Thursday, January 19. 2006
Jim Pinkerton has a straight-forward thesis at TCS about the formation of regional religio-cultural blocs around the world - the Western/Christian, the Chinese/Confucian, the Indian, etc. The caliphate aspires to be one of them. A quote: So regional blocs, based on a common characteristic, such as religious and cultural ancestry, are naturally powerful. And of course, if one country is the leader of such a bloc, it doesn’t want a rival within that bloc to emerge -- and thus it can’t be displeasing to American strategists that the European Union is foundering. Just as Europeans were once eager to keep the rest of the world divided, so we should not lament the failure of a Brussels-based superstate to emerge as much more than a costly red-tape dispenser. America is effectively unchallenged within the Christian Bloc. But there’s a problem dead ahead: As we look around the world, we can see that other countries are forming blocs of their own, too. China, for example, is pulling together a Confucian bloc in East Asia. The People’s Republic is an empire of its own, people-wise and territory-wise, but it is now using its longer and longer politico-economic hook to reel in as many of its neighbors as it can.
It makes sense. And, as I see it, it's a post-imperial development, since it is no longer necessary to "own" another nation to make money trading with it. It's the new version of Ye Olde Power Game. Read the whole thing here.
The French and Indian Wars, on TV tonite: Irish Pennants. Yes, they were a very important (to the future USA) aspect of the war between the Brits and the French. But not as historically important as the later series of Indian Wars in which the Indians allied themselves with the Brits to prevent migration into the Indian Lands, and the 19th century Indian Wars when land-hungry American homesteaders succeeded in conquering the country. CraigsList. Who is Craig? Dinocrat Powell on Iran: Confed. Yank. Hillary too (is she going to do a daily "major speech" between now and 2008? - or is she trying to distract from the Barrett Report?) When do women smell best? LiveScience Condi is shaking up State in a major way: Checkerboard Why Hollywood loves Johnny Cash and not Merle Haggard: City Journal (Maggie's Farm loves both - and City Journal too.) Response to Iranian nukes? RWNH goes through the thinking as if he worked for the State Dept. I wish he did. A way to stand up to the ACLU's attacks against American security. Michelle. PSA, Prostate cancer, medical tests, and economics. Very good, in-depth piece by Dr. Bob Osama (or his impersonator) cries uncle. RTLC Google vs. Yahoo: A VC Fuel economy to fall? Env. Econ. The UN maps that delete Israel. Atlas Another gun lobby, new to me, looks good, deserves donation. Citizen's Committee
This piece is making the rounds today: Number 10 - Life is a sexually transmitted disorder. Number 9 - Good health is merely a term for the slowest possible rate at which one can die. Number 8 - Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
Number 7 - Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
Number 6 - Some people are like a Slinky...not really good for
anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
Number 5 - Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. Number 4 - All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism. Number 3 - Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred
dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?
Number 2 - In the 60's, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
AND THE NUMBER 1 THOUGHT FOR 2006 - We know exactly where every cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven't got a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.
Was the American Civil War the first modern war? And what role did slavery play? New book by Stout: Upon the Altar of the Nation. NY Sun review. The definitive new Beatles biography, by Bob Spitz. The author of the iconoclastic Dylan: A Biography spent years working on this Beatles bio, a magnum opus which has had excellent reviews.
Doctoring in Tibet. The new microjets. An excellent new trend: Local news blogging. Pressthink. This model could, and should, go worldwide. The Liberal Goatherd: Video satire on the Alito Hearings by Fidelis More humor: A redneck alcohol and ammo game. Chose your weapon. And even more humor: Broder praises Al Gore Earmarks and taxpayer-funded lobbying. Kesselman Custom-made bacteria, including germs that blink like Christmas lights. Science Times The Barret Report, finally: Captain Ed
 And now it's...
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We're marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!
Lyrics from The Producers, by Mel Brooks The Bird Dog family did a comparison - the new Producers movie compared with the original with Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock and Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom. As you know, the Broadway show was based on the 1968 movie, and then the new movie was based on the Broadway show (!?!). The 1968 version wins, hands down. If only on Mostel's amazing FACE. This is Marx Brothers-quality farce from the spottily-brilliant Mel Brooks.
Wednesday, January 18. 2006
Due to ferocious windstorms in southern New England (the second such storm in a week with gusts to 70 mph), Maggie's server in Connecticut was down until midnight Wednesday. Many trees down, power lines down, etc. And FEMA was nowhere to be found! Sorry for any inconvenience.
