Supplemental Sections

Yes, I am incensed by Obama's move on state secrets

2009-02-10T18:11:00.001-05:00

[HuffPo]: Obama's State Secrets Slipup Means We Need to Be Louder

Muntader al-Zaidi is still in jail. You should be angry.

2009-01-28T20:55:00.002-05:00

[HuffPo]: The Darkness before the Dawn (and how to lift it)

Virtues of a Proportional Response

2009-01-11T19:37:00.003-05:00

In the debate, Dukakis flubbed badly a question on capital punishment (transcript below, video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF9gSyku-fc).

Bernard Shaw (moderator):
Governor, if Kitty Dukakis [his wife] were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?

Dukakis:
No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life

Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, used a Dukakis flub as inspiration for his show (and not for the first time) when staffer Toby asks President Bartlet a similar question in debate prep:

TOBY
Mr. President, this next question is on capital punishment, which you oppose:
If your youngest daughter Zoey was raped and murdered, would you not want to see
the man responsible put to death?

BARTLET
First of all, it's important to understand the President doesn't make that
decision, though he appoints the Supreme Court Justices who do
so. What... any... um... All right, I'm not going to say that. I'll just go right to... No, I don't. I think you know that I'm opposed.... [sighs] Let's not do that. I haven't seen any evidence that it's a deterrent, and there are more effective... In my state...

TOBY
What's the matter with you? I just mentioned your daughter being murdered, and you're giving us an answer that's not only soporific, it's barely human! Yes, you'd want to see him put to death. You'd want it to be cruel and unusual, which is why it's probably a good idea that fathers of murder victims don't have legal rights in these situations.

Criticizing Israel's response to Hamas's rocket attacks in no way means denying the legitimacy of the feelings that are spurring it. To expect Israelis to live under constant attack with equanimity is as unreasonable as expecting the father of a murdered daughter not to wish her assailant dead. In the United States, we have a legal system to step in and restrain the vengeful father, despite his understandable and natural passion. Israelis desperately needs someone to step in and restrain them before their actions harm their nation's prospects for peace even further.

An expanded post on the situation will follow tomorrow.

(thanks to WestWingTranscripts.com)

Ratios without Rationalizations

2009-01-07T18:47:00.002-05:00

1 : 100 :: Israelis killed : Palestinians killed

2 : 5 :: Palestinian civilians killed : Palestinian militants killed

1 : 5 :: Palestinian children (under the age of 16) killed : Palestinian militants killed

If Israel is determined to ignore or rationalize the above, perhaps it will be chastened by the below:

1 : 1 :: Population of the Palestinian Territories in 2040 : Population of Israel in 2040

(first set of data from the AP's reports of UN estimates, second from the Washington Times

Polly Want a Legal Status

2009-01-04T22:01:00.006-05:00

The miniature horse pictured above is notable not only for being fairly adorable, but for serving as a service animal, just like a seeing-eye dog. An article in today's New York Times Magazine reports on the expanding definition of 'service animal.' The new uses of animals are clever, none more so than the assistance parrot named Sadie which talks Jim Eggers's down from his bipolar rages:

Eggers’s [bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies] has landed him in court several times: a disturbing-the-peace charge for pouring scalding coffee onto a man under his apartment window who annoyed him; one-year probation for threatening to kill the archbishop of St. Louis. Sadie is one of the few things keeping Eggers from snapping.

Sadie rides around town on Eggers’s back in a bright purple backpack specially designed to hold her cage. When he gets upset, she talks him down, saying: “It’s O.K., Jim. Calm down, Jim. You’re all right, Jim. I’m here, Jim.” She somehow senses when he is getting agitated before he even knows it’s happening. “I still go off on people sometimes, but she makes sure it never escalates into a big problem,” he told me, grinning bashfully at Sadie. “Now when people make me mad I just give them the bird,” he said, pulling up his sleeve and flexing his biceps, which is covered with a large tattoo of Sadie.

Unfortunately for Eggers and Sadie, the line between 'service animal' (allowed to accompany its owner into public places) and 'therapy animal' is largely unclear. The Department of Justice has proposed limiting the definition of 'service animal' to “dog or other common domestic animal,” specifically excluding “wild animals (including nonhuman primates born in captivity), reptiles, rabbits, farm animals (including any breed of horse, miniature horse, pony, pig or goat), ferrets, amphibians and rodents.”

Rather than attempt to create a bright line definition that could put Eggers and other innovative patients at risk, the DoJ should sign off on a broader definition of service animal, contingent primarily on a doctor's affadavit and simply hold users accountable for the reasonable behavior of their animals in public. The law is not meant to be twisted to preempt every extreme, improbable case.

Start the New Year with a Smile

2009-01-03T17:52:00.002-05:00

According to the New York Times, the Thai police have found a novel way to improve relations with civilians.

Thailand is nicknamed "The Land of Smiles," but, of late, the Thai police have found it hard to keep smiling. The solution they hit on lies below.

“They have to put on a mask because a smile doesn’t come naturally anymore,” said Ammar Siamwalla, an economist who keeps a close eye on the mores of his countrymen. “Normally people smile. You don’t have to put on a smiley mask.

“But these past few years that smile has worn thin because we are all angry at each other and willing to show it.”

So, what's your metaphorical Thai-smiling-mask to keep you pleasant for the new year?

Live from Middlebury... Muggle Quidditch

2008-11-30T09:49:00.003-05:00

Posting on more serious subjects will resume after T-giving break. Til then, from io9:

The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association or (IQA) held the [Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup] at Middlebury College (where Muggle Quidditch originated in 2005). Right now over 150 colleges have Quidditch teams including Boston University, Vassar, Bucknell University, Tulane, Oberlin and Emerson College.

The promotional video, with an explanation of the mechanics of the game, is below:

All Politics is Tragedy, but some of it's staged

2008-11-29T11:25:00.003-05:00

Ever since the election, a lot of people have framed the McCain campaign as a classical tragedy. To achieve what he thought was his greatest desire, he gave up his soul and was left with nothing.

Playwright Wendy Weiner has decided to chronicle the struggles of a different plaything of the gods in her new play Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending.

The concept, according the the NYT review is:

Hillary (Mia Barron), when she is still a girl dreaming of an adulthood in which a woman might pursue the presidency, pledges her devotion to Athena. Aphrodite, jealous, makes it her business to thwart Hillary, her principal weapon being the slick, charming Bill Clinton (Darren Pettie).

It's as good an explanation for the Clintons' marriage as any I've heard.

Thanksgiving Mental Health Break

2008-11-25T17:43:00.002-05:00

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has just announced the winners of its annual "Dance Your PhD" contest. Applicants must convey the crux of their research in a 3-4 minute dance video posted to YouTube. Below is my favorite of the winners, "Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids" by Professor Vince LiCata of LSU.

(The rest of the winners are at http://gonzolabs.org/dance/contestants/)

Naked people sell tickets. Naked emotions sell shows

2008-11-17T20:32:00.003-05:00

This was a pretty theatre-packed weekend for me. Happy Now? was closing at the Yale Rep, a friend of mine was playing the title role in a untranslated production of Racine's Britannicus, and all Yale was abuzz about the musical being staged by the Dramat, which featured naked boys singing (but not Naked Boys Singing!).

I'd already seen The Full Monty on Broadway, and my opinion of the show was pretty much unchanged by the Dramat's production. The songs are instantly forgettable, and the plot does not progress except by sudden starts and improbably out of character shifts. Certainly, on the basis of the written script, it was the least thought-provoking of the three shows I saw.

But the last time I saw The Full Monty, it wasn't during a recession.

The six leading men (and particularly Miles Jacoby as protagonist Jerry Lukowski and Matthew McCollum as his best friend) managed to bring real, wrenching emotional depth to the cardboard cutouts of characters they were handed by the script. Jacoby was most affecting before the stripping plot really gets moving, when he and his fellow laid-off steelworkers feel trapped by their sudden misfortune.

Jacoby and the other men don't just miss their paychecks after the layoffs. Losing their jobs means losing part of their identity and part of their purpose. Their despair and desperation are palpable. The show shifts tone when Jacoby's character decides that he and his friends can regain their dignity by becoming strippers, but by the time my eyes had recovered from the strategic backlighting in the final scene, I kept thinking about the downtrodden men from the first act.

Secluded at college, my experience with the economic meltdown has mostly been limited to following policy arguments among the blognoroti. I really hadn't thought about how the effects of these decisions were being felt across the country until I saw those brilliant boys playing men leading lives of quiet desperation. And after having watched Jacoby stand alone on the stage, pinned down by a spotlight and keening in shame and grief, I only wish that kitschy, underwritten songs could solve their problems.

After the honeymoon, the crazy in-laws

2008-11-09T15:30:00.004-05:00

Following closely on the heels of yesterday's post on encouraging headlines in the wake of Obama's election comes, unsurprisingly, a jubilant message from Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an organization which claims links to Al Qaeda. The message included the expected, gleeful pronouncements of Al Qaeda's power and condemnation of Bush's foreign policy decisions, but one part of the message was a little unexpected.

“On behalf of my brothers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya, I offer you what is better for you and us: you return to your previous era of neutrality, you withdraw your forces, and you return to your homes,” Mr. Baghdadi said. “You do not interfere in the affairs of our countries, directly or indirectly. We in turn will not prevent commerce with you, whether it is in oil or otherwise, but with fairness, not at a loss.”

Faris bin Hizam, an expert on Al Qaeda, said the offer of a trade relationship had struck a new note. “How can he call for establishing a relationship with the United States if it withdraws?” Mr. Bin Hizam said. “The main principle of Al Qaeda prohibits any relation with infidels.”

I'm sure Mr. Baghdadi will be in trouble when his apparent love of the infidel gets reported back to his superiors, but maybe they'll be merciful. It's obvious Obama Fever is more infectious and more powerful than anyone suspected.

(link from the NYT)

The honeymoon goes on

2008-11-08T09:02:00.004-05:00

The sleep deprivation is just starting to win out over the Election Day high, but with headlines like this from Friday's New York Times, even late night election viewing/problem set doing/computer coding can't keep a spring out of my step.

Obama Victory Alters the Tenor of Iraqi Politics

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

In Rare Turn, Iran’s Leader Sends Letter to Obama

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent an unusual letter congratulating President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday for his victory in the American presidential race, even though the two nations have had no diplomatic ties for nearly 30 years... this is the first time an Iranian leader has congratulated the winner of an American election, at least since the Iranian revolution.

None of these developments represent magical fixes, and it's important to remember that President-elect Obama will be coming into the White House facing an economic crisis and two wars. But it's just so heartening to see how this change is making it easier for other countries to engage with us, so that there exists at least a hope for progress.

The prodigal governor may yet return

2008-11-05T22:42:00.005-05:00

No, not Mitt Romney. He's well and truly over. But we may be seeing more of Ms. Palin (if not Tina Fey's impression) soon.

The count goes on (and on and on) in Alaska and Ted Stevens still has a razor thin lead over his challenger. Despite his seven felony convictions, the Alaskan people seem determined to return him to the Senate. But even if he wins the race, it's unlikely he'll remain a senator. Both McCain and Palin have called for him to step down, and Republican as well as Democratic senators have threatened to expel him.

An open seat in Alaska cannot be filled by appointment, so Palin can't just pull a Cheney and take the position for herself. The seat would be filled by a special election, and Palin has the name recognition to pull it off.

The votes are still coming in, and Stevens may lose his lead when all the absentee ballots are counted, so it would behoove Ms. Palin to wait until the election is called before she places orders for "Senator Maverick in 2012" posters.

Barack Obama was your new jetpack

2008-11-04T13:55:00.003-05:00

There's been a lot of talk about the repercussions of electing an black president (as it appears we are about to). Will it be an inspiration for black people, bad for black people, or even good for white supremacists?

