I have just now finished reading The Aardvark Is Ready For War, by James W. Blinn.#

The book is about an anti-submarine warfare specialist in the United States Navy and the forty days before the First Gulf War is over. He travels from his home town (indeterminate location) to Hawaii, then Sri Lanka, then to the Gulf.#

Intro to Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW): Basically, he's goes up in a plane (S3s, I think) and drops sonar buoys into the water. These triangulate the position of enemy submarines. Then I'm not sure if they drop the torpedos in or if they signal to another submarine where the enemy one is. What Blinn does is he is the "acoustic specialist" who can interpret the data from the sonar buoys. He can tell what kind of sub, how fast it's going, etc. When he describes it the first time it is interesting, but eventually it's very show-boat-ish.

While reading I have been consistently saying, when asked, that it is a terrible book and would definitely not recommend it to anyone. I mostly still agree with this.

The book is incredibly obscene, is not written very well, doesn't seem to have much of purpose besides being the wrapping of a few non-sensical rants about "the Machine" and voyeurism, all with the egotistical trappings of ASW shop talk. Add to this a boatload of curses on every page, discussions about pornography every time he's on the ship, and hookers of indeterminate sexuality at every port call--and you have "The Aardvark Is Ready For War."

(Note on the title: The gas masks the narrators wears make him look like an aardvark and he wears it all the time... not just when he has to.)

With these problems, however, come a few gems hidden amongst the filth and meaningless dribble. And near the end the story almost has an important message about learning to face your fears... but doesn't actually end up doing it.

The gems.#

Before the author ships off, he talks to someone who lives in the same apartment complex as him:

Says I should take care of myself over there. Even though she says it nicely I can tell she's trying for an opening. Wants to dazzle me with her impressive war thoughts that fly so good down at the leather bar. I don't want to hear it. I just say, You bet, and walk upstairs pretending to sort my junk mail. [pg. 5]

There's a constant theme where the author simply sees his work as a job that has no real attachment to reality. This is hammered down when you realize that every situation he's in during the entire book is a simulation of an event. At one point this makes him feel worthless because he wants to be a hero (so people will watch him like he watches others) but eventually he gets over it.

On said simulations:

The target is a Los Angeles Class fast attack sub playing a Soviet Echo II guided missile boat. A stretch. Like a Nissan NSX simulating a pathetic rusted-out Datsun B210. With missiles. The Echo II is a Krushchev-era, first-generation nuke. Max speed twenty knots. Noisy as a freight train. A total piece of shit. Thing has to surface to salvo if you can believe that. Soviets honed their reactor shielding technology after crews came back glowing. Still lose about one a year to reactor fires. Or rust. I could track a real Echo II five miles off, ten miles in good water. Not that I've ever SEEN a real-world Echo II. Not that I'm ever LIKELY to see one. [pg. 37]

I think this sort of attitude has to do with why he thinks so little of the other sailors:

Napoleon's still screwing with the projector. He's not really rewinding, though, like I thought. He rewinds some, stops it, then pulls out a bunch of film and holds it to the light. Then he wraps it back on and rewinds some more. I figure, dumbshit airman, some dirt-scratcher from Gimcrack, Iowa, probably never seen film up close and wonder where the little people come from. It sounds dumb to think like that, like people that stupid exist anywhere outside movies but they DO, and the navy's got them. Hell the navy's MADE for them. [pg. 59]

 

This is funny, he's getting on the ship and describing how they are checking bags:

They got tables set up on the sponson and MAAs searching everything. Even got a dope dog. Don't want any nasty unnatural stimulants getting on board. No guns or knives. Nothing threatening. God forbid. Meanwhile they're craning on pallets of thousand-pounders and Sidewinders and torps and Sparrows and twenty mike-mike ack-ack belts and Harpoons and cluster bombs and Phoenixes and Tomahawks and who knows what all. [pg. 19]

 

The author also talks a bit about what the American think about war, whether they feel responsible for the deaths and that sort of thing. Here is an interesting comment:

A big billboard facing the channel says, We Support Our Heroes! What's THAT supposed to mean? Last week we were all just scummy squids but now we're heroes? [pg. 58]

He sees this at Pearl Harbor and then begins to think about D-Day and how those guys were REAL heroes.

But us? Program a Tomahawk from two hundred miles away and let her loose. Drop a torp from a thousand feet up on a sub a thousand feet under. Where's the heroics? THOSE guys fought eye-to-eye. They SAW who they were shooting at. Close up and personal. I don't want to sound like some gung-ho kill-crazy jarhead (ed--Marine) or something, but there's a difference. There's got to be a difference. [pg. 59]

This ties into a later comment about war and football. The party line is that people like football because it's like war...

Said it was twentieth-century war technology that made football so popular, since there aren't many opportunities for real combat anymore. Used to you could count on a war for every generation so everybody got a chance to work out their aggression cookies at least once a lifetime. Attain hero status. The wars are still here but stand-off ranges have gone from the distance between the rife stock and the bayonet to hundreds of miles. The psychic charge just isn't the same. So in its place there's football, a kind of warfare masturbation -- the uniforms, the anthems, the regional fervor, teams like armies, the forward pass like primitive airpower insurgence, cheerleaders on the sidelines like some caramelized myth of the good woman on the homefront. [pg. 86-87]

And a wee bit later is a return to what the American public think of the military:

And she naturally gives me that Oh-the-military look. No details required. People always do that. Especially, it seems like, people who are supposed to be smart in every other way and who should know better than to slap labels on people. Yet when it comes to us "heroes" they're perfectly willing to think we're all a bunch of morons and baby-killers and each of personally participated in the My-Lai massacre that probably happened when I was about three years old and that just because we all dress the same we must all BE the same underneath, there's no possibility for individuality or personality or, god forbid, original thoughts or anything else they'd give credit for as a matter of course to the lowliest most ignorant dust-squatting aborigine.

