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April 30, 2004
Not My Collegian
by JeremyHere's the latest embarrassment from our otherwise lovely town of Amherst, MA. The following is excerpted from an editorial appearing in the Collegian, the daily newspaper of UMASS Amherst:
I've been mystified at the absolute nonsense of being in "awe" of Tillman's "sacrifice" that has been the American response. Mystified, but not surprised. True, it's not everyday that you forgo a $3.6 million contract for joining the military. And, not just the regular army, but the elite Army Rangers. You know he was a real Rambo, who wanted to be in the "real" thick of things. I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures. Well, he got his wish. Even Rambo got shot in the third movie, but in real life, you die as a result of being shot. They should call Pat Tillman's army life "Rambo 4: Rambo Attempts to Strike Back at His Former Rambo 3 Taliban Friends, and Gets Killed."
In my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, Tillman would have been called a "pendejo," an idiot. Tillman, in the absurd belief that he was defending or serving his all-powerful country from a seventh-rate, Third World nation devastated by the previous conflicts it had endured, decided to give up a comfortable life to place himself in a combat situation that cost him his life. This was not "Ramon or Tyrone," who joined the military out of financial necessity, or to have a chance at education. This was a "G.I. Joe" guy who got what was coming to him. That was not heroism, it was prophetic idiocy.
Who's the pendejo? (it means "pubic hair" by the way). The twerp who wrote this dogshit should be spanked. I don't know if that's going to happen, but apparently he has been forced to apologize to Tillman's family.
What's most apalling about this sort of thing is not even the opinion itself, but the utter lack of seriousness with which he treats the subject matter (that being the violent death of a human being).
When I was a student at UMASS in the 80's I was quite accustomed to each new Collegian editorial being more idiotic than the one before it. This is not to disparage the paper itself, it's just that college students should not be allowed to write editorials without adult supervision; that's all I'm suggesting.
Two of my closest friends at the time were editors at that paper and both, I now realize, had a far better understanding of their proper stage in the psychosocial continuum of young adulthood than the idiot quoted above. One (we'll call him Adam, because that's his name) knew how college students ought to come up with copy for a newspaper. His crowning glory -- and I'm happy to say I added my own intellectual acumen to the project -- was to do a feature story on who in the greater Amherst area had the best pizza. One might summarize thus: free pizza, from every pizza shop within 10 miles, collegian office, Campus Center basement, eight o'clock, don't tell too many people. Now that was journalism. And somehow I have the feeling it's the sort of piece we're going to be seeing more of from the Collegian for a while.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Sometimes UFO watching is better than reading the newspaper
by JeremyHere's why I hope the people of Iran keeping looking up in the sky for new and colorful realities, hints at others worlds (rather than staying inside and reading their newspapers, if the English Tehran Times is any indication).
Some headlines from today's Tehran Times:
Washington Unleashes Bloodbath in Iraq
News Analysis
...
Washington is determined to make an example out of Fallujah and Sadr's movement, much in the same fashion that the Nazi occupiers of World War II Europe leveled the Czech town of Lidice and razed the Warsaw ghetto.
...........................Bremer Considering Coup in Iraq
...
The preliminary details for the coup against the Iraqi people have been taken care of. It appears that the United States, some regional countries, and the United Nations representative in Iraq are the main players in the coup plot.
...........................Australian Defense Adviser Sacked for Refusing to Write WMD Lies
...........................Jew to Draft Iraqi Constitution
TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) -- An Iraqi analyst revealed on Saturday that a Jew, originally Iraqi, who acts as an advisor to the U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer, has been missioned to draft the Iraqi constitution.
...
The Iraqi analyst has refused to disclose the name of the Jew.
If you're thninking my favorite line from the above is "The Iraqi analyst has refused to disclose the name of the Jew" you'd be wrong; that was my second favorite. My favorite line? "News Analysis." And I'd like to express my gratitude to Danny Devito who, in addition the being the only funny celebrity spokesman on those Direct TV ads where they read customer letters, has provided the voice in my head for that phrase "WMD Lies."
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 29, 2004
To Serve Mullahs
by JeremyI really have no justification for it, but I feel strongly that this is a good thing:
TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Flying saucer fever has gripped Iran after dozens of sightings in the last few days. Fanciful cartoons of alien spacecraft have adorned the front pages.State television Wednesday showed a sparkling white disc it said was filmed over Tehran Tuesday night.
More colorful Unidentified Flying Objects have been spotted beaming out green, red, blue and purple rays over the northern cities of Tabriz and Ardebil and in the Caspian Sea province of Golestan, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Newspapers and agencies reported people rushing out into the streets in eight towns Tuesday night to watch a bright extraterrestrial light dipping in and out of the clouds.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Powder keg, Pandora's box, can of worms...box office hit?
by JeremyLet the fun begin:
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's censors have approved the screening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" in the Persian state's movie theaters, the official news agency reported Wednesday.A committee of clerics and officials within Iran's Islamic Cultural and Guidance Ministry unanimously decided Tuesday to let the film be played in its entirety, with Persian language subtitles, the agency said.
The state-owned Farabi Cinema Foundation, which is in charge of foreign movies, bought a copy of Gibson's controversial film in February and has negotiated with theater owners to screen it in May, the agency added.
Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim state, is allowing the screening of the film despite strong Islamic objections, particularly from Sunni Muslims, to the depiction of religious prophets in any form.
Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and several other Islamic countries have already approved the screening of Gibson's film.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Take Back the Street
by JeremyMy latest public service to non-instapundit readers (via Glenn Reynolds):
Mystery group wage war on Sadr's militiaIn a deadly expression of feelings that until now were kept quiet, a group representing local residents is said to have killed at least five militiamen in the last four days.
The murders are the first sign of organised Iraqi opposition to Sadr's presence and come amid simmering discontent at the havoc their lawless presence has wreaked.
Let's hope this is a sign that the urge to take back the Arab street will overwhelm the urge toward civil war, but that the days of Iraqis sitting quietly under fascist opression are over.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 28, 2004
Outsourcing: the morning after
by JeremyIt seems sending your projects thousands of miles away to be completed by people in a totally different culture who don't really give a rat's ass about your company isn't as good for productivity as giving the work to us fat (dare I say unionized?) Americans (dare I say in your own community?):
Bladelogic's chief technology officer, Vijay Manwani, born and educated in India, predicts that once the "hype cycle" about Indian outsourcing runs its course, projects will come back to the United States "when people find that their productivity goals have not been met."
...
Innovative business processes result from "an understanding of the business that happens when people get into a room and talk to each other," Mr. Pradhan said. "That is very difficult to outsource."
