Stress

Posted on December 3, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

Even more hair-raising than biking in city traffic is transferring a database-driven website to a new hosting service. At least for me, since I don’t do this sort of thing every day.

It all started Tuesday, when the database server became unavailable. Again. On Wednesday I started researching hosting companies. On Thursday I signed up with one and started moving files, replicating databases, etc. On Friday I changed my domain’s DNS servers. The rest is cleanup and learning my way around the new host’s impressive array of management tools. And wouldn’t you know, it’s cheaper than the old host. This move was long overdue, actually, but I’m lazy and loyal and prone to stick with people until things get atrociously bad.

And somehow it all worked out. Well, not just somehow. The tools at the new provider are excellent. All I lost (I think) is a month’s worth of posts on my family forum—luckily November was a slow month. (I thought for sure I did a backup when the database came back online after Thanksgiving. Turns out the last backup I could find was when I upgraded WordPress at the end of October—drat! Silly me: I thought I could count on my hosting company to back up my databases so that my backups were just icing on the cake.) Maybe I’ll get those posts back, if my database at the old host ever comes back to life (my contract with them doesn’t run out for a while, so I should still have access). Or maybe I won’t. No big deal.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized I had been holding my breath or something for three days. A sort of constriction in my chest. Now I think I can relax. A bit. It is technology, after all. The minute you’re lulled into thinking you’ve got it under control … Pow! If it’s not a bad line of code or a hard drive that gives up the ghost, it’s a lightning-induced power surge or a cable that was taken out and reinserted one too many times, or any number of human-generated flubs or well-targeted “acts of God.”

Then again, what if all my silly little webs went down? I think the world would survive, and probably I would as well. I shudder to think what’s it’s like to be responsible for systems that lives depend on. Permanent thoracic constriction, no doubt. Or seventeen layers of redundancy. Or both.

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Attention

Posted on November 26, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

A few weeks ago I saw a Ford commercial on TV that really depressed me. I wasn’t sure I heard it correctly, so I went online to verify the bad news. It was true: e-mail will be infiltrating Ford automobiles. And not just e-mail—you’ll be ensconced in a 55-mph cellphone. Or is it a 70-mph computer? It depends on how big a hurry you’re in and what you urgently need to get done as you hurtle down the road.

From marketwatch.com:

Ford Motor Co. (F) will unveil […] a hands-free Bluetooth wireless system and in-vehicle operating system developed by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) as an option for its entire Ford brand lineup. The system will integrate some of the features of a personal computer into a car’s cockpit, according to sources familiar with the auto maker’s plans.

The move is Ford’s latest attempt to spruce up its U.S. product portfolio and follows the company’s recent decisions to expand satellite radio offerings and introduce features such as connection jacks for Apple Computer Inc.’s (AAPL) iPod music player. The new system, to be dubbed “Sync,” will allow for hands-free cellphone communication and other wireless information transfers inside the car, including the ability to receive email.

So why am I bummed by this? Why should I care that today’s hyperstimulated, overcaffeinated, maximally distracted drivers have internet access in their cars? That’s their business, right?

It’s simple: I commute by bicycle.

The news report goes on to describe the Sync system and Ford’s rollout plans at some length before ending on a sour note—the note I heard right off the bat, the note that got louder the more I read:

The drive to install more and more electronic features in cars has sparked debate in the auto industry concerning the amount of distraction that drivers encounter in the cockpits of their cars.

Gosh, it’s reassuring to know there’s “debate in the auto industry” about this! The question is, where’s the US Congress? Where’s 60 Minutes? Where’s Ralph Nader when you need him?

A few days ago, I got a mailing from the League of American Cyclists on biking fatalities and what needs to be done to make biking safer. Among the horror stories was “the case of Matt Wilhelm, who was killed by a teenage driver with four previous traffic violations in just 17 months”:

The driver admitted she was downloading ring tones for her phone when she struck him with the driver’s side of the car as he rode to the right of the fog line on the highway shoulder.

You’re starting to get the picture, right? Driving while distracted can be fatal … to the bicyclist (or pedestrian). The driver almost invariably walks away without a scratch, and usually gets off with a slap on the wrist (in this case, six months’ probation and a $1,000 fine).