[...]

Either you're a hero or a war-mongering dickhead, there's hardly any in-between. Hardly any chance to be just a standard-issue HUMAN doing some BEING. [pg. 96]

 

The whole simulation, "nothing is real" thing is another common theme of the book. One take on it I actually found to be a good illustration:

They're not even NEW words, not HIS words at all. Just words he's repeating from some other source, only not even a source but a relay -- radio or TV or the papers, pulled in by an antenna, bounced off a satellite in geo-synchronous orbit, maybe two, maybe more, from where? From never-never land. Just a chief saying what a newscaster read from what reporter copied from a CRT wired to a modem that's hooked up with a news service where an inputter copied from a memo from another reporter who got the words from a phone call with ANOTHER reporter who got it from some military press briefer who read it from the message put out by some unit commander -- who MAYBE saw it (whatever IT really was) happen. [pg. 80]

This is my citizen journalism is cool. "I was there, you were not, let me tell you about it." Not, "I was paid to be there and report what they want me to, where they is either my employer or the actor, who may or may not be different."

 

There are a great number of rambling lists and things about serial killers, because the narrator is obsessed with television and public figures, and they are mostly obnoxious. But one is funny:

"A nursery school teacher who mutilated rabbits? A priest who kept toys under his cassock? Was your father a strict disciplinarian? Maybe too lax? An absent father? Around too much? A Baby-sitter with hydoencephalitis? Did you collect animal cadavers as a child? Torture insects? Draw cartoon characters with genitalia? Ever see a pentagram? Hang a Christmas tree upside down? Dip a crucifix in urine? Dad have a black cloak in the closet?"

"Naw, we were Catholics but not that kind." [pg. 210]

Good answer.

As you may notice they jewels are mostly in a 50 page block from about page 50 to 100. The book is pretty short, so the mild entertainment does not suffer from too much overhead, but if you just wanted to pick it up then I would recommend those 50 pages. You won't have a problem just jumping in because no story last the whole book anyways.#

I'm very lukewarm about the book. I really like those quotes, but they are honestly the only quality parts.#

Ryan Overbey writes about getting a name for yourself by blogging.#

I've actually met colleagues who think blogging is very weird, who worry about job prospects in a very competitive academic market. But I think being innocuous, silent, and uncontroversial is a great way to establish oneself as a person who says nothing worth arguing about. I write provocative things here from time to time, with the sincere hope that a skilled interlocutor will challenge me. By the end of my time at Harvard, I'll have a large body of thoughts both playful and academic, a record of discussion and debate, and, perhaps most importantly, a demonstrable range of academic, political, and social interests and interactions. A search committee will be able to know me more completely than another candidate who has no such record. That's not a frightening thing- it's exciting.

Why not provide a body of writing to use at a link's notice?

Matt May writes about long term discussions in the blogosphere and the difficulties that the technology and politics present.#

I think there's got to be a way that can be fleshed out which involves applying a URI to the thread, and gathers complete messages to create a permanent archive of the discussion at hand. And one that keeps the feel of things familiar to both bloggers and the audience. My stuff is still my stuff, and I want to feel some degree of control, if not ownership, of what I've written. Ideally, though, I want to float my idea, in my chosen style and format, into a common discussion, in the structure of a typical message board. I still want to keep my message intact, and to use the features blogging affords me: a blank slate, not limited by political or technical barriers, to make my pitch; and a permanently archivable reference to my work. The more we can do in this space, and the more open we can make this to the average blogger, the more we have to share with readers and each other.

I think this is worth being solved, so we as bloggers and readers aren't limited to a short-term history when long-term archives could help us gather and understand our thoughts. I think this would help bloggers in a number of areas where collaborations and disputes aren't necessarily helped by two blogs talking to (or past) one another.

Richard writes that a potential problem with blogging is when your opinion changes or your opinion is unclear. But, should we really respect people who do not seek direct discussion?#

Although it would probably help to make my case if my weblog had comments enabled, one of the ulterior motives of Just a Gwai Lo is to cite controversial opinions and even write what my opinion is from time to time. While I don't want to disclaim fully anything that appears here, all quotes, if there are no comments from myself, are, by definition, without endorsement or criticism. It would be a mistake to assume that in every case, a quote represents my own opinion. It would be safe, however, to assume that in most cases, I either agree with the sentiment or just thought it was wonderfully phrased. Besides, how would you know if I read something if I haven't blogged it?

Charles Miller writes of facts and opinions. (He's wrong by the way.)#

The problem is, though, that having half-heard and not understood this concept, people get it into their heads that because an opinion can neither be true nor false, this means they're allowed to hold any opinion unchallenged. "It's just my opinion", they say. "Opinions can't be false, they just are!"

"Don't hassle me with your… facts!"

While an opinion may not be false, it can be irrational.

