Scoffing

Posted on June 1, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

The Russian online newspaper Kursiv has returned—sort of. (See this post for background.) After a week of “page not found” errors, the curious reader was rewarded with success today at www.cursiv.ru: a single page of text. Here it is in translation, in its entirety:

They certainly descended on us! Like crows! Who would’ve thought that Kursiv could elicit such a silly and stormy brouhaha in the government agencies, spending government money for naught. We humbly bow to the tax-paying citizen: this isn’t our doing. All this nonsense comes from their governmental zeal.

First off, the Ivanovo regional prosecutor and the regional organized crime division came bursting into our office. To take away the computers because of the article “Putin as Russia’s Phallic Symbol.” The editor, Rakhmankov, shouts at the crows: “Boys! Tie me up, but not the computers. I admit, I wrote the article, bust my rambunctious head!” But the crows say: “No, brother. We don’t want your stupid little confession. Give us the computers!” And they took them, the bastards. And sealed the office.

Why do they want an editorial office without computers? And why do they want the computers themselves? How will the computers help them puff up article 319 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation if Rakhmankov has already admitted that he was the person who was having a bit of fun with the article about the phallus, and if the prosecutor thinks the article about the phallus falls under article 319?

True, the interrogators learned all this from Rakhmankov, but did he discuss the point of the article ahead of time with anyone else? Rakhmankov—no fool he—caught on immediately: the affair stinks of an organized criminal conspiracy against the entire phallic symbol of all Russia. He says: “No, I only discussed the point of the article with my computer!” Well, they seized the computer. And every other computer within range. And sealed the office, to keep any other computer from wandering in.

They drew up a criminal complaint against Rakhmankov and an injunction against his leaving the area.

And that’s not all. Our bureaucrats always have to add a bit of the grotesque. No sooner does the prosecutor seal the office than a letter arrives from the regional government: vacate the office, you haven’t paid your rent (the editorial office of Kursiv is in a building belonging to the regional government). If you do not leave immediately, we will cut off the electricity! Now the editor is scratching his head—have they cut off the electricity in the sealed office or not? And how is he to get out of a sealed office?

But that’s not all! The prosecutor, together with the organized crime division, have scared all the Ivanovo internet service providers with the Kursiv affair, scared them worse than any hunter ever scared a single rabbit with his borzois. One would think, well, what do these ISPs have to do with anything? Especially since they have had absolutely nothing to do with Kursiv. But no—the question of Kursiv‘s hosting must take them deep, deep into the woods. Happily, the internet is an international thing. For a dollar a month you can post a splendid little page like this one. Without superfluous junk like a forum, archive, or other bells and whistles. Very appropriate for underground types …

… But not for Kursiv. The underground just isn’t our style, you see. It’s fine to fight for truth, justice, and world peace from the underground, but we don’t have a very clear sense of what these terms mean. We are more inclined to scoff at those in power, especially given that they are indeed so ridiculous—from the village elder to the president of the country. So, think of this page as a dog marking its territory, that’s all. We’ll start scoffing again in a little while, once we’ve solved the problem of computers, offices, hosting, and other things a normal internet newspaper requires. Not more than a month, dear ladies and gentlemen. But we won’t jinx ourselves by guessing at a date certain.

* * *

Actually, this was an apology to you, dear readers of Kursiv, for the interruption in service.

31.05.2006

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Phages

Posted on May 31, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

We have a problem with bacteria. They can make us sick. Sure, we have antibiotics, but it turns out the little buggers are smarter than we gave them credit for. They keep changing, making our medicines ineffective.

We also have a problem with viruses. They, too, can make us sick. But it turns out there are viruses that eat bacteria—bacteriophages. The idea naturally occurred: can we get a virus to eat the bacteria that are doing us harm? And the answer was: yes.

From an article at Slate:

In the 1920s and ’30s, with diseases like dysentery and cholera running rampant, the discovery of bacteriophages was hailed as a breakthrough. Bacteriophages are viruses found virtually everywhere—from soil to seawater to your intestines—that kill specific, infection-causing bacteria. In the United States, the drug company Eli Lilly marketed phages for abscesses and respiratory infections. (Sinclair Lewis’s Pulitzer–winning Arrowsmith is about a doctor who uses phages to prevent a diphtheria epidemic.) But by the 1940s, American scientists stopped working with phages for treatment because they no longer had reason to. Penicillin, discovered by the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming in 1928, had become widely available thanks to synthetic production and zapped infections without the expertise needed for finicky phages.