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 07:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
9/11 Madrid Connection
by JeremyA Moroccan fugitive sought in connection with the March 11 train bombings in Madrid was indicted Wednesday on charges of helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States -- the first suspect linked to both attacks.Amer Azizi, 36, helped organize a meeting in northeast Spain in July 2001 that key plotters in the U.S. attacks, including suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, used to finalize details, Judge Baltasar Garzon said in the indictment.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 07:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Big Brother vs. big brother
by JeremyYou know, it's easy to suppose that Howard Stern is like a nasty little brother nagging and farting at the adult world each morning. But I see things almost exactly opposite: Howard Stern is the big brother to the little kid inside of each of us, the kid who suspects that the adult world is a sham. If Stern's radio persona has a mental age of about twelve, that's still older than the age at which some part of us was necessarily stunted. Even the best childhood doesn't erase the fact our lives are lived backwards: only a wise, weathered old man or woman could hope to have enough strength to enter this world and know how to deal with it. And only after living on this Earth for three score and ten could an infant expect to have gained enough wisdom to stand a chance. Food for thought, though it's best not to try and visualize this too completely.
Another theory of mine is that we have far more in common with our chimpanzee cousins than most of us can handle thinking about. Howard Stern has absolutely no problem with this and other sorts of thoughts, while people like Michael Powell evidently do.
A third thing:
I keep hearing the phrase "the culture wars" and maybe I should be embarrassed to confess that I have no idea what it means. I've tried again and again to get a handle on this but I don't get it. Maybe the problem is simply the old notion that radical change must accompany a new millennium. To radical right wingers, radical lefties, Islamist terrorists, pan-Arabic fascists, this means you've got to be first in line, you've got to make sure that it's your agenda whose time has finally come -- it's now or never. I think, in fact, that this is what 9/11 was about: stop the "Westernization" of Arab youth or lose them forever. To a lesser extent I guess the same thought process is happening in the minds of anyone who has an agenda, whether good and bad, big or small. There's a now-or-never vibe in the air. This campaign to "clean up" the airwaves, the bi-partisan bullshit campaign as championed by Michael Powell, is an example. Unconsciously I think there is a connection being made between the slack and complacent security policies that made 9/11 more possible and the liberalizing of content in the broadcast media that has led to such things as reality TV and bad words being uttered on the radio. This is, of course, backwards. Liberalization is, I don't have to remind anyone, what we're fighting for. Freedom of speech, and all that. Making an example of Howard Stern is a "good" strategy because it's very hard to make a credible claim that his show doesn't venture well into the objectively obscene. Stretching the limits has always been a part of Howard Stern's bag of tricks. But his real appeal is that he speaks his mind openly and exposes humorless, self-important people for the asses they truly are. I can't think of anyone else who does this so well. If Bugs Bunny were alive (he of course died with Mel Blanc) and had a morning radio show, then perhaps Howard Stern would have some real competition.
But whatever you think of the chosen targets, the abuse of the FCC by its current chairman -- even if only a reflection of some disturbing mandate from congress -- is unacceptable. I personally feel this is just a swing of the pendulum. But before it swings back, much harm can be done to the various media involved. TV and radio may have turned to shit decades ago, but we want to be certain, for instance, that the internet does not fall under the gun, since I think this whole process is an effort to standardize and centralize content and the web is the final frontier of independent, free "broadcasting."
History should judge this current wave of crackdowns as a temporary period of excess that failed to get at the real problem (ie: corporate greed taking access to media away from communities and putting exploitive crap on TV) and was extremely unpopular among the voting public. But that means we have to voice our opinions and get talking about it. Taking down Howard Stern is both a goal and a smoke screen; we should see past it and lodge our objections in at least some small way. This is my start.
I'm looking forward to Jeff Jarvis's article on all of this in the next Nation (now that I no longer subscribe I'll have to go out and find it like everybody else).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 27, 2004
Coincidence Alert
by JeremyI was just looking at a clipart image of an airplane on a website at the precise moment a military plane flew overhead, also at the exact instant the phone rang at the office where I work: the person had called to ask for a flight number to meet someone at the airport (my place of work has no connection to air travel). What does this mean? Is this a good omen or bad? Can there be good news related to airplanes? Help me think of something.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Will this put Sudan in the prime time news?
by JeremyGlenn Reynolds points to this story on Sudan and Syrian weapons. If true, this new complexity in the knot of horrors that is Sudan has disturbing implications. It would be nice to think that liability of possessing chemical and nuclear weapons is becoming too much of a hot potato for unstable and dangerous countries to handle. But it would be better if the mass destruction itself were seen as undermining a country's own sovereignty, rather than just the weapons. This ought to be the U.N.'s mandate for the new century, though it doesn't look as if things are headed that way.
Sudan has ordered the removal of Syrian missiles and weapons of mass destruction out of the African country.Arab diplomatic and Sudanese government sources said the regime of Sudanese President Omar Bashir has ordered that Syria remove its Scud C and Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum. The sources said the Sudanese demand was issued after the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry confirmed a report published earlier this month that Syria has been secretly flying Scud-class missiles and WMD components to Khartoum.
The sources said the Bashir regime has been alarmed over the prospect that the United States would discover the Syrian arsenal and conclude that Damascus and Khartoum were cooperating in the area of missiles and WMD. They said this would have delayed or dashed U.S. plans to lift sanctions from Sudan.
A U.S. official confirmed the Syrian missile shipments to Sudan, saying they were meant for use against rebels in the south. But the official said the U.S. intelligence community has not determined that Syria sent WMD systems to Khartoum.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
And to think I was worried
by JeremyIt wouldn't be the first time highly radioactive and potentially fatal material found its way to a low-level dump.
This seems to obviate the need for terrorists to get their hands on the stuff. For a while I was afraid the nuclear industry would have to change or something; I can't visualize anything that would make that necessary (accept for the unthinkable, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 26, 2004
The one cure I haven't tried yet
by JeremyThat's weird: it didn't help. Seems to make other people feel better, though.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tangled Up in Wha?
by JeremyI took the "Which Bob Dylan song are you?" quiz and knew, as much as I feel a kinship with Norm Geras, that I would never, like him, be called the "Tangled Up in Blue Type," but that's exactly what this extensive and incontrovertibly objective personality test has proven that I am. I'll take a moment to say here, though, (and no offense to those of the other persuasion) that I am a huge Dylan fan who has never understood the huge popularity of the song, "Tangled Up in Blue." Maybe you have to be a topless Petrarch afficianado, a hapless fisherman in New Orleans, or a rueful slave trader in Brooklyn Heights to "hear" that particular lyric, but I just don't feel anything much when that song comes on the stereo. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone not liking that song, so please pity me but don't hate me, I implore you. I am not an animal.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 25, 2004
Will the Real U.N. Please Stand Up?
by JeremyIf Americans can't agree as to whether the U.N. is the champion of peace and human rights throughout the world or a corrupt liability-laundering front for its most heinous member nations, perhaps it's because the U.N. itself can't decide:
New York-based group, Human Rights Watch says it has established that pro-government militias executed 136 men in a coordinated operation last month.The allegation comes as the United Nations Human Rights Commission adopted a watered down statement on Darfur.