Very disappointed to see some of my favorite Justices on the wrong side of this one. This is not to make any medical point, even though it is medical practice across the USA to non-assist pain-ridden dying patients to "comfortably" slip away on morphine. My point is political: this is a state issue. Like abortion - if a state wants it, it's up to them, despite all of the complex moral considerations. Power to the people! Not to the Feds, who have no monopoly on wisdom or life experience. May I refer our readers to Amendments lX and X ? Having said that, though, I'd hate to see us become a country where the ill and infirm are expected to go away to save us money and trouble and inconvenience - which is what abortion is about, as I see it. That would be a Brave New World.
The Volvo Fallacy, aka the Fallacy of Misleading Vividness, is committed when a rare but memorable occurance is given undue statistical weight and meaning because of its dramatic nature. The "Volvo" comes from the guy who changed his mind about buying a Volvo, despite safety reports, after hearing someone tell him that he knew someone whose Volvo had the wheel fall off on the highway, and crashed and died. This fallacy works because the vividness factor emotionally overpowers one's statistical sense and one's common sense, resulting in a superstitious-like reaction. Fifteen years ago, I noticed a $100 bill half-hidden in a pile of leaves at the edge of a parking lot I frequent. I still cannot park there without a glance at that spot, even though I am a rational human. Another: I heard somebody choked to death on a steak at Bob's Angus Steak House, so I will never go there again. Another: I will never take a flight out of Boston again, after 9-11. Another: I will move from DC to northern Vermont if someone stops the govt from searching for nukes. This is a good one, because the statistical likelihood is an unknown, making it even more vivid in the imagination, and possibly rational. How can this fallacy be exploited? Try this one: Don't try to convince me that hunting is safe. Four years ago, I heard that a deer hunter killed a game warden by mistake in the woods. (The statistical facts that driving to work, flying in a plane, living in Washington DC, or playing high school football, are more dangerous is ignored.)
A liberal is someone who is so open-minded that he can't take his own side in an argument. Robert Frost (H/T, Neo-neocon)
Tuesday, January 17. 2006
For Libertarians and traditional conservatives, any expansion of power by any of the three branches of government is seen as a threat to freedom. And both would agree that the main threat to freedom is not specifically an imperial presidency, but an imperial Federal Government - a condition which Leftists and Democrats have pursued since FDR. Why a threat? Because it is too far from the people, too far from local daily life, and too arrogant. When it comes to the national defense, however, things are different. Libertarians and conservatives tend to view national defense as one of the genuine constitutional functions of the Feds, while the Liberals seek to de-fang America for reasons of their own. It's the one area in which they wish to see the Federal Govt weakened. I happen to believe that anything Bush has done to monitor cell calls was a good idea, and that he would have been tarred and feathered and chased out of the country if he had neglected such a basic defensive tactic. And has nothing to do with tyranny. And any liberal brouhaha about it is pure opportunistic partisanship, hysterical scare tactics, and a pile of BS - which they know but won't admit. Because were they in power, they would have done the same thing. Al Gore wants to be Secretary of State. Or any paying job - he's been living off his inheritance and tobacco farm and trust fund - right? No manly pride in that. Too similar to Ted the Swimmer. Paul Craig Roberts has written a thoughtful but, in the end, hysterical piece on this subject here. Off this point, but along the same lines, our Yankee neighbor Tom Bowler clarifies some political differences here.
Dear Abby, Some of my best friends tell me that I must have a fear and anxiety problem if I buy into the idea that Presidential authority needs to be increased during wartime. They say that's what Presidents always try to do, and wars are just a good excuse to scare us and take away our freedom. Plus there is always one war or another anyway. But other friends tell me that I'm right to want the government to protect me from the mad bombers, because I can't do it myself. I'm just too busy and flustered to have time to monitor the Al Quaida phone calls to Boston and LA, but someone has to do it. That's what we hire them to do, and we fire them when they don't do it. And my boyfriend says FDR did the same thing, and he was the Father of our Country. Who is FDR? I am just so totally confused now, and worried that all of this disagreement could damage my friendships. So what's a girl to do? Sincerely, Mixed-up in Minneapolis
From a piece this week in the CSM re the Alito hearings: "It's hard to get people to understand what the court means in their daily lives," says Debra Ness, President of the National Partnership for Women and Families, which is stepping up e-mails that make it easy for people to contact senators. "If courts become a less conducive branch for advocacy, we will turn to the other two branches of government," she adds.
Precisely. That is where "advocacy" belongs - in the other two branches. Persuade voters, if you can. It is hard work, though, compared to fund-raising and hiring lawyers.