Opinions generally represent some objective truth that can be true or false. That objective truth can be argued. And if you are left with an opinion that you have no justification for holding, then while you can continue to hold that opinion as long as you want, you are no longerrationally holding that opinion.

Oliver Willis has a satire piece that suggests Mandy Moore is an idiot Republican.#

The economy is kicking ass. I know this because I've seen it first hand. While on tour for my movie, Chasing Liberty (in theaters now!) I've been driven around by taxis, had my room cleaned by maids, and even had my shoes shined by a nice elderly gentleman. Those are jobs, aren't they? And our proud and powerful president brought them to us. The liberal media doesn't talk about that, instead they talk about things like unemployment figures - that makes my brain hurt.

This is not the first time Oliver has insulted Mandy. I'm so mortified. Oliver, this is war!

Chun the Unavoidable asks, "Was Women's Suffrage A Bad Idea?"#

Getting back to the point, was the suffragists' eventual triumph worth it? Some argue that womenfolk tend to be too emotional--due to their menstruation, child-rearing, and other peculiarities--to be trusted to make the rational decisions involved in politics. Others employ a modified argument that giving the women the right to vote is a regressive measure that penalizes those too poor to get married and double their vote. The key question here is if it is true that married couples tend to vote as the dominant partner (who often, but not always, is a man) wishes.

I know you can talk about your James Carville and Mary whatevers and so on, but I personally have never met a married couple who didn't vote the same ticket (I probably have not ever met anyone socially who voted for Bush, come to think of it.) This will accord with your experience, I expect, and we cannot explain it away as the mere meeting of true minds. In order to counteract the tyranny of the married, perhaps their votes combined should be worth only 1.5.

Michael Feldman writes that losers of presidential elections are forever losers and written off by all.#

So is it any wonder if most of the losing candidates in this losers rodeo end up shedding crocodile tears and, with secret relief, slinking away to lick their wounds, husband their resources, and plot their return to the fray in '08. Whereas the "winner" will end up sloppy road kill under the Cheny-Rove tire tracks, and disappear forever into the pages of history.

The bottom line is that Americans hate a loser. They don't like having them around, reminding us of defeat by their very presence. Better to move on, to new faces, fresh meat, optimistic promises, and unrealized potential.

I always wonder why more presidents don't return to politics. If you really want to make a difference then why would you stop?

Jack Hodgson replies to this:

(1) BOTH candidate in the general election are so personally savaged, by each other and the media, that it takes the bully pulpit of the presidency to repair the damage.

(2) Related, the reality of this savaging leaves the loser unwilling to return to the fray for a second beating.

Gadgetopia writes about the big book and the priciest Amazon item.#

this tacky piece of jewelry that can be yours for the low low price of $390,000. That's right, nearly a half a million dollars. I make a lot of online purchases, but even if I had the spare change I'd have trouble clicking the 'Buy Now' button for this one. Shipping's free on this one.

Anil Dash on the destruction of serendipity.#

I know a significant number of people who initiated business relationships with people they met while on hold as the phone was being passed, in contexts that we'd now call "loose ties". And that's not to mention romantic couples who met this way, resulting in everything from flings to marriages. I'd suspect all of us know at least one person whose parents met by accident because communication in the past was typically to a place before it was to a person. It's gradually gotten less centralized, of course; Few of us in the United States can remember party lines or going to a general store to get the mail.

So I lament the serendipity that's been lost. Many of the most interesting and exciting things that happen to us happen by chance, and now most of the time when I talk to someone, I do it by getting in touch with that specific person. There are of course the rare times when someone is using a computer that belongs to another person and that entry on my buddy list yields a surprise when I send a message. Or a few times I'll call a cell phone and it will have to get handed to its rightful owner before the conversation can begin. But those pass-through moments used to be commonplace, and used to result in the incidental creation of social capital.

Lisa Williams on blogging's impact and Collision Clive's note that before blogging most people didn't write ANYTHING after school.#

By the way, the "unimportant" characterization isn't Clive's -- he's commenting on the attitude of some that blogs are trivial because they focus on the things that are important in the ordinary lives of people (this criticism often takes on an ominous sexist tinge, as the most common way it is phrased is "blogs of teenage girls," as if these were somehow uniquely unimportant -- just as society sees its authors, I suppose). Like Clive, I have a basic beef with this slant -- that somehow blogs are only important if they concentrate on topics that society has already decided are important, like politics or economics or technology. Those are great blogs too, but one of the corrective measures that blogs can take is to make the cultural battle less "winner take all" and restore some measure of deserved importance to neglected topics. After all, look at Pepys Diary. Full of "trivialities," no? Yet it is a work of enduring literary and human power. True, not every personal blog is like that, but that's because we can't know in advance which of the millions of blogs out there is going to pass the test of time.

Richard in China writes about "The Unique Magnificence of a Blogging Community."#

So to anyone who says blogging is a stupid waste of time and a meaningless exercize in navel-gazing, I say you're wrong. It brings people together in ways never before possible, and the results can be inspiring and beautiful. To the two gentlemen who offered their help for my friend, I want to thank you once more, although you are probably tired of all my thanks by now. It is important to be reminded now and then of man's capacity for goodness. Thanks for reminding me.