The United States had pushed for a much harder hitting resolution criticising Sudanese government abuses.
Unlike the original draft resolution, the text does not go into details about the targeting of civilians by the Arab militias in Sudan, or mention rape, sexual assault and forced removals of black communities in the area.
Rather than condemning Sudan, it expresses solidarity with the country in overcoming the present situation.
Obstruction by the Sudanese government of the U.N.'s efforts at fact finding can't be blamed here. This is U.N. self censorship. Amnesty International has this to say:
"This is a very meagre response to a situation that is at the point of spiralling into a full-fledged human rights catastrophe", Amnesty International said.Ten years after the genocide in Rwanda, the Commission on Human Rights has shown itself to be incapable of taking strong and decisive action on this human rights crisis.
"This once again calls into question the Commission's ability and willingness to rise above the political wrangling and to promote and protect human rights", Amnesty International said.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2004
A Saudi Problem
by JeremySaudi blogger(!) Alhamedi at "The Religious Policeman" echoes the words of Martin Niemoller (see the post titled "The Start of the Second Saudi Civil War"):
At first they operated abroad, in Afghanistan, in Chechnya, in the Yemen. And we Saudis regarded them as brave adventurers, the late 20th century equivalent of volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.Then came 9/11. It had become more serious. But Westerners were the target. And, at all levels, we never really condemned it. Indeed, many cheered.
Then they attacked within the Kingdom. But it was housing compounds, for Westerners. And, at all levels, we never really condemned it. And still many cheered.
Then they attacked more housing compounds. This time, Arabs, Muslims, got killed. So we didn't cheer. But they were Egyptians and Lebanese, so we didn't care that much.
Now, all of a sudden, they are attacking Saudis. OK, Saudis from the ruling tribes, part of the security forces. But we all look the same. And suddenly we are the targets. The terrorists are not going to leave us alone, because we're not part of the government apparatus. And now we are faced with the sudden realization that we should have done something about this a long time ago.
Read the whole thing. And then read the whole blog.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Welcome Gentiles!
by JeremyIt looks like a non-Jewish person could do worse than to bone up on what it's like to be ethnically, culturally, and/or religiously Jewish. You might start by reading some I. B. Singer, some Saul Bellow, I don't know...there's always Woody Allen. And then maybe a continuing-ed course at the local Yeshiva, I'm not sure. And you might follow the example of people like Madonna -- whose latest turn now seems quite sensible -- and read the Kabbalah (confession: I haven't).
Here's why...
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:07 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 23, 2004
Wikipedia: Sensible Utopianism?
by JeremyPart I - Gastroparesis [you can skip this part if you want to get to my thesis below, and then you may, of course, skip that too]
I have been somewhat perplexed at the number one Google result for the search-word "gastroparesis." The site that comes up is for a gastroenterology practice whose definition of this disorder, while it more or less accurately captures the mild form that I have, gives such a cozy picture of the disease that I would think it would be quite annoying to those whose health is seriously compromised by GP. I suppose this reflects an optimistic and compassionate bedside manner -- a good thing -- and thus would seem inviting to prospective patients who are feeling lonely and discouraged. But for people who are simply doing research so as to better advocate for their own proper diagnosis and treatment, I would think it would be more helpful to be given the potential bad news as well, rather than being told that "it is usually not a serious problem and there are effective treatments available." I might have though a better wording would be "in its severe form it can be a serious health problem though there are treatments that have been quite effective for some patients." But I guess a sentence like that would not give you the impetus to throw over your current physician and seek a new one.
Part II - My thesis [and how I came by it]
I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about gastroparesis, but found there was no entry. I educated myself about Wiki, and about Wikipedia enough to create a GP entry, and did so, merely cutting and pasting -- with slight re-ordering -- a public domain pamphlet from the NIH.
I learned that Wikipedia is a utopian vision (my interpretation) of a user-created encyclopedia that will one day be the greatest reference work ever created (I say so only partially with tongue in cheek). The OED, afterall, would not have been possible without the contributions of countless volunteers devoted to the mapping the English language.
What seems crazy to me is that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. This is nuts because it means that you can delete entire entries, strategically change facts, add "graffiti" as they refer to it, all without any repercussions. I would contend that every utopian vision is tied together with the hemp that eventually is used to hang itself. Thus would it seem to me that it's pointless to allow millions of people to create something that one asshole can destroy.
But here's the sensible part: Wikipedia seems to have -- at least in part -- learned from the failings of other communal, utopian projects by designing for the dark side of human nature even as it places faith in its bright side (and by implication they have made the rudimentary leap of recognizing that there is such a thing as human nature). Wikipedia has "self-healing" built in. I'm still not 100% sure how this works, but one thing is that a trail of edits is preserved for all to see. So if a reader notices something terribly wrong, he or she can look back through the edits and restore an entry to its pre-vandalism integrity. Of course this doesn't address good faith divergences in basic perception of reality (ie: one man's "resistence" is another man's "fascist insurgency") but somehow it all seems to be working.
My conclusion: no great thing can be accomplished without harnessing the collective spirit, and better still the collective labor, of large numbers of people (I think this is true even for individual artists. The Beatles would still be a snarky little skiffle band, albeit an excellent one, if not for the enthusiasm of their audiences, the inspiration of their heroes, and the societal upheavals of the 60's). But if you don't have a plan for dealing with the dark underbelly of human nature, you're doomed. Wikipedia's calculus seems to be that there are at least more smart, decent people in the world than there are malicious and/or idiotic ones -- I wholeheartedly agree -- but that it only takes one malicious person to bring down the whole house of cards, so you need to fold that into the plan.
Check it out -- look for the gaps and errors in Wikipedia's entries, and be an instant encyclopedist.
One last thing: if you know anything about gastroparesis, you might check my work. One flaw I'm aware of in the NIH language I used (but am cautious about tampering with) is the implication that GP is always caused by irreversible damage to the Vagus nerve, whereas I think it's commonly believed that there may be other, less permanent causes as well (the possibility that this is wishful thinking on my part has deterred me from proceeding any further).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
North Korea explosion news
by JeremyNormally it's a bad idea to use blogs as a news source. If you want to learn more about yeserday's train explosion in North Korea, however, you might make an exception for "North Korea Zone," Rebecca MacKinnon's other blog. (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds):
NKzone has spoken with a Chinese source in Beijing who confirms South Korean media reports that the exploded train was a Chinese gift-train loaded with fuel.More controversially, this source - who is generally quite reliable - tells NKzone that at least some high-ranking officers in the Chinese military believe the blast was the result of a foiled assasination attempt by anti-reform generals in North Korea. This is despite the fact that all the news reports from China and South Korea are describing an accident.
I argued with my source that this "foul play" theory sounded pretty far-fetched, given that Kim's security people would not have allowed another train - especially a fuel train - to come any where near Kim's train. As my former CNN colleague rightly points out, all other train traffic would routinely have been held up for several hours before and after Kim's train passed through the station. The response from my source was: "The power struggle in North Korea has gotten very complicated."