From a post by Bill Quick on the future of the political parties: We still have three classes, but they are vastly different from the Marxian concept. We have a producing class, a consuming class, and a political class. There are overlaps, of course, and much movement from one to the other, but, in general, the three divisions work. I suspect my readers will find my enshrinement of politicians into a class all their own to be the most surprising, but what else can you call it? More than 21 million people are employed by government at all levels in the US, by far the single biggest classification of employment in this country. Government workers comprise about 15 percent of the total work force, and exert a significant effect on the political culture of the nation as a whole. The reason for this is simple: Government workers neither produce nor consume in any sense relevant to classical notions of capitalism. Every penny they "earn" is taken from the pockets of those who actually produce things. Every penney they spend returns to those pockets. Their "consumption" is perfectly balanced by their "production," and hence, like corporate taxes, they are an artifact that exists only in a theoretical sense. Yet this shell game permits them a lifestyle in general better than any similar group of their counterparts in private industry, and so their deeply vested interest is in the continuation of the state, and is, hence, a political interest. They are the political class to a far greater and more meaningful extent than those who dabble in politics for reasons of ideology. Further, some segments of the political class - and not just elected politicans - are beginning to show one of the historical markers of any class - their class status is becoming hereditary.
Read the whole thing at Daily Pundit. (his links weren't working so you must scroll down.)
From Ten poor word usages which will expose our lack of education and could damage a career. Including "hopefully": "Everyone uses "hopefully" as a shortcut for "I hope." It is not. Yes, the dictionary allows it, but that's just bending to popular usage. In my book, there is only one correct use for "hopefully." It's a synonym for "prayerfully"—as in, "She looked up hopefully and said, 'Dear Lord, please make it rain soon, or we'll have no harvest.'" Do you want to say "I hope"? Then say "I hope."" Read all ten, including since and because, and .everyone and they.
12-23-05 Hermaphroditic Numbers: Learning Hebrew Hebrew -- learning it -- I have said little about. I play in my head
what I might sound like if my Hebrew errors were in English. I can
only approximate. In Hebrew, each verb has a connecting word following
it before aproper noun; not entirely like English. One word, et, is
not translateable; literally it could mean 'to.' in some contexts.
But I might err in saying, "I want to talk "on" you." Or, "May I ride
to you in your car." I will try to sort out a few more examples. But now to numbers.
Hebrew numbers are hermaphroditic, or perhaps have gender dysphoria,
or like some primitive life forms, change gender at puberty. First,
Hebrew is a gendered tongue (unlike us simpler-minded English
speakers). therefore, there are female and male numbers. Rather,
whena number is associated with a noun, it takes on the gender of the
noun. Here, already we have a chameleon-like quality of numbers, a
readiness to take on the morphology of whom it is abutting. But,
that's just the beginnig. Feminine words generally end with ah, or et
--- unless they are numbers. Male nubmers generally end with ah; up
until they reach puberty -- eleven. Then male nubmers lose their
ah's, a version of castration realization. But, female numbers, upon
reaching puberty, grow a tail, eh. Perhaps a version of female penis
realization: hit puberty, get a tail.
Continue reading "Guest Author: Aliyah Diary # 11"
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Abraham Lincoln
A Moslem cultural exception for smoking in bars in NYC? Gates. Similarly, in Scotland, Moslems want a Catholic school to teach Islam instead. Ace. What gives with all of these demands? Me and my friends have lots of demands, but the world ignores us. Do we have to go Moslem? A good Bush video parody. Senators openly discuss military options re Iran. Reuters. I'd prefer to see a revolution of sanity in Iran. Olduvai George is Carl Buell, an animal artist specializing in ancient animals, who now paints with Photoshop and graphics tablets. Very cool. Shows you how he does it, here. H/T, Synthstuff. Colorful Narcissists: Kennedy and Robertson. Austin Bay Greenwalt's new documentary goes after Walmart. Same guy who did MacDonalds. Now it's liberal Dems blocking the schoolhouse door. John Fund on Florida and vouchers. Why does. Mass. keep losing population? Jacoby
Monday, January 16. 2006
A fresh look at Stossel's Stupid in America. And "have the unions won?" The latest on vouchers at CSM A high school newspaper wouldn't be this dumb: Michelle with the NYT's latest. From Captain Ed: The debate over abortion has never gone away, and as science teaches us more about embryonic development, the question of killing a foetus for the convenience of the mother becomes more and more complicated. The electorate has the sense that Roe stole the ability of the people to make their own decision about policy regarding abortion and created an unresolvable political impasse as a result. The usurpation of authority that the Court committed also poisoned its role in America's governing system, with the current poisonous tone for Supreme Cout and federal appellate bench confirmation hearings resulting from that point. If anything, the Alito hearings show that the issue of abortion has become an albatross around the necks of Democrats.