Ms. Lauren links to the Guardian on pornography.#

Psychotherapists Michael Thompson and Dan Kindlon, in their book Raising Cain: Protecting The Emotional Life Of Boys, suggest that objectification, for boys, starts early. "By adolescence, a boy wakes up most mornings with an erection. This can happen whether he is in a good or bad mood, whether it is a school day or a weekend ... Boys enjoy their own physical gadgetry. But the feeling isn't always, 'Look what I can do!' The feeling is often, 'Look what it can do!' - again, a reflection of the way a boy views his instrument of sexuality as just that: an object. What people might not realise when they justly criticise men for objectifying sex - viewing sex as something you do, rather than part of a relationship - is that the first experience of objectification of sexuality in a boy's life comes from his experience of his own body, having this penis that makes its own demands."

Richard links to Heartless Bitches International on Why "Nice Guys" are often such LOSERS.#

If you have one bad relationship after another, the only common denominator is YOU. Think about it.

What's wrong with Nice Guys? The biggest problem is that most Nice Guys (tm) are hideously insecure. They are so anxious to be liked and loved that they do things for other people to gain acceptance and attention, rather than for the simply pleasure of giving. You never know if a Nice Guy really likes you for who you are, or if he has glommed onto you out of desperation because you actually payed some kind of attention to him.

Tony Pierce loves women.#

you know why i like girls? cuz they seriously dont care what you look like. i love that. all they care about is your personality.

in a way theyre sorta like dogs. except dogs dont even care about your personality, the only things dogs care about is that you dont beat them and that you feed them.

republicans are even more loyal than dogs.

Doug Miller is buried under work.#

Very nearly since the day I joined the F.C. Tucker Company, I've been hearing about how business picks up after the first of the year. I viewed this with some trepidation; I thought I was pretty busy throughout the Fall, and frankly couldn't imagine how I was going to cope when thing got busier.

Turns out the way you cope is by working all the time. I haven't had a full day off since New Year's Day, and it doesn't look like it's going to get better for a few months. When other agents said things were going to pick up, they really weren't kidding.

David De Santo on fluoride in our drinking water: It's not a commie plot, it's just bad medicine.#

For over half a century the government has been telling the public that fluoride is safe and beneficial. It is supposed to reduce cavities; manufacturers add it to toothpaste, and municipalities to their water supplies. Supposedly the only ones who opposed fluoridation were a few lunatics on the far right alleging a Communist conspiracy. Now it seems the left is concerned about it as well.

The Green Party, which is hardly an advocate of laissez faire, has come out solidly against mandatory fluoridation, and for good reason. The Greens point out what more mainstream opponents of fluoridation have know for years, that tooth decay is caused by poor dental hygiene and high consumption of refined sugar products. In fact, it may even give people a false sense of security, by making them feel that they can neglect good dental hygiene in lieu of fluoride. In fact nothing cold be further from the truth.

Tyler Cowen links to a story about how caution can kill you.#

...new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that caution can actually kill you. Sonia Cavigelli and Martha McClintock of the Department of Psychology and Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago found in a recent experiment that individuals who fear novelty—a condition scientists have named "neophobia"—are likelier to die at an earlier age than those who are unafraid of change. It is the first time, says Cavigelli, that a study has demonstrated that an emotional trait that shows up in infancy can shorten life span.

Philip Greenspun writes about how immigration makes Americans fat.#

Contrast this with life in an American city. You're with friends and propose going to a Chinese restaurant. They say "No, we had Chinese food last night." You eventually agree on Indian food, which nobody has had for awhile. Delighted with the novelty of all the tastes you order one or two more dishes than your group would require merely to sustain life for another day or two. The next day you have Mexican food for lunch and go to a Greek restaurant for dinner. Because of immigration we always have the opportunity to open our mouths to alleviate boredom rather than hunger.

Limited choices make you see food as a necessity, not an art form or entertainment outlet.

Adam Gessaman writes about this:

I can attest to this. I live on what I would call the College Student Diet™. Essentially, it consists of foods that are frozen, keep well, and are cheap. They are as healthy as I can make them given my current budget, but they fall far short of a home-cooked meal like Mom makes. This diet is related to the Poor Person Diet™ although it generally includes a basic knowledge that the foods that are being consumed are generally detrimental to my long-term survival. The CSD™ is driven by the fact that one can only eat the same foods, which were purchased in bulk at Costco, day-in and day-out for a certain period before the portions decrease to minimize stomach churn.

Cory Doctorow links to the Daily Show on Howard Dean's reputation for being "angry."#

Dean Esmay on the "poison" of Howard Dean.#

It remains an utterly poisonous untruth to claim that George W. Bush "stole" the 2000 election, or that there was anything illegitimate about his narrow victory. He is not even the first President in living memory to win the Presidency while losing the popular vote; we are now pretty sure that John F. Kennedy also lost the popular vote to Richard Nixon in 1960. And Kennedy wasn't the first, either, because both Presidents Hayes and Harrison did it before him. We don't elect Presidents by popular vote, and never have. We do it based on semi-proportional representation of state elections (i.e. the electoral college), an enduring and functional way of electing Presidents that's as old as the Constitution, and has many valuable features that make it unlikely to ever change (among them, that it forces the candidates to pay attention to state issues).

[...]

