In re: Mike Huckabee:
What are the nuances I’m talking about? For one thing, as far as I know he never uses Reagan-type racist code terms like, “state’s rights”, which is code for keeping black people from voting, or “welfare queen,” which is another, racially loaded term. In fact I believe he is on record as saying that the major problem of the American prison system is that it is filled with people who are drug addicts, not criminals, and that instead of prison they should be in rehab. Since the majority of prisoners in American jails are persons of color, this statement is profoundly un-racist. And if you consider how much more caring, un-punitive and especially how much more expensive it would be to treat these unfortunates as sick people instead of criminals to be locked away, the statement is amazingly un-conservative. This is the sort of message that Democrats should be delivering.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Well said, Mr. Kinsley
"Certainly it's true that we can't let in everyone who wants to come. There is some number of immigrants that is too many. I don't believe we're past that point, but maybe we are. In any event, a democracy has the right to decide that it has reached such a point. There is no obligation to be fair to foreigners.
But let's not kid ourselves that all we care about is obeying the law and all we are asking illegals to do is go home and get in line like everyone else. We know perfectly well that the line is too long, and we are basically telling people to go home and not come back." -Michael Kinsley, "Kidding Ourselves About Immigration."
The part of the article that received the heartiest internal "AMEN!!"-s was the last section, in which he points out that in a reality TV-style contest to see which group has most proven its appreciation for American values (current legal immigrants, current illegal immigrants, immigrants of prior generations), it's the current illegals that would probably win...
* * * *
We're coming up on Day 7 of FREEEDOMMM!!!, and I'm going stir-crazy. The Scion has been sleeping better than ever, and the Better Half has finally begun looking/feeling human again, and the Mongrel is happily getting walked everyday...and I, meanwhile, feel like I accomplish NOTHING in any given day. The first three days, as I was catching up on rest, were deeply appreciated. Now, the lack of structure is driving me bonkers.
I know I'm not likely to get much (or any) sympathy from all o' y'all workin' stiffs, but I just figured I'd let you in on my current mental state. I'm also perpetually exhausted, possibly because the Scion's "better than ever" sleeping still involves a 3:30-4:00 am feeding. I still can't actually DO the feeding, but the Better Half switched side of the bed with me (YESSSS!! I've got my side back! Awww, yeah!!!), so I am now the first line of defense between the bassinet and the buffet line, so I'm involved in passing the Scion over to the Café Lactation Bistro. The Better Half sleeps better now than before, so that's a blessing, but I'm taking the hit now as well. I don't know how she's gonna do it when the time comes to go back to being a sugar mama.
In other news, I felt like a big tool the other day...I was writing a thank-you letter to someone and could not for the life of me recall how to spell "nuptials." I didn't have a spare piece of paper with me, and I didn't want to scrawl "nuptial" and "nuptual" on the paper to see which one looked right to me, but I knew that I had never in my life heard anyone pronounce it properly (myself included).
As Dictionary.com says, the correct pronunciation is [nuhp-shuhl, -chuhl], and at the bottom of the entry they've got the following:
—Pronunciation note The pronunciations /ˈnʌptʃuəl/ [nuhp-choo-uhl] and /ˈnʌpʃuəl/[nuhp-shoo-uhl], by analogy with such words as mutual and actual, are not considered standard.
Umm....editors of the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2006, I think those pronunciations at least warrant a mention as being "default," if not "standard" in terms of correctness. I've bitched about our collective linguistic ignorance or sloth not being a sufficient reason to tolerate incorrect spellings and usages, so I won't contradict myself here...but I think you'd need to at least alert non-native speakers as to the reality on the ground vis-à-vis the normative standard.
I also hate it when people conflate "lax" with "lackadaisical" and come up with "laxadaisical." I mean, whiskey tango foxtrot? Grrr...
Oh, yeah, and the ever-popular "mispronounciation." Ooh, yeah...
----------------
Now playing: The Basics - Leaving Seattle
via FoxyTunes
But let's not kid ourselves that all we care about is obeying the law and all we are asking illegals to do is go home and get in line like everyone else. We know perfectly well that the line is too long, and we are basically telling people to go home and not come back." -Michael Kinsley, "Kidding Ourselves About Immigration."
