Blame

Posted on November 29, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

It looks like Phase I of our new Iraq exit strategy is going full bore. The US foreign policy poobahs are now singing a new choral tune: “It’s All the Iraqis’ Fault.” It’s the 2006 version of the smash hit that topped the charts in January 1973, “Peace with Honor.” With even less honor.

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Close

Posted on November 26, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

… but no cigar.

You don’t like to see this in the New York Times. From an otherwise excellent article on the definition of “civil war” and who gets to say whether there is one in Iraq:

Large swaths of Iraq have little violence, but those areas are relatively homogenous and have few people. [emphasis and link added]

Oh, for the editorial standards of yesteryear.

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Walden

Posted on November 18, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Now that things have settled down a bit, I thought I’d post a few photos from our recent trip to Boston. We found time to poke around Concord and, specifically, Walden Pond.

Here’s Laura foraging for stones to bring back for friends (I got one from a different section of the shore—it sits on my computer monitor at work):

Laura at the edge of Walden Pond

A view of the pond from the path heading toward the site of Thoreau’s cabin:

Walden Pond

What Thoreau might have seen from his front step:

The view from Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond

And the view toward the pond uphill from the cabin site (demarcated by the stone slabs near the center of the photo—10 feet by 15 feet, as I recall):

View of Walden Pond from above Thoreau's cabin

I suppose that’s enough trees for now. We never did find the field where Thoreau planted his beans:

“What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?”

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20/20

Posted on November 9, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Apropos Rummy’s departure, a pundit had this to say (among other things):

Indeed, Rumsfeld’s dominance of the cabinet and the Bush administration may have guaranteed that America chose the entirely wrong paradigm for the past five years. Notwithstanding the spectacular violence of the Sept. 11 attacks, America might have done better had it not chosen a war paradigm to fight terrorism and instead chosen to employ a comprehensive array of diplomatic, intelligence, military, and law enforcement approaches. Doing so might have encouraged more of our allies to stand by our side. It might also have put America on a better footing to sustain its efforts for what promises to be a generational struggle against terrorism.

Gee, ya think?

It would be great if we (meaning people in a position to influence policy—in other words, they) could train this sort of clear-headed thinking on the present—i.e., flip hindsight into foresight.

But after 9/11, would the braying punditocracy and the M/I/M* complex have permitted anything other than out-and-out war? Is it inevitable that an attack, or a perceived threat of attack, or a bad night’s sleep of attack—or the succubus of world domination—will unleash the dogs of war? It need not be. But how can a “drumbeat of peace” be kept up, so that it takes a huge effort to convince us that war makes sense?

US Rep. Dennis Kucinich and others have pushed for a Department of Peace. It apparently strikes most people as a soft-headed. It is actually the opposite. But it requires memory. And the sad fact is, remembering is hard work. And it requires humility. You’d think that would be easy for a predominantly self-professed Christian nation.
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*Military/industrial/media.

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Better

Posted on November 8, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

So far, so good. The House falls from the GOP’s grip. The Senate may end up with 49 Republicans. Fingers crossed for Jon Tester in Montana. Fingers crossed less tightly for Jim Webb in Virginia—it looks like he’s also headed for a recount, but his numbers look better than Tester’s. Also, he’s probably the most conservative, military-infused Democrat running this fall. He’s a ton better than Allen, but that’s not saying much. Let’s hope he doesn’t stray too far from the Democratic caucus.

Lieberman. Grrrrr …

Addendum 1:07 pm: Maybe Lieberman will get a new job—as Secretary of Defense under his beloved George W. Bush. Good-bye, Rummy!

Addendum 1:15 pm: Too late—it’s going to former spook Robert Gates. But it’s incredible how little time it took Dr. Frist to retool his toolhood:

Washington must now work together in a bipartisan way—Republicans and Democrats—to outline the path to success in Iraq.

“… must now work together …” (emphasis added). Good old Dan Froomkin calls that a “neck-snapping reversal from the savage smearing of Democrats as troop-hating terrorist-appeasing cowards that continued right up until last night.” It is indeed.

Update 2006.11.21: Webb has been a pleasant surprise so far—an economic populist first and foremost, front and center. Billmon has the details, including an excerpt from Webb’s Wall Street Journal op-ed from last week.

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Epiphany

Posted on November 7, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

It is finally November 7, 2006.

C’mon, America! Show the world we’re not as dumb as we look!

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Bleen

Posted on November 2, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

I have been holding my breath this past month, not wanting to jinx the long-overdue electoral retribution awaiting George W. Bush and his gang of miscreants.

To kill time, I’ll write some more irrelevant garbage.

Today it concerns my 1990 Volvo 240 DL. I used to be bothered by the fact that I couldn’t decide whether it’s blue-green or green-blue. On sunny days it seems more blue than green; on cloudy days the opposite is true.