And by the way, I'm going to repeat something I've said before in response to people who've told me how nice and sincere and optimistic and patriotic Howard Dean's supporters often are. The fact is that if you believe in, and put forth, vile falsehoods, I don't particularly care how cool you are to hang out with at parties, or what a terrific time you have hanging out with your fellow Dean supporters. If falsehoods about the 2000 election, which have been debunked time and again, drive your support, and if you believe vile things about America going to war just for oil or because we are bully imperialists or just want to make our President's business cronies rich, then you believe hateful things and are, at core, a hateful person. I don't care how many ear piercings you have, what kind of cool laid back attitude you have, how interesting your taste in music is, or what kind of terrific parties you throw.

Tom McDonald asks an important question, "Why is education so bad in politics?"#

Glenn Reynolds points to a story where Clark says Bush lied (about the tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda) and then Clark is shown as indicating he thinks Al Qaeda is in bed with Iraq. This may be a poor example but I find it so strange that the media jumps on folks who change their mind. Isn't there such a thing as evolving your thought process or simply seeing things correctly (maybe even based on new information)? Like, what's so bad about changing your position on things? I used to be "for" government programs which I am now very much against. The idea seemed good at the time but further investigation led me to a different conclusion. Does the mere thought that you did not make a perfect decision in the past stop people from publicly changing their minds? Is being human such a bad thing?

Michael Feldman writes about a visit to Concord, NH to see Wesley Clark.#

Clark rushed through a two-page prepared statement. He was happy to receive this endorsement. Many native American tribes and organizations have endorsed him. He is in favor of affirmative action and thinks the far majority of Indians shouldn't have to pay taxes. The Chief gave him a certificate and a thin strip of beaded leather she called "wampum".

It was rushed and insincere. We were shocked at his lack of empathy with the audience, his rushed and perfunctory delivery. He was just going through the motions. Then we realized what was different from the Dean, Lieberman and Kerry appearances we had seen-the audience. There were no "voters" at this press conference. No "real" people. They were all pro's, and all basically doing the same thing, serving the same master. Creating the news as we know it, getting the message out, accomplices in a scam so complex even the most astute participants only understood a fraction of what was going on.

This was what the week earlier was like.

Grant Henniger responds to a comment about Governor Dean and President Bush's various stances on terrorism.#

President Bush has not done a thing to make us safer while doing quite a bit that has made us less safe. The current war in Iraq is likely to destabilize the entire Middle East which will bring in regimes hostile to the US, which is not safe for us. President Bush has completely been ignoring Al Qaeda, letting it rebuild in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, which is not safe for us. President Bush has cut the pay and benefits of our reservists, which will weaken our military in the long run, which is not safe for us. President Bush has begun to pursue a national missile defense and space militarization which, in turn, will lead to an escalation in arms among our allies, which is not safe for us. President Bush has weakened our ties to our allies, making them realize that us and them will not always agree on the best course of action, and that they need to develop their militaries so they do not have to rely upon us, which is not safe for us. President Bush has not made the US a safer place to live.

Dean Esmay on people caring more about being write that being good for the country.#

If the Bush administration finally finds 10 million pounds of anthrax, nerve gas, and 3/4ths of a working nuclear bomb, the only response from the critics will be that the Bushies are incompetent because they took so long to find it. And probably still lied about something anyway.

Bashing the Commander in Chief in a time of war is simply more important to them. Period. Truth doesn't matter. Scoring cheap points in a political debate is all that matters.

[...]

What these people deserve is the biggest ass-whupping in American electoral history. But they're probably not going to get it, so why waste our time? I'm increasingly convinced that politics for some people is always and forever about being vicious and mean-spirited and cynical and unfair to your political opponents.

Jim Moore on the difference between Dean and Bush, with particular focus on Bush's problems.#

For the citizen and taxpayer in you: States are cutting services everywhere--in education, especially. E.g. in Oregon most schools are on a shortened year, after already cutting teachers and courses. Education and other state services are important in the medium and long term if we are to sustain our knowledge economy and provide good livelihoods for our people. The total of state budget shortfalls, as estimated by the Economist magazine last June, is between $15B and $25B. By contrast, the cost of the Iraq war was over $100B just for the initial fighting. And of course the congress has appropriated $87B more for reconstruction (including the notorious Haliburton contracts). Hmmm. The best tradeoffs?

Lawrence Lessig links to the Bush in 30 Seconds winners. They are all awesome.#

MoveOn's Bush-in-30-Second campaign has announced its winners. They are in four categories, and each is brilliantly done. I hope the same is done by the other side, when the Democrats finally find a candidate. Because what's great about this is that it marks the real beginning of iPolitics — bottom-up media made real.Citizen-bloggers and digital media — when Madison finally returns to "Madison Avenue."

This just in! David Weinberger compares George W. Bush to Hitler!#

Here's one thing I think should be remembered: Nazi Germany's unfathomable evils were perpetrated by one of the most civilized of cultures. Yes, "civilized" is a loaded term. Deconstruct it as you will, Germany — a country that gave us many of the West's most revered artists and philosophers — seemed to be operating well within the norms of Western politics and culture. Yet it democratically voted in Hitler and watched (or worse) as it murdered its children and rolled tanks into its neighbors' cities.

[...]

We should learn from the horrors of Nazi Germany that it can happen anywhere, even here.

[...]

Do these acts make us into Nazi Germany? Of course not! Is any of these acts on a scale with death camps or the invasion of Poland? Not in the least! Each may be entirely justifiable: It may be the responsibility of a courageous country to ignore world opinion in some instances. Some dissenters may actually be unpatriotic. It's possible that our enemies are demonic; I have nothing good to say about Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. Even so, we should take such steps with open debate and genuine trepidation. Shutting off the conversation does not help us preserve our genuine American values. We should remember that it can happen here because it did happenthere...and also that if were to happen, the it would certainly be different. Is it happening here? That's exactly what we should be talking about, even if our answer is a resounding No.