But now the equation has changed. Many kinds of bacteria have become antibiotic-resistant—prompting a few Western scientists, and patients, to travel to former Soviet Georgia to give bacteriophages for treatment a try. Phages have been used in the former Soviet Union for decades because scientists there had less access to antibiotics than their American and European counterparts did. Phages were a cheap alternative, and in Soviet clinical trials, they repeatedly stopped infections. Now in a bid for medical tourists, Georgia has opened a center in its capital, Tbilisi, which offers outpatient phage treatment to foreigners. In connection with the Eliava phage research institute, which Stalin helped set up in Tbilisi in 1923, the treatment center offers personalized cures for a host of infections the United States says it can no longer do anything about.

Read the rest—interesting stuff.

The bacteriophage T4 preparing to infect its host cell:

T4 bacteriophage

Purdue University and Seyet LLC

Description from an NSF web page: “The structure of bacteriophage T4 is derived from three-dimensional cryo-electron microscopy reconstructions of the baseplate, tail sheath, and head capsid, as well as from crystallographic analyses of various phage components. The baseplate and tail proteins are shown in distinct colors.”

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Pugilist

Posted on May 30, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Since his campaign headquarters is on the same block as my illustrious place of daytime employ, James Webb‘s thumbnail self-characterization is constantly popping up during my periodic escapes from the asylum.* The former Assistant Secretary of Defense (under Reagan) is running for Senate as a Democrat, and just about every car on the block has a bumper sticker:

Jim Webb: Born Fighting

Now, I understand why he feels the need to establish his bona fides as being “strong on defense,” since the lazy dopes who pass for journalists in our imperial capital assume, and write as if they assume, that every Democrat is “weak on defense.” But “born fighting”—is this a good thing? The slogan may work, and if it works it will be obvious why it worked. But I can’t shake the image of little Jimmy on his zeroth birthday, emerging from his mother’s loins, fists cocked like the Notre Dame mascot, ready to land a solid right on the first object that crosses his cloudy little field of vision. “Born fighting”—yikes!

I would hope that every tyke in this great land is entitled to at least three or four years of not worrying where the next threat to his baby well-being is coming from; maybe even five years of not looking to take down the snot-nosed punk next door; perhaps, on the outside, six years of not throwing a shoulder into Bobby to impress Sally. I don’t know—is that too much to ask? Am I out of touch with my own country?
__________
*This is an example of Myshkin’s notoriously droll sense of humor. Please humor him. Please do not fire him.—Ed.

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Diacritic

Posted on May 28, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Gmork is a fictional villain, while Gmörk is a decent white wine from Austria. What a difference an umlaut makes.

Label from Gmörk wine

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Meatrix

Posted on May 25, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Just a link. Discuss quietly amongst yourselves. 😉

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Boonies

Posted on May 24, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Salon has passed on a wire service report about a Russian journalist arrested for making fun of Vladimir Putin:

The article was published by Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor of the online newspaper Kursiv in the central city of Ivanovo, said Andrei Galchenko of the regional prosecutor’s office.

The piece poked fun at Putin’s recent state of the nation address that called for economic incentives to boost the country’s plummeting birth rate. Russian media reported that the publication suggested that animals at a local zoo increased their mating, heeding Putin’s call.

Rakhmankov could not be reached for comment Wednesday. His article could not be seen, because the Web site has been shut down.

Galchenko said the investigation was launched because the article “contained phrases of an insulting nature aimed at the president.”

If convicted of insulting a representative of the authorities, Rakhmankov faces up to 12 months of corrective labor or a fine, Galchenko said.

The suspect has been summoned for questioning, Galchenko said.

The AP story then offers this context:

Since coming to power six years ago, Putin has reined in major independent television channels. Critics accuse his government of curtailing freedom of speech.

“This case illustrates the outrageous lengths that authorities will go to silence critical voices,” said Ann Cooper, the head of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Pravda, on the other hand, talked with Rakhamankov, who saw things this way:

The author is convinced that his piece is a harmless satire on the president’s address. Rakhmankov thinks the conflict is due to his complicated relations with the regional governor, Mikhail Men.