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2004
Let's hope this is a false alarm
by JeremyThis scares the hell out of me:
VERNON, Vt. -- Officials continued to search Thursday for missing radioactive material at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant across the river from Hinsdale, N.H.An inspection showed that two small pieces of spent fuel rods are not in the plant's storage pool, where documents said they should be.
A spokesman said that the public is not in danger, and officials don't believe the materials were stolen.
"These are highly radioactive materials, so the only way they would have been handled is underwater by remote control," spokesman Rob Williams said. "And the only way they would have left the plant is in appropriate container."
The plant is doing a thorough search of the storage pool using remote cameras and said if the materials had been taken out of the plant, it would have set off alarms.
I guess the public is not in danger because these rods could not have been stolen except by someone who didn't value their own life and had an appropriate container. Of course terrorsits can't get their hands on apropriate containers (uh...because I guess you can only get them in nuclear power plants). Just trying to reassure us, I guess. At least they haven't cut the communication lines.
Why do I get the feeling that nuclear power plants are still operating under a pre 9/11 security level. I hope I'm wrong about that.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Horrible accident(?) in North Korea
by JeremyThis tragic and frightening event makes one wonder whether something is happening in North Korea:
(CNN) -- Two trains carrying flammable materials have exploded in a North Korean train station, leaving a large number of casualties, South Korean media reported.
...
Just hours earlier, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had passed through the station on a return trip from China, South Korean news network YTN said.
And this from the Times:
North Korea declared a state of alert in the area of the explosion and cut some international telephone links, Yonhap reported."The station was destroyed as if hit by a bombardment and debris flew high into the sky," the South Korean news agency reported, quoting unidentified Chinese officials. Ryongchon is on flat coastal land, 30 miles south of the North's border with China.
North Korea's official announcement on Thursday of Mr. Kim's three-day trip to Beijing seemed to signal that he had returned safely to Pyongyang.
Reuters reported that residents of Pyongyang reached by telephone had said that there was nothing unusual in the capital. North Korean television was broadcasting military songs and music -- standard evening fare.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 02:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Signs of "The Times"
by JeremySomebody at the New York Times (Arthur Salzburger) gets it (as reported by Jeff Jarvis):
"The scariest thing of all of last year for me... wasn't Jayson Blair.... The scariest part was that the people we lied about didn't bother to call because they just assumed that's the way newspapers worked. That's scary."
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It's a Small, Surreal World
by JeremyWhat to make of Iranian Vice President, Mohammad Ali Abtahi and his blog (hat tip: Hoder) I am still not sure. But here's a thought experiment from Norm (hat tip: me).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Local blogging experiment #2
by JeremySo who said Northampton, MA is not a real city (via Greg)
The leg was found near the water line on the island, which is just above the Coolidge Bridge and the Norwottuck Rail Trail, Patenaude said. Police have not determined whether or not it washed up there during high water.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Local Blogging Scene
by JeremyNo I mean local, local. Being an introverted blogging couple means that Cara and I have corresponded with professors from Zimbabwe-via-England, New York Jews from Japan, a charming clan of semi anonymous Marxists at an undisclosed location in the United Kingdom, even some fine folks as close as NYC...but we had not, until this evening, met any of the bloggers in our actual community.
Thanks to this guy (whose boss is this other guy) we met a handfull of very nice Western Massachusetts bloggers. I'd reveal all their indentities (some blog anonymously) and tell all their secrets, but they can probably figure out where I live.
The experience has reminded me how infrequently I blog about the community I live in. Will I do anything about that? Not sure. It might be more interesting than blogging the presidential election, frankly.
Here's a start: I just found out that there's a cafe in Holyoke (the city where I now work) called the "R*d Cat." It's conspicuously Northamptony amidst the bodegas, but perhaps it will fall on the cultural mix side of things, rather than the gentrification vanguard side. I explored the neighborhood on foot specifically because it reminds me of Washington Heights, the Manhattan neighborhood where I was bred and buttered, as they say in Ireland (I think). It was an emotional experience, in a good way. When I saw the R*d Cat, though, a voice within me urged me inside to sit with the other White people. I wonder if the folks in that neighborhood realize that if they put out steamed milk for us we will never stop coming back.
Ok, maybe I should stay away from the local blogging. My point was going to be that I'm excited about the fact that they are going to get WiFi soon, but now I'm going to be afraid to show my face there. I know: I'll asterisk out the name to prevent unwitting cafe Googlers from landing here.
UPDATE: This is hilarious.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2004
Still Fasting
by JeremyWell, still fasting again...I mean one day every week. I'm blogging this becuase I'm getting a bit hungry now and thought I'd channel the urge into the blog. The fact that it's getting harder probably means that it has been helping, since it means that my stomach is now actually emptying within the 24 hour window. Oh, one final note to underscore how clueless I am: last week I wimped out of the fast on Wednesday evening because I didn't think I should do our taxes in a heightened spiritual state (ie: zombified space freak). But I realized that it already had been 24 hours, or slightly more. When you stop eating after dinner Tuesday, and then don't eat again until breakfast Thursday, that's an f'ing 36 hour fast. Dumb, huh? I have since decided that 24 hours is plenty. Hence, I plan to have dinner when I get home (I would eat my desk now but I think that would be too much fiber).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Progress in Michael Moore's Revolution
by JeremyOne of the blasts in Basra hit a school bus during the morning rush hour, when school buses are circulating and commuters are on their way to work, according to Iraqi witnesses. Traffic was heavy around the police stations, situated in the center of the city.Bodies of schoolchildren were burning inside the bus.
This, and the post below, demonstrate why I do not think the word "evil" is a naive or unspecific term. As for Michael Moore, the New Yorker in me has this linguistic observation: there is a reason why a certain five letter word starting with "P" should not be taken as an offense to women and that is because the male anatomical equivalent, also five letters starting with "P," is a far worse insult. And Michael Moore has finally jumped the gap.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 19, 2004
Holocaust Remembrance Day
by JeremyToday is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It's today because April 19th is the date of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
The pictures below remind us what the words "uprising" and "resistance" actually mean at a time when we have heard these terms woefully misapplied:
Photo credit: Glowna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives [via: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust]
One way Nazis suppressed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was to burn blocks of buildings. Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives [via: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust]
It occurs to me that this is not far from how many people on the anti-war fringe throughout the world contrive to view the American occupation of Iraq. It must be remembered that there are people who truly believe this, but I would ask them to take this day to do some research and some reflecting. For the rest of us, let's take the opportunity to be thankful to those who have risked their lives -- past present and future -- to put an end to seemingly unstoppable horrors.