Richard Stevenson in the New York Times on how Bush sought to oust Saddam early.#

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr. O'Neill said in an interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes."

Mr. O'Neill, who was dismissed by Mr. Bush more than a year ago over differences on economic policy, said Iraq was discussed at the first National Security Council meeting after Mr. Bush's inauguration. The tone at that meeting and others, Mr. O'Neill said, was "all about finding a way to do it," with no real questioning of why Mr. Hussein had to go or why it had to be done then. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," Mr. O'Neill said.

Aaron Swartz writes on this:

While Bush had campaigned on not doing any interventionist nation-building, at the first National Security Meeting (just after they got into office) they discussed invading Iraq and two days later they discussed the post-Saddam regime, including who wants oil contracts and where oil might be. (They showed pictures of documents establishing this.)

Bush is routinely unengaged and bored in meetings and doesn't ask questions.

Ted Barlow fact checks some asses.#

I paid pretty close attention to the debates, and I really didn't remember Bush proposing an invasion of Iraq. Is that the way it happened? Let's go to the transcript for the full quote:

GOV. BUSH: I'd like to, of course, and I presume this administration would as well. But we don't know — there's no inspectors now in Iraq. The coalition that was in place isn't as strong as it used to be. He is a danger; we don't want him fishing in troubled waters in the Middle East. And it's going to be hard to — it's going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him.

Was Bush revealing that he intended to attack and depose Saddam Hussein? In a word, no. In this debate, candidate Bush was proposing that we use the existing coalition to contain Saddam and keep the pressure on.

[...]

In January 2003, Bush was asked if his administration had been planning a war against Iraq before September 11th. Did Bush take advantage of the opportunity to mention his forethought?

[... Nope ...]

(I should make a pre-emptive note: no sensible person would object to the fact that the Administration had a plan to fight a war with Iraq in early 2001. To do so would only be prudent. The Pentagon makes plans to attack just about every country on Earth.

However, there is a significant difference between plans to attack and intention to attack. We almost certainly have a plan to attack Great Britain, which is unobjectionable. However, if we had the intention to attack Great Britain, this would be a very significant problem. It is easy 'n' fun to pretend that these are one and the same, but a moment's thought reveals that they are not.

Ethan Zuckerman writes about Ghana and Bernard Woma.#

There are many African artists who have found a way to make a good living sharing their culture with the world. Given the success countries like Senegal, Mali and Ghana have had marketing aspects of their arts and music, it's clear that culture is a resource as important as cocoa, gold or timber. But what became clear to me on this trip is what a complex and successful balancing act Bernard's life as businessman and musician is.

In the US, we generally think of artists as removed from the world of business by a layer of managers and agents. And while some artists take visible political stances, we tend to think of them more as promoters and spokespeople, less as activists and organizers. The Ghanaian reality is a bit more complicated. Bernard is celebrity, businessperson and community activist wrapped in a single insanely busy package. (Indeed, we were lucky to catch him - in five years, he's off to the US to start a semester simultaneously teaching ethnomusicology, earning his BA in music and touring.)

RPGamer posts a preview of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.#

FF:CC follows the adventures of the Crystal Caravan, a group of kids on a quest to collect Mirula droplets from mana trees. This magical dew is necessary to maintain the sparkle of the crystals, which mankind needs to keep the poisonous Miasma air at bay. This simple narrative is designed to fit any number of players regardless of what point in the game they join in. Indeed, the entire setup of the game aims to facilitate the multi-player process. Players can join or leave a game without any difficulty - they can even bring their own memory card to avoid re-creating their character. This whole "come and go" philosophy is reminiscent of multi-player gameplay in online games or at the arcade. Unfortunately, the developers and publishers did not take advantage of this opportunity by enabling online play, moreover, the previewer suspects that he wouldn't be the only person to bring quarters and a memory card to a Crystal Chronicles arcade console... but he digresses.

Makiko writes about Lost In Translation.#

Were Japanese people portrayed in a negative way? I don't think so. I recognized so many of those people in some ways. The Ugly-Americanishness of both Charlotte and Bob was not glossed over - well, Bob was more Ugly than Charlotte was, though he was not nearly as bad as many real-life Americans I've seen outside of the confines of the U.S. If Americans see the way Bob makes fun of the Japanese peoples' accents and cringe, that's good! Maybe they will remember to be polite to their hosts when they travel abroad.

Dan Hon writes a brilliant piece about the Return of the King. (No spoilers in my excerpt.)#

The beacon scene rocked. I hope in the extended edition it's at least five minutes longer.

I'm much less bothered now that Sauron looked more like a flaming eye in this installment and not, as in the first film, flaming labia.

Never mind Sam living a lie, I was a little disturbed by the fact that he seems to have married a mute.

Rosie does talk actually, in the 1st and the 3rd she mumbles things to bar patrons.

J. Shell writes about furniture.#

This weekend, I obtained some new furniture. Nothing fancy - in fact, quite simple, but elegant. Just some new shelving, small tables, and this console table in the entry way where my iBook gets to hang out now as I write this. For some reason, I've always wanted a writing table in here. Maybe because it's free of the distractions of the big windows in the main area.