On the radio station Ekho Moskvy, the author of the website vladimir.vladimirovich.ru,* Maksim Kononenko, noted that “the phrase ‘phallic symbol’ has been used many times over in reference to Putin.” He thinks the Ivanovo prosecutor is trying to please the president.

In the opinion of Sergey Dorenko, a commentator at Ekho Moskvy and author of a book about Putin, Rakhmankov’s article contains nothing insulting about the president. Indeed, in his view the author intended to praise Putin with his article.

At any rate, no complaints about the Kursiv article have issued from the Putin adminstration.

Tip O’Neill used to say that all politics is local. Not strictly true, of course, but local conditions do play a role, don’t they?
__________
*The site is a relentless spoof of “Vladimir Vladimirovich™ Putin.”

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Solutions

Posted on May 23, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Molly Ivins writes:

Last week, Bush visited Yuma, Ariz., to tour a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border by Border Patrol buggy. Maybe Jorge was doing a little measuring for the $3.2-million-a-mile fence the Senate recently approved, which I guarantee will be really helpful.

Are they insane? As Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano observes, “Show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.”

Ah, yes: countermeasures. You’d think smart people would try to imagine them before throwing gobs of money at simple yet strangely expensive solutions to problems real and imagined.

Take the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Recently we noted Putin’s remarks in his state-of-the-nation address about “high-precision” Russian missiles under development that would zigzag, thus defeating any antimissile defense. And this week the New York Times reported on the Pentagon’s plans to deploy new “interceptors” in Europe (possibly Poland or the Czech Republic), supposedly to defend against Iranian nuclear missiles (of which there are none), not Russian nukes (of which there are lots).

Fred Kaplan exposes the folly of continuing to pour money into this complex but enticingly reasonable yet relentlessly expensive program (according to Kaplan, the US spends more than $10 billion a year on this crap). To wit:

If the United States ever does deploy a system, a not terribly clever foe—the leaders of North Korea, Iran, or wherever—could evade it in two easy ways. They could fire two missiles at each target (no missile-defense test has ever been conducted against multiple targets, nor are any such tests scheduled). Or instead of firing a missile from a launch site whose location is known (thus making it easy for us to track the missile’s flight path to the target), they could load a missile on a barge, take it much closer to the target’s coastline, and fire it at such a short range that it doesn’t have to arc high into outer space; it could fly underneath the missile-defense system’s radar. (These techniques, by the way, are well-known and have been much discussed; the bad guys don’t need me to tell them how to do it.)

A good way to win an arms race is to exhaust the enemy—to field weapons systems that are very difficult and costly for the enemy to counter. Even if we managed to perfect a defense against long-range ballistic missiles, an enemy could counter it by delivering a nuclear bomb in a way that’s easier and cheaper.

I wonder who really benefits from SDI? It’s not putting my kid through college.

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Shattered

Posted on May 22, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Even Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large at Sun Myung-Moon’s Washington Times and United Press International, thinks the Putin-bashing is excessive:

Beating up on Russia’s shrinking democracy has become a geopolitical blood sport from Vice President Dick Cheney down to unreconstructed cold warriors who gleefully say, “I told you so.” They see no contradiction in berating Vladimir Putin’s governing style and imprecatory Bush administration diplomatic efforts to enlist the Russian president’s support to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Even Moscow’s anti-Putin newspaper Kommersant called the Bush administration’s Russophobia an echo of the history-making 1946 Fulton speech when Winston Churchill first warned of an Iron Curtain descending across Europe from Stettin to Trieste.

He notes the provocations …

Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire, NATO’s frontiers have moved steadily eastward. First it took in three of Moscow’s ex-satellites—Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Two years ago, NATO expanded by seven new members to 26 countries by taking in six former Soviet satellites: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia—and Slovenia. Now NATO’s frontier extends from the Black Sea coast to Finland. Its air defense shield covers the Baltic States with a tripwire presence of four F-16 fighter planes in Lithuania. The U.S. is also setting up “lilypad” bases on the Black Sea for contingency deployments in the Middle East or the Caucasus.