Jonathan Messinger sees a stranger problem. Like hovercars and jetpacks, black presidents have been a common shorthand in science fiction.

As many have said before, the function of a black president in film and TV has largely been used to signify some sort of alternate reality. It often shows up in various forms of science-fiction or fantasy, whether we’re talking about The Fifth Element or O Presidente Negro. Now, if Obama wins, I’m guessing that we’ll have to see science fiction turn to gay presidents for their alt-universe qualities. I look forward to it.

GOTV gets dirty

2008-10-25T12:49:00.003-04:00

...and I'm not talking about mudslinging.

Circlet Press, a publisher that describes itself as the "intersection of erotica and science fiction, fantasy, and futurism," has decided that there may yet be a way to get apathetic voters engaged with politics: offer them free porn.

Email a copy of a receipt from a campaign contribution, and Circlet will send you a sci-fi themed, erotic novel. Now's a little late to be mounting a last minute fundraising drive, so it's unclear how much of a difference Circlet thinks it can make. Since it's McCain who's in desperate straits, he's best hope there really are a number of sci-fi fans out there, ready to campaign for Tigh/Roslin rather than sticking with Roslin/Airlock. Either way, it should be a fun demographic dust-up.

(h/t to i09)

Liveblogging the last debate

2008-10-15T21:08:00.017-04:00

10:07: "I think [the Supreme Court] has made a lot of bad decisions... I'm a federalist, let the states decide." Sounds like the Supreme Court is going to get a turn in the bathtub, once McCain finishes drowning the government.

10:04: I believe McCain just equated cosmetic surgery with organ transplants.

10:01: Yes, McCain, it's surprising that Obama is claiming to be levying a fine of $0 on Joe, the much maligned plumber, but use your words to express your disbelief. Holding perfectly still with your mouth open and blinking rapidly is a little too literal.

Barring any big moments, I'm signing off. Looks like it will be status quo ante bellum, with Obama's coolness playing well opposite McCain's agitation.

9:47: Look, I'm a fan of nuclear power, much more so than for "clean" coal, but "No problem" is a little flip, McCain

9:33: Obama talks about the "Kill him" remark, McCain takes umbrage that Obama doesn't recognize that "the best people in the world" come to his rallies. Then he says he's quite put out about the t-shirts people wear at Obama rallies.

9:25: People yell "Kill him" at Palin rallies because Obama didn't agree to Town Hall debates?

9:24: Obama said McCain never breaks with Bush on economic issues. McCain responds with a list of non-economic breaks.

9:23: The FoxNews line got the only laugh of all three debates.

9:21: The more defensive and desperate McCain looks, the better off Obama looks. As long as he stops smirking.

9:19: If McCain is proposing dropping the tariff on sugarcane ethanol, he must really be pulling out of Iowa

9:17: An across the board spending freeze?!? Really?!? So we, what, just stop paying Medicare doctors if treatment rates go up?

9:17: McCain is sill shilling for PUMAs.

9:15: Obama going through the budget line-by-line is still a laughable idea. Plus, without a line-item veto, it's hard to see what he'll accomplish.

9:14: Good to have someone point out that the $700 billion isn't meant to be a gift.

9:11: McCain hates redistribution. But if he keeps characterizing it as "spreading the wealth around" I fail to see how that's an effective attack.

9:08: "Senator McCain, do you want to ask Senator Obama a question?"
"No."
Wait, really? I'm calling an Obama win right now. What a terrible first impression.

The numbers are in, and the libertartians are losing

2008-10-14T19:21:00.022-04:00

Mostly, I get my distilled datasets from FiveThirtyEight.com's sabermetric analysis, but there's something pretty thought-provoking at the end of the NYT/CBS poll that was just released.

The poll shows a 51-39 split for Obama and McCain, respectively, when third party candidates are counted. The real interesting data comes when you look at who's defecting for third parties.

	Democrats	Republicans	Independents
Barr/Root	0	0	2
Nader/Gonzales	2	2	4
Other	0	0	1

I'm not exactly what message the GOP is supposed to get when more partisans are deserting for Ralph Nader than for the Libertarian candidate and Ron Paul write-ins put together. Not abolishing government in favor of reducing it to the size where they can drag it into the bathroom and restrain it with a governmentally mandated seatbelt, perhaps?

That's hardly the worst of it for the Republicans.

	Republicans
McCain/Palin	81
Obama/Biden	11

One in ten registered Republicans are planning to defect to the Dems. That's five times as many as are planning to shift to Nader, and, if you want to get cute, infinitely many as are going to vote for Barr at this level of significance. So what message is the GOP establishment supposed to take home? Be more like the Democrats?

All these guys are doing a fine job planning the revolution, but, even with McCain in crisis, no one's really fleeing the two-party system. And, even as an ardent Obama supporter, I can't say that a world where dissatisfied voters just ping-pong back and forth between the two established parties is one I really enjoy living in.

So, libertarian-leaning, crunchy, or pomo- conservatives, what now? Bow your heads and pray "Next year in the Ballot-Box, not the blogosphere?" Cause from where I'm standing, this year is as much a failure for you as for the GOP.

[I realize the formatting is fouled up, by my HTML skills have proven insufficient. If anyone has suggestions, feel free to comment.)

Shining a spotlight on Apple's shenanigans

2008-10-13T23:10:00.005-04:00

Apple will be releasing a new line of notebooks tomorrow, but, if you want to take a break from checking for Chinese leaks on tech specs, developer Peter Hosey has just finished updating the iPhone App Graveyard, (h/t Ars Technica which memorializes the apps that Apple has kicked off the App Store, and thereby placed off limits to everyone whose iPhones and iPod Touches aren't jailbroken.

Some of the dead are victims of copyright problems like Tris (a Tetris remix) while others fell afoul of Apple's apparent no-absurdism policy (I am Rich, an app that cost $999.99 and displayed a glowing, red jewel on the iPhone screen above the words "I am rich"), but only one of the dead apps has me boggled.

Freedom Time displayed a countdown to George W. Bush's last day in office above the words "...until the end of an error." Apple dropped the app, claiming it was defamatory. (They also supposedly booted a Bushisms app, which only showed actual Bush quotes for the same reason. It does make you wonder if Bush can sue himself for defamation of character.)

Steve Jobs responded to criticism by saying,

I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What’s the point?

It's puzzling that Jobs thinks that his business won't succeed if he allows anyone to sell anything that might annoy some fraction of his target population, particularly when he could make money when Democrats buy the app.

Ah, well. Guess that puts the kibosh on writing an app to display the image below whenever the user navigates to the iTunes store.

Shame on you, Maureen Dowd's editor

2008-10-13T09:15:00.002-04:00

When you're as famous as Maureen Dowd (though she's been getting her butt kicked by Gail Collins on the witty, incisive op-ed front for more than a year), it's easy to lose your grip on your ego. That's why the NYT has editors to check the pomposity and indulgence of columnists.

So where was Dowd's editor when she decided to write half of Sunday's op-ed in neologistic Latin? Sample pararaph:

Vilmingtoni, in Ohionem, McCain’s Mean Girl (Ferox Puella) defendit se gladiatricem politicam esse: “Pauci dicant, O Jupiter, te negativam esse. Non, negativa non sum, sed verissima.” Talk about lipsticka in porcam! Quasi Leeus Atwater de oppugnatione Busii Primi ad Dukakem: “non negativus, sed comparativus.”

Sorry, Dowd. Pixtrem transiluis. (You have jumped the shark)

Spelunking in the Uncanny Valley

2008-10-12T13:56:00.004-04:00

The android is modeled on a real five-year-old and was created by the Intelligent Robotics Lab at Osaka University. The researchers are focused on using androids to create "geminoids," android doubles remotely controlled by their dopplegangers to lend a human presence to telecommunication. Even leaving aside the uncanny valley problem, the utility of transporting specific robots to teleconference is kind of insane. This will only really work with some kind of cheap matter fabbing unit on site. Till then, just revel in the strangeness, and hope the geminoids dont have a plan.

(h/t to io9)

I need hyperlinks in meatspace

2008-10-06T13:00:00.002-04:00

My day started off terribly, since I had forgotten the NYT had collapsed the Metro Section into section A, and spent quite a while looking for it.

Therefore, I'm especially appreciative of online media and hyperlinks today and will now proceed to furnish a number of them. David, Kate, Ferny, and I are guest blogging at HuffPo today. HuffPo has set up a symposium here on the recent YPU debate R: Blogs are good for democracy.

My post is here, so enjoy! (But please keep the number of comments mocking my previous HuffPo post on Harry Potter to a minimum)

She came, she dimpled, she conquered

2008-10-03T11:35:00.003-04:00

I know it was unreasonable to expect Joe Biden to not drag out all of his wonky answers, even when contrasted with Palin's quick, folksy remarks. I know it was unreasonable to expect Joe Biden to anticipate that Palin's flag pin would be that much bigger and sparklier than his. I even know it was unreasonable to expect Joe Biden to do the smart thing and say he'd cut government subsidies to rather than raise taxes on Big Oil and Big (Evil) Corporations.

But for the love of anything, was it really unreasonable to expect Biden to look out at the audience, not at Gwen Ifill! Do the Dems just hate winning, or do they really not see the need to give any kind of media coaching?

Why won't someone tell the Dems it's not deceptive to use a little lipstick?

Hobbes at Senate Hearings, Leaves without Covenant

2008-10-02T17:38:00.005-04:00

Yeah, I wish.

I thought that Professor Garsten did a fine job lecturing on Hobbes's De Cive, but it was sweet of the Fed to give me an object lesson. So I'm supposed to consent to giving Paulson god-like powers over the economy and at the same time waive any ability to withdraw that consent or check his actions in the future. It's asking a lot, sure, but this is a crisis! Any form of division will delay us for too long! We need to put aside our petty factions and cede authority to one leader!

(I'd have titled this post "Leviathan Wept" but that title's been taken by author Daniel Abraham as the title of his excellent short story.)

I guess Congress didn't notice that the last time we passed a bill in crisis mode, with lawmakers not even bothering to read the bill (I'm looking at you, John McCain) didn't work out so well.

Frankly, whatever the merits of the original failout bill, I'm still blaming Congress for the Dow drop. If they (especially stop-the-presses-stop-the-debates McCain) hadn't built up the bill as a rush job, we could have actually read and debated it, which seems appropriate, given its importance and scale.

I realize I'm following up my last post with another real-life application of my Democratic Rhetoric class. Next week we read Woodrow Wilson, so stay tuned for the dissolution of the UN.

Gorgias visits Yale, Polus is alive and well and hacking at K2

2008-09-25T18:14:00.011-04:00

My Democratic Rhetoric class read Plato's Gorgias (his dialogue attacking rhetoric from both a moral and a pragmatic angle) the week before Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain gave a lecture at Yale.

My professor was amazed by the similarity between the scenes, the charismatic orator in front of a crowd of eager, ambitious young people, promising that, if they followed his teachings, they would have

the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political meeting?--if you have the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician your slave, and the trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are able to speak and to persuade the multitude.

Westen's thought-provoking book argues that Democrats could actually win elections if they used research on emotional intelligences and networks of associations to better target their messages. The book is worth reading for the close readings of major political ad campaigns alone, and Westen certainly covers the issues that plague the Dems (abortion, health care) with more coherence and less controversy in the frames and talking points he proposes.

But, as in Gorgias, the effectiveness of Westen's methods is called into question less by his description of his methods and more by blind spots where his method is, apparently useless. Gorgias is undermined by his consistent need to defend the morality of teaching rhetoric. He lives in fear of the inhabitants of the various towns who might banish him or worse, but if rhetoric truly gave him the near absolute powers he claimed, he should never fear an angry mob.