Could it be an attitude problem? From the same League letter:

“That’s what happens when you ride on the road …”

That’s what a police officer told an Albequerque cyclist who had just witnessed a fellow rider being killed by a driver swerving into their path.

People often complain (and rightfully) about bicyclists behaving recklessly and making a nuissance of themselves. But from what I can tell, most cyclists who are killed or maimed are following the rules of the road. They are simply wiped out by careless, distracted, or impatient motorists. (Or drunk drivers—a mortal hazard to us all, whether we’re on bikes, in cars, or walking.) The January/February issue of Bicycling magazine has a long article by David Darlington about cyclists who were struck by cars—some of them died, some were paralyzed. All were obeying the law. Continue reading →

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Forsooth

Posted on November 5, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

Larry Derfner, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, asks a rhetorical question you won’t find anywhere in the US media:

How long are Israel and its lobby in Washington going to go on living this ridiculous, transparent lie? How long are they going to hock the world about the Holocaust while acting as Turkey’s number two accomplice, number one being the White House, in denying the Armenian genocide?

He goes on to accurately describe the forces at play on the banks of the Potomac:

Again, Congress has demonstrated it won’t recognize that the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s predecessor, deliberately wiped out about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915–17. Again, the president of the United States has scared Congress off with a big assist from the Anti-Defamation League and other American Jewish “defense” organizations. (Historically, the American Jewish Committee has led the Israel lobby’s effort to shut Congress up about the genocide and the Ottoman Empire’s culpability.)

As usual, we find more diversity of Jewish opinion in the Israeli press on not just this but every issue (the maltreatment of Palestinians, the Israel lobby, the Armenian genocide, etc.) than here in the land of the First Amendment.

Derfner goes on the parse the hard-nosed politics that Turkey’s American lobbyists have trumpeted at the highest possible tessitura in the Washington Post, with echoes answering back across the land—or at least on Capitol Hill, causing sponsors of H.Res. 106 to fall away like stunned moles. He parses the stated objections, then places them in a larger context—that old, boring dichotomy (my words, not his—my Weltschmerz, not his): the practical vs. the moral:

Security and economics are the primary concern of every nation, and Israel is part of the family of nations. But the thing is this: If Israel and the Israel lobby can pursue practical self-interest alone, they can’t insist that the rest of the world act like Righteous Gentiles.

They can’t go on intoning that “the world stood silent” during the Holocaust when they—the leaders of the Jewish world—act as front-line enforcers of silence on the Armenian genocide.

Derfner says that “Israel, along with its lobby in Washington, have always chosen realpolitik.” What he doesn’t say, but what everyone knows, is that this approach works. Or has worked. Continues to work. But, Derfner says, “[w]hat they may not know … is that by now the world sees through them.” He continues:

The world doesn’t take seriously what an Israeli leader or an American Jewish macher has to say about the Six Million, not when it sees that same Israeli leader and American Jewish macher shushing everyone over the murders of 1.5 million other innocents.

Thankfully, those politicians are not the only Jewish voices on the Armenian genocide, or on the Holocaust. There is also Wiesel, Lipstadt, Goldhagen, Bauer, Congressman Adam Schiff, Yossi Sarid and many, many others.

Either you value truth first, or you value power first. Every Jew, every person, makes the choice.

He might have added Israel Charny, Leo Kuper, and many others who have chosen the truth, but he makes the point better than I ever could. As for the American press and the choice its acolytes (“every person,” not just “every Jew”) continue to make, I won’t name names. I leave that to my well-informed, assiduous, good-hearted reader.

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Flashback

Posted on October 31, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

Старые привычки … I don’t know if there’s a Russian equivalent for the English phrase: “Old habits die hard.” It would certainly apply to recent events in the Russian hinterland, where workers were ordered to attend pro-Putin rallies in a number of cities.

The Guardian reports:

A telegram from Sergey Lemikhov, a railways boss in western Siberia, to department heads, union representatives and veteran committees, gives a detailed breakdown of how many workers from each section should attend the Novosibirsk rally on October 24, which drew about 30,000 people. “Organise participation in the demonstration by workers and veterans of collectives and members of their families in the following quantities,” it orders. Hundreds of employees are told to attend.