For pictures, click on each separate link in the words "Warsaw Ghetto uprising" at the top of this post. For movies, click here.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2004
Final BloggerCon Post
by JeremyHere's the accordian guy through a wire-reinforced window:
That's all I've got, folks.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
People we met at BloggerCon
by JeremyWell not many, actually. Cara and I both are terrible at these kinds of things, which is why neither of us are venture capitalists, I guess, or diplomats. But I had the gumption to introduce myself to Jeff Jarvis amid the sardinian crowds of BloggerCon II (I mean squashed in like, not that all attendees were from the Island of Sardinia). As much as the captain of the Buzz Machine seems to enjoy networking with big machers, he seems to equally value the opportunity to meet random characters such as myself. He seems like an extremely nice guy. If you meet the Buddha on the side of the road go ahead and kill the SOB, whatever that means, but if you run into Jeff Jarvis, go ahead and say howdy.
Also notable: we chatted with two guys -- I'm horrendously bad with names -- who were curious to know what we could tell them about the definition of Paganism (after I'd been consensually outed as an atheist by Jeff Sharlet at his religion session). I guess it made sense to asume that we'd have a neutral take on defining the word pagan. Fortunately Cara had a good answer and I had some stuff to add too. Very nice guys.
I'll tell you more about the religion thing: Jeff Sharlet had emailed me to ask me to be a part of his religion session where I might say something about secular utopianism and stuff like that. Jeff Sharlet is a great writer; I plan to read his blog more and suggest you do the same. I think the idea had something to do with the role of belief, in the larger sense, in blogging and also in whether religious blogging might have a grounding effect on religious belief and practice, and also what religious blogging might teach journalists...due to mild culture shock and nervousness about whether what I was saying made any sense or had any relevance, I don't have a good summary of that session. But here are a few items I got a kick out of:
- There was a woman there who blogs as "The Velveteen Rabbi"
- A Pagan blogger was present who informed us that there is a denomination of Paganism called "Techno-Paganism."
- The Velveteen Rabbi informs us that there had been one (and only one) Hasidic blogger -- Hasidic Rebel -- in the blogoshpere but there is speculation that perhaps his cover was blown and he had to stop. His most recent post is dated October 3rd.
- There was a woman there who is part of a webring called "St. Blog's Parish"
- A comparative religion scholar at the session said he once had a professor who referred to himself as a "religion whore" (UPDATE: As I think back on it, he may actually have said "religion slut," the difference, both poetic and fiduciary, is significant) referring to his voracious interest in learning about every known religion.
- Jay Rosen said he thought it interesting that the traditional religious view of time is that things are basically as God made them and will remain that way until -- you name it: the end of time, the first coming, the second coming...but blogging is predicated on the conviction that the world is changing from day to day and that each of us has the potential to influence the way in which the world reinvents itself. No one representing the major Judeo-Christian (Judeo-Islamo-Christian?) religions seemed to agree that their religions precluded this dynamic definition of time. Nevertheless I thought it was a brialliant remark. That Jay Rosen is an impressive cat. Must read more of his stuff.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 02:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 17, 2004
International blogging at Bloggercon II
by JeremyCara and I sat just behind Jeff Jarvis who, with his state of the art computer, was able to get on the network and blog the whole Rebecca MacKinnon International blogging session. Jeff Jarvis, when he chimed in, spoke amazingly fast, presumably so as not to take up more than his fair share of time (I couldn't talk -- or think -- that fast if my life depended on it). But even at that speed you can't catch absolutey everything. Here are a few obervations I'd add to what Jeff scribed:
- An Iranian guy who knows Hoder said that Iranians had had a taste of what a free press might feel like but, of course, the Mullahs snatched it away. Once bitten by the bug of free speech, though, there's no turning back. So blogging took off in Iran because it was the right thing at the right time.
-Jeff Jarvis pointed out that Persian is the 3rd most popular language in the blogosphere now.
-Hoder, via IRC (I confess I can't deal with IRC: it's like the knot of disembodied voices in a ghost movie to me) said that the Iranian blogs have gotten two generations -- pre and post 1970-ish -- communicating with each other for the first time.
-Story on SARS in China and one or two other similar things would not have been reported in the see-no-evil environment of that state if not for the grassroots communication via SMS text messaging (whatever the hell that is: something to do with cell phones?) This is a case where blogging would not have been able to fill this void becuase the Chinese government cracks down on internet freedom. The reporting of undesirable negatives like disease and disaster, though, may be a wedge where government may not clamp down becuase, though defiant, this sort of reporting is not inherently anti-party.
-Jeff Jarvis said U.S. and other priveleged bloggers need to do what we can to help bloggers in other parts of the world bridge the technological barriers to blogging, eg: sending laptops, etc. [I was thinking to myself: yeah, those poor people in places like Haiti and Rwanda who want to get the word out can't because they don't have access -- then I realized that here I was at Harvard Law school and even I didn't have access because my computer is too out of date. So the "digital divide" is still a huge problem.]
-A guy from Ghana spoke about his interest in taking the lively phenomenon of community talk radio there and trying to tie it to blogging -- similar efforts involving IRC have shown promise.
-Someone else mentioned that in most of the rest of the world, where electronic communication happens, it most often happens through wireless phone chatting of various types. Thus, it would be very important to increase the ease and availability of ways to connect this to blogging, if blogging is to become a more universal connecting means [sorry, my electrical journalism creeping in].
- A woman who works in a public library somewhere in the U.S. said that many of the people who use their public internet stations are from foreign countries, especially the Congo, wanting to connect with friends and family back home and share the latest comings and goings. She suggests that there would be great potential in this community for reaching out to people who might be able to start blogs aimed at giving voice to what's going on in developing countries.
And so it went. It was quite a good session. I've under-represented Rebecca MacKinnon's role in shaping and inspiring all this conversation, probably because she did such a good job of drawing out the comments from participants. But she really did a stellar job with this session.
More on BloggerCon II tomorrow (plus spelling and grammar errors corrected).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blog-free BloggerCon
by JeremyAt least for us, anyway. It seems certain Windows users (Windows is an obsucre operating system) were getting booted off the WiFi network, so no realtime blogging at BloggerCon for many of us. Cara and I were bummed out too that we got a bit lost and by the time we showed up at Jay Rosen's journalism session the room was overflowing. Fortunately there was an overflow room. Pictured below you can see Cara just about giving up on trying to decipher anything over the tinny speakers and unable to access the internet.
END OF WHINING. We enjoyed what followed.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2004
Blogga Khan
by Jeremy"Blogger--Blogger--Blogger--Blogger
Blogger Con
Blogger Con
Blogger Con
Blogger Con
Blogger Con
Blogger Con, let me rock you
Let me rock you, Blogger Con
Let me rock you, that's all I wanna do
Blogger Con, let me rock you
Let me rock you, Blogger Con
Let me rock you, 'cause I feel for you"
Was this joke made last year? This year? I don't care.