The weakness of Westen's method came out in the informal Q&A that followed his lecture. I had read the book and had noticed that many of Westen's proposed talking points included references to Scripture or the speaker's faith, Did he think, I asked, that irreligious candidates could still use his methods or be elected at all? Should the Democrats be imposing a religious litmus test on candidates for their own good?

Westen replied that he believed that atheists couldn't win. Further, he had been asked to run for Congress in his native Georgia and had turned down the Party Elders in large part because he felt his (fairly disaffected) Judaism would be a sticking point that even his rhetorical skills couldn't help him escape.

If Westen is right, I think this is a big problem for American democracy (not to mention any of my hopes for holding office). Westen's approach, ultimately, isn't built on manipulating others by using deceptive practices like priming, but, rather, to reassure voters that your positions are grounded in values that are similar to theirs. It's a shame if we can't trust anyone who doesn't worship our god to share the principles that we care about, particularly as faith in god has not, of late, been a particularly good guarantor of respecting any of his creatures.

Apocalypse Forestalled. Drat!

2008-09-24T15:27:00.004-04:00

In an article titled "Ah Spring! Baseball, Colliding Protons" Dennis Overbye has a sad tale to tell. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), due to the recent liquid helium leak, will not be firing up again until April 2009.

...and I felt a great disturbance under the earth, as though hundreds of researchers had suddenly cried out in terror and run past their grant deadlines.

Until the LHC comes back online, refresh your memory of the LHC's methods and goals here, double check whether the LHC has released earth-devouring stranglets yet here, and hope that the LHC doesn't get pushed back past December 21, 2012, since the only thing worse than dying in the apocalypse knowing that you could have died in the cool, did-we-push-past-the-limits-of-what-Man-was-meant-to-know? apocalypse and got stuck in the lame, it-took-the-Mayan-gods-about-one-thousand-years-to-notice-we-stopped-worshipping-and-then-got-pissed apocalypse.

All I know is, people only write operas about the first kind.

Lateblogging Tony Blair

2008-09-19T18:19:00.006-04:00

No laptops allowed in the hall meant no liveblogging. (And, for a slapstick-filled hour, the changing rules books but no bags, nothing held in your hands, newspapers but no magazine supplements to the NYT, and finally, books allowed again necessitated several trips off the line back to my dorm. Thanks ever so, Scotland Yard.) Below are my thoughts on Blair's speech:

First: Blair is a consummate showman. Anyone who watched this interview without knowing who he is would assume he was a well-known actor or author, rather than a politician. Again and again he chose to go for the laugh line, rather than the applause line in his responses to questions. He was well-spoken and utterly at ease in a manner that seems foreign to American politics. While Obama and other politicians may be comfortable in interviews because of lengthy prep work, they (and the audience) are always aware of the (high) stakes. Blair seemed to have lowered the stakes to a more relaxed, Oprah-like level, never becoming flustered or too intense.

On to policy:

It figures that Yale put the Iraq question in the mouth of the student, the person Blair is least likely to take seriously. Blair doesn't regret his actions in Iraq, but never once does the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" (let alone "Downing Street Memo") escape his lips. Blair's ultimate objective is setting up a viable counter-narrative to that presented by extremist, anti-modernity Islam. Since he explicitly stated that this goal can not be achieved solely by applications of violence, the obvious question was: Why did Iraq become the front line of this narrative-war? Why was violence necessary there, but not other countries (like, oh, Saudi Arabia)?

These questions were neither asked nor answered.

Overall: Entertaining, but not particularly enlightening.

Real Sarah Palin facts

2008-09-18T16:34:00.004-04:00

40% of registered voters have a favorable impression of Sarah Palin.
38% of registered voters have a favorable impression of Joe Biden.

It's a little surprising that McCain's August Surprise isn't any more popular than Joe "clean and articulate" Biden, but it gets worse.

17% of registered voters have a unfavorable impression of Joe Biden.
30% of registered voters have a unfavorable impression of Sarah Palin.

Her high unfavorables don't matter so much as long as she turns our the evangelicals, but she's not likely to turn independents or PUMA. And she's not boosting the "maverick McCain" storyline, either: 75% believe McCain picked her solely to win the election.

But I'm sure McCain and his staffers probably skipped over most of those numbers in favor of this one:
59% of voters believe McCain won't bring change to Washington. That's only five percentage points lower than the percent that believe Obama will bring change.

But, hey, what's to change? "The fundamentals of our economy are strong"

[All stats from today's NYT]

Word of the Day: Antimetabole

2008-09-09T17:02:00.004-04:00

(h/t to Juliet Lapidos of Slate)

Antimetabole (according to Dictionary.com: An`ti*me*tab"o*le\, n. (Rhet.) A figure in which the same words or ideas are repeated in transposed order.

At the conventions alone:

We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. - McCain

In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change. - Palin

People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power. - B. Clinton

Great antimetabole of the past:

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. - Frederick Douglass

Ask not what your country can do for you —- ask what you can do for your country. - JFK

Fantastic rhetorical device, and I'm so delighted to be able to put a name to it.

What the Left does right

2008-09-07T21:59:00.006-04:00

I'm a week late commenting (and complimenting) Sarah Vowell's op-ed which appeared in the Week in Review section of last Sunday's NYT. Here is how it begins:

ON Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, Caroline Kennedy introduced a tribute to her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, by pointing out, “If your child is getting an early boost in life through Head Start or attending a better school or can go to college because a Pell Grant has made it more affordable, Teddy is your senator, too.”

To my surprise, I started to cry. Started to cry like I was watching the last 10 minutes of “Brokeback Mountain” instead of C-SPAN. This was whimpering brought on by simple, spontaneous gratitude.

Vowell relied on Pell Grant's to get through college. The grant wasn't enough to pay her way or to let her get out of working. It simply meant she had to work ten fewer hours a week.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

I recommend reading the whole article, which is moving and well argued. The Pell Grant Vowell recieved changed her life, without representing too large a fiscal burden for the government (Vowell has since paid back her Pell Grant many times in the form of the increased income taxes she pays on her increased income).

The Pell Grant program is one of the best governmental programs I can think of. It's not a hand-out or a "special right," it just helps hard-working, motivated students clear one bureaucratic hurdle so they can succeed on their own merits. Government governs best when it clears obstacles out of the way of hard-working people who are doing the right thing but just need a boost.

So next time you go knocking the Dems, think about a world without Pell Grants. It's a world that makes it that much harder for poor students to go to college and compete academically with their peers, a world that makes it harder for children to escape the misfortunes or poor decisions of their parents. It's a world in which Assassination Vacation was probably never written.

I don't think any of us prefer that world.

UPDATE: I've just noticed that both posts that I've tagged "verklempt" are about Teddy Kennedy. Just mentioning.

Pandering? For me? You shouldn't have!

2008-09-04T16:33:00.003-04:00

Science Debate 2008 prepared a list of 14 questions for the candidates, and today, Barack Obama's answers went up (h/t i09). Among the highlights:

As president, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight . . . I believe that it is ethical to use these extra embryos for research that could save lives when they are freely donated for that express purpose.

Specifically, I will implement a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. I will start reducing emissions immediately by establishing strong annual reduction targets with an intermediate goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

And my favorite:

[I will] strengthen the role of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) by appointing experts who are charged to provide independent advice on critical issues of science and technology. The PCAST will once again be advisory to the president. (emphasis added)

Needless to say, PCAST got booted under Bush.

I'd rather leave (Bristol's) baby in the corner

2008-09-03T16:11:00.002-04:00

...because I'd rather talk about this.

Arguing that religious faith is pertinent inasmuch as it relates to character is one thing, but (according to this NYT profile her mayoral campaign took it way too far.

The traditional turning points that had decided municipal elections in this town of less than 7,000 people — Should we pave the dirt roads? Put in sewers? Which candidate is your hunting buddy? — seemed all but obsolete the year Ms. Palin, then 32, challenged the three-term incumbent, John C. Stein...

“Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” said Mr. Stein, who lost the election. “But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I’m not a churchgoing guy, and that was another issue: ‘We will have our first Christian mayor.’ ”

“I thought: ‘Holy cow, what’s happening here? Does that mean she thinks I’m Jewish or Islamic?’ ” recalled Mr. Stein, who was raised Lutheran, and later went to work as the administrator for the city of Sitka in southeast Alaska. “The point was that she was a born-again Christian.”

Palin wasn't just skillfully using the wedge issue for personal gain; it appears that questions of faith make too big a difference in her governing:

In her speech to the Wasilla Assembly of God in June, Ms. Palin said it was “God’s will” that the federal government contribute to a $30 billion gas pipeline she wants built in Alaska.

Her religious rhetoric is not just a veneer to sugarcoat policy choices, it is the basis of those choices. Time is reporting that:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Please let me know when the talking heads leave Bristol alone and start discussing these choices. When faith trumps facts on issues of public policy, you're damn right it's a character issue.

Mental Health Break: It was a dark and stormy night...

2008-09-02T11:03:00.003-04:00

This blog has been dark for a few days as I moved back to school and caught up with many of these guys. Normal blogging will resume tomorrow, but one delightful item had to be addressed today.

For those unfamiliar with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, it is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his novel, Paul Clifford, with the following famous (and wretched) line:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Since 1983, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Competition has sought out the worst opening line to a work of fiction (the line is not required to actually be part of a novel and is usually invented specifically for the competition).

So, congratulations to Mr. Garrison Spik, the winner of the 2008 contest, who was profiled in today's NYT. His opening line follows:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’

Welcome back.

Palin Supports Teaching Intelligent Design in Science Class

2008-08-30T11:49:00.003-04:00

Palin's remark is reported in full at the Anchorage Daily News

That's all

Liveblogging: Clinton/Biden

2008-08-27T21:07:00.041-04:00

9:07 - coming in late from dinner, but luckily Bill's applause went way over

9:10 - "My 8 years in office convinced me Barack Obama is the man for this job." Apparently, those 8 years took about 8 months to kick in.

9:13 - "Barack Obama is ready to lead... is ready to be POTUS" Check. Bill's in the clear.

9:15 - You have to feel a little bad for Hil, as she watches hubby praise BO and his "excellent VP pick"

9:16 - "People across the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power" Fabulous line

9:20 - Nicola, Bill always hits his stride when he gets to talk about people. He's not putting that on, he really does get that energized by empathy

9:22 - "Third time is not the charm" got a smile from Michelle. No word on whether she was thinking of the Bush dynasty or the Clintons

9:23 - Comparing Obama's youth to his own is a smart (and gracious) move for Clinton

9:25 - Bill nailed it. And he's still a rock star

9:29 - From MSNBC: "Elvis was back in the hall tonight"

9:31 - I'd blog about the coverage during the gap, but I have to return this copy of Watchmen tomorrow, so I need to finish it tonight.

9:34 - It's a tough gig, speaking right after Bill Clinton, so it must have been hard to decide whether to give the slot to Mark Warner or John Kerry. Can't make them duller on delivery.

9:44 - Kerry's actually gotten off some good lines. I was a little harsh before.

9:46 - I actually feel a little bad for Kerry, too. It's not as tough for him as for Hil, but he must be a little jealous that everyone loves his talking points... as long as they come out of Obama's mouth

9:47 - Can retired servicemen and women still wear their uniforms? It seems like if the general the Dems just brought out were a man, she'd have suited up

9:50 - Looked it up, she is eligible to wear her uniform

9:55 - Biden won't be on for half an hour. I'm taking a break

10:21 - The shakycam effect on the Biden montage is strange

10:25 - Overall, the quality of the Biden vid is way below Hil's

10:26 - Michelle is crying as Beau Biden speaks

10:27 - I like Biden, but not part of Washington is ridiculous. It's not a bad thing to have an experienced veep to help push through your agenda

10:29 - News Flash: Obama is no longer the most popular person on facebook. Michael Phelps out touched him.