As a result of all this, I've reorganized my apartment. Everything is shifted around now. The place feels more homely, in place of the more stark minimalism of before, while retaining a lot of open space (and still fairly minimalist). The couch is now placed so that I can see the heart of the city from it. Actually, when all the blinds are open, I now face all the windows when sitting. It's a nice improvement.

The quest for a perfect room layout will forever elude me.

The Binary Circumstance links to a review article of What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand.#

I suspect that this book had its genesis in two distinct impulses: admiration for the writings of Ayn Rand, on the one hand, and impatience with the contemporary art world, on the other.

The impatience is eminently justified. As one looks around at much of what is adulated as art today, one shuttles between weariness, incredulity, and revulsion. Of course, there is plenty of good art being produced today. But the headlines are mostly reserved for work that is unutterably banal, downright pathological, or, just occasionally, both. Everyone will have his own rogues gallery and catalogue of horrors. Karen Finley, for example, earned her place in the annals of fatuousness by convincing the National Endowment for the Arts to shovel some money her way for an act that consisted of her prancing about naked, smeared with chocolate, while skirling about the evils of patriarchy. Or consider Matthew Barney, a hot young artist whose oeuvre consists of things like Field Dressing (Orifill), a video that depicts the artist "naked climbing up a pole and cables and applying dollops of Vaseline to his orifices." That description comes from Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for The New York Times who recently declared Barney "the most important American artist of his generation."

Jacques Barzun comments on the book:

"At last I have found enough uninterrupted time to read What Art Is from end to end, and I report my enthusiastic appreciation and enjoyment. You have done a splendid piece of work--research, reflection, and writing are worthy of all praise. . . . Your scholarly treatment of modern art, your Appendices, your Notes are full of facts, comparisons and judgments that come to grips suggestively with the elusive double topic, Art and the arts. . . . My hearty congratulations on an admirable book."

Steven Yates writes about a libertarian point of view on Affirmative Action.#

Consider a basketball season in which certain teams play by all the familiar rules and others are compelled to play with each player having one arm tied behind his back.

No one, of course, would consider such games fair.

Now suppose someone proposed that for the next several seasons those teams whose players had been untied, were now to play all their games with an arm tied behind their backs, while those who had been tied up, now had both arms free.

Would turnabout be fair play?

Before answering, let's improve the analogy. Let's observe that there has been a complete turnover of players. All those who played in the first set of games have retired. The current players, therefore, are newcomers none of whom were involved with the original practice.

Now let's ask again: would turnabout be fair?

Tyler Cowen on why Europe is no longer the world leader. It's because they're trying to stop orchestras from playing loud.#

For me this article had a "jaw hits floor" quality. How about legislation saying that no composer can lose blood, sweat, and tears over a masterwork? Bach, after all, wrote the equivalent of twenty pages of music a day. He likely had some form of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Note that private solutions can alleviate the noise problem. Some orchestras increase the spacing between players. Some musicians use earplugs. Sometimes an orchestra will put plexiglass screens in front of the trombones. Or you don't have to join an orchestra in the first place.

The Binary Circumstance comments on The Death of Politics.#

The role of government has grown substantially since 1969 and their is no sign of that growth slowing down any time soon. It is my firm conviction that this is because government almost literally breeds government by creating an environment that is hostile to humans who are best adapted to live in freedom while providing a selective genetic advantage to those who are well-adapted to live in a politically predatory environment.

JD Roth writes about Democracy in America, a book that is sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read.#

For example, you've heard that "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"? Here's Tocqueville's slightly different take:

Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habits of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.

That nugget made me set the book aside and cogitate for several minutes. I don't agree. I think that power itselfdoes tend to corrupt, though perhaps not always. And how many people believe that whatever power they might possess is illegal? Doesn't everyone in power believe that they deserve their power, have earned the right to be in their position? His point regarding obedience makes more sense

The Revealer on Indian Fascists.#

Case in point: Cows. According to Bhargava, "the first movement for cow protection was initiated at the end of the nineteenth century and sought to unite all Hindus against the alleged barbaric practices of Muslims that threatened the natural order of Hindu society…. The permanent subtext of such campaigns is their anti-Muslim character: all Muslims are assumed to be beef-eaters, a permanent body of cow-slaughterers."

"I see the cow issue," a Hindu nationalist leader remarked recently, on the fight to save the bovine, "as part of the global struggle against jihadi fundamentalism."

Sappho writes about the Da Vinci Code and in the entry Peter Sean Bradley describes the book:#

I'm about 200 pages into the thing, and I may simply call it quits. I'm amazed at how poorly written it is. Brown has a tic common to hack writers of having adjectives sell the story. So, we have the "renowned curator" run into the Grand Hall in the first sentence. He creates character by physical description. Langdon is Indiana Jones and, of course, the villains are deformed or mutant. (Talk about your implicit Gnostic belief that the world is evil - evil deformed people commit acts of evil because they are physically deformed and, consequently, evil.) Likewise, Brown has this literary device of infilling his tendentious background by "remembering lectures." This device just gets annoying after a while, particularly since he never relays his recollection to the person who asked a question which kicked off his recollection. Then, there's the device of "convenient stupidity" that afflicts characters at various moments. Thus, the bull-headed, bullish inspector never stops to wonder why and how it is that a cryptographer is relaying a message to a murder suspect from the American embassy.

