This week, MLS introduced international superstar David Beckham to its Los Angeles Galaxy franchise. Like Pele and a dozen guys whose names I can't remember before him, Beckham is the one-man show that's supposed to revolutionize what Americans think about the world's favorite game. This will never happen. When it comes to soccer, all PR is bad PR, because Americans just don't care about it. Even hockey had a better week than soccer, by simply keeping quiet and pretending it wasn't there.
As long as we have soccer in this country, football players could kill each other on the field; baseball players could jump in the stands, shooting needles in the butts of those in attendance; and basketball could just keep being basketball. None of these things are good things, but all of these things are better than soccer games ending in nothing-nothing ties.
Jonathan David Morris, "A Bad Week for Sports?", Libertarian Enterprise, 2007-07-29
I was surprisingly upset to read that my last home in England is due to be demolished in the near future:
Middlesbrough Council have announced plans to demolish up to 1,500 homes in the centre of the town. Find out exactly which streets are involved.
The whole regeneration programme could cost as much as £160m, and may take as long as 15 years to complete.
However, Middlesbrough Council expect much of the major demolition to be underway within five years.
The areas scheduled for "mainly demolition and new build activities" are marked on this map in red.
(Map from the BBC Tees website.)
As you can see from this excerpt from Google Maps, I lived in almost the centre of the area to be carpetbombed redeveloped:
More about the reaction to the redevelopment efforts here.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I can only say that I've been quite busy. The new job is going well so far, but I have exactly no time for blogging during the day now, and events have kept me from the blog at other times.
I'd love to say that normal blogging will resume soon, but that would be over-promising, I'm afraid. Evening and weekend blogging may be the best I can offer for the next little while, at least until I get more of a handle on my responsibilities at work.
The view from our hotel window, looking east over Seneca Lake. There is a far shore, but the rain and mist make it look more like Scotland than Upstate New York.
Off on a brief road trip, not sure if I'll have access to email or the web, so you may see updates, but I'm not promising anything.
Okay, class, it's time for a review.
A "fnord", in case you've forgotten (or never knew) is a special symbol that, as Discordian teachings would have it, gets inserted in magazine or newspaper articles, or in radio or television programs, by our Secret Rulers (you know who they are), to alarm and terrify the population at an unconscious level, setting off a very carefully preconditioned urge to hurry to government authority for safety and comfort.
Discordian? A belief system, a comparatively new one, introduced by Greg Hill, Kerry Thornley, Robert Anton Wilson, and Robert Shea, with a surprising number of adherents, based on worship of — or at least a healthy respect for — Discordia, the ancient Roman goddess of confusion.
Known even better by her Greek name, Eris (her devotees also call themselves Erisians), she is, at least to me, the deity I'd venerate if I were inclined to venerate deities. Symbolically, Eris embodies an idea I find highly worthy of contemplating, that in chaos, there might just be room for a little freedom. Discordians tend to be anarchists at heart. The most dedicated among their number don't even care for the idea of natural law, because they feel that it cramps their style.
L. Neil Smith, "Islamofnordism", Libertarian Enterprise, 2007-07-15
My assistant coach and his family were at the FIFA U-20 semi-final game last night between Chile and Argentina. The game went Argentina's way early, and the Chilean team lost the game, their composure, and their common sense, not necessarily in that order:
Two Chilean players were ejected during the loss. The game was an ill-tempered affair with nine yellow cards — seven to Chile and two to Argentina — in addition to the two red cards. German referee Wolfgang Stark called 53 fouls — 30 against Chile.
When the final whistle blew, several Chilean players tried to get at the officiating crew. Others stepped in to keep them away. Two police officers escorted the officiating crew off the pitch, but they stopped as they neared the tunnel, eyeing the angry crowd.
Eventually they made a run for it, dashing to the safety of the tunnel below the stands.
The Chilean soccer officials should be scrambling to apologize to FIFA, to the Argentines, the officials, and to the Canadian hosts.
In other soccer news, the Pirate finally chalked up a second win of the season, although in a not-very-proud fashion. Opponents Canadian Legion were just barely able to field a team, with only seven players. The Pirates were in the same boat, but had several players arrive after the game started.
The Pirates went up 1-0 in the early going, but within ten minutes were on the wrong side of a 3-1 tally. As the game started to get out of hand, we had to start taking advantage of our numbers . . . by the final whistle, 12 Pirates were playing or available for substitutions, but Canadian Legion still only had their starting seven. Numbers eventually told, with a final score of 10-5, but Canadian Legion never gave up . . . still fighting hard for scoring opportunities up to the final whistle.
Legion will get a chance for revenge on Monday night, as the schedule pits them against the Pirates in consecutive games.
Jane Galt has a go at figuring out why the Harry Potter series hasn't been as good as it could have been:
Recently, kicking through some internet archives, I found that Kieran Healy had put his finger on the source of my lingering disappointment with Hogwarts and company. "Harry", he wrote, after finishing the Order of the Phoenix, "has been licking the lead paint at Privet Drive."
Harry acts like an idiot, and not the normal sort of teenage idiot who thinks they are the immortal centre of the universe. Harry’s idiocy is sui generis. Who but Harry Potter, having been given a wrapped gift by his beloved godfather with the words "use it if you need me", would leave it unopened at the bottom of his suitcase and instead break into the evil head teacher's office when he wanted a quiet chat? What sort of a nit can't figure out that when a wild giant keeps saying the word "Haggy", he wants his half-brother Hagrid? Or guess, for tiresome centuries of pages, that "Tom Marvolo Riddle" might be an anagram for "Lord Voldemort", when the seven-year old sitting next to me in the bookstore picked up on the resemblance a few scant minutes after opening The Half-Blood Prince?