Lines 9 and 12 don't seem to scan, but I guess it's all in the phrasing. I suppose the comma in each of those lines is to be taken as a caesura (note pointless use of college education).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 03:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Encouraging Post from Omar
by Jeremy(via Roger)
I've been visiting the BBC Arabic site in the last few days and I found a forum where people from many Arab countries -including Iraq - post their opinions about some hot topics, the main of those is Iraq and terrorism of course. I wasn't surprised to see that most Arabs (especially from Egypt, Palestine, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Syria) are forming one side of the debates while Iraqis and people from the rest of the gulf countries are taking the other side. But I was surprised when I found that the almost all the Iraqis who took part in the debates are on our side, maybe 95% of Iraqis expressed their rejection to the violent behavior of some Iraqis and condemned the terrorists attacks on both Iraqis and the coalition saying that the Arab world must stop supporting the terrorists and the thugs from inside Iraq. It's also surprising that many of those Iraqis live in areas that are recognized to have a public anti American attitude in general like A'adhamiya, Diyala and Najaf. I feel that those people are still afraid to voice their points of view in public in such hostile atmospheres but the internet is providing them freedom and safety to say whatever they believe in.
I think the importance of that last sentence cannot be overstated; this is what the current war is about. The Arab/Muslim world is in "danger" of entering their own version of the Western Enlightenment, thus there is a last gasp effort underway by Islamist and other pan-Arabic fascists to bring their awful vision to life before it's too late. News flash: it's already too late.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Yippie Second String Enters Fat Elvis Period
by JeremyStory here (hat tip: Obscure Blogger).
And with that I announce that Cara and I are looking forward to our attendance at BloggerCon II. We will be attending Jay Rosen's "What is Journalism" session where I will humbly suggest that the snappy headline is all that really matters.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2004
In Sudan, chance to apply lessons learned from Rwandan genocide
by JeremySamantha Power's Op-ed in the NY Times last week is as good a way as any to get a grip on the disturbing events in Sudan.
On this anniversary, Western and United Nations leaders are expressing their remorse and pledging their resolve to prevent future humanitarian catastrophes. But as they do so, the Sudanese government is teaming up with Arab Muslim militias in a campaign of ethnic slaughter and deportation that has already left nearly a million Africans displaced and more than 30,000 dead. Again, the United States and its allies are bystanders to slaughter, seemingly no more prepared to prevent genocide than they were a decade ago.The horrors in the Darfur region of Sudan are not "like" Rwanda, any more than those in Rwanda were "like" those ordered by Hitler. The Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has armed nomadic Arab herdsmen, or Janjaweed, against rival African tribes. The government is using aerial bombardment to strafe villages and terrorize civilians into flight. And it is denying humanitarian access to some 700,000 people who are trapped in Darfur.
She has specific advice as to how the Bush administration might respond:
What would standing up to Sudan entail? The administration has several options.On the economic and diplomatic front, the United States has already demonstrated its clout in Sudan, which is desperate to see American sanctions lifted. So far, Secretary of State Colin Powell has rightly described the humanitarian crisis as a "catastrophe." But the White House and the Pentagon have been mostly mute. President Bush must use American leverage to demand that the government in Khartoum cease its aerial attacks, terminate its arms supplies to the Janjaweed and punish those militia accused of looting, rape and murder. The president made a phone call last week to Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, but one ritual conversation hardly counts as pressure. Mr. Bush should keep calling until humanitarian workers and investigators are permitted free movement in the region, a no-fly zone is declared and the killings are stopped, and he should dispatch Mr. Powell to the Chad-Sudan border to signal America's resolve.
The Bush administration can't do this alone. Ten thousand international peacekeepers are needed in Darfur. President Bush will have to press Sudan to agree to a United Nations mission -- and he will also need United Nations member states to sign on. The Europeans can help by urging the Security Council to refer the killings to the newly created International Criminal Court. Though the United States has been hostile to the court, this is one move it should not veto, as an investigation by the court could deter future massacres.
And it looks as if the EU might do something here:
Italy, France and the UK have all been deeply involved in monitoring the Sudanese peace process and are the nations most likely to lead an EU force.
The chances of something being done can only be improved by increased attention being paid to this crisis, so if you're looking for something to blog, this would be an important contribution.
Norm Geras was on it last week.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 12, 2004
Stairway to Utopia
by CaraDriving to work the other day I had a thought about socialism. I've been struggling, still, as some of you may know, with processing the time I worked in the 'collective' business that I was part of for 4 years. It took me two years to finally see this 'collective' totally disperse and dissolve right before my eyes in the shadow of a crisis. This was a time where truth telling and action were needed but nothing but denial and effete posturing ruled the day, and it took another two years for me to realize there was nothing I could do to fix it. That is the typical lefty socialist reaction to crisis, pretend it's not happening (lie to yourself and your 'comrades') or "reframe" it away (lie to your 'comrades' and yourself) when a situation doesn't match your utopian vision of the world. Fifteen thousand of the most vulnerable dead this past summer (where's the human rights outrage, anyway?), no not in Iraq in a war zone, but in a 'civilized' western country who's socialized medical system couldn't weather the crisis of a heat-wave, France. I've been thinking, though, that socialism really isn't so much a blatant lie as an illusion. It looks great on paper but somehow never quite translates into reality without reaching a dead end or cliff.
So driving down the road one day, thinking about all this, what pops into my mind but Escher? You know, those drawings, they look amazing, wondrous, and logical...they really do look possible; there it is in black and white for all to see, ascending staircases that somehow end where they began and water falls where the water runs uphill... all this suddenly seems possible when gazing through Escher's sphere. These impossible buildings and contrasting realties all coexist beautifully in these fun magical pictures and they appear so mathematically precise that they must make sense somehow...it all seems so well planned, sophisticated, and scientific. But of course it's all an illusion based on perceptions, assumptions, and a wish, or need, to believe in the impossible. Bear with me for just putting this together now. Hell, one of those drawings is even named "Relativity".
- Cara
Posted by Cara at 11:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 09, 2004
sometimes Silence is Golden
by JeremyWise people, when their delusional ideas are mapped to their logical endpoint, fall silent or change the subject or get angry. Fools keep right on talking (via Norm Geras):
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:16 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 08, 2004
Satellite Radio -- Easy as 12345678...
by JeremyI've become interested in the possibility of getting satellite radio. Interested enough, anyway, to find out how much it would cost. Turns out you need to hire a team of financial analysts and electrical engineers to figure this out. As far as I can tell so far you simply need a receiver, a transmitter, a controller, a modulator, an antenna, and I guess a wire for the antenna, a faceplate, knobs for the faceplate, enamel for the wiring inside the dynamo you have to mount on the roof of your car...it seems like the safest thing to do would be to buy a new car and cross your fingers. It reminds me of shopping for a computer circa 1987. Maybe I'll invest in a set of knurls for the power switch knob, or the conductive silicone gel for the optional power supply heatsink...
Don't hesitate to explain to me how simple it actually is -- I wouldn't doubt that this is just a case of bad marketing. I may not be a genius, but I'm no technological moron either. And if I can't figure this out after a half hour of googling, then there are tens of millions of other potential customers who have no more time for the aggravation than I do.