I'm going to make an attempt to finish the book and do a review on my site. But I was surprised how poorly written it is. I guess it is par for "airport literature," but there are better writers out there, like John Sayles, for instance, who actually bothers to research the stuff he's writing about.

Correction writes about being Christian together.#

There are my friends and family, most of whom have been terrifically supportive of me. But there are also some friends, I think, who feel that a distance is growing between us. Maybe they're afraid that I'm going to become pious and sanctimonious. I suppose that fear is understandable. If you're having a big drunken bash, do you really want to invite the pastor? Do you want him to join your rock band? Do you want him around when you're trying to meet girls? I think not. Which is sad because I like parties, and I'm a really good bass player, and . . . well, I don't have any need to meet girls at this point in my life, but you get the idea. I know that some of my non-Christian friends, who knew me when I was an atheist, feel as though I've gone off the deep end. Maybe they're afraid I'll proselytize to them or something.

Eve Garrard dilutes her Internet presence and writes about evil at Norman Geras' blog.#

Evil is a concept which is very widely used, but it is also very widely criticized as illegitimate in some way, and it's these criticisms which I want to examine. But we might reasonably start by looking at what's right with the idea of evil, at why we might find it useful to deploy such a concept. The world is full of terrible things, but some acts strike us as peculiarly dreadful, strangely chilling, horrifying, alien in some way (which is not of course to say alien in all ways, or necessarily incomprehensible to us, or even very unusual.) Forcing live human beings into industrial shredders, feet first so as to increase the suffering, is a current example which can stand in for all such nightmare actions. These are the kind of acts which we're inclined to call evil.

The primary question is: Should we use this concept? Why and why not?

Scott Douglas asks, "Is Illiteracy So Bad?"#

Literacy's flaws are many and obvious: Reading can be boring, suggest ideas about how to destroy things, and give voice to people who shouldn't have one, in addition to a platform to voice that voice. But these are only surface issues — there are whole other arenas that are rarely discussed. For instance, literacy causes colds; case in point, I developed a horrible cold just hours after an entire night reading Infinite Jest. I also discovered a strange raging sexual lust when I read All the Best, George Bush: My Life and Other Writings, and though I'm actually a little embarrassed to say what happened after finishing The Power and the Glory, the itchy rashes in sensitive spots still have not gone away. If we simply give into the will of our hearts and stop reading, we will finally be able to establish the utopian world that great thinkers have been planning for centuries.

[...]

One of man's most sacred items, the computer, will have to be equipped for the illiterate mind. A computer keyboard with letters, for example, holds no value to an illiterate. Our new, more perfect world will need a Windings keyboard. The Wingdings keyboard, modeled after and inspired by the Wingdings font, will replace the letter on each key with a cute illustration. A formal greeting might therefore look like: :-). And a formal farewell might look like: :-|. Not only do these new communications save space, and, further, ink, but they will also be easier to remember. Many years ago, the mightiest, smartest men of them all — the cavemen — used signs and got along pretty well in life; we should not be so quick to mock this sort of communication as primitive.

Michael Feldman links to William Pfaff on how he doesn't understand David Ricardo. Yesterday I blogged an article by Paul Krugman on people who don't understand Comparative Advantage (Ricardo's idea.)#

The iron law of wages is also simple and logical. It says that wages will tend to stabilize at or about subsistence level. That seemed inevitable to Ricardo, since while workers are necessary, and so have to be kept alive, they have no hope of any better treatment since they are infinitely available, replaceable, and generally interchangeable.

Ricardo's wage theory has seemed untrue. The supply of competent workers in a given place is not unlimited; neither workers nor industry are perfectly mobile, and labor demonstrated in the 19th and 20th centuries that it could mobilize and defend itself. The iron law of wages would seem to function only if the supply of labor is infinite and totally mobile.

Richard on entry titles.#

Nobody asked, but my method of entry titles of late has been to highlight a phrase from either the principal quote in each entry or a turn of phrase of my own that I felt was particularly clever (at the time, at least). It used to be that the title of the item being blogged was the entry title, but that got old fast. It makes my weblog look a lot more interesting when the title of the weblog entries are interesting (this month is turning out well in that respect). Entry titles are micro-teasers, especially when that's all one sees initially in aggregators, and, well, the more interesting-sounding they are, the more likely I'm going to read the entries behind them.

Charles Miller writes about the computer environment. It's great.#

All these ideas fight in the bizarre landscape of the computing market. It's like watching evolution at work: being forced to realise that Darwinism is a statistical process that doesn't apply to individual species. You have to have faith the general trend is for the better despite the fact that the most efficient carnivore can have a bad run of luck and die out, while some completely unremarkable scavenger can find itself in a lucky niche and plod along forever.

Except this is evolution played at maximum fast-forward, with an ice-age every couple of years and meteorites hitting the planet constantly from every angle.

James Robertson writes about XML validation and that crap.#

I'm already off the reservation with BottomFeeder. It doesn't handle anything thrown at it, but it does ignore as many problems as it can. I use the standard VisualWorks XML Parser, but I do intercept and ignore a bunch of the error conditions. Why? Because it's an end user tool, and many of the end users are never going to report the problem as malformed xml - not to me, and not to the author of the bad feed. What they'll actually do is hunt around for a replacement aggregator that will handle the bad feed. That's the reality of it, and all the hand waving in the world isn't going to change it.