The part of the article that received the heartiest internal "AMEN!!"-s was the last section, in which he points out that in a reality TV-style contest to see which group has most proven its appreciation for American values (current legal immigrants, current illegal immigrants, immigrants of prior generations), it's the current illegals that would probably win...
* * * *
We're coming up on Day 7 of FREEEDOMMM!!!, and I'm going stir-crazy. The Scion has been sleeping better than ever, and the Better Half has finally begun looking/feeling human again, and the Mongrel is happily getting walked everyday...and I, meanwhile, feel like I accomplish NOTHING in any given day. The first three days, as I was catching up on rest, were deeply appreciated. Now, the lack of structure is driving me bonkers.
I know I'm not likely to get much (or any) sympathy from all o' y'all workin' stiffs, but I just figured I'd let you in on my current mental state. I'm also perpetually exhausted, possibly because the Scion's "better than ever" sleeping still involves a 3:30-4:00 am feeding. I still can't actually DO the feeding, but the Better Half switched side of the bed with me (YESSSS!! I've got my side back! Awww, yeah!!!), so I am now the first line of defense between the bassinet and the buffet line, so I'm involved in passing the Scion over to the Café Lactation Bistro. The Better Half sleeps better now than before, so that's a blessing, but I'm taking the hit now as well. I don't know how she's gonna do it when the time comes to go back to being a sugar mama.
In other news, I felt like a big tool the other day...I was writing a thank-you letter to someone and could not for the life of me recall how to spell "nuptials." I didn't have a spare piece of paper with me, and I didn't want to scrawl "nuptial" and "nuptual" on the paper to see which one looked right to me, but I knew that I had never in my life heard anyone pronounce it properly (myself included).
As Dictionary.com says, the correct pronunciation is [nuhp-shuhl, -chuhl], and at the bottom of the entry they've got the following:
—Pronunciation note The pronunciations /ˈnʌptʃuəl/ [nuhp-choo-uhl] and /ˈnʌpʃuəl/[nuhp-shoo-uhl], by analogy with such words as mutual and actual, are not considered standard.
Umm....editors of the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2006, I think those pronunciations at least warrant a mention as being "default," if not "standard" in terms of correctness. I've bitched about our collective linguistic ignorance or sloth not being a sufficient reason to tolerate incorrect spellings and usages, so I won't contradict myself here...but I think you'd need to at least alert non-native speakers as to the reality on the ground vis-à-vis the normative standard.
I also hate it when people conflate "lax" with "lackadaisical" and come up with "laxadaisical." I mean, whiskey tango foxtrot? Grrr...
Oh, yeah, and the ever-popular "mispronounciation." Ooh, yeah...
----------------
Now playing: The Basics - Leaving Seattle
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A Wonderful Essay on Eco-Guilt
This one didn't make L out L, but I definitely chuckled aloud.
My favorite line? Easy:
"When I die, I plan to be placed au naturel in a shallow hole and become fertilizer for a dogwood tree. But there's one thing I won't give up. If he wants my toilet paper, Al Gore himself will have to pry it from my cold, biodegradable hands."
--Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, It's Inconvenient Being Green.
Brilliant!
And, slightly less brilliant, but nonetheless interesting: an article regarding the so-called "Green-collar revolution," which involves the idea that all the infrastructure changes that accompany trying to go eco-friendly could be used to help provide good jobs for un- or under-employed segments of society.
Bring Eco-Power to the People, by Bryan Walsh.
My favorite line? Easy:
"When I die, I plan to be placed au naturel in a shallow hole and become fertilizer for a dogwood tree. But there's one thing I won't give up. If he wants my toilet paper, Al Gore himself will have to pry it from my cold, biodegradable hands."
--Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, It's Inconvenient Being Green.
Brilliant!
And, slightly less brilliant, but nonetheless interesting: an article regarding the so-called "Green-collar revolution," which involves the idea that all the infrastructure changes that accompany trying to go eco-friendly could be used to help provide good jobs for un- or under-employed segments of society.
Bring Eco-Power to the People, by Bryan Walsh.
Listening to WCPE, reflecting on the BBC's NewsHour
Two things come to mind.