Her suggested revision to the ending of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is brilliant.
Congressional Democrats are spinning their wheels trying to "get" George Bush. Democrats promised not to waste their time impeaching Bush. That is what they are doing. The public disdain for Democrats is overwhelming.
It took 12 years for Republicans to drop to 23%. Dems already are down to 14%. That means even Mom is starting to wonder about you.
14% job approval. Nixon did better. On the day he left office!
Don Surber, "Worst. Congress. Ever", blogs.dailymail.com, 2007-07-19
You can tell that we've reached the news doldrums when articles like this are treated as real news:
One of Canada's most popular authors is taking a decidedly novel approach in his efforts to encourage appreciation of the arts — he's started a website to help expand Prime Minister Stephen Harper's literary horizons.
Yann Martel, the author of the award-winning 2002 novel "Life of Pi," is behind the website "What Is Stephen Harper Reading," a project aimed giving the prime minister a little taste of culture. Since April, Martel has been mailing Harper a different inscribed book every two weeks, along with a personal letter praising the book's virtues. The letters are posted online at www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca.
Martel admits he's taking a few jabs at Harper, but insists he isn't preaching.
"There's no point in writing to someone if you're going to insult them. I certainly don't agree with the prime minister — I'd never vote for him — but that doesn't mean one becomes petty and petulant," he says.
There you go, a perfect encapsulation of Canadian smug. Of course Stephen Harper is culturally illiterate . . . he's a Tory. Tories are well known, among the educated urban elite, for their disinterest in — if not active hatred for — all things cultural. In some ways, it's surprising that Martel is bothering to send real books, as Tories are also thought to be largely unable to read . . . perhaps he's sending the "large print" versions?
The late-July edition of the Ontario Wine Review is now online. This issue features a visit to one of my favourite wineries: Flat Rock Cellars.
Flat Rock specializes in two main varieties of wine: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay; but they, being on the much lauded Beamsville Bench, have also made a name for themselves with Riesling, producing two kinds: and Estate Bottled — which won Best White Wine in Canada for their 2005 vintage; and Nadja's Vineyard Riesling — a wine named after Ed's mom. They also dabble in a little Gewurztraminer on occasion (2006 being their first solo bottling of this grape) — and a white blend known simply as "Twisted" using their three white varieties. When going through the wine store, you'll also notice something else about Flat Rock: prices range from 15-30 dollars . . . pricing that seems at odds with the newer wineries in Niagara these days. For an explanation I turn once more to the words of Ed Madronich, whose pricing-philosophy is based on gaining lifetime customers: "If I can get each customer to buy at least one bottle of Flat Rock wine each year for the rest of their wine drinking days, then I have a customer for life. And the way to do that is to keep my wines reasonably priced, of good quality and accessible." I guess the only ones he won't get as customers are those totally opposed to his closure . . . and that is a shame, because they truly are missing out.
I'm sure it's been done for other fandoms as well, but some of these are quite funny.
H/T to Colleen Hillerup.
John Scalzi wrote a one-month retrospective of parenthood several years ago, and for some reason decided to post it on his blog:
Athena celebrated her one month birthday last Saturday by spitting up what she had been drinking and then staying up all night and making a lot of noise. This pleased me immensely; she's already preparing for college life. Her mother and I, on the other hand, spent some time trying to encapsulate the whole parent-child relationship thus far, something that defines everything we are as caregivers and custodians of this small being. Here's what we've come up with so far: "John and Kristine: We haven't dropped her yet!" Which is absolutely true as far as Krissy knows, and I'll thank you not to tell her any differently.
We're also trying to explain life with baby to our unprogenated friends, who are curious, and understandably so. Having a baby is like suddenly sprouting a second head: The attention you get at the start is nice, but at the end of it, it's just another mouth to feed. Our friends want to know if the benefits outweigh the detriments. If they are one day to have children of their own (or, alternately, graft another head onto their spinal column), they need to have some inkling of what it's like, in terms they can appreciate.
I can't help them with that second head thing. But the parenthood issue is another matter. Here's what I tell them: One month in, it's like having another pet. And not a very clever pet at that — at this point in her life, Athena is the fifth smartest mammal in the house, after the dog and the cat.
Athena is now a bit older, and therefore much closer to the point that "will cause some therapist somewhere to give Athena the once over and think: Here's how I'm getting that new sailboat."
[. . .] quite a lot about this system is repugnant. In Maclean's this week, I write about the Feds' seizure of the $10 million proceeds from the sale of the Blacks' Park Avenue apartment. The government, you'll recall, argued that his purchase of the flat from Hollinger International in 2000 was a fraudulent transaction. On Friday, the defendant was acquitted of that charge. But the US government is still holding the money. They seized the proceeds of the crime before they'd proved there was any crime, and they're not going to let any rinky-dink technicality like a "not guilty" verdict stand in the way of justice.
From the pre-emptive seizure to the post-verdict "sentencing enhancement", the United States has upturned one of the bedrock principles of English law and now operates on a presumption of guilt. Repugnant indeed.
Mark Steyn, "Guilty until proven innocent", Maclean's Canada Blog, 2007-07-17
In the run-up to training camp, the various sports publications are doing their usual pre-season guesses about how the teams will do in the coming season. Also as usual, the final results bear very little resemblance to the predictions (but that's why they play the games). Anthony, at Vikings War Cry finds that the usual suspects have indeed been rounded up:
Peter King and Dr. Z seem to hate the Vikings. Dr. Z absolutely refuses to take the Vikings in his weekly picks . . . if we played Florida Atlantic University, he'd go with the Owls.
