy and humorless British review of A Tramp Abroad, which the discerning reader (like, ahem, me at age 16) could see was written by Twain himself. (I think it was an utterly Twainish deadpan "This is surely an exaggeration" that provided what we now call the Tipping Point.) It got a lot of attention, including some from smart people who told Twain that it was a fake, and he had been taken in. They had a hard time accepting the obvious truth when told about it.
Anyway, Twain always played fair, sorta, putting in something outrageous enough to make it clear that the whole thing was false, provided you were paying attention. That was the problem with the massacre, as Twain later perceived it: it was so lurid and shocking that no one had his brain turned on while reading it.
The recent creationist manifesto might be real, and it might be a hoax to expose the profound ignorance of a supposed expert on the creationist side. By the Mark Twain rules, it ought to be a fake, but you can't be sure when you don't know anything about the author: this kind of thing is perfectly possible among sincere creationists, as you can see from the PhD who expressed herself as unsure that it was for real, but was favorably inclined.
So, Porter Goss of the CYA says that he knows where Bin Laden is. Then, to make sure we understand in what sense he is saying that, he adds in true Mark Twain fashion that we can't just go in and get him because of "our sense of international obligation, fair play."
Mark Twain wrote a number of outrageous hoaxes, or satires, depending on how you take them. In his early days in Nevada, he reported a bloody multiple murder that shocked everyone in town, since they didn't notice details such as that the man who murdered his family was a well-known bachelor. And there was the Petrified Man, described in great detail, with some obvious impossibilities in the geography, and the small matter that he was petrified in the position of thumbing his nose.
Then, later, there was a wonderfully stuffy and humorless British review of A Tramp Abroad, which the discerning reader (like, ahem, me at age 16) could see was written by Twain himself. (I think it was an utterly Twainish deadpan "This is surely an exaggeration" that provided what we now call the Tipping Point.) It got a lot of attention, including some from smart people who told Twain that it was a fake, and he had been taken in. They had a hard time accepting the obvious truth when told about it.
Anyway, Twain always played fair, sorta, putting in something outrageous enough to make it clear that the whole thing was false, provided you were paying attention. That was the problem with the massacre, as Twain later perceived it: it was so lurid and shocking that no one had his brain turned on while reading it.
The recent creationist manifesto might be real, and it might be a hoax to expose the profound ignorance of a supposed expert on the creationist side. By the Mark Twain rules, it ought to be a fake, but you can't be sure when you don't know anything about the author: this kind of thing is perfectly possible among sincere creationists, as you can see from the PhD who expressed herself as unsure that it was for real, but was favorably inclined.
So, Porter Goss of the CYA says that he knows where Bin Laden is. Then, to make sure we understand in what sense he is saying that, he adds in true Mark Twain fashion that we can't just go in and get him because of "our sense of international obligation, fair play."
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