Well, it turns out there’s a word for that color (leaving aside the aforementioned meteorological circumstances):

Across cultures, people tend to classify hundreds of different chromatic colors into eight distinct categories: red, green, yellow-or-orange, blue, purple, brown, pink and grue (green-or-blue), say researchers in this week’s online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now, this is not to be confused with Nelson Goodman’s grue, which is affected by temporal circumstances:

Nelson Goodman is best known for his “new riddle of induction”, which he set up by first defining what appears to be a new color adjective, grue: Something is “grue” if and only if it is examined before some particular time T and is green, or else is examined after time T and is blue. He also throws in, as a bonus, “bleen”, which applies to anything examined before time T and is blue, or which is examined after time T and is green. Now, he says, how do we know that the grass is green and not grue before that time T arrives, and that the sky is blue and not bleen? This is for him, and for numerous other analytic philosophers who jumped into the fray, a very worrisome problem indeed!

The guy who provided that summary (Scott Harrison) doesn’t think much of the notorious brainteaser and provides some argumentative details before offering a bit of “philosophical doggerel”:

Nelson Goodman seems quite keen
Induction yet to show anew
Is somewhat sick as will be seen
And may not be completely true.

Is this leaf a lovely green?
Or is it rather colored grue?
Is the sky above quite bleen?
Or am I right in seeing blue?

I really don’t care to be mean
And have no wish to Goodman skew;
But childish puzzles can demean;
Has he nothing else to do??

—JSH, “On ‘The New Riddle of Induction'”

So … is it the seventh of November yet?

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Weird

Posted on October 12, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

My pal Thomas at Newsrack Blog has tagged me. The task: list five ways I’m weird. Now, being tagged is damnably irritating, as we all know. But it’s twice damnable for a person with limited self-awareness. (Needless to say, I have been told this.) And it’s thrice damnable in that the proper task would have been to list five ways I’m normal. For instance, I like to eat popcorn when I go to the movies. Or … hm. Give me a minute …

While I’m digging deep into my icky psyche,* I would suggest the following exercise to all my wonderful readers: every once in a while, switch the leg you put into your pants first. I think you’ll find it refreshing, if not liberating.

Do not, however, attempt to switch hands while tying your shoelaces (i.e., have your left hand do what your right hand normally does, and vice versa). This will drive you insane.
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*Josh. I have no intention of doing any such thing.

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Silencer

Posted on October 10, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

It’s hard to imagine a more cowardly act than the cold-blooded murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. “The pen is mightier than the sword”—and, presumably, mightier than the bullet. Whistling in the dark. Bullets and bombs continue to make the weaker argument prevail, just as in the days of swords and battering rams; continue to prop the unworthy in high places, continue to make life in the jungle seem civilized by comparison.

Her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, is offering a 25 million ruble reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators. “As long as there is a Novaya Gazeta,” the paper writes, “her murderers will not sleep peacefully.” Ironically, money may provide the solution—the same thing that can hypnotize weak souls into firing bullets and exploding bombs.

When someone tells you they’re killing for an idea (democracy, freedom, etc.), dig a little deeper. There’s usually lucre down there, or something freely convertible into lucre. Only maniacs kill for ideas—to satisfy the voices whispering inside their heads. And how many of them are there, really? By and large, it’s the average, reasonable human being we need to worry about—the one capable of a contract killing. A contract—what could be more civilized?

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Moonwalker

Posted on October 3, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

I haven’t used a conventional alarm clock for years. I have a personal alarm clock named Laura. But recently I’ve needed its services. And for several days now, when it goes off, I find myself thinking, “The alarum has sounded!” (How Shakespearean de Verean!) It seems I’m playing with the word to make up for the dreary prospect of actually getting up.

Today it got me thinking about the natural economy of the English language: alarum → alarm, aeroplane → airplane, and so on. Maybe all languages are like that. In French, though, appartement is still four syllables, last I checked.

Be that as it may, the urge to clip (or simply the disinclination to enunciate) can have unfortunate consequences. Ask Neil Armstrong. For years he has insisted (in his mild, downstate Ohio way) that he had really said, “That’s one small step for a man,” not “… one small step for man.” Last week a kind stranger provided a computerized analysis of the famous sound bite that seemed to vindicate Armstrong’s claim that he had merely swallowed the a. I did my own little analysis of the NASA clip and, sure enough, you can see a trace of the article between “for” and “man.” The homespun astronaut pronounces “for” more like “fur” (and, really, don’t we all? and doesn’t that make us all homespun?), so the phrase comes out more like “furamán,” with the first (furst?) a barely sounding.

Give a listen:

Now have a look:

Annotated voiceprint of Neil Armstrong's 'One small step ...'

Not a big deal, and yet kind of a big deal. The historic lunar exclamation doesn’t make much sense without the a. Let’s hope the correction gets made in all extant transcripts of that epoch-making moment.

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