10:30 - Biden looks delighted. Finally a Dem without reason to be bitter

10:31 - Biden is choking himself up. Still manages to quip about his wife being the only one who can leave him speechless. Quoth my mother, "He's going to be a pip."

10:33 - Leave off, Will. That moment about his son was very real and sweet. I'm sure Biden's big mouth will give them other options

10:35 - Biden's mom is also in tears. It's a three-hankerchief speech

10:36 - "[My mom] told me to go out and bloody their noses" Cut to his adorable mother mouthing "It's true"

10:37 - I'll admit, "everyone is your equal" is a pretty creepy philosophy

10:39 - Second John/George "freudian slip" of the night. It wasn't funny enough to do twice

10:41 - "Work is more than a paycheck, it's respect" Dead on.

10:44 - John McCain was his friend, even though that was fairly restrained (for Biden)

10:45 - The Dems need to sync up on what data their drawing their percentage of time McCain voted with Bush. Biden just said 95%, but Kerry said 90% earlier.

10:46 - Would it kill Biden to say 'more of the same' in rhythm so he can stay in sync with the floor-chanters?

10:47 - "Any country that out teaches us today will out compete us tomorrow" Another good line

10:48 - It's not looking too good in Pakistan, "the central front of the war on terror." The coalition government is fragmenting, and the likely prez has a history of mental illness

10:51 - Way, way too hawkish on Georgia. I don't know what the Dems are thinking

10:53 - Biden's done, but Obama's on the way

10:55 - Obama's on stage, and the hall is going wild. Anyone got a stopwatch to contrast with Clinton?

10:57 - Hillary gives a very ironic looking "Thank you" to Obama's comment that she "rocked the house." Surprisingly, hothead Bill pulls off a better reaction shot for his compliment

10:58 - That didn't really merit trotting him out. Ah well, at least I get to listen to the Boss singing "The Rising"

10:59 - "The Rising" sure beats Hillary getting played out to "Love Train" earlier today

11:00 - MSNBC apologizes to me for spoiling Obama's 'surprise' appearance.

11:01 - Looks like all is over. Time to sign off and check out that episode of Project Runway I just taped

Kudos: Ted Kennedy

2008-08-27T11:52:00.006-04:00

I had noticed that there was a stool positioned behind Ted Kennedy (it went unused) when he delivered his speech at the Convention on Monday, but I had no idea that, in addition to still feeling the effects of his chemo, Kennedy came to the convention straight from the hospital, where he was being treated for excruciating kidney stones. The full story is in today's New York Times.

Although he was not released by his doctors until two hours before his speech (and was instructed to come right back to the hospital when the speech was done), Kennedy insisted he would not skip the speech or, as Bob Shrum suggested, read a three sentence statement.

At this point, I'm sort of up for a national health care plan that involves Ted Kennedy just coming to your house and willing your illness away with his colossal badassery. Wow.

Hopping on the liveblogging wagon

2008-08-26T22:10:00.015-04:00

10:10 - Rachel Maddow and Pat Robertson agree, the Dems (esp. Warner) should be making someone angry. Robertson says, "Where's Cheney? He has an 18% approval rating; it's a free shot!"

10:13 - Highest praise for Warner comes from Mark Shields who said something approximating: It was pretty good for someone who's generally known as a crappy speaker. My mom asks, "Why put him as the keynote?" I assume it was part of the deal with the Clintons. Well played, Hil.

10:35 - Finally, the delegates are showing a little life. They were so muted for Warner.

10:37 - Picture of young Bill Clinton with dark hair quite cute. Surprising that they captioned him "Hillary's Husband"

10:39 - Strange to use "Weekend Update" as a testamonial in the Hillary montage

10:46 - Hillary's going down her list of unity buzzwords, but I'm mostly just encouraged by the fact that CNN spent an entire news segment looking for Hillary Holdouts at the convention without finding any

10:51 - "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits" just became the new name of at least six bands

10:56 - Hillary's speech doesn't seem pro-forma. The "what are you in this for" is the absolute best she could have done

11:03 - Hillary: It makes sense that Bush and McCain will be together at the convention...
McCain: No! Didn't you hear? We're there on different nights! It doesn't count

11:05 - Harriet Tubman was also known for saying, "If you don't keep going, I'll have to shoot you."

11:09 - Speech is over. Hillary was pretty much perfect for what she needed to do. Now I'm off to Comedy Central for less fatuous coverage

Why Hillary's speech doesn't matter as much as you think

2008-08-26T17:19:00.003-04:00

I know those PUMA people are raising a stink and vowing to vote for McCain, and McCain's new ad "Passed Over" certainly implies that he's courting them. It's possible that some of those voters will stay home, but it is inconceivable that they will defect to McCain.

Obviously, it makes no sense to switch sides if you believe in Hillary's positions, since Obama's are virtually identical, but some die-hards are claiming that they (and womankind) have been disrespected by Obama and the DNC and at least McCain is behaving better than that.

The video below (a mock-up I whipped together in ten minutes, so please don't complain to me about artistry), would disabuse them of that notion pretty darn quick if it were remade with actual production values by a group not directly orgainized by Obama.

So, although I'm hoping Hillary sells it tonight, I'm not too fussed.

Joe Biden is really growing on me

2008-08-25T21:42:00.002-04:00

He's just been very personally endearing this week. First, there was this article in the New York Times:

After Senator Barack Obama tapped him on Saturday to be his vice-presidential running mate, Mr. Biden introduced Jill Biden to the world this way:
“My wife, Jill, who you’ll meet soon, who’s drop-dead gorgeous..."
That was classic Biden. He’s still said to be head-over-heels in love with her after more than 30 years of marriage, and proud, if slightly intimidated, by her multiple degrees... After [Jill] defended her thesis, she arrived home to find signs in the driveway. One said: “Congratulations Dr. Jacobs-Biden.” The other: “Dr. and Senator Biden live here.”

Then, tonight at the convention, during Teddy Kennedy's speech, they kept cutting to Biden, whose eyes were welling up with tears in perfect sync with my mother's.

And now look at me, I'm all verklempt.

No gauze-filtered montage for the gays

2008-08-25T10:37:00.002-04:00

NBC laid the human interest stories on pretty thick during the Olympics. From the one-legged swimmer to Misty May's lost wedding ring, the stories ranged from inspirational to trite, and it seemed like NBC's pursuit of moving montages was unstoppable.

Until Mathew Mitcham won gold.

Mitcham, an Australian diver, was the only non-Chinese athlete to win gold in any diving event, so his win was newsworthy by any standard, but NBC's coverage conveniently skipped over the fact that Mitcham was the only openly gay man at the 2008 Olympics. NBC also, unusually, did not show footage of his mother and his partner reacting to his dives. NBC was not the only media outlet to ignore Mitcham's sexuality, and the omissions can't just be chalked up to time crunches. The New York Times's article the next day also did not mention Mitcham's orientation or his stuggle to raise money to bring his partner to Beijing to watch him dive.

OutSports.com summed it up pretty well:

It’s a big story. The only openly gay male athlete in Beijing pulled off one of the great upsets at the Olympics in a spectacular fashion. If he had had cancer, or if his parents had been killed in a car crash when he was 2, or if he had just proposed to his girlfriend, they would have mentioned it. But they never showed him hugging his boyfriend, never mentioned it. They referred to “personal problems,” but I’m afraid they decided Matthew’s sexuality was off limits. A real shame.

Fun Fact: if all of the 14 openly LGBT athletes were a country, they would rank just behind Romania and hold a commanding three medal lead ahead of Greece.

Measles is catching (again), just like hysteria

2008-08-24T15:12:00.017-04:00

Parents, brush up on your three C's (cough, coryza, and conjunctivitis) and get your kids ready for bed-rest. The Measles are back! (Just don't let the fact that no treatment exists paired with the 1 in 1000 death rate faze you.)

In an age of superbugs, you might wonder what crazy new mutation has let the measles come roaring back, but the resurgent measles are no different than the old-school measles that we last saw circa the turn of the century in The Lawrenceville Stories (the prequel to, and suprerior of Dink Stover at Yale).

The measles are back because today's parents are refusing to innoculate their children against measles, mumps, and rubella out of a fear that these vaccines could cause autism. The most popular arguement is that thiomersal, a preservative used in some vaccines, can trigger autism spectrum disorders, but this assertion does not hold up scientifically.

Remember, thiomersal and other mercury-containing preservatives were phased out starting in 1999. If there really were a causal link between these vaccines and autism, autism rates should have dropped in the decade following the phase-out. This did not occur.

A few other theories have been advanced, but none has been recognized by the scientific community. Vaccines and autism are not causally related, even though there is a correlation. Children are vaccinated at about the same age they begin to exhibit symptoms of autism, so it is not surprising that parents feel there is a connection.

Parents who don't vaccinate their children aren't just putting their own children at risk. Vaccinations benefit from herd immunity, i.e. that mass vaccination helps protect everyone, even the unvaccinated, by making it almost impossible for the virus to find a host to spread through. Parents who don't vaccinate their children chip away at the herd, putting even vaccinated individuals at risk (since no vaccine is 100% effective) as well as endangering infants too young to be vaccinated.

According to the New York Times, the back when vaccinations weren't common," each year nearly 4 million people in the United States were infected, 48,000 were hospitalized, 1,000 were chronically disabled and nearly 500 died."

Meales may be the tip of the iceberg. It is the most contagious of the childhood diseases, so it is the first to reemerge, but mumps and rubella may follow. The government and medical officials should reach out to parents to encourage them to vaccinate their children. Parents who refuse endanger their children and everybody else's.

Obama is done Biden his time

2008-08-22T23:55:00.002-04:00

ABC is reporting that a special Secret Service detail is on its way to Biden's house, so that's that. I'm pretty happy. Biden does have a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, but he's a smart guy and will shore Obama up on the experience gap.

Plus, I'm totally charmed by this story from David Brook's column today, titled "Hoping it's Biden:"

Biden’s most notorious feature is his mouth. But in his youth, he had a stutter. As a freshman in high school he was exempted from public speaking because of his disability, and was ridiculed by teachers and peers. His nickname was Dash, because of his inability to finish a sentence.

He developed an odd smile as a way to relax his facial muscles (it still shows up while he’s speaking today) and he’s spent his adulthood making up for any comments that may have gone unmade during his youth.

Mystery solved! (I've been wondering about that smile since 2003) And I certainly admire his determination.

Continuing the trek through the Uncanny Valley

2008-08-20T19:49:00.003-04:00

The term Uncanny Valley was coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 and refers to the feeling of unease or disgust when humanoid robots or CGI characters are too good to look obviously fake or cartoony, but just inhuman enough to make you uncomfortable (e.g. the Tom Hanks zombie in the film The Polar Express).

One animation company thinks their CGI-fu can make it out of the valley (hat tip to i09). The video is below:

Is it convincing? Squicky? Try showing it to someone who doesn't know what's up (and skip the opening sequence, natch). For more information check out this article from the Times (of London, not New York).

Invade, kill their leaders, and convert them to Libertarianism

2008-08-18T20:21:00.003-04:00

Jeffrey Gettleman's article in today's New York Times suggests that what corrupt, war-torn, 14-governments-in-17-years, Somalia needs is some good, old-fashioned localism.

Many Somali intellectuals and Western academics are pushing an alternative form of government that might be better suited to Somalia’s fluid, fragmented and decentralized society. The new idea, which is actually an old idea that seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance because of the transitional government’s shortcomings, is to rebuild Somalia from the bottom up.

It is called the building block approach. The first blocks would be small governments at the lowest levels, in villages and towns. These would be stacked to form district and regional governments. The last step would be uniting the regional governments in a loose national federation that controlled, say, currency issues and the pirate-infested shoreline, but did not sideline local leaders.