Last time I checked, the Vikings still have the number one rush defense in the NFL, they still have a (mostly) talented offensive line, and they've put together a dangerous running back tandem.
Am I seeing the world through purple sunglasses? Maybe. But I'm sorry . . . the Vikes aren't a three win team, Peter King.
In other NFL rankings news, Football Outsiders ranked the Vikings 32nd in the league at quarterback.
There are plenty of reasons for even purple-dyed fans to feel that this season isn't going to see the Vikings winning the Superbowl: a starting QB who only has two regular-season games on his resumé, a completely no-name receiving corps, and several players coming back from injury on both offensive and defensive squads. They're not inducing migraine headaches in opposing coaches.
That being said, a good running back combination with a league-best run defence should win some games . . . but the opposing teams are going to be throwing the ball a heck of a lot. Nine wins would be a good season for this squad, based on what we know now . . . but we're still a long way from the opening kickoff.
Commercial desecration of ancient pagan fertility symbol:
Pagans have pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash away a cartoon character painted next to their famous fertility symbol — the Cerne Abbas giant.
A doughnut-brandishing Homer Simpson was painted next to the giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, to promote the new Simpsons film.
Many believe the ancient chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused giant to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.
Raindance starting in three, two, one . . .
Update: From disrespectful to ring tossers in one easy go.
Frequent commenter "Da Wife" is trying to get some work done on her property. This is probably just the start of a process:
I have begun the painful process of obtaining a building permit so we can build a deck on our property. Property that we are paying for and therefore own. Our property that is private and therefore nobody's business but our own. Last time I checked, a deck is not the same as having a grow-op on the property but you would think with all the red tape, it might as well be. The drawings, the clearances, the zoning, etc.
We also have the privilege of paying an extra fee to do this although our property taxes have been paying for the town to do this job already. What was supposed to be a 10 day process, according to one employee has all of a sudden stretched from 4 to 6 weeks depending on whom you ask.
Also, there is the absolute joy of wasting two weeks (and therefore two weeks of prime summer building time) waiting for paperwork that the employee "will put in the mail tomorrow" two weeks ago, just to find out we do not need it. I explained this delay today at the Building Department and requested that it taken into account when our application is looked at and ask that it is possibly speeded-up. I received a glazed-eyed, open-mouthed look of total incomprehension that at the same time told me that no one there is actually responsible for anything they say or do.
Now it is also a two step process. You go in to apply once for Zoning and then you go in again to apply for the permit. So today I brought 5 kids with me 'cause no one will want to make any extra demands on a person with 5 kids in tow. Next time, when it is time for the permit, I may borrow some of my friend's kids just to make the town staff do a bit more to earn their salaries.
Why do I do this? Well simply because of all the kids in the house. If anything was to happen to them on the deck and it was not inspected, up to code, etc. the insurance company would probably laugh at me.
I will keep you updated further and will attempt to omit many four-letter words while describing the reasons why so many people do not bother getting permits.
Jesse Walker has some fun with a meme:
Among the other firsts of his campaign, Ron Paul is probably the only presidential contender to be compared to a Samuel L. Jackson movie. The Texas congressman, a dark horse candidate for the Republican nomination, was being lightly grilled by Kevin Pereira, a host on the videogame-oriented cable channel G4. "Young people online, they were really psyched about Snakes on a Plane, but that didn't translate into big ticket sales for Sam Jackson," Pereira said. "Are you worried that page views on a MySpace page might not translate to primary votes?"
The reference was to the Internet sensation of 2006, an action movie whose cheesy title and premise had sparked a burst of online creativity: mash-ups, mock trailers, parody films, blogger in-jokes. Hollywood interpreted this activity as "buzz," and New Line Cinema inflated its hopes for the movie's box office take. When the film instead did about as well as you'd expect from a picture called Snakes on a Plane, the keepers of the conventional wisdom declared that this was proof of the great gulf between what's popular on the Internet and what sells in the material world.
It's taken a lot longer than I expected, but I have accepted a position with a new company. It's a more responsible position in a smaller company (I'll actually work with the people making the decisions, unlike at some of the larger places I've been employed before). I've now got two weeks before starting at the new job.
Obscure headline explanation here, by way of James Lileks.
A few Treo photos taken over the last few weeks:
Someone missed a clue here: the sign extolls the virtues of Ontario VQA wines, but all the wines on the shelves below are not VQA . . . they're not even Canadian wines!
Sunset in Brooklin, late June.
Buffy, after her first bath
Xander, helping Elizabeth dry off Buffy (that is, getting in the way and making a nuisance of himself)
Buffy, on the bank of the Avon River in Stratford
Colby Cosh has some fun batting around the restrictions on freedom of speech:
On Wednesday, Marni Soupcoff, our much-missed editorial board colleague who is on maternity leave, popped in at the paper's Full Comment weblog to discuss the fine recently levied by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against an Internet goofball who had created a dreck-filled homepage for an imaginary "Canadian Nazi Party." She was there to express the timely if unpopular view, which I share, that even scumbags have sacred free speech rights and that they should, in ordinary discourse, be resisted by argument and not by means of hate laws. An interlocutor in the comment thread disagreed on behalf of "smart people," offering a familiar reminder: that freedom of speech "does not give anyone the right to shout 'fire' in a theatre."