[Allright grandpa, pipe down and take your stomach pill]
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Step right up! A real live National Security Advisor! Watch what she does when we poke sticks at her!
by JeremyActually, dealing with tense situations and keeping her head is why she makes the big bucks, so who really cares that she was reamed a tad. But Richard Ben-Veniste, who came off a bit like Judge Judy, was unpleasant to listen to. It's not that he was too tough on her -- there's no such thing as too tough when questioning a national security advisor -- but that he was unnecessarily and unproductively tough. He tried to force her to answer "yes" or "no" to the question (if I'm remembering right) as to whether or not she'd briefed Bush on a report she'd had that Al Qaeda was trying to build cells in the U.S. She refused to give this a yes/no, since it was one of those "when did you stop beating your wife" questions. Where she was coming from, I gather, is that there was never a moment when she or anyone else knew that there was one specific intelligence report that was more credible or immediate than any other, so the question of whether -- Oops! -- she may have forgotten to brief Bush on the single most important threat to national security gives a misleading picture of the truth. He continued to try to force her in that cinematic "I asked you a simple yes or no question" way to answer without annotation. If this were all some assinine movie (which, it must be remembered, it is not) this moment would have been a good choice for one of the 8 or 9 obligatory shouting male baritone clips in the trailer. There are times when forcing an issue into concreteness helps to cut through the bullshit, but there are also times when this sort of concrete framing creates the bullshit. My impression is that this was an example of the latter. Either way, nothing strikes me as having been accomplished.
It says in Ben-Veniste's bio on the 9/11 commission website that "Mr. Ben-Veniste is a Presidential appointee to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, which is mandated to review and declassify secret documents relating to World War II era war crimes" and that he was "chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office from 1973 to 1975." So one might conclude that he's gotten into the habit of a certain kind of questioning style. I can't help but wonder what it would sound like if he worked at Burger King: "Mr. Brown I asked you a direct, yes or no question: do you or do you not want fries with that!? Answer the question, Mr. Brown!!" "But I only wanted fries" "Answer the question!!!"
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 07, 2004
More Fast Observations
by Jeremy2pm: I keep catching mysef thinking about how I'll have a lovely bagel, or some ice cream, before remembering that I will not be doing that for another sixteen hours. I can feel my synapses beginning to regroup, beginning to angle for other tricks to get a little stimulation. I might have to do something goddam creative, or read a book -- this is the degredation I'm reduced to -- instead of having a snack. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to get in the habit of equating the munchies with a need for intellectual sustenance rather than for food. This could be the path to a peaceful settlement between my hypothalamus and my stomach.
8:30pm: Only now starting to feel that my stomach is empty. Now I'm truly hungry. This is boring as hell. Sorry. Failed experiment.
7:43am: Just had breakfast though I wasn't yet feeling hungry. I don't know whether it's the blood sugar rising, the coffee...but I have a feeling remeniscent of the last day of school before Summer vacation. This mood surge alone, even if it last only an hour or two, would justify the whole fast. I would imagine though that fasting often or for long periods of time would be a different story. One thing I appreciate now is the fact that I've got the luxury to decide whether I eat or not. I've never had to go hungry because of poverty -- clearly that would be depressing beyond measure. I think what I'm feeling now is an acute sense of my own freedom.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Weekly Fast #1
by JeremyThis marks one of the first blog promises (maybe I should call them forecasts from now on) that I will have kept, namely to blog my deteriorating coherence flowering visions during my weekly water fast. I'd do this in a plexiglass box over the Thames, but by the time I got there I'd only have an hour or two of fasting left -- you need a good few days lead time before people notice you and have a chance to bring stuff to throw at you.
I had a painful night with little sleep after taking a Metoclopromide (Reglan) in what turned out to have been a ill-conceived strategy for coping with a large Passover meal (which was wonderful, thanks to Cara). Metoclopromide is a capricious beast and I'm afraid it sometimes leads you down the wrong side of the crossroads (or something to that effect -- you're welcome to pen your own blues song about this particular drug. I'd give it a go, but the genre calls for a more misongynist anthropomorphism than a guy like me can pull off. Tip: don't have the first line be "Metoclopromide is a capricious beast and I'm afraid...").
I'll tell you, I don't have any fast-inspired reflections yet. But the news in Iraq is disturbing and makes this post more self-indulgent even than it would have been anyway. I'll be reading the Iraqi blogs today and, depending on how the day unfolds, I will also try to blog the fast.
Here's what Zeyad closes with today:
No one knows where it is all heading. If this uprising is not crushed immediately and those militia not captured then there is no hope at all. If you even consider negotiations or appeasement, then we are all doomed.
Sobering words from Zeyad. Kerry is making some sounds that hint at his one day having an Iraq policy, but it still sounds like campaign positioning. His questioning a June handover could be constructive, and if he really thinks we should send more troops over then that's a good sign:
"I think they wanted to get the troops out, get the transfer out of the way as fast as possible without regard to the stability of Iraq," Kerry told reporters after a campaign rally here. "It is a mistake to set an arbitrary date and I hope that date has nothing to do with the elections here in the United States."
...
Kerry did not rule out advocating sending in more troops to quiet the uprising and said the United States should scrap a date-certain for transferring power. "Bottom line is we have to change the entire dynamic and that's going to require a very different form of diplomacy," he said.
But what I take away from this is: 1) Bush Bad 2) Kerry unhesitatinlgy prepared to not hypothetically rule out advocating sending more troops, but don't quote him directly 3)Immediate use of some as-yet-undetermined, hypothetical "Diplomacy" shift (might this involve a unilateral telephone call? What? Throw us a bone.)
Here's what my nascent hunger is beginning to tell me: my short term memory is not 100%, even this early (lack of sleep plus lack of breakfast/coffee) so I've already started to forget the words I've written and pasted above. The lingering sense I have from Zeyad is that it is imperative that we stop this uprising. What I've internalized from Kerry's words is that if he were president now he'd be doing things very differently, though he can't yet say specifically how. The problem is that this is already now and, like it or not, he is already Kerry. If he knows how to fix this situation then why the hell is he not speaking up about it.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 05, 2004
Joogle
by JeremyLet's get the Jew W*tch website the fuck off of the number one google spot for the searchword "Jew." Thanks to Norm Geras and other bloggers who have picked up on this, we can use our Google leverage to do something important.
Just put this link somewhere on your blog connected to the word Jew:
Footnote: my specific use and omission of asterisks above is a cryptic reference to an old Jewish joke about a guy named Adolph Shit who goes to a town official to officially change his name. "No need to explain the reason for the name change" the official says, "just let me know what you are changing it to." "Irving Shit" the man replies.