… and the huge risks taken by the US that affect the world economy:

Today, the U.S. borrows $7 billion a day—much of the debt held by China, Japan, Russia and Saudi Arabia—to stay in the superpower business. But Mr. Putin does not denounce President Bush for gambling with global monetary stability. Or blast the laissez-faire gambling of a derivative market of $300 trillion (U.S. Fed estimate)—not $300 billion—in bets for or against almost anything placed by wealthy hedge fund managers. Futures, forwards, options, calls, swaps are greed run amok.

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, has raised serious concerns about the growing menace of derivatives. A derivatives meltdown would be a global financial tsunami.

Naturally, when one is talking about the Bush administration, there’s a healthy dose of hypocrisy involved:

The double standard of the Bush administration is also a sore point in Moscow. The U.S. accuses Russia of playing “pipeline politics” while the U.S. lobbies hard for the new Baku–Ceyhan pipeline through the near abroad to avoid Russian territory.

And the Russians haven’t forgotten the role played by the US in “restructuring” the former Soviet Union:

Deeply resented in Russia is how the U.S. pushed in 1991 for instant political democracy and market economics to replace communism cold turkey. This led to history’s biggest plunder. Some $220 billion was literally stolen from Russia—from raw materials and icons to gold and diamonds—and stashed in offshore bank accounts to buy choice properties from France to Fiji and Buenos Aires to Berlin. A country that had known nothing but authoritarian rule for 1,000 years was suddenly turned over to bandit capitalism—and eventually total collapse under Boris Yeltsin.

Putin is taking steps to clean up the mess, and for that he’s popular in his own country (70% approval, compared to 30% for George Bush and pocket change for his attack dog, Dick Cheney). Also, the Russians do not suffer from a starry-eyed admiration of the United States—Vanya and Lyuba are more likely to tease myth from reality than Jack and Amanda. Borchgrave concludes:

Russian news reports from the United States also reflect American democracy, warts and all. Six out of 10 young Americans between ages 18 and 24 could not find Iraq on a map of the world. Half of U.S. teachers are likely to quit within the first five years because of low salaries and poor working conditions. More than 50 percent of the U.S. prison population of 2.1 million is black.

The litany is long. But it should teach us that when we live in a glass house, with full transparency, we should ease up on the brickbats.

Indeed. (If old Arnaud is engaging in a bit of arcane disinformation, he sure fooled me.)

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Beer

Posted on May 20, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Make that “water filtered through a horse”:

[German soccer fans] are furious that Budweiser will be the official tipple for the World Cup, which starts next month. The American lager has secured a near-monopoly of beer sales inside World Cup stadiums and within a 500m radius of the grounds, supplanting more than 1,270 domestic breweries.

A Bavarian politician has called Bud “the worst beer in the world.” I haven’t tried every beer in the world (and I applaud Franz Maget for doing so), but I agree that Budweiser is truly awful. Wretched, really. I would rather drink water—it’s that bad.

It’s an odd projection of US power abroad. An American “beer” sponsoring a soccer event? Soccer? We can’t even manage to call it by its proper name!

It also reminds me of a brand of beer I drank rather too much of at Jimmy’s, the watering hole on 55th Street near the University of Chicago: Schlitz. Like Budweiser, it was made with rice. I got to calling it sake—I could taste the ricey overtones. Blyech.

Three cheers for American industry—lowering standards of taste everywhere!

Addendum 2006.05.24: A commenter at Newsrack Blog says Budweiser tastes better in Europe, speculating that a different formula is used. This changes things a bit, as I noted there. It might actually be illegal to sell American-style Bud in Germany as bier. In which case the beer mandated for the World Cup might not be the best in the world, but at least it won’t be the worst (despite what Herr Maget says).

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Standstill

Posted on May 18, 2006 by WorldWideWeber

Man, you can’t say anything nowadays without people actually remembering it.

Take Tom Friedman. New York Times wise man. The go-to guy for pithy analysis of a complex world. The person for whom “six months from now” never arrives:

On a recent episode of MSNBC’s Hardball (5/11/06), for example, Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline: “Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.”

That confident prediction would seem a lot more insightful, however, if Friedman hadn’t been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq War. A review of Friedman’s punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer.

So says Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, which then appends fourteen citations of Friedman’s calendrical stasis.

I don’t know if the world is flat, but I can think of something else that might be.

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