 Harvested from here:
Joan Baez:
"I heard about Bob Dylan before I heard him. Somebody invited me to Gerde's Folk City in 1961, and that was the first I heard him sing. He knocked me flat. Everything everyone said [about him] was right. I thought he was brilliant, amazing, a scuff ball." Donovan:[After mentioning the accusations of "ripping off" Dylan and being irritated with Dylan comparisons in general, Donovan tells this anecdote:] "I remember arriving, and Bobby Neuwirth, Dylan's roadie at the time, quietly bringing me into Dylan's suite... I went into a little television room, creeped in and shut the door. It was dark in there. Dylan was just a shadow. He was looking at the ice skating championships from Austria on television in a darkened room. He didn't say anything. We just sat down. Neither asked the other a question. There was nothing to say, nothing to ask. Slowly my eyes got accustomed to the dark, and I realized there were other figures in the room sitting on the couch. Slowly the figures became more real. It was John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I must say I felt a little out of my depth." Bono of U2:
"I think he is a very tenacious character. I think underneath all the so-called eccentricity, which I think is just a mask, there's a very true person. He's a good father --- I've seen him with his children --- with a moral compass, and who can get lost at sea like everybody. But I think he's very strong." George Harrison:
"Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel." Levon Helm of The Band:
"He's turned himself into a decent bandleader. He don't strum no more. Bobby plays an electric guitar. He plays like [Steve] Cropper plays. He's really part of the rhythm section. Oh man, I love the way Bob has led his band... I like to go like that, just no plan, and play it all by ear. He's as good at it as anybody I know." Dave Matthews:
[Asked to name his favorites.] "It wouldn't be fair if I didn't name every Dylan record. It almost makes me furious sometimes, how good his lyrics are. You know, you aspire to things. I'm trying and trying [to write a song], and I'll get something and I'll say, 'That's pretty good,' and then I'll listen to Blood On the Tracks and think 'Who the hell am I kidding? What the hell am I talking about?' 'Come in, she said / I'll give you / shelter from the storm.' Asshole!" Paul Simon:
"I don't think [Dylan and the Beatles] influenced me a lot. I think it was inevitable; they were so powerful that you couldn't really escape the influence... As for Bob, I don't know. He's like the most mysterious of all the people of our generation. He's sort of impenetrable, really."
A personal look at the abortion issue by Am Princess The Gaia Theory: I hope this fellow Lovelock is wrong. And, in keeping with the theme, very strong positive review of the 2007 Tahoe. Stunningly beautiful cinematography. See it. Hero (2004) Cats think HDTV is reality. Ahmadinejad update: Method to his madness? Telegraph. And more on the cult of the Hidden Imam: LGF Pacifists: One person highlighted by YARGB. And the Methodist Bishops. Did The Netherlands (!) take anti-terror efforts too far? RTLC Murtha needs a neurological check-up. Unbelievable. Ankle-Biting Rowland's successor, Repub. Rell, on track in CT. Calif. Yank. How did she do that? Shadegg seems to be the bloggers' favorite. Kudlow.
Sunday, January 15. 2006
 We had a magnificent wind and snow storm last night in southern New England. Powerful, exciting, exhilarating, and humbling Yankee weather. Trees and powerlines down everywhere, and roads blocked all over the place. Church had no power and no heat - like in the old days - so those of us who made it huddled in "The Upper Room" instead of the sanctuary and it worked just fine. Cozy. Those church candles found a real purpose - illumination, instead of atmosphere. And a sermon concerning the dark side of God which I will discuss on the blog one of these days, soon.
Listening to George Jones, Emmylou, Johnny Cash, and Alison Kraus, Norm, if you were wondering. Plus some of The Dylanologist's recent Dylan bootlegs which he gave me for Christmas. Will pick an opera later - not sure which yet. And putting off working on quarterly taxes as long as possible. Also wondering why no-one is commenting on my Truthiness piece - I thought it was a good take-off point. I guess not - damn. That's why I am not in the marketing business. Just no sense of "mass market." But we don't want to be a boutique blog: we want to be Walmart! Or, at least, Costco. The price is right, isn't it? One more thing - the blog Humbug introduced themselves to me via email. They specialize in detecting fallacy and bullshit, and have a good sense of fun. I will not permit Barrister to read their stuff - don't want us to inadvertently plagiarize on our new Fallacy of the Week idea, which we arrogantly imagined was an original idea. Here's one of their latest posts - on Princeton's appalling Peter Singer. And a final comment: Powerline is remarkable today. Too much good stuff. How do those guys do it? This one, to only single out one of many fine pieces.