For 20 years I've been arguing with Canadians against our impoverished accepted doctrine of expressive freedom, and in favour of the strong First Amendment-style approach implied in the actual language of the Charter of Rights. Ordinarily I am told that in arguing for near-absolute free speech I am reciting a blind, unreasoning formula that is ill-adapted to contemporary times. It is never more than two minutes before the person arguing against stale old-fashioned ideas is trotting out the 88-year-old "fire in a theatre" cliche. You could set your watch by it.
Cosh does a good job of pointing out the nincompoopery (if that's a word) of the argument.
Over at Combs Spouts Off, he compares the coverage in the media of the current Lebanese conflict with the earlier Israeli attacks on Hizbullah positions:
The story goes on to describe the rocket fire, the heavy bombardment of the "camp" on Thursday, the number of soldiers killed, and various tactical and other matters. Reuters has a similar story with similar pictures.
Reading these and other recent reports has made me wonder about some things.
The Lebanese army is fighting jihadists holed up in civilian neighborhoods, just as the Israelis did last year, and the Lebanese artillery and tank attacks seem much less restrained and precise. Why is the coverage so different? The AP story quoted above is 18 paragraphs long, and it isn't until the 17th and 18th paragraphs that civilians are mentioned [. . .]
It's an illustration that all deaths are not equal in the eyes of the western media: it's far more newsworthy if the deaths are caused, directly or indirectly, by Israeli (or US/Western European) troops. Internecine fighting doesn't get the same focus on either civilian casualties or destruction of towns and villages. You could argue that this is caused by anti-American/anti-Israeli biases, but it could equally be reflective of the audiences in the west: as Stalin is reported to have said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." This is even more so when the many deaths are far away (by distance or by cultural vectors).
Bad news sells, as everyone in the media understands full well, but bad news close to home out-sells bad news from further away.
From a post at Hit and Run:
You laugh, but in 1802 a pistol-wielding Aaron Burr single-handedly fought off a dozen Thuggees as they tried to invade the Senate floor and sacrifice Gideon Granger, the virgin postmaster general, to the devil-goddess Kali. Later Burr would use the same skilled gunplay to kill Alexander Hamilton. Of course, that was before the cultural rot of the '60s set in.
The kicker is . . . this hyperbole is restrained compared to what set it off.
BBC News has a brief entry about some research on the effects of aging on the sense of humour:
Grumpy old men may not be able to help it, as age could affect their sense of humour, scientists have found.
A study by Washington University in St Louis found older people find it harder to understand jokes than students.
The authors say the finding should be taken seriously as laughing has been linked to health benefits such as boosting circulation.
The findings were published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.
Of course, before you start blaming age for not getting the joke, you might want to consider that this wasn't exactly the definitive study: it only tested 80 people in total, and for that size of sample a 6% variance isn't statistically significant. (Not to mention that — I guess I'm showing my age here — the joke they used for the tests isn't particularly funny.)
H/T to Ian Guild.
I've encountered some badly designed dialog boxes in my time, but these really must have required a certain special talent in user interface design.
. . . can be a very dangerous thing indeed.
Yesterday's link to the Radley Balko article got a thoughtful response from Chris Taylor (pulled from the comments to that post):
Balko is in error, though — he makes the assumption that today's jihadis are motivated to seek political change via terror. This is only true in a very limited sense. If the United States were to void its collective security arrangements with the Arab world, Israel, and formerly-Muslim parts of Europe, I am sure there would be a temporary downtick in terror attempts within the United States.
Eventually, though, we would be right back at the status quo because the primary animating force is religious and not political. No amount of political change would ever bring about the adoption of sharia and the absorption of the United States into the ummah. Even in nominally radical-dominated Muslim lands there is plenty of disagreement about what are and are not legitimate interpretations of the Qur'an, sunnah and hadith. Those disputes can never be resolved by political means. The only way to truly insulate a society is to become one of Islamic radicals, and even then we would be fighting with other radicals, whose interpretations our sect would find heretical. It simply does not end.
I responded in a flippant manner in that comment thread, but I thought Chris made some good points and that they should see the light of day (I know not everyone follows the comment threads). The instinct in the western media seems to be to attribute every terrorist act to the issues of the day in the west, not to the actual causes the terrorists themselves say are the reasons for their attacks. This bombing, despite the claims of the group that made the attack, is "really" because the Senate failed to pass that bill. Or this beheading is "really" caused by the US government failing to sign the Kyoto treaty.
Related thoughts from Steve Chapman:
By framing the fight as a global war, we have helped Osama bin Laden and hurt ourselves. Had we treated him and his confederates as the moral equivalent of international drug lords or sex traffickers, the organization might not have the romantic image it has acquired. By exaggerating the potential impact, we also magnified the disruptive effect of any plots, which is just what the terrorists seek.
We do further harm to ourselves by accepting government actions we would never tolerate except in the context of war.
The cack-handed "security" measures western governments have implemented in response to terror threats have done far more to further terrorist goals than the actual murders, bombings, and general mayhem actually committed by terrorist organizations. This should come as no surprise: in any period of stress, it is the deepest urge of any government to attempt to take greater control of anything within their grasp. It's one of the few things governments do well. (Grabbing control, that is, not actually exercising that control in an intelligent manner.)
Libertarians: Never got over the fact they weren't the illegitimate children of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand; currently punishing the rest of us for it. Unusually smug for a political philosophy that's never gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board. All for legalized drugs and prostitution but probably wouldn't want their kids blowing strangers for crack; all for slashing taxes for nearly every social service but don't seem to understand why most people aren't at all keen to trade in even the minimal safety net the US provides for 55-gallon barrels of beans and rice, a crossbow and a first-aid kit in the basement. Blissfully clueless that Libertarianism is just great as long as it doesn't actually involve real live humans.