A similar order by education bosses in Tver region demands that 55 schools provide teachers and pupils to attend a rally. There, supporters waved flags reading “Putin, we trust you!” The Union of Right Forces, a liberal opposition party, said it had lodged a complaint with the central electoral committee about the order.

Here’s the funny bit:

Anatoly Lokot, a Communist MP from Novosibirsk, said: “It’s very sad that the Russian electoral campaign has set off down this path, when the law is broken.” [emphasis added]

There’s no denying Putin enjoys wide popular support, and that he’s unlikely to shuffle quietly offstage after his term as president is over. The question is, will his next steps be legal? And perhaps more to the point, can his supporters be kept in check? One wishes we aren’t witnessing the rebirth of Soviet-style Cult of Personality, but the signs aren’t good.

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Handyman

Posted on October 31, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

Sensation Comics cover - May/June 1952

Happy Halloween!

[h/t to Ben Samuels via The Beat]

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Etude

Posted on October 30, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

I stumbled across a review of a book called Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon, and given how I admire concision (or say I do, at any rate), I just had to take a look. The title in French, Nouvelles en trois lignes, is actually a pun: nouvelles can be taken as either “novellas” or “news.” In fact, insofar as the items originally appeared in a newspaper, “news” could be considered the primary sense.

The rest of the title refers to the fact that, in the narrow newspaper columns, the bits were invariably three lines long. They were first published serially in 1906 in Le Matin. Here are a few samples, translated by Luc Santé:

In political disagreements, M. Bégouen, journalist, and M. Bepmale, MP, had called one another “thief” and “liar.” They have reconciled.

Again and again Mme Couderc, of Saint-Ouen, was prevented from hanging herself from her window bolt. Exasperated, she fled across the fields.

The French ditchdiggers of Florac have protested, sometimes with their knives, against the amount of Spanish spoken on their work sites.

In Clichy, an elegant young man threw himself under a coach with rubber wheels, then, unscathed, under a truck, which pulverized him.

Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.

Soon after the book arrived, I stumbled—again—across an item in the newspaper that seemed to ask for Fénéonesque treatment. I thought: Why not try my hand at it? My first attempt was too long; after whittling, it came to this:

G. Edgerton, hunting alone in the woods of Dale County, climbed a dead tree, which fell and crushed him. His carcass was found the next day.

Right off the bat I had a problem. “Carcass” is accurate (though startling when used for humans) and injects a bit of irony. The cruelty, however, is uncalled for. This was an unfortunate accident, not divine retribution. (Unlike Fénéon, I’ve changed the name and location. Do I want the victim’s family or friends stumbling across this “clever” squib? Clearly I don’t have the stomach for this.)

The next version was slightly shorter and didn’t editorialize:

G. Edgerton, hunting alone in the woods of Dale County, climbed a dead tree and was found dead the next day, crushed by the tree.

Not enough story, I thought. So—

G. Edgerton failed to return from hunting in the woods of Dale County. He had climbed a dead tree that toppled and crushed him.

—the implied drama in the home he had left in the morning for perhaps the thousandth time. Better? Maybe it needs an expressive detail (and maybe the name could be dropped):

A local hunter failed to return home. His longbow was found before he was, crushed beneath the dead tree he had climbed and overwhelmed.

Wait—is it the man who was crushed, or the longbow? With something this short, syntax really matters. And: did he survive, or did he expire? By this point I’m spinning and slipping and losing my bearings completely. I think we’d better let Fénéon do the fénéoning:

There was a gas explosion at the home of Larrieux, in Bordeaux. He was injured. His mother-in-law’s hair caught on fire. The ceiling caved in.

Before jumping into the Seine, where he died, M. Doucrain had written in his notebook, “Forgive me, Dad. I like you.”

In order to see the world, Louis Legrand, Bedroux, and Lenoël, with a collective 36 years to go, escaped from the penal colony at Gaillon.

An unknown person painted the walls of Pantin cemetery yellow; Dujardin wandered naked through Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône. Crazy people, apparently.