“It’s the only way viable,” said Ali Doy, a Somali analyst who works closely with the United Nations. “Local government is where the actual governance is. It’s more realistic, it’s more sustainable and it’s more secure.”

Sounds good, but I look forward to a follow-up article where someone explains how you implement a bottom-up strategy from the top down.

Weekend Arts: Keeping it in the Family

2008-08-16T21:49:00.008-04:00

This post is of particular interest to Yale Mafiosos (though all theatre afficianados are encouraged to read on).

This week, I have had the pleasure of seeing two shows written and performed by Yalies at the NYC Fringe Festival. I had seen Usher in several incarnations at Yale, and it has gotten better every time. Usher is a musical adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Molly Fox and Sarah Hirsh.

In the musical, James (Casey Breves) is invited to the estate of his university friend, Roderick Usher (Ben Wexler) to paint Roderick's final portrait. During his time in the Usher home, James discovers that Roderick is spinning a web of lies to keep James from seeing his childhood love (and Roderick sister) Madeline (Claudia Rosenthal). These events are overseen by the malevolent portraits that haunt the Usher home.

The show is brilliantly executed. As at Yale, Casey and the rest of the cast do a brilliant job bringing life to cleverly-sketched characters and well-painted portraits. Casey's angelic tenor produces notes so beautiful that I was on the edge of my seat, hardly daring to breathe for many of his songs, and he is well matched by Claudia's haunting soprano. Fox and Hirsch give all their actors great material to work with. (Pariticularly good turns from Aaron Lee Lambert and Danielle Ryan as the Ushers servants in the song "Water and Gruel" and, in the chorus, Emily Jenda shines (without pulling focus) every moment she is onstage).

But perhaps the best recommendation for the show comes from the man on the LIRR platform this morning who complemented my singing (I couldn't get Usher out of my head). Since the only person I usually get singing complements from is my tone-deaf father, I have to assume he was moved by the songwriting prowess of Fox and Hirsh.

Usher has 4 performances left:
Sun 17 @ 4:15
Tue 19 @ 4:30
Wed 20 @ 7
Fri 22 @ 10
In addition, audio and video clips are available at the Usher website at http://www.usherthemusical.com/

The other Yale show at the Fringe is @lice in www.onderland, a dance/multimedia show based on the Lewis Carroll story. It is very difficult to translate a story so dependent on textual jokes to an essentially silent medium, but the production includes some charming moments. The two dancers who embody the Caterpillar is particularly inspired. For now though, my favorite Alice remix is still Alice in Quantumland.

@lice in www.onderland has 3 performances left:
Mon 18 @ 7:15
Tue 19 @ 5:15
Fri 22 @ 9:45

Gold Tarnishes: Chinese arrest British Reporter

2008-08-14T17:46:00.004-04:00

British reporter John Ray was assaulted and arrested by Chinese police for covering a "Free Tibet" protest in Beijing. His video is below.

Fiber Fix and CAPTCHA Tricks

2008-08-14T16:39:00.003-04:00

I'm planning to post on consumer-owned fiber in more detail, later, but I wanted to respond to Nikki's post at TechRepublican. Talking about the FCC's ruling that reprimanded Comcast for strangling P2P traffic, Nikki said,

It's tempting to fall back on our old friend Let The Market Decide. After all, if Comcast throttles BitTorrent traffic, the BitTorrent folks use a different ISP, Comcast loses market share, and eventually it changes policy. Voila: market signals triumph, seed rates soar, and everyone gets a pony.

But it's not a free market.

Most Americans are confronted with a duopoly (at best) when choosing broadband providers, and the infrastructure is so expensive that it's hard to break into the market. Without meaningful competition, consumers can't push for better service. I can get my high-speed Internet from Comcast, with all its attendant issues, or I can use dial-up.

Happily, consumer owned cables could make competition among ISPs possible. This article from Ars Technica lays out the basics of the idea.