Libertarians blog with a frequency that makes one wonder if they're actually employed somewhere or if they have loved ones that miss them. Libertarian blogs even more snide than conservative blogs, if that's possible. Socially slow — will assume other people actually want to talk about legalizing hemp and the benefits of a polyamorous ethos when all these other folks really want is to drink beer and play Grand Theft Auto 3. Libertarianism the official political system of science fiction authors, which explains why science fiction is in such a rut these days. Libertarians often polyamorous (and hope you are too) but also somewhat out of shape, which takes a lot of the fun out of it.
Easily offended; Libertarians most likely to respond to this column. The author will attempt to engage subtle wit but will actually come across as a geeky whiner (Conservatives, more schooled in the art of poisonous replies, may actually achieve wit; liberals will reply that they don't find any of this humorous at all). Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to "Get Off My Property." News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.
John Scalzi, "I Hate Your Politics", Whatever, 2002-03-22
Victor was among the first in line to watch the new Harry Potter movie last night. He was . . . underwhelmed. He had lots of specific criticisms (many of which might be spoiler-ish, so I won't repeat them), and would probably have given the movie a C- or a D rating. The professional critics were rather more generous, averaging a B, with only the Hollywood Reporter grade being as low as the one Victor gave.
Me, I'm agnostic . . . I probably won't see the movie until it comes out in DVD.
"Da Wife" sent along this link to an article about a convergence of environmentalism and (potentially) genetic engineering:
Using modern plant-breeding methods to find new diets for cows that make them belch less is a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said on Monday.
The key is developing new varieties of food that are easier for cattle to digest and also provide a proper balance of fiber, protein and sugar, said Michael Abberton, a scientist at the UK-based Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research.
This could open up plant-based solutions as alternatives to reducing stock as farmers look for ways to cut methane emissions amid warming climates, he told a briefing on farming and climate change at London's Science Media Centre.
Of course, the article carefully avoids any hint that genetic engineering might be the solution, referring only to "approaches within plant breeding that can lead to reduced emissions".
In some ways, it might be quite entertaining watching this issue be fought out: many of the most devoted believers in man-made climate change are the same people who loudly protest genetic engineering. It would be educational for them to discover that the solution to one of their biggest concerns might well be another of their biggest concerns. (I can almost hear Jon's inevitable response that it would be a massively parallel "paradigm shift without a clutch".)
Radley Balko gets to the heart of the matter:
By definition, the aim of "terrorism" is not to topple the U.S. government, or even to rack up a massive body count (though that seems to be a perk for them). The aim of terrorism is to cause terror. It's to scare us. Frighten us. Alter our way of life, and get our government to change its policies.
In this sense, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists are playing right into the terrorists' hands. Despite the absence of any specific information, and despite the fact that his saying as much would do little if anything to actually thwart a pending attack, Chertoff still feels he has to go public with his "gut feeling" that something awful might happen this summer. And so the newspapers and Drudge and the blogs run with it. And now we get to go about our summer business with the foreboding cloud of a possible terror attack looming on the horizon.
To some degree, you can sympathize with the bureaucrats in the anti-terror organizations . . . they need to be seen to be doing something, even if that something isn't particularly relevant to their primary job. By going through the motions of raising the warning level — whether justified or not — they are seen to be doing something. If an attack happens, they're in the clear, "We warned you". If no attack occurs, they're still good, "We prevented an attack by raising the warning level".
About the only thing preventing them from doing this more often is the tolerance of both the media and the public for false alarms.
[I]n both England and the U.S. there is no quicker route to hating the government than dealing with the various bureaucracies that handle public assistance.
Benjamin Barton, "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy", 2005
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, y'all.
University of Tennessee law professor Benjamin Barton sees Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels as libertarian propaganda:
In Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy, Barton details the political messages he's discovered in the Potter books:
"What would you think of a government that engaged in this list of tyrannical activities: tortured children for lying; designed its prison specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; placed citizens in that prison without a hearing; ordered the death penalty without a trial; allowed the powerful, rich or famous to control policy; selectively prosecuted crimes (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); conducted criminal trials without defense counsel; used truth serum to force confessions; maintained constant surveillance over all citizens; offered no elections and no democratic lawmaking process; and controlled the press?
"You might assume that the above list is the work of some despotic central African nation, but it is actually the product of the Ministry of Magic, the magician's government in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series."
Barton said he thinks the anti-government thread that runs through the Potter novels is significant because the books have great potential to sway public opinion.
"It would be difficult to overstate the influence and market penetration of the Harry Potter series," Barton contends. "Somewhere over the last few years the Harry Potter novels passed from a children's literature sensation to a bona fide international happening."
H/T to Brian Doherty.
Over at Hit and Run, Jesse Walker puts his libertarian cred at severe risk when he blurts "I've never read Atlas Shrugged, so I don't know if there are passages in the book that undermine Jablecki's thesis." Of course, I've never read that door-stopper either, so I'm not quite as free to chuck stones as I might be. At any rate, he quotes Juliusz Jablecki's "Tales of Titans and Hobbits":
In Atlas Shrugged [the protagonists] are exceptional and it is precisely because of that quality that they became characters of the novel. Each of the Atlases is unblemished, pure, proud. Every detail of their physiognomy speaks of genius and magnificence. The Übermenschen do not simply move: they make motions full of charm and elegance. They do not simply work: they craft, always with passion and enthusiasm. They never get tired, weary or bored with what they do; they have no families, no children, no obligations; they are frightfully rational; they live only for themselves and for their occupational passions. If they happen to be businessmen, they never own little family businesses; they run huge corporations, ironworks, mines, or railway companies. In Rand's novel there is no place for moderation and inconspicuousness. Only that which is huge and effective deserves praise and attention.