 An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
Aldous Huxley
A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
Mark Twain All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.
Bob Dylan One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.
Dr. Karl Menninger What is Truth?
Pontius Pilate We posted briefly on this new word "truthiness" a couple of months ago, but it deserves more attention. The word stands more or less in contrast to the non-word "factiness," as I understand it. It brings to mind the comment of a friend who once described the processed cheese we were putting on burgers as "a remarkably food-like substance." "Truthiness" is a truth-like substance. The Mixing Memory blog (which deals mostly with Cognitive Psychology) has a nice short piece on the subject, and I quote here: "Truthy, not facty" strikes me as a pretty good way of describing the way we usually think about things. Most of the time, when we're thinking about the world, we're not trying to determine whether the information we're receiving from it is factual, but instead working to integrate it with the representations we've already got. The information that we're likely to notice, and keep, is just the information that fits with those representations, regardless of whether that information happens to fit with the facts. If something is truthy because it fits with our beliefs, but not with facts, then a lot of what we'll end up believing with be truthy, not facty. It's because of this that you get things like cognitive dissonance or the confirmation bias. Those involve searching for and emphasizing truthiness over factiness.
Thus a cognitive psychologist, or maybe any psychologist, might find the new word handy because it has to do with the way our minds deal with things - in a rule-of-thumb, experience-based way which expects or wants things to fit our existing ideas and images. (A "representation" is what psychologists and psychoanalysts call a package of memory, image, idea and emotion. It's called a "re-presentation" because it's constructed on the inside, and thus necessarily colored and distorted to varying degrees for all sorts of psychological reasons.) I suspect that, for a long time, the idea of a round earth contained fact but lacked truthiness for many people who walked around all day on flat surfaces. Indeed, it lacks truthiness to me that my flight from New York to Paris flies over Newfoundland. How many things are apparently facts - the existence of quarks, a curved universe, the flight of the bumblebee, the movement of electrons in a copper wire - yet all lack truthiness. For another example, I think Dan Rather, this fall, was trying to tell us that the CBS forged records "lacked factiness but contained "truthiness". Similar to the Al Sharpton-Tawana Brawley business, if you recall that story. So it seems to me that Mixing Memory has the correct idea: What feels "truthy" is something that fits our preconceptions. And our preconceptions aren't bad things - we could not function without them, but how many of them can we prove to be True? (We live in a world of ambiguities, but crave certainty and solid ground so as not to go nuts. As in Huxley's quote: "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you mad.") On the other hand, things that feel "truthy" can just as easily be lies, as happened this month with the Oprah Book Club's Million Little Pieces. If we plan to use this word (which I do not, unless I use it with irony), let's use it with the connotation of an untruth or a lie - a "truth-like substance," and not as a watered-down version of truth. And let's view the professional purveyors of truthiness to be what they are - con-men, manipulators, and propagandists - whether they be advertisers, politicians, trial lawyers or journalists.
Saturday, January 14. 2006
During his speech on Monday, Al Gore will demagogue, fear-monger, strike the podium, act santimonious, and decry Bush's Nazi Police State. But watch: the one thing he will not do is to demand that surveillance of terrorists, and information-seeking from terrorists, cease. He will Talk Loud, but Carry No Cohones. If he were to be consistent, he would demand that the US surrender immediately, and quit our surveillance of terrorists/ Why is the Left consistently soft on terror? We are always trying to figure that one out. Hornik gives it a try, at Am. Spectator Birgit Nilsson died on Christmas. NY Sun Hewitt has an interesting take on the coming changes on the Court, and the panic amongst the ACLU and the Left. He sees it as a Theist/Secularist issue. He thinks there's a great fear that people will begin to speak about morality and natural law in persuasive ways. Here. Belgium thinks the American school system is rooted in an antedeluvian past. In Belgium, the $ follows the kid. Schools compete. Democracy Project.
The mugging of Walmart: Cafe Hayek A new bio of Mark Twain. Reason What's the real tyranny? Bush, or the Regulatory State? Vodka Mona Charen reviews Kate O'Beirne's Women who make the world worse: Strangely, while feminists were burning with indignation toward men, they also enthusiastically endorsed promiscuity. O'Beirne quotes Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, who notes that early feminists who sought the vote and other rights "saw that the ready availability of abortion would facilitate the sexual exploitation of women . . . they regarded free love, abortion and easy divorce as disastrous for women and children." Modern feminists, by contrast, were characterized by a "puzzling combination of two things that do not ordinarily go together: anger against men and promiscuity; man-hating and man-chasing." Read the whole review.
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