In this plan, consumers would own the "last mile" of high speed fiber cable that linked their house to the larger fiber bundle. Since ISPs could enter a market for the lower start up cost of installing a main pipeline, rather that connecting up hundreds of houses. If consumers are linked to two pipelines and can decide, month to month, which provider they prefer, the ISPs will actually have to compete with one another. More on this, later.

~~~

Meanwhile, this Ars Technica article is just straight-up awesome. When scanning old or damaged texts, researchers are often frustrated, as the computers are unable to acurately read many words. Now, those researchers are outsourcing the job to humans in the form of CAPTCHAs.

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are used to make sure the person filling out an online form is really a human. (The word verifications that blogger uses are a prime example). Since only humans can accurately identify these scanned words, the researchers can correct errors without anyone having to do additional work.

(Neat Bonus: these recycled CAPTCHAs (reCAPTCHAs) are actually better at filtering out bots than ordinary CAPTCHAs, since the distortions introduced by the scanning process are not the result of pure mathematical formulas, and are harder to undo.)

It's a Gay old time in the YA section

2008-08-11T20:25:00.004-04:00

Michael Gross's article, "Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?" on Out.com tells a pretty depressing story (hat tip to David Broockman). Gross terms Manhunt " the world’s fastest-growing gay website, which is quietly abetting a revolution in social and sexual mores, under the slogan “get on, get off." The whole article is worth a read, but here's a particularly choice excerpt:

I began wondering about this connection at a dinner party on Martha’s Vineyard when the host asked why, during the past decade, so many national political victories and legal reforms -- an employment nondiscrimination act, a hate-crimes bill, repeal of the military ban, marriage or civil unions -- have remained beyond our grasp. A fashion photographer from Texas drawled, “I think it’s because so many of us spend so many hours of so many days online, doing things that make us feel ashamed of ourselves.”

During the 15 years since America Online men-4-men chat rooms introduced mass-market online cruising (earlier Internet cruising technologies, like IRC chat rooms, were mostly for techies), some aspects of our lives have become more visible than ever. We are ubiquitous in mainstream culture; we are out to our families, friends, and employers; we’re able to hold hands in public, in some places, without having to worry that we might get beaten up; and some states and cities now permit gay marriage or civil unions (more will inevitably follow now that California has joined Massachusetts). As this wave of enculturation advanced, AIDS treatments made the ravages of that disease less visible and dispelled the sense of crisis that strengthened our connection to each other in the 1980s. These factors, along with straight gentrification of gay neighborhoods and the growth of the long-tail economy, hastened the decline of many urban gay enclaves, and the demise of many bars, businesses, and social groups that gave structure to gay life.

“The implications of that trend are enormous,” says Jeffrey Klausner of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “It means that gay men who were once socialized in brick-and-mortar establishments, surrounded by other people, are now being socialized online.” Gay men still go out as well, but our nightlife habits are very different than they were 12 years ago. Jeffrey Parsons, professor of psychology at New York’s Hunter College, says his unpublished research confirms the common sense that “when guys go to bars, they’re going to be with their friends, not to meet new people.”

There is an offline analogue to Manhunt: the LGBT bookshelf in any Barnes and Noble. If you peruse this shelf, you will find that it's composed of at least 80 percent erotica. The nonfiction is also mostly sex-themed. I'd assume the writing probably isn't worse than straight erotica, but the troubling fact is, like Manhunt in the dating scene, this seems to be all there is.

Happily, for books, anyway, there may be a generational shift. There is quality LGBT writing out there, but most of it's in the YA section. Empress of the World, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and especially Nancy Garden's Annie on my Mind. All are well written YA that could stand proudly alongside many other books in the YA canon.

And that's the other part of the problem. Mainstreaming LGBT YA makes it difficult to find, since only the extreme works are in the LGBT aisle. It might be that kids growing up on high quality YA, but not if they think the erotica is all that's out there. Similarly, alternatives to Manhunt may exist, but be so mainstream as to be unremarkable. The best hope is to raise awareness of other paradigms and role models.

Thoughts on Watching 45 Minutes of Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room

2008-08-08T18:28:00.002-04:00

Yes, it was personally immoral for John Edwards to cheat on his cancer-stricken wife. Yes, it was also irresponsible for him to keep this to himself as he ran for president. Yes, it does raise questions that the MSM sat on these allegations for about three weeks.

But, Wolf, when I watch 45 minutes of The Situation Room and see you spending 40 of those minutes on a close reading of Edwards's public statement, while Russia is sending tanks into and declaring war on a soverign nation that is important to our security interests in the reason, it's not really John Edwards's judgement that I'm all worked up about.

This is also a broken system

2008-08-06T21:24:00.002-04:00

In the Metro Section of today's New York Times, Winnie Hu has an article on the kindergarten crisis. In New York City, affluent parents routinely send their children to private pre-schools and kindergarten (often registering them before they are born). This year, though, there was a problem:

Despite mounting layoffs on Wall Street and the broader economic downturn, private schools in New York City continue to thrive, with administrators and consultants saying this year has been the most competitive yet for admission to kindergarten. Some estimate that several hundred children were rejected from every place they applied.

All right, anti-public schoolers, I'm throwing down. In a vouchered or totally private schooled world, why wouldn't some students miss out all together. It was absolutely in the interest of the private schools to expand and take more students, or for more to start up, since demand clearly exceeded supply (and at $28,000 a year, you have to figure that this market is pretty insensitive to price). The schools couldn't admit everyone because they didn't have the foresight, resources, or infrastructure in place to expand. But when this happens to public schools, the government makes sure the extra kids still get to go to school.

Without comprehensive public school, either no one is responsible for the kids who get screwed when the actuaries misproject, or those kids get shunted off to a lower class of schools, the only ones who have to expand.

Bytes xor Breasts?

2008-08-05T23:17:00.004-04:00

This time Helen's arguing with David Porter about feminism, instead her usual sparring partner, Anonymous, and I can't resist wading in.

Helen summarizes this blog post, saying,

No one says that women blog about nothing but their cats and their babies. What I am saying (I won't speak for RSM) is that a woman who is good at blogging will find no problem getting ahead (Kathy G, the Iqra'i ladies, McArdle, etc.), and women who don't become successful bloggers fail because they're no good at what they do. For women who suck at blogging to blame misogyny for their failures is indeed whiny.

I'm going to leave aside the issue of whether it is actually harder for women to succeed in many fields, on average, regardless of their skill level (though I will include a link to this study, in which resumes with female names got fewer callbacks that identical resumes with male names). In my experience, women who succeed using 'male' strategies in 'male' fields may be respected as professionals, but not as women.

In my high school AP Computer Science, I was the best female coder, hands down, and among the best period. The guys in the class treated me like 'one of the boys' and were comfortable collaborating on projects, asking for help, or just hanging out. At this point, I mostly wore baggy shirts that concealed my figure, but one day, I wore a pi shirt from thinkgeek that was form fitting, but not, according to my mother, indecent.

The boys spent a substantial portion of the class making fun of the size of my breasts, and, for the rest of the year (and even stretching into our summer D&D games) any comment about size or position of any object would spark a joke about my chest. Even though I reverted to baggy clothes.

I could be a good programmer, or a woman with breasts, but not both. The boys had no trouble interacting with the other (lousy at programming) girls as girls or flirting with them. I don't want to have to live in drag to be successful

If feminism means fighting the idea that my love of programming nixes dating, I'm all for it.

"Don't you have any declaratives hiding in that beard, anywhere?"

2008-07-31T22:20:00.005-04:00

The corrupt hiring practices at the DoJ are already so ludicrous that they leave little for Stewart and Colbert to mock. However, last night Stewart was absolutely right when he attacked Wolf Blitzer's coverage of the issue (starting at about 4:05 in the video below).

The idea that reporting unflattering facts represents bias is insane. I've heard some pro-McCain-ers arguing that, even if you don't support McCain's policies, you should support divided government, since it forces each side to defend their policies and not overreach their mandate.

If you really want limited, defensive government, you'll get a lot more mileage out of agressive journalism than divided government (the 60 vote cloture rule in the Senate and Coburn's holds make division and compromise a foregone conclusion anyway). This kind of wimpy reporting makes it impossible for all but the most wonky to get energized about government misdeeds and to be motivated to push for change. Once again, Comedy Central is out reporting the MSM. Shame on you, Blitzer.

(If the embedded video doesn't work, the clip can be found here or by searching for "Illegaly Blonde" on the Daily Show website.)

The Dark Knight: Despair isn't as Scary as Goodness

2008-07-29T23:07:00.002-04:00

I've been enjoying the Yale /Mafia's commentary on The Dark Knight and really enjoyed the discussion what role the outlaw plays in a corrupt society and in one on the mend. I didn't get around to seeing the movie until today and, to be honest, I was relatively uninterested in Batman. Obviously, the Joker stole every scene he was in, and the weird reverb effect on Bale's voice made it hard to empathize with him, but it was Harvey Dent that really left me thinking.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

White hat DA Harvey Dent is transformed into the murderous Two-Face when he is caught in one of the Joker's plots. His girlfriend is killed and he is horribly disfigured. The Joker comes to see him in the hospital, stokes his anger, and frees him, a weapon with only one purpose, revenge.

The film tries to spin Dent's fall as a big victory for the Joker. The white hat loses hope and declares that in an immoral world, the best one can do is follow the dictates of chance. But where is the triumph? The proof that even the strongest have a breaking point is trivial. Besides, Dent's fall is more a conversion of convenience than a genuine reawakening. The Joker redirects Dent's desire for vengeance and gives him a new avenue to express it, but, unlike the Joker, Dent's nihilism is wholly subsumed in his desire for revenge. The Joker is an absolute force, the avatar of chaos, and he is unstoppable. Dent is too limited to be anywhere as scary. Once the targets of his revenge are eliminated, his motivation is spent, and he is defanged.

So could Dent become anything to match the power and terror that the Joker inspires? Maybe, but I think it would entail less of a fall than a rise. In A Wizard Alone, the sixth book in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, Nita, one of the protagonists, encounters an abdal, a force of pure goodness, a conduit of the One's power into the world. But just because they're on our side doesn't make them pleasant to be around. Nita's mentor warns her that abdals mean

"Virtue, the real thing. It's not some kind of cuddly teddy bear you can keep on the shelf until you need a hug. It's dangerous... Virtue has its own agenda, and it's not always yours. The word itself means strength, power. And when it gets loose, you'd better watch out."

"Something bad might happen..."

"Impossible. But possibly something painful."

Abdals are goodness, but they are so powerful that when they burn the dross off of us, there might not be anything left. This is the direction I thought Dent was going in, especially since he had gotten his start investigating Internal Affairs for the police. Throughout the movie, he harasses the police commissioner over his use of dirty cops, while the commissioner argues he has to make some compromises to have any officers at all. These are the dirty cops that help the Joker maim Dent and murder his girlfriend.

A Harvey Dent fueled by uncompromising virtue is the absolute force to oppose the Joker. (The Lawful Good to his Chaotic Neutral/Evil). Both are forces of destruction. Human beings, inherently flawed but striving for order, can't live with either.

The Bad Reason I Didn't Like Hair

2008-07-28T22:19:00.003-04:00

I know I ragged on The Public's staging of Hair, but credit where credit's due; there was one really good moment in the production...

"Hair" rang out over the speaker system. The cast danced like dervishes through the audience and soon, half the audience (including me) had joined them on stage. The mood was electric, members of the audience dances with the cast and with each other as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and, at the end of it all, Jonathan Groff autographed my Metrocard. So what was the problem? The dance number came after the curtain call.

The actors were talented and appeared passionate, but, until that last number, I couldn't really believe it. The lack of plot or character development for most of the characters meant that all of the mood swings (mostly back and forth between bliss and comatose) were chemically fuelled and difficult for the mostly sober audience to share.

But the show wouldn't have been fixed by simply pulling the audience on stage earlier. Interactivity is great, but not in the form of blind enthusiasm. Ultimately, Hair suffered from comparison with my friend and classmate, Rafael Kern's production this year of The Bacchae.

Rafa incorporated audience participation from the opening of the show, when the cast threw open the doors of the theatre and pulled the audience in for dances and revels. He and the cast kept the energy high, so I spent the nearly the entire show in a state of Dionysian exhilaration. Which made the crash so much more wrenching.

Before the physical dismemberment of Pentheus, the cast circled on him and tore apart his concept of self. (Hard to describe on paper, frightening in person). They turned on him with now-playful-now-earnest cruelty, and the worst part was, if they had transitioned to this abuse straight from the dancing, it was hard to imagine that the audience wouldn't have joined in the taunting or that we might have gone so far as to strike Elliot (the actor playing Pentheus).

Rafa's production had the biggest impact on me of all the shows I saw this year because he transported you into the world of the play, and then, once he sucked you in, he made you complicit.

Hair failed for me because, even at its most engrossing, it was without consequence. The main characted, Claude, is lost to the drugged-out collective, but solely due to the outside influence of the US Army. Nothing suggests that the culture presented is not self-sustaining. If I wanted a happy-go-lucky musical with confusing shifts in mood I'd rewatch Mamma Mia!

Sorry, Public Theatre. No guilt. No good review.

The Good Reason I Didn't Like Hair

2008-07-23T22:45:00.003-04:00

The Public Theatre (home of Shakespeare in the Park) opened its second show, Hair, for previews on Tuesday night. My family and I went together, and, I'm sad to say, I didn't enjoy it that much.

Although the show opened with remarks about Hair's relevance to today, the musical really felt dated and kitchy. When it premiered in 1968, many of the songs and sight gags were incredibly controversial, but now they fall flat, which is, in many cases, a good thing. I thought the "Black Boys/White Boys" song was a complete waste of time with lousy lyrics, sample:

Black boys are delicious
Chocolate flavored love
Licorice lips like candy
Keep my cocoa handy
I have such a sweet tooth
When it comes to love

but my perspective changed when I was reading about the show and found out that, since the show premiered so soon after the push to repeal anti-miscegenation laws, this song (sung by white girls) was shocking and offensive. A number of similar gags playing on racism, homophobism, and whatever the term is for people who are anti-nudist are obsolete.

It's a cultural victory that takes the fun out of seeing the show, except as an historical/anthropological document. It might have been better, but I'll save my other objections for my next post: "The Bad Reason I Didn't Like Hair.

N.B. Anyone near NYC who wants to see the show, it runs through the end of August and is totally free. To get tickets, you wait on line in the morning in Central Park. For veterans of the line, best show up early (8-9 am at the latest). My family got the very last tickets showing up at 11:30am for the first show of previews of a dated show that, apart from Jonathan Groff, had no stars. Enjoy.

Science Tuesday: Modern Day Indulgences

2008-07-23T01:15:00.002-04:00

True, most of the time today, when we talk about indulgences we just mean something that's bad for us, that we permit ourselves. But it turns out coffee is also an indulgence in the best traditions of mideival Catholicism; it erases other misdeeds. According to this article from Science News:

One of the largest studies ever conducted shows that coffee drinkers die at almost the same rates as their non-drinking peers. But, after controlling for the fact that coffee drinkers tend to exercise less and smoke more, coffee is linked to a slightly lower death rate in both men and women...

Overall, participants who downed a few cups of coffee a day had about the same death rate as those who didn’t drink coffee, despite the fact that coffee drinkers tended to smoke more, drink more alcohol, not take vitamins and exercise less. All of those factors are linked to higher death rates.

The article goes on to say this result is seen mostly only in women, and stops short of recommending lazy smokers add a vice for their health. On the lazy side, I'm disappointed the only (non-athletic) way to deal with my sloth is to drink a beverage which makes me sick, I'll wait to here from Helen for the smoker's side.

Metro Section: Putting the "Community" in Community Pool

2008-07-21T22:23:00.005-04:00

Just a quick link to this article from today's Metro Sectiona bout former and current gang members revitalizing a community pool.

Scorpio, who is known by this name, is Terrance Carpenter, 26. He is one of a dozen or so young men who volunteer unofficially each week at the pool, which sits amid an area long fractured by hostilities among gangs like the Bloods, the Crips and the Latin Kings. Some of the volunteers are gang members, but others have turned their backs on crime...

The volunteers have no enforcement powers; their duties are not clearly defined. But at the enormous pool full of excited — sometimes overexcited — children and teenagers, they provide extra ears and eyes for the officials charged with maintaining order. When the children violate the no-diving rule, they scold them. When horseplay gets too rowdy, they tone it down. When they see loiterers looking for trouble on the streets outside the pool, they swagger over to ward them off.

“This is my block,” Mr. Carpenter said. “It’s my love. It’s my family.”

I don't have much to add, but I do think it's interesting that this story departs from the normal idea that you need to get the kids out of the gangs before you set them up as mentors.

~~~

Nice to have a little ray of sunshine on to light the abyss we must be in if I'm reading this in the NYT:

Britain should no longer rely on assurances by the United States that it does not torture terrorism suspects, an influential parliamentary committee said in a report released Sunday.

Couture Femininity isn't that flattering

2008-07-18T18:50:00.005-04:00

Project Runway is back this week, and, aside from confirming my long-held belief that people who refer the themselves in the third person should be shot, it got me thinking about an interesting metaphor that Helen developed in the comments trail of this blog post.

To be more helpful: really, try and take the fashion metaphor more seriously. Yeah, fashion has meant lots of different things to lots of different cultures and eras. There are certain common themes (symmetry, simplicity, etc.), but not really enough common ground to hang your hat on. Sometimes we even look back at a particular era and say, "Wow, I can't believe that's what we thought 'fashionable' was!" (A good analogy for how I feel about 1950's femininity: acid wash jeans.) We never completely revert to a former era--fashion is always moving forwards, and so is femininity--but we do look to them for inspiration.

But in spite of all those caveats and admissions of arbitrariness, fashion still matters. You're still not allowed to wear a plaid jacket with a polka-dot tie and blue jeans to your office job and say, "The suit-and-tie uniform is arbitrary. Why can't I just wear what suits me?" If I went up to Tim Gunn and said, "I think that one is most stylish" and he disagreed, he would be right and I would be wrong. On the other hand, I could become a fashion innovator and outpace him (a path that would depend on learning, and to some meaningful extent playing by, the rules).

Let me say first off, this is a great explanation of how femininity matters and how we can live within it without being crippled. I think this is a pretty good analogue, but part of the fashion side has me worried.

Two seasons ago the designers of Project Runway were challenged to design for each other's mothers. The mothers were, to put it delicately, not as petite as the androgynously-skinny models the designers were used to. This challenge produced some of the most hideous outfits I have ever seen on PR, and even the most talented designers were flummoxed. They had never been asked to design for ordinary women before.

Fashion may be moving forward, aesthetically speaking, and it's certainly more comfortable, but I don't feel it's grown more flattering on ordinary women. I fall withing the 'ordinary' range of female bodies and am nearly incapable of finding a flattering shirt or dress in most department stores.

That's why I think Helen's narrative is a little blithe. If the innovators of femininity are as divorced from ordinary women as fashion designers are, there's not a lot to draw on. I'm not sure that couture, aesthetic-only femininity exists, but I'm not listening to Tim Gunn on this one unless I'm sure he knows something about women (though if he has any ideas on the shirt front, I'm all ears).

Singing Supervillian Scientist (I love Joss Whedon!)

2008-07-17T23:52:00.002-04:00

Blogging on fashion and femininity, tomorrow; shameless plug, right now.

Two webisodes of three are up now, and it all goes dark (except for iTunes) Sunday night. How can you miss a musical where Neil Patrick Harris's love song has these lyrics "With my freeze ray I will stop/the world/With my freeze ray I will/Find the time to/Find the words to..."