Completely different, more human-like, are Tolkien's characters . . . There are men in The Lord of the Rings, to be sure, but it is the hobbits who resemble real humans the most — they are rather clumsy, neither exceptionally smart, stout, nor courageous, but good, sociable, faithful and generally cheerful. The most important characters in Tolkien's novel are actually anti-heroes — they try to stay away from the world of big politics; however, when fate throws them in its very middle, they act bravely and ultimately bring salvation.
Jablecki's conclusion is spot-on:
Given the breadth and length of both novels, the comparison of Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings could go on much longer, revealing many new themes and interpretations. It seems, however, that even the few differences sketched above allow for a tentative answer to the questions raised in the introduction. As much as Ayn Rand's novel, with its strictly modernist message, could have been at some point in the past an effective remedy against the plagues of socialism and collectivism, the world described in it does not fit today's reality and does not help in introducing the idea of natural order. Today, it is no longer necessary to protect big business from people. On the contrary, it is people who need protection from big business, which now goes hand in hand with Leviathan in trying to create a homogenous and completely atomized society.
Update: It's probably a bad thing in some formal "How to Blog" manual, but I linked to this John Scalzi post for the Heinlein content, but immediately below that was this brilliant little Rand item:
But why go on into detail about all the reasons I wouldn't want Ayn Rand for a mom when a cheap-and-simplistic Top Ten list will do? And so, without further ado:
The Top Ten Reasons You Don't Want Ayn Rand as Your Mom
10: Her not-so-secret disappointment that you weren't able to operate a speedboat the first time you saw one, even after watching the help do it for ten whole minutes.
9: Birthday gifts: Erector sets and a "Lil' Smelter" kit.
8: Pushing you to date her young male followers after she's "vetted" them is really kind of creepy.
7: At bedtime, reads you The Giving Tree as a cautionary tale.
6: Wouldn't speak to you for a week after you admitted that you kind of like useless ornamentation.
5: Her "Birds and Bees" chat to you sounds like a particularly seamy scene in a film by David Fincher.
4: Always ends arguments by throwing down a bunch of pictures of modern buildings; seems angry that you don't see the logic.
3: Dismisses your desire to visit Disneyland as "Anti-Life." She's right, of course, but you're still disappointed.
2: Tears down the house rather than let you choose the wallpaper for your room.
1: Your Babysitter: Alan Greenspan.
The longer version of Brian Doherty's retrospective on the life and work of Robert Heinlein from the August/September issue of Reason is now online:
His influence on science fiction almost goes without saying; when the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America chose their field's first Grand Master, Heinlein was the easy choice. But Heinlein was bigger than his literary genre. Following him could lead you to seemingly contradictory places, from the military to a free-love commune.
Heinlein venerated the armed forces, most notoriously in his 1959 novel Starship Troopers, which celebrated an elite military order. Just two years later, he was publishing the counterculture classic Stranger in a Strange Land, with its simultaneously beatific, sexy, and heroic vision of Martian-inspired communal living. A rich mix of bohemian and straight-arrow values, Heinlein's unique take on American individualism made him the bridge between such disparate '60s icons as Barry Goldwater and Charles Manson.
Heinlein's novels and short stories reflected the rough-hewn anti-government but pro-defense message associated with Goldwater and the conservative movement he sparked. At the same time, his writings exuded the communal desire to live in blissful togetherness, ignoring the repressive sexual and religious mores of bourgeois America. With a libertarian vision that appealed to individualists of both the left and the right, Heinlein not only set the template for the American 1960s but helped create the looser, hipper, more pluralist world of the decades since.
Update: There's a post at Chapomatic about the recent Heinlein Centennial event, should you be interested. Sounds like a great time was had by most.
Update the second: This is from an old post by John Scalzi, which I just had to pass along:
Which of course caused me to contemplate: Given the choice between Heinlein and Rand, which would I want as a parent? Let's posit that one couldn't have both — beyond such a union causing the cracking of at least four of the seven seals, there's a pretty good chance that after about 15 minutes in each other's presence, either or both of them would have been thumbing their holsters. There can only be one Alpha Male in the room. In a shootout, incidentally, it'd be even money: Heinlein would probably be faster off the draw, but Rand would probably need a stake through the heart to go down. (Before you start: I know about Rand and her thoughts on force. But let's just see her try to reason with Angry Bob.)
Steve Chapman channels his inner Gary Cooper and painfully puts forward a few words on the 16,000 words per day issue:
This research torpedoes the popular assumption that incessant yakking is correlated with X chromosomes. Or as Pennebaker told USA Today, with an admirable economy of words, "It's been a common belief, but it just didn't fit." The evidence is convincing enough that neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, whose book "The Female Brain" cited claims that women speak at triple the rate of men, says those now "can be relegated to the category of myth."
All I can say is that if the average male is putting out 16,000 words every day, then I'm living in a verbal desert. Some guys I haven't met must be gushing verbiage like Old Faithful to make up for the ones I know, many of whom might easily be mistaken for victims of lockjaw.
That is not a description I would apply to many women of my acquaintance. The editorial board on which I serve used to be nearly all-male, but now has a female majority. I can describe the difference in two words: Longer meetings.