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Ottomania

Posted on October 29, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

I have been waiting for Christopher Hitchens to weigh in on the Armenian genocide resolution (H.Res. 106) for weeks now. I used to agree with Hitchens a lot more in the past—back in the days when he thought “terrorist” was a stupid label and “terrorism” a blanket excuse for a brutal but ultimately pointless response, all this “terror” covering up the underlying political, economic, and military schemes and crimes being perpetrated. But over the years he has been remarkably consistent about at least one thing, and that is the Armenian genocide. I remember the time my wife and I met with him in New York City after he spoke at an April 24 commemoration. My mother-in-law went to his house in DC once for a very pleasant chat. (She had coffee. He had the usual.)

So—where was Hitchens? Can he really remain silent in the face of the campaign to kill the resolution, launched by the Turkish government and abetted by countless well-paid Americans of high (or formerly high) standing?

Today, at long last, Hitchens speaks. In true Hitchensian fashion, he gives us a good chunk of history, with Kurds, Jews, and Greek Cypriots added to Armenians in the pot where nothing ever melts. But he puts his finger in the self-inflicted wound that Turkey continues to keep from closing:

So, let us be clear on a few things. The European Union, to which Turkey has applied for membership with warm American support, has insisted on recognition of Kurdish language rights and political rights within Turkey. We can hardly ask for less. If the Turks wish to continue lying officially about what happened to the Armenians, then we cannot be expected to oblige them by doing the same (and should certainly resent and repudiate any threats against ourselves or our allies that would ensue from our Congress affirming the truth). Then there remains the question of Cyprus, where Turkey maintains an occupation force that has repeatedly been condemned by a thesaurus of U.N. resolutions ever since 1974. It is not our conduct that should be modified by Turkey’s arrogance; we do a favor to the democratization and modernization of that country by insisting that it get its troops out of Cyprus, pull its forces back from the border with Iraq, face the historic truth about Armenia, and in other ways cease to act as if the Ottoman system were still in operation.

Precisely.

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Bumpers

Posted on October 23, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

Peddling through Georgetown this morning, I saw this bumper sticker:

Don’t believe everything you think

A block or so later, this:

MILITANT AGNOSTIC
I don’t know & you don’t either

Skeptic to the right of me, skeptic to the left of me …

Discuss quietly within yourself.

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Wahoo

Posted on October 18, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

Every time the Cleveland Indians baseball club makes it to the playoffs, a sense of unease sets in with the euphoria. It’s only a matter of days, if not minutes, from the time they step into the national spotlight before broadcasters or bloggers or commenters will decry the “racism” of the Indians name or, more pointedly, the team’s icon, Chief Wahoo. The excellent Salon columnist King Kaufman lasted the entire Yankees series and most of the Red Sox series before he could hold it in no longer and he popped.

I wrote a letter in response. Here is it, with a few typos fixed.

* * * * *

Thanks for reminding me how racist I am

I grew up in Cleveland in a large family where playing baseball was the family passion (I’m this close to saying “the family religion”). I loved the Indians, terrible as they were throughout the sixties and seventies and eighties. Chief Wahoo was simply part of the landscape. I don’t think I loved him. He was just there. In the case of the huge revolving Chief Wahoo at the old stadium, he was really there.

I was also interested in Indians as a kid—the real ones, some of whom lived in northeast Ohio at one time and left their names for things scattered all over the place: Cuyahoga, Geauga, Conneaut, Ashtabula, etc., etc. I don’t know if there was a connection between my interest in the baseball Indians and the phantom Indians. I read a lot of books about Indians and kept my eye peeled for arrowheads in the woods. That’s all I know.

Be that as it may, as a liberal – progressive – socialist – humanitarian – internationalist white guy, I have at times felt ill-at-ease with Chief Wahoo. On balance, I wish he would retire. The problem is, he doesn’t seem to age, and he looks so damn happy. I have noticed how the Indians front office has been downplaying the image in recent years. But of the millions of people who buy Indians gear, a certain percentage actually buys the stuff not in spite of the image but because of it. They are so benighted, aren’t they? What is wrong with these people?