Enjoy!

Some things are simple

2008-07-15T23:05:00.002-04:00

I'm excerpting from today's
Editorial Observer in the NYT, but I really recommend reading the whole article (it's not long). It tells the story of Pfc. Joseph Dwyer who died last month at home after serving honorably in Iraq.

He was 31 and very sick. For years he had been in and out of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction. He was seized by fearful delusions and fits of violence and rage. His wife left him to save herself and their young daughter. When the police were called to Mr. Dwyer’s apartment on June 28, he was alone. They broke down the door and found him dying among pill bottles and cans of cleaning solvent that friends said he sniffed to deaden his pain...

His friends tried an intervention, showing up at his door in October 2005 and demanding his guns and cans of solvent. He refused to give them up.

Hours later, gripped by delusions, he shot up his apartment. He was glad when the SWAT team arrived, Ms. Knapp said, because then he could tell them where the Iraqis were. He was arrested and discharged, and later moved to Pinehurst, N.C. His parents tried to get him help, but nothing worked. “He just couldn’t get over the war,” his mother, Maureen, told a reporter. “Joseph never came home.”

The way we treat our veterans is a travesty. This isn't an issue that should cause divisions on partisan, ideological, or philosophical lines. This isn't an issue that needs to wait for a new Administration. Summer is a slow season, and, while Obama and McCain are focus group testing their fall ads, they should take some time out to say, together that our vetrans deserve better, and they should endorse a biparisan plan now. Pfc. Dwyer, and others like him, won't make it to January.

Science Tuesday: Curing the Symptom/Curing with the Symptom

2008-07-15T19:13:00.000-04:00

To follow up on an earlier post, I was complaining about the modern desire to ignore oversimplify systems, favoring quick fixes (hookworm-based pills) over an acknowledgement of the complexity of its dynamics. This week's New York Times Magazine's cover story was on "Pill Popping Pets," animals who are prescribed mood-regulating drugs. This article did make a good case for treating the (inbred) dogs that suffer from compulsive, self-harming behaviors. Plus, it included this quote:

Eli Lilly brought to market its own drug Reconcile last year. The only difference between it and Prozac is that Reconcile is chewable and tastes like beef.