I have to admit that I also found the research to be less than 100% convincing, but perhaps it's just my old-fashioned, patriarchal, etc., etc. views of the world causing me to hold such an odd opinion. Chapman finishes off the article with some pithy words of wisdom:
But now I learn that the guys I know are wholly unrepresentative. Apparently for every one of us, there is some long-winded politician, preacher, auctioneer or "Hardball" guest who talks more in his sleep than we do fully awake. I hope not to meet any of them in this life. But if I do, I'll know what to say: Shut up.
But Sony seems to think that muttering "sorry", under duress, is really as much as I have a right to expect. The studied indifference with which their customer service representatives treat my complaints is downright appalling. When I point out just how long I've waited, they don't offer me anything to make up for my inconvenience, not even a $5 gift certificate to the Sony store. Indeed, they don't even acknowlege that I am complaining. They wait for me to finish, and continue with whatever they were saying as if I had not spoken. Before I went to business school, I spent five years as a network engineer. As you can imagine, that entailed a lot of time spent on hold to tech support, including to places in Taiwan where the English was at best shaky. Sony has now commanded the award for worst technical support ever. At least the Chinese guys seemed to be aware that I was talking, even if they didn't understand what I had said.
Jane Galt, "You knew this was coming, didn't you?", Asymmetrical Information, 2007-07-06
A not-particularly rigorous test of your knowledge of dining etiquette in other parts of the world (I managed 8 out of 11): Don't Gross Out the World.
H/T to Roger Henry.
Brian Doherty has some nice things to say about Robert Heinlein:
Heinlein laid some of these concepts out in his 1959 "Starship Troopers," offering up the idea that American liberty and a relentless fight against the Soviets were inextricably linked — a science fiction version of Goldwater's subsequent message. It presented a world of low taxes and few laws in which only veterans of public service could vote (not only military veterans, contrary to some Heinlein detractors who saw something fascist in the novel) and where brave young men gave the last full measure of devotion to defeat an insectoid alien menace that was a clear metaphor for communism.
Heinlein's next novel, 1961's "Stranger in a Strange Land," presages a very different side of 1960s California: the groovy, communal aspect, an atmosphere in which new, non-Western religions bring an alternative spirituality to America, in which old mores are questioned in the name of sexual and religious liberty.
The novel is the story of a messiah from Mars who tells us that "thou are God" and preaches non-jealous free love and communal property ownership. The book provided a model for countercultural living that many young people adopted as the '60s went on, especially in California.
Doherty covers a lot of the territory, but I think that Heinlein's most accurate predictions about California were his depictions of the "Crazy Years" in several stories (particularly Methuselah's Children and Friday).
It is, of course, the Heinlein Centennial, and there's an event marking the occasion happening in Kansas City this weekend.
Michael Pinkus has the most recent issue of Ontario Wine Review online. This issue discusses the new higher-end (that is, more expensive, although not necessarily better) wineries that have been opening in the Niagara region lately.
In a recent discussion with a member of the Ontario Wine Society, we found ourselves chatting about the new wineries opening up in the Niagara region. The member lamented, "it seems, with the exception of Calamus, that the newcomers are high end and expensive." This was said to me on the heels of opening day at Niagara's newest winery, Hidden Bench (June 2) where policies for visiting and tasting were set out thusly: "due to the size of the tasting room we do not do groups of more than 8 persons . . . require an appointment for groups larger than 4 . . . tastings are $10.00 for our flight of four estate wines." Prices for wines started at $18 (for a rosé); $22 (for Riesling); $30 (Chardonnay) and $40 (white meritage).
What my OWS friend is referring to are the Tawses, the Hidden Benches, the Strati, the Ice House, the Alventoes, and the soon to be, new Southbrook that all seem to be a opening up with wine prices that seem to be priced out of this world; a world that’s more California-centric then Niagara-based. In a recent interview I read in the North York Mirror, Brian Kroeker, of the Niagara Grape and Wine Festival, was quoted as saying (jokingly I think), "we're Napa-North, or as we like to say Canapa." It would seem that some are taking this to heart.
I remember meeting the winemaker for one of these new "premium" wineries at a wine tasting about a year before the winery opened its doors to the public, and being treated to a long, ear-bending discussion about the winemaker's goal to produce only $100+ bottles of wine. I thanked him for the samples I'd tasted and quickly moved on . . . I was very much not his target wine-consuming audience!
I mean, good luck to him and his winery, but I have to hope that this isn't the direction all the wineries want to take: I enjoy my wine, but I don't want to have to take on a second job just to support my cellar!
The recording industry as we know it is as good as dead, having overdosed on a toxic cocktail of arrogance and stupidity. Its failure to embrace downloadable music at a critical juncture — ca. 2001, when a mutually beneficial deal with Napster was the only option that made sense economically — will go down in history as the business equivalent of Napoleon sending his armies into Russia.
In the market, the quickest way to commit suicide is by badgering your clients, rather than listen to their needs; by willfully crippling your products, rather than enhance them; by stubbornly defaulting to litigation, rather than innovation.
So sue me (ha!): I no more shed a tear over the industry's last gasps than I would over the demise of coal-fired trains. Truthfully, I'm rather entertained by the spectacle of seeing formerly high-flying record executives twisting in the wind.
Rogier van Bakel, "The Music Industry: Tonedeaf and Near Death", Nobody's Business, 2007-07-02
Nicholas Rosen has some interesting things to say, in partial response to a discussion on the Bujold mailing list:
Then there was a case I read about some years ago in Reason magazine. It seems someone wanted to open a childcare center, and some kooky neighbor objected to her getting a license. The neighbor didn't want another child-molestation horror in her neighborhood, and a city councilman went along with her, so the would-be childcare provider couldn't get a license. (It later emerged that many of the cases of alleged child molestation at daycare centers were utterly bogus, and even if some were not, the immense majority of daycare centers are not fronts for gangs of child molesters.) Here was a city government preventing a willing provider from offering child care to parents who wanted to hire her, all for no good reason, while politicians and others were complaining about the lack of affordable child care, and the Need for Government to Do Something.