But here’s the funny part (if you have a sense of humor, which most people outside of Cleveland don’t when it comes to Chief Wahoo). A few years ago I happened to be talking on the phone with someone in Maine, someone I’d never met, a guy who wanted to offer his web design services to my organization in northern Virginia (I live in Washington, DC). In passing I asked about the Penobscot tribe. He seemed surprised. He asked how I knew about them, and so on. I must’ve mentioned I’m from Cleveland, and somehow or other the Indians and their mascot came up (maybe it was 1997, a bittersweet year for Indians fans). I expressed my embarrassment about Chief Wahoo before we returned to the business at hand.

A few weeks later this guy in Maine sent me an e-mail saying how he had come across some Indians (the real ones) wearing the Cleveland Indians cap with Chief Wahoo. He asked them about it, and they said they love Chief Wahoo. They actually seemed to appreciate that there was a Major League baseball team called the Indians—that someone actually remembers that Indians exist, that they, in fact, had the run of the continent for centuries. Would they also have said, “Hey, white man, lighten up! You think Indians don’t laugh? You don’t think Indians appreciate a caricature? You think Indians are that touchy and soft and perpetually down-at-the-mouth?” They didn’t say that, as far as I know. They just wore the hats and said they liked them. Are they “self-hating Indians”? I wouldn’t like to assume that. Are they idiots? or fools? Hmm—I think it would be a bit racist to think that, don’t you?

As I said, if Chief Wahoo won’t ride off into the sunset on his own, I personally would like to see the Indians management give him more than a little nudge. But I don’t pretend to speak for anyone else. And I hope to see the Indians finish off the Red Sox and beat the Rockies. Not scalp them—just out-hit, out-run, out-pitch, and out-field them on the diamond. And I hope everyone, starting with King Kaufman, can keep their pain (which I’m sure is heartfelt) at seeing Chief Wahoo from billowing forth in phrases like “outrageously racist” and easy but misleading comparisons to minstrelsy. I, too, wish fans wouldn’t paint their faces like Chief Wahoo. But then, I wish they wouldn’t paint their faces at all. Or their flabby stomachs. I wish the loud music would go, and that people would watch the game—the indescribably beautiful game of baseball—with their undivided attention. Obviously I’m an old fart.

Perhaps some especially sensitive commentators can keep in mind that the presumably racist city of Cleveland happened to field the first black player in the American League and the first black manager in the major leagues (leaving aside that the white population of Cleveland helped elect the first black mayor of a major US city, that the college in nearby Oberlin was the first to regularly admit African-American students [back in 1835], and so on). If, every time the Indians claw their way to first place in their division and step onto the national stage, Chief Wahoo makes intelligent people like King Kaufman think the people of Cleveland are more racist than those who live in Chicago, or Boston, or Los Angeles, or [name a tiny town somewhere in the heartland], then that is the best reason for killing him. Not because you happen to think he offends Indians, or because he offends you (and makes you feel strangely good being offended), but because Cleveland gets a black eye, in what should be a deliriously happy time, over a silly cartoon—an Indian who’s giddy with the pleasure of competing and emerging victorious over a pair of socks, or an entire mountain range.

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Equanimity

Posted on October 11, 2007 by WorldWideWeber

As the son of a nurse and brother of a doctor (and brother-in-law of two more), this squib in the latest University of Chicago alumni magazine caught my attention: “Why Doctors Don’t Feel Your Pain.”

Brain scans show that physicians apparently learn to “shut off” the portion of their brain that helps them appreciate the pain their patients experience during treatment and instead activate a portion of the brain connected with controlling emotions. Because doctors sometimes have to inflict pain on their patients as part of the healing process, they also must develop the ability to not be distracted by the suffering, said Jean Decety, professor in psychology and psychiatry at Chicago and coauthor of “Expertise Modulates the Perception of Pain in Others,” in the Oct. 9 Current Biology. [read more]

The old bedside manner vs. expertise issue (or empathy vs. equanimity).

My mom (now retired) actually preferred working in the emergency room, because it kept her from developing emotional attachments to patients—it was all a rush of adrenaline and training and instinct, and then it was over. I know my brother—an endocrinologist—takes it hard when things go badly with those in his care. I wonder which part of his brain lights up when he’s tending to his patients. Has he learned to control the normally automatic response of the anterior insula, periaqueducal gray, and anterior cigulate cortex while at work?

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