More worrying is that fundamentally, these people are medicating their dogs for being dogs, whether the dogs are restless from being stuck in an appartment all day or are so attached to their owners that they panic when their owners leave. The most objectively egregious example are pet owners who demand diet pills for their pets. Just feed them less! For the most part, pet prescriptions are another easy-out solution that avoids acknowledging the real problem by focusing on the symptoms.

~~~

Then again, someone's found an awesome way to use symptoms to find cures (hat tip to Ars Technica for the story. By using data mining techniques on side effects of FDA approved drugs, scientists are finding the target mechanism of drugs and clarifying protein pathways. Unfortunately, some symptoms were just not helpful. According to Ars Technica, "so many drugs were reported to cause dizziness that it was nearly useless for the analysis."

No thanks, I'll just keep living in a world without smallpox

2008-07-15T00:04:00.005-04:00

The NYT's Editorial Observer and I are on the outs. Commenting on Spain's recent resolution granting legal rights to chimps, the Observer has this to say:

Strip away the goofier rhetoric of the ape-rights activists, and their claim is straightforward. Great apes are biologically very close to humans; chimps and humans share about 98 percent of their DNA. Apes have complex communication skills and close emotional bonds. They experience loneliness and sorrow. They deserve some respect.

Absolutely. I'm against the horrific conditions in which we raise our livestock, and I support discouraging the use of apes in circus-like performances. Most of us have no problem with outlawing needless cruelty. I just happen to think that "harmful medical research" is pretty darn needful.

I don't mean to downplay the suffering experienced by chimps in medical facilities. Richard Preston's excellent history of smallpox, The Demon in the Freezer details the horrible suffering of chimps infected with smallpox, and the scientist involved genuinely mourn for their charges. I think eliminating crippling diseases trumps our concern for the human-like nature of apes, just as crippling hunger would justify butchering and eating them. We shouldn't outlaw important medical research, but we should, just like the scientists Preston observes, understand the weight of what we are doing and mourn accordingly.

(Of course, I'll admit to being somewhat heartless in this matter. When I read in Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (another great book) that Pasteur neglected to confirm that his TB cure worked, since this would have involved deliberately not treating babies for a control group. Unfortunately for science, TB was already in decline when Pasteur developed his treatment, so there's no confirmation that it works. I would have been in favor of an actual human trial.)

Dining In, Dining Out: Happy B-Day Proust!

2008-07-10T23:34:00.004-04:00

Throughout my year in DS, my professors emphasized (in handout and lecture) the importance of "close reading." Clearly, any deficiencies in my method are wholly due to the fact that my DS:Lit papers were not accepted in the form of cullinary concoctions.

Happily, Edmund Levin is filling this void with this article in Slate, titled "How much did Proust know about madeleines?" He exerpts the famous passage and then reflects:

What can we glean from this passage? Proust's madeleine was quite dry. It demanded not just a quick dunk, but immersion to "soften" it (according to the new translation by Lydia Davis, said to be the most accurate). And, you'll note, Marcel never bites the cookie. The memory surge is triggered by crumbs.

The Crumb Factor is the key to this culinary mystery. A close analysis of the text yields the following sequence: Marcel 1) breaks off and drops the morsel into the tea. 2) The madeleine piece then wholly or partially disintegrates during its immersion. 3) Marcel then fishes about with his spoon, yielding a spoonful of tea mixed with crumbs.

The question, then: What recipe would deliver this dry, extraordinary crumb-producer?

I won't spoil this literary mystery, except to say that the author consults no fewer than three Proust scholars, one of whom contends:

[Levin's theory that] Marcel had "dissolved pieces of madeleine floating around in his teacup," [is] "not likely." And, to my surprise, he asserted that Marcel does dunk and bite the madeleine—which would mean there's no crumb production mystery to be explained. The professor insisted that the crumbs are simply created in the narrator's mouth after he bites off a morsel and shmooshes it around

Crumbled or shmooshed, these (possibly invented) madeleines are nearly as delicious as Proust's wonderful, lyric sentences. I have only read Swann in Love, but I hope to read more Proust this summer and find the prospect of reading him in French the strongest arguement for continuing with French instead of switching to Latin next semester.

Happy 137st! Requiescat in pace, at least until you see this.

Thursday House and Home: New Neighbors

2008-07-10T23:18:00.003-04:00

Two new Yale blogs have joined the Mafia.

Adrian Ryan is blogging as the Conservative Hipster. He terms it his

personal blog of musings on music, culture, philosophy, and politics. It stems from an idea I had while posting here, when I realized that making others know that conservatives come in all shapes and colours, even in a hipster variety that cares about the shape and colour of the typeface on ones shirts, is an important endeavor.

The other newcomers are Bryce Taylor, George Singer, and Mathew Gerkin, united as the Quixotic Cavers who are attempting to follow Don Quixote's

valiant quest for romance, beauty, and truth in its highest form... To be sure, we do not aspire to see castles where there are only inns. We suspect, however, that some of the things ordinarily taken these days to be but ramshackle inns will turn out to be majestic castles in the end.

No word yet on a rival "Sancho's Insula" blog, presumably run by the Progs and composed of many transliterated Spanish proverbs strung together into a single, glorious post.

Welcome to the family guys. Don't be strangers.

(Yes, I am shoehorning this plug under 'House and Home' on the grounds that plugs are appropriate house/blogwarming gifts).

Science Tuesday: Healing with Hookworms

2008-07-08T22:41:00.005-04:00

First it was leeches draining excess blood from grafts, then maggots began saving limbs from amputatation, now, hookworms may be next to make the leap from pest to prescription. Scienctist David Pritchard (profiled here) knows hookworms
(in limited dosage) are safe, since he had ten crawl through his skin and set up home in his gut. He believes that the worms can suppress immune function in people with severe allergies or autoimmune disorders. So far, so good.

The National Health Services ethics committee let him conduct a study in 2006 with 30 participants, 15 of whom received 10 hookworms each. Tests showed that after six weeks, the T-cells of the 15 worm recipients began to produce lower levels of chemicals associated with inflammatory response, indicating that their immune systems were more suppressed than those of the 15 placebo recipients. Despite playing host to small numbers of parasites, worm recipients reported little discomfort. Trial participants raved about their allergy symptoms disappearing.

This is one of the good arguments for not mindlessly annihilating species, even parasites. But Dr. Pritchard's long term goals seem to miss why this kind of science is so cool. He hopes to "to figure out exactly how the worms turn down the immune-system radar, so he can borrow the tactics to develop alternatives to immune-suppressant and allergy-fighting drugs."

The problem that the hookworms are dealing with is caused by not being aware of our connection with nature. Not in some Kumbaya, Mother Spirit way, but a simple humility and willingness to recognize that removing ourselves from nature can be debilitating. Irritable Bowel Syndrom, whose rates have been skyrocketing in an age of casually prescribed antibiotics, may be caused or exacerbated by destruction of intestinal bacteria.

It may be that no distillation of hookworms can reproduce the effect actual hookworms have in a human body. We may be desperately trying to remove ourselves from the environment, but it's important to remember we aren't just a sack of chemicals, we are an ecosystem within an ecosystem. Ultimately, recognizing this reality may produce solutions that are more effective, as well as objectively awesome.

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-06T20:26:00.002-04:00

It was a lovely evening. My family, take-out Chinese food, my first ever viewing of The Godfather, and, finally, watching the country club's members' only fireworks from the highway median just outside the gates. Here's to the immigrant experience and the American Dream.

P.S. The New York Public Library has a cool exhibit on the Declaration of Independence which includes a draft of the Declaration in Jefferson's own hand. If anyone is in the area, it's worth checking out.

YouScrewed: Please don't be evil, Google

2008-07-03T22:23:00.006-04:00

No NYT link on this story, since Ars Technica beat them to the punch.

Remember that $1 billion lawsuit Viacom filed against YouTube, and by extension, Google? Well, a big ruling just came down. No, not a verdict, of course, the case has been going for only about a year, now. The verdict in question specifies what information Viacom is entitled to as part of the discovery process.

The judge denied some of the more absurd requests (all of Google's source code, YouTube's source code, every private video ever uploaded). Unfortunately, Viacom is still getting plenty to make mischief with.

Viacom is entitled to receive a copy of every video removed for any reason (be it porn or piracy) to make the case that YouTube is not just a safe harbor for piracy, but rather is fueled by them. The second concession is worse:

A 12TB database containing logging information on every video ever watched at YouTube. The database will also show which username and IP address watched every video, a move with potential privacy implications.

Leaving aside the fairly likely possibility that Viacom, like RIAA, will use this information to sue and settle with users who viewed pirated content, this concession would be a substantial violation of the users' privacy. The videos an 'anonymous' user watches should not be tabulated and turned over. This concession will curtail viewings and creativity on sharing websites if every view is logged and may come back to haunt you. Employers already peruse Facebook profiles, information that is willingly uploaded by users. Making it possible to request viewing logs without reason is a step in the wrong direction. Google should appeal and defy this order.

Front Page: US cribs from China on torture

2008-07-02T22:57:00.003-04:00

I feel pretty strongly about torture as a moral issue, but Scott Shane's article China Inspired Interrogations at Guantanamo makes it pretty clear this isn't a big moral dilemma, balancing the needs of the many against one person's human rights, if torture doesn't produce actionable intelligence. Or any intelligence at all, really. Leaving aside the fact that when China practised the techniques we've adopted on American soldiers we called it torture, here's the real money quote:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. [emphasis added]

So we've adopted as protocol for intelligence work techniques designed to produce false information. With the White House pushing to keep Gitmo in the shadows, what on earth do we need false, coerced confessions for?

Escapes: Sworn Virgins

2008-06-27T22:22:00.004-04:00

Helen has a few good posts up right now that were prompted by the Times's article on the decline of sworn virgins in Albania. Helen's take:

There is a difference between fulfilling traditionally male responsibilities and adopting a masculine manner and masculine patterns of thought, and insofar as the Virgjineshe realize that you can't do the former without also doing the latter they're smarter than, say, American feminists. The mental quirks associated with masculinity (an obsession with pride, aggression, competitiveness, etc.) developed (partly) in response to male responsibilities, and I think there's something to be said for insisting that, if you're going to play patriarch, you should go all the way with it. Gender isn't a buffet bar; be one or be the other, but pick.

I'm inclined to agree with Helen on most counts, but I don't see sworn virgins as any closer to a solution than gender neutral proponents. Sworn virgins, girl geeks, and gay best friends, when neutered sexually, undermine the idea of gender as a non-arbitrary construct by divorcing the gender role from some of its roots.

After all, why go all the way to Albania, Helen? These behaviors are common in high school. I was treated as one of the guys on stage crew, (not that surprising, as I had no one to be one of the girls with), but more interesting was the situation in my AP Computer Science class. The class was split 8:3::male:female. The other two girls were girls, tank tops, pedicures, lazy coding and any other archetype you care to project. I was still one of the boys, the only girl in the class whose coding was respected, and I was even invited to play Dungeons and Dragons with the boys and then chosen to run the game as Dungeon Master in the summer.

Being accepted as one of the boys meant I was accepted in all spheres of manhood. I heard all the stories about their girlfriends, and the guys felt comfortable talking to me about their conquests and seduction techniques without the slightest discomfort. Because they never treated me as a female, they never thought of me in a sexual context. In fact, the only time that my feminity became an issue was when I wore a non-baggy shirt to school that revealed my figure. The boys proceeded to mock me for this for the rest of the year, in front of the teacher. I hadn't upheld my end of the deal, but the transgression would have been just as heinous if I had leered with them at one of the other girls.

This is what I find particularly interesting about the Albanian sworn virgins. When they become men, they never have sexual relationships with men or women. The Albanian women aren't men, they are neuters. In the U.S., there's a parallel role for men: the (neutered) gay best friend. This isn't as simple as performing a different gender, since it isn't allowed to be performed wholeheartedly.

This shilly-shallying does as much to erode gender norms as equality=sameness feminism. You still retain, as Helen said, the mental quirks of masculinity, which arose in response to male-type responsiblities and objectives. To retain the behaviors while removing one of the motivations undermines the framework in which it makes sense to see these behaviors as related and co-dependent, rather than options to mix and match.

By all means, pick a gender and stick to it, but if you divorce sexuality from these behaviors you didn't pick a side, you're just in a nonsensical no-man's-land.

Science Tuesday: Standards Set by Communities Deeds Freak Out Community

2008-06-24T22:28:00.002-04:00

When jurors are asked to determine if the defendent in an obsenity trial has "violated community standards," they are seldom given a definite heuristic to evaluate these standards. But in one case in Florida, the defence is arguing that community standards are nothing more than behavior that is standard for the community and has found a novel way to assess these behaviors.

Rather than showing broad availability of sex-related Web sites, he is trying to show both accessibility and interest in the material within the jurisdiction of the First Circuit Court for Santa Rosa County, where the trial is taking place.

The search data he is using is available through a service called Google Trends (trends.google.com). It allows users to compare search trends in a given area, showing, for instance, that residents of Pensacola are more likely to search for sexual terms than some more wholesome ones.

“We tried to come up with comparison search terms that would embody typical American values,” Mr. Walters said. “What is more American than apple pie?” But according to the search service, he said, “people are at least as interested in group sex and orgies as they are in apple pie.”

The idea of community morals being determined by the average morality of the community is sort of frightning. The lowest-common-denominator morality this seems to promote is hardly what we should aspire to. Laws don't exist to enforce or create guidelines for moral action, but rather to regulate behavior that infringes inappropriately on the choices and actions of others. The real danger is that having a better picture of what we are will promote moral complacency. The actions of others have nothing to do with guides to moral behavior.

Wednesday Dining: Yes, We Have No Bannanas

2008-06-18T22:59:00.004-04:00

Say what you like about the questionable carbon neutrality of organic foods, I'm up for anything that cuts into the market share of monocultures. Dan Koeppel's op-ed today doesn't just condemn the competition-suppressing, democracy-squashing actions of the banana cartel on a moral level, but on a practical level.

Unlike apple and orange growers, banana importers sell only a single variety of their fruit, the Cavendish...however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20.

So, it turns out environmentally destructive decisions often bite you in the ass. Who knew.

I just hope this actually results in Chiquita et alis actually funding seed banks and heritage crops.

Science Tuesday: Porn Scarier than Censorship

2008-06-17T21:41:00.005-04:00

Verizon made a deal with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to police child pornography traffic on its networks. An original survey of Usenet groups found 88 newsgroups that shared child pornography. (Side note, Usenet was the first widespread, civilian internet network and is still popular in some circles today). This established, Verizon has announced that it will ban all Usenet forums except for the "Big Eight" a subset of forums that are more actively moderated and organized.

This is patently ridiculous. I'd be horrified at the precedent that's being set if it weren't so clearly absurd; eliminate porn on the internet by eliminating the internet. The 88 targeted newsgroups are a miniscule subset of the hundreds of thousands that will be eliminated under Verizon's policy. Users will still be able to access Usenet by using other ISPs, who hopefully won't be so foolish as to follow Verizon's example.

So what caused this illogical reaction? The idea that ISPs should (or can) be responsible for all user content on their networks is crazy. Senator Lieberman is fighting YouTube to have all videos with jihadi content removed, regardless of whether they advocate violence, but it is not the place of ISPs to regulate speech on the internet any more than it is Microsoft's problem if I use MS Word to write revolutionary tracts. The ISPs should leave the question of child pornography with law enforcement, perhaps helping to identify questionable content, but it should not be responsible for porns prevalence.

(The Verzion plan suffers from no taint of sanity or irony; one of the newsgroups banned is alt.censorship)

Science Tuesday: Hal in India?

2008-06-17T21:16:00.003-04:00

The New Yorker is lame and only makes part of the current issue available online, so no link today. No big loss. John Seabrook's article "Hello, HAL" is a good overview of some of the problems facing voice recognition problems, but its certainly not worth getting the mag just for this article. I just wanted to share this:

Designers [of voice recognition systems] found that Southerners had more trouble using the system than Northerners didm because when instructed to answer "yes" or "no" Southerners regularly added "ma'am" or "sir," depending on the I.V.R.'s gender, and the computer wasn't programmed to recognize that.

In Memoriam: Tim Russert

2008-06-16T21:42:00.004-04:00

When I heard that Tim Russet was dead, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. I wasn't processing his passing as a standout news anchor or thinking about particular interviews I had loved. I missed him emotionally, the way I would have missed Grover (the muppet, not Norquist) if I had been told he had died. After all, I had been fans of both at the same time.

My dad gave (and still gives) current events talks at Long Island libraties, so he watched all the Sunday politics talk shows.
9 - 10 am Sunday Morning (CBS)
10 - 11 am This Week (ABC)
10 - 11 am Reliable Sources (NBC) (taped upstairs to watch later)
11:00 - 11:30 am Meet the Press (NBC) [only the second half, so he'd often watch the first half when it was repeated at 6pm that evening]
11:30 am McLaughlin Group (CBS)

I was a big fan of all of these shows (for the volume, if not the content) from a young age. When I was three years old, I'd run into the room when the 'Gokkin Goop' came on, for the pleasure of yelling "Issue One!" with host John McLaughlin. Tim Russert, with his obvious love for his work, was a delight to watch, even if I didn't understand what he was doing. When I got older, I began to enjoy his show for his remarkable interviews and insights. The many tributes to him have done a beautiful job of eulogizing him. I just want to praise the enthusiasm and passion he brought to his reporting that was powerful enough to move a three-year-old and inspire an eighteen-year-old.

It is still unclear who will replace Tim Russert on Meet the Press, but the blog Web 2.Oh...Really? has an interesting post calling Russert the last of the 1.0 newsmen. Russert's
whiteboard is the stuff of legend, soon to be replaced by

[T]he new host[,]... he (or she: Katie?) will become, like Wolf Blitzer of CNN, a moderator and curator of digital data streams, remote interactive liver feeds and public discussion. A 2.0 website will be kitted out. The competition will follow.

And Tim Russert will be missed.

(Belated) Science Tuesdays: Gay Couples are a Model for Straights...

2008-06-14T22:13:00.006-04:00

...Not so much the reverse for straight science columnists.

Imagine my surprise and delight to find, while catching up on the New York Times upon returning home from the national ACLU membership conference, this article. Science writer Tara Parker-Pope suggests that gay marriages should set the standard for heteros, citing a Vermont study of married couples (straight and gay) after Vermont instituted civil unions. The findings:

Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.
While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

Gay couples "fought more fairly" and showed fewer physical signs of stress after a fight. The hypothesis was that these couples were better at seeing each other's point of view and therefore became less irrational during fights.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but the article isn't clear whether all couples in the sample were married. It is rational to assume that gay married couples might have healthier relationships, on average than straight married couples. Since gay couples had a longer wait to marry, couples with insoluble problems or difficult relationship are much more likely to split up before marriage was available. Additionally, gay couples are less likely than straights to rush into marriage either due to pregnancy or a desire for its fruits. Without additional data on how long the couples had been together before any kind of committment ceremony, the data aren't really conclusive.

Regardless of the reason, the behavior modelled by the gay couples is positive. The
NYT Magazine cover story is on families that try equal parenting (as opposed to either gender-normed or egalitarian). Is it progress? Maybe, but I can't help but feel relentless scheduling deals only with symptoms, but play-acting at equal parenting may lead to children who live what their parents modeled.

Book Review: Sci Fi vs Space Opera

2008-06-01T18:53:00.001-04:00

Will's been arguing that space operas are about humans and human problems and speculative fiction is about post-human problems. The first kind is fairly common (and awesome) but decent examples of the second sort are a lot harder to find, making it a little harder to assent to Will's assertion that

relatively modest technological innovations can change human nature in an effective sense if not in an intrinsic sense

That's why I recently failed (for the second time) to finish Ursula LeGuin's
The Left Hand of Darkness. I know the book's a classic, but it fails as a space opera (and, by contemporary standards, is sort of disappointing as speculative sci fi, too). The hermaphrodite society is interesting, but the political problems aren't really dependent on the sci fi aspects of the world. It comes across as a dull political drama interspersed with mildly interesting encyclopaedic explanations of the structure of the society.

Ian McDonald's River of Gods is a decent speculative epic (and he pulls off hermaphrodites better than LeGuin), and it does succeed in creating a post-human nature world populated with Indian aeai regulated by jacked in Krishna Cops, but the novel's plot doesn't make sense. I'd recommend instead his shorter stories in this work including and "The Little Godess" and "The Djinn's Wife" (excerpted in Asimov's).

Another good blend of speculative and space opera is my usual favorite, Battlestar Galactica. The show was mostly space opera (The West Wing with explosions and robots), but later seasons have focused more on the Cylons, as well, adding speculative elements.

Overall, I'm inclined to agree with Will that small changes can push us into speculative sort of new problems, but my reading leaves me unconvinced that it solves old ones. Is there a qualitative difference between the issues addressed in spec and opera and those that only surface in spec or does technological progress just add to our burden of human woes? I've yet to see fiction to convince me that technology doesn't just give us cooler problems to deal with, without resolving our human issues.

Since this is my first Sunday Book Review post, I might as well finish up with a recommendation from the actual New York Times Book Review. Helen, this one's for you.