There may be a case to be made for having government provide welfare, especially to children, who are not at fault for their parents' laziness or incompetence or bad luck. The trouble is that when government undertakes to do too much for people, people often lose their sense of responsibility and determination to provide for themselves and their families, leading to increased levels of social pathology and family breakdown. You can, for example, try reading Theodore Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom for an account of this.
Daycare is one of those discussions that can't help but move into politically dangerous ground: there's never enough quality care available to meet the need, and what there is is often too expensive for those in greatest need of it. It regularly becomes an issue in Canadian elections, although the proposed changes or new programs would far too often make the situation worse (the good news is that they are rarely implemented once the election is over: costs and complexity trump the "we must do something" urge very quickly).
Many children are cared for during the working day (and often well beyond the usual working hours) in informal daycare with friends and neighbours. At least three families on my street provide this kind of service on a full or part-time basis, for example. It may not be perfect, but it meets the needs of the parents, and clearly is beneficial to the providers (or they wouldn't do it). Yet these unlicensed operations are the ones most likely to be shut down by regulation or government mandates.
Some people — both in and out of government — pretty clearly feel that parents are the worst people to be put in charge of any one else's children, and many of the proposed reforms would put additional barriers in the way of this kind of service. It may sound great to a ministerial committee to mandate that only adults holding a post-secondary certification in child care should be allowed to take care of children they are not related to, but there are not (and will not be) enough holders of ECE certificates or equivalents to cope with the children who would need to be taken in if such a rule was put into place.
Similar things would happen if rules which are designed for commercial daycare facilities were also mandated for home daycares. The cost to retrofit would be far in excess of the perceived benefit, and in many cases would not be allowed under municipal building codes. (Of course, under some municipal rules, informal daycare is already wandering into regulatory gray areas.)
Jaquandor has some fun with John Scalzi's latest verbal fascination: the phrase "hideous arse candles".
It's just a normal day up here on the frozen tundra of the GWN, but I understand that it's different to the south of us. You'd think they'd be tired from all the celebrations of Dominion Canada Day on the 1st to have much left for the 4th, wouldn't you? ;-)
Happy Dominion Day! In la belle province, the concept of Canada may be regarded with indifference and contempt and dismissed as a weak sickly thing, but here in Chicago Canada is the baddest-@#! mutha ever to come swaggering in town.
For four months, the prosecution have regaled the jury with horror stories of the wild lawless swamplands to the north. You thought it was just one big wimp-o 24/7 Benetton ad celebrating diversity and UN peacekeeping and socialized healthcare and confiscatory taxation and all that other wimpy stuff? Hah! Get real. It's an offshore tax haven to which the world's executives stampede en masse because in Canada you don't have to pay any tax. It's a land beyond the rule of law where predatory thugs sporting sinister colours of terrifying gangs like the "barristers" and "Queen's Counsels" fall on helpless US trial-lawyers, eat 'em up and spit 'em out all over Larry King Live. Marauding hordes of corporate vice-presidents ride down across the 49th Parallel to lay waste to American boardrooms like Albanian Mafiosi pillaging Italy.
Innocent unworldly types such as secretaries of state, four-term governors, Pentagon advisors and chief nuclear-arms negotiators who think nothing of going mano a mano with the Soviet Politburo, the ChiComs and the PLO are forced to concede they're way out of their league with these ruthless Canadians. A maple-drenched godfather simply has to put the word out, and an apparently innocuous sentence such as "Toronto wants it" is enough to strike fear and terror into the hearts of big-time execs all over Illinois. And that's before they send in the enforcers from the badlands of "the Maritime Province".
Mark Steyn, "Canada Day in the Northern District of Illinois", Maclean's, 2007-07-01
Another late-night game, another loss, another attempt to field too few players . . . this is getting to be a bad habit. Last night's game was hard-fought, but the Pirates again started a game with too few players (only 9 on the field this time) and our opponents had the full 11 on the field and another three substitutes on the sideline.
Matt K. arrived shortly after kick-off, giving us 10 players, and a hastily recruited younger brother, Joseph M., allowed us to get up to full-strength on the field just before the half. Of course, by that time we were down 2-0.
When the final whistle blew, we were on the wrong side of a 3-0 score, but it could easily have been much worse. Blake M. and Anthony C. did some excellent work in goal, and our guest player Joseph M. was doing very well against players three or four years older — and considerably bigger — than him.
Well, despite my best judgement, we seem to be close to adopting a new dog . . . but at least Xander is happy about the new arrival:
Xander checks out the new arrival in the backyard. She's a part Yorkshire Terrier, part Shi-Tzu (we've been told). Her rescue kennel called her "Jazzie", but she doesn't really respond to that name. She is partly blind, through some genetic condition and needs several daily applications of an ointment to her eyes.
We've been told that she was picked up from the side of the road after being thrown from a truck, somewhere in Ohio.
The new dog tries to mask her scent with whatever is on the grass.
Hmmm. The new dog appears to be part Ewok.
Xander is thinking "Can I play with you if I'm this small?
Sure! Can you run away?
Stop playing . . . I've got an itch I need to scratch.
Finally got the Red Ensign up in front of the house. Just took a bit longer than I'd planned (like too many other projects around the house, now that I think about it).
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