First off, why was I so clueless about Winton Marsalis? For some reason, I always thought he was this mad jazz trumpeter, which made me write him off for one point five reasons.
One: He does (or so I thought) jazz, which I've NEVER understood and is totally beyond me. To the point that I can't even appreciate it. I wind up falling into thinking that jazz musicians are basically in it to impress themselves and each other (and a few cognoscenti) with how difficult the music they're playing happens to be, 'cause they sure as HELL can't be enjoying the way it SOUNDS. Where's the melody? Where's the harmony? Where's any kind of linear connection between pt. A and pt. B?
That's why I'll never be a hepcat.
Point Five: I always thought I hated trumpets as musical instruments. So brassy, so in-your-face, so unrefined...until I heard the Messiah performed at the Duke Chapel. THEN I realized that what I hated was trumpets played poorly. The sound of a trumpet played with good tone is so clear, it's almost crystalline...so pure...and now it's pretty much my favorite instrument to listen to, at least within the context of classical music.
(It rates a point five b/c I eventually came around to liking his instrument.)
Now it seems like I hear the WCPE announcers saying "blah blah blah, some complicated name for this piece of music, performed by (90% of the time) the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, with Winton Marsalis on trumpet."
I know they've probably never actually played a piece that had the ACSMITF and WM featured simultaneously, but the point remains. They're ubiquitous. Like the Fickle Finger of Fate.
* * * *
In other news, the BBC read from listeners' e-mails today, and one of them mentioned that their favorite reporter was Lyse Doucet. You know, I think she may be my favorite as well, if only because of her totally awesome name. If the next Junior Slade turns out to be a SHEnut instead of a Peanut, I'm totally pushing for Lyse Doucet Slade or some variation on that theme. Then again, the coolest BBC presenter names (in terms of roll-off-your-tongue-awesomeness) among the males are Owen Bennet-Jones, Julian Marshall, and Robin Lustig ("You're listening to the BBC World Service, and this is Robin Lustig...with...NEWSHOUR!"), and I'm really not gonna be pushing for either of them to be the namesake of my next male child.
* * * *
In OTHER other news, I'ma axe any of y'all for advice. Some time ago, I think upon our return from Benin, I found I had developed an allergy to anti-perspirants. Not deodorants, because they don't generally contain aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex Gly 17.6%. I found that anti-perspirant/deodorants that DO contain the above vile substance cause my armpits to itch like crazy and develop a nasty-looking bright red rash...almost like I've fallen asleep on the beach with my arms over my head for 9 hours, and that's the only part of my body that wasn't covered in sunscreen.
So, I've ceased purchasing any anti-perspirants that have Aluminium Zirconium [insert your numerical prefix here]-chlorohydrex Gly [insert your favorite number from 14-20]%, and that has stood me in pretty good stead. Of course, that has relegated me to just buying deodorants, because pretty much ALL antiperspirants contain some variation of the above.
Well, this morning I realized that I'd had a bad reaction to my new stick of Old Spice deodorant, which I had thought was wonderfully unmiscegenated w/r/t any aluminium (or even aluminum, for the 'Mericans) products. I'm not particularly attached to Old Spice, by the by, but this is getting really aggravating. Any ideas?
First off, why was I so clueless about Winton Marsalis? For some reason, I always thought he was this mad jazz trumpeter, which made me write him off for one point five reasons.
One: He does (or so I thought) jazz, which I've NEVER understood and is totally beyond me. To the point that I can't even appreciate it. I wind up falling into thinking that jazz musicians are basically in it to impress themselves and each other (and a few cognoscenti) with how difficult the music they're playing happens to be, 'cause they sure as HELL can't be enjoying the way it SOUNDS. Where's the melody? Where's the harmony? Where's any kind of linear connection between pt. A and pt. B?
That's why I'll never be a hepcat.
Point Five: I always thought I hated trumpets as musical instruments. So brassy, so in-your-face, so unrefined...until I heard the Messiah performed at the Duke Chapel. THEN I realized that what I hated was trumpets played poorly. The sound of a trumpet played with good tone is so clear, it's almost crystalline...so pure...and now it's pretty much my favorite instrument to listen to, at least within the context of classical music.
(It rates a point five b/c I eventually came around to liking his instrument.)