UPDATE: By all means check out the hate site mentioned above, but don't get there by clicking on it from the search page or putting the link on your blog. You can simply highlight the URL from the search result, copy it, then paste it into your browser's address bar. This way you won't be reinforcing their ranking.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 05:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 04, 2004
Vertigo
by JeremyI just looked at the weekly graph of this blog's daily visitor stats and -- I kid you not -- I experienced motion sickness. I'm going to lie down now.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How to Prevail in an Arugment #2
by JeremyIn my previous post I illustrated a way to avoid getting sucked into tilting at windmills when your friends email you. Here's another way, equally effortless but far more serious and far more meaningful -- send them this by Hitchens (Hat Tip: These Guys):
I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?
Fact: they won't hear it, won't be convinced by it, won't be moved. But it will return the challenge, implied in every "Bush is a gorilla" email you receive, that you are the one who is falling short of your better instincts.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:17 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 03, 2004
How to Prevail in an Argument
by JeremyI'm sick of having email arguments on a nearly daily basis, butting heads with people and getting nowhere. Life is not long enough and offers far better alternatives. But what do you do when you get an email from a friend that's designed to either provoke a counter argument or to elicit a grunt of assent from those of like mind?
An old college friend of mine emailed me a streaming video of the Gorilla general from Planet of the Apes rallying his gorilla troops, with audio of Bush rallying his human troops superimposed over it. I have to admit that my initial autonomic response was one of amusement, though a competing gangliar irritation soon overwhelmed it. It was well conceived primate humor.
I still haven't come up with a satisfactory hypothesis as to why the Bush=monkey (or gorilla) image has captured the imaginations of so many people. It seems to be scratching that paw-waving spot for a lot of anti-war folks. I would invite your theories as to what precise psychological undercurrents are at play here.
That American troops were being depicted as hairy, presumably smelly, gorillas did not surprise me. But I assumed that I was to consider myself a gorilla too. That's OK. But there began the strange, dada paranoia spiral. I responded by simply sending the famous picture of the dignified looking gentleman you see below:
My friend responded with a video of a TV commercial where a guy in a car escapes being attacked by an angry truck driver by reaching over to his dashboard and pressing the "trunk monkey" button. The trunk then opens, a monkey climbs out with a tire iron and hits the truck driver over the head. And again, I guessed I was the overfed car driver who was happy to push a button and let others (monkeys) do my dirty work for me. Or I'm paranoid, which is also possible. I then sent something strange back. He sent another "joke" in reply. I gave up because already an hour had passed. But I got the idea that it would have been much easier to simply have sent something completely random, having no inherent meaning. He'd have puzzled over it for hours before finally "getting" what it was I was trying to imply about him. This you might call Rorschach polemics. What grave intellectual assault, for instance, might my friend have inferred from this image:
I'll try it next time around and let you know.
UPDATE: April 26, 2004. I just sent someone the "guy watering the plant" picture in response to another "American soldiers are evil imperialists" message and got appreciative laughter in reply. The moral seems to be that he'd not been especially serious about his message and would have felt I was the angry, uptight one if I'd responded in earnest. I'm not sure what the "correct" thing is here -- maybe one should speak one's mind openly always -- but I must say this has worked nicely. I got my anger off my chest (albeit a bit passively) but managed to avoid a pointless and unpleasant argument. Doctoral thesis/book/article idea: experiment with this sort of exchange as a way of understanding something about the uses of irony among minority groups in American culture (and/or elsewhere). Start by exploring African American slave humor and bring it on up through Richord Pryor and Lenny Bruce, but don't limit the scope to humor alone; say something about modes of dress, art, music. Go ahead and use it, but expect me to post about how it was my idea and you ripped it off (or give me credit in your footnotes and/or acknowledments).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 01, 2004
My advice to Air-America
by JeremyI'll start with why I think Al Franken is no longer funny. He used to write his own material. Now he's simply re-writing other people's stuff. Yes, I understand that's what satire is; the problem is that satire is only funny when it's genuinely inspired. Franken now seems to be a political satire factory, taking whatever conservative nugget comes down the assembly line and anodizing it with the patented Franken Satire Coating. I haven't yet heard his new show or any of the other "Air America" broadcasts, but it does not bode well that Franken calls his "The O'Franken Factor" and that Janeane Garofalo calls hers "The Majority Report" which would seem to be a reference to the former Nation column by Christopher Hitchens. These are two people who have been quite funny in the past but now seem to have been hijacked by that weird disease whereby humorless, mainstream Democratic party hackery masquerades as radical activism and saps the life force from talented people.
So perhaps the titling of shows is just the wrapping and the content will be more substantial, but my advice, to quote Bill Withers: "Just do what you do and do it good." My prediction: they won't, and they will be off the air by the time the election is over. Or perhaps one or two of the B-list broadcasters will gather a listenership and stay on the air in some capacity. The whole thing feels like a tent city outpost for political pamphelteering designed to oust Bush; this in a time when broadcast radio could use a shot in the arm. I don't think this is it what the doctor ordered.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:24 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Self-Indulgent Post #27
by JeremyCara and I just had a lovely breakfast of pancakes. I knew of course that the word "breakfast" meant "the breaking of one's fast", but I'd never actually used it that way before. I've just crossed over the border of the 24 hour water fast I went on yesterday as an experimental self-treatment for my mild-to-moderate case of gastroparesis (Actually I drank a glass an hour of "fitness water.") Here's my "don't try this at home" warning: while it's evidently difficult for a healthy person to harm oneself on a mere 24 hour fast, if you have gastroparesis as a complication of diabetes, you might as well jump in front of a train as fast for a day, so don't do it. And you should consult the proverbial health professional before doing this anyway.
Having said all that, I feel great this morning! My stomach is relatively clear, my head is clear, my mood is clear. And the fast was surprisingly easy (it's probably easier to fast when you're still digesting yesterday's dinner).
How did I think of this? If you're a GP sufferer and lending my words any credibility whatsoever, you'll want to read this first: I initially got the idea while reading about how Robin Quivers, Howard Stern's sidekick, had some sort of inflammatory bowel problem for years until, on a tip from David Blaine, she went on a 21 day fast and has, it seems, never felt better. I knew immediately that fasting for more than a day was "not on" as they say in the UK. But I started reading about one day fasts via Google: it was like jumping into another world populated only by orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and New Agers. But I found one health-related site that gave some pretty sensibile advice and that recommended a weekly one-day fast to clear out and prevent bacterial overgrowth in the digestive system. This sounded like what I was looking for so, disregarding the fact this was a website devoted to veterinary advice for the care of dogs, I felt empowered to give it a try. So far so good.
Moral of story: If your health advice doesn't contain references to Howard Stern, Robin Quivers, David Blaine, religious zealotry, and canine digestive health, then you should probably be wary.
From now on I plan to blog my strange, spiritual visions on my fast days (every Wednesday) so stay tuned. I'm pretty sure, though, that I've broken every single blog promise I've made in the past, so you are welome to ingore me (if you've read this far).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 07:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