Now it seems like I hear the WCPE announcers saying "blah blah blah, some complicated name for this piece of music, performed by (90% of the time) the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, with Winton Marsalis on trumpet."
I know they've probably never actually played a piece that had the ACSMITF and WM featured simultaneously, but the point remains. They're ubiquitous. Like the Fickle Finger of Fate.
* * * *
In other news, the BBC read from listeners' e-mails today, and one of them mentioned that their favorite reporter was Lyse Doucet. You know, I think she may be my favorite as well, if only because of her totally awesome name. If the next Junior Slade turns out to be a SHEnut instead of a Peanut, I'm totally pushing for Lyse Doucet Slade or some variation on that theme. Then again, the coolest BBC presenter names (in terms of roll-off-your-tongue-awesomeness) among the males are Owen Bennet-Jones, Julian Marshall, and Robin Lustig ("You're listening to the BBC World Service, and this is Robin Lustig...with...NEWSHOUR!"), and I'm really not gonna be pushing for either of them to be the namesake of my next male child.
* * * *
In OTHER other news, I'ma axe any of y'all for advice. Some time ago, I think upon our return from Benin, I found I had developed an allergy to anti-perspirants. Not deodorants, because they don't generally contain aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex Gly 17.6%. I found that anti-perspirant/deodorants that DO contain the above vile substance cause my armpits to itch like crazy and develop a nasty-looking bright red rash...almost like I've fallen asleep on the beach with my arms over my head for 9 hours, and that's the only part of my body that wasn't covered in sunscreen.
So, I've ceased purchasing any anti-perspirants that have Aluminium Zirconium [insert your numerical prefix here]-chlorohydrex Gly [insert your favorite number from 14-20]%, and that has stood me in pretty good stead. Of course, that has relegated me to just buying deodorants, because pretty much ALL antiperspirants contain some variation of the above.
Well, this morning I realized that I'd had a bad reaction to my new stick of Old Spice deodorant, which I had thought was wonderfully unmiscegenated w/r/t any aluminium (or even aluminum, for the 'Mericans) products. I'm not particularly attached to Old Spice, by the by, but this is getting really aggravating. Any ideas?
A wonderful article about the media's having abdicated its responsibility vis-à-vis the public
It's great...goes to show that even the so-called "liberal media" is, in fact, not working to promote liberal interests. They are, apparently, as self-serving and disinterested in factual matters as any of the candidates on either side. Stop the presses!
Here's a wonderful little excerpt, serving as the link to the article itself:
The most recent manifestation came in the form of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership National Leadership Index. The ongoing survey included interviews with 1,207 adults nationwide and focused mostly on leadership issues, but also asked people their impression of the media, and specifically, how the media is covering the campaign. The results?
[T]he press receives the lowest ratings of all. This is troubling, because democracies rely on a vibrant, probing, and trusted press. This year, we dig more deeply into the public's views on news media election coverage. The key finding: Americans' lack of confidence in the press stems from deep unease about bias and editorial content.
According to the survey:
* 88 percent agree that the news media focuses too much on trivial rather than important issues.
* 92 percent say that it is important that the news media provide information on candidates' specific policy plans, but 61 percent believe that the news media is not providing enough coverage of policy plans
* 67 percent say that coverage of embarrassing incidents or mistakes that make a candidate look bad is not important, but 68 percent say the news media is providing too much coverage of embarrassing incidents and mistakes
The conclusion was painfully obvious: Citizens claimed they were getting "exactly the type of campaign coverage that they want the least," according to the report. [Emphasis added.]
Here's a wonderful little excerpt, serving as the link to the article itself:
The most recent manifestation came in the form of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership National Leadership Index. The ongoing survey included interviews with 1,207 adults nationwide and focused mostly on leadership issues, but also asked people their impression of the media, and specifically, how the media is covering the campaign. The results?
[T]he press receives the lowest ratings of all. This is troubling, because democracies rely on a vibrant, probing, and trusted press. This year, we dig more deeply into the public's views on news media election coverage. The key finding: Americans' lack of confidence in the press stems from deep unease about bias and editorial content.
According to the survey:
* 88 percent agree that the news media focuses too much on trivial rather than important issues.
* 92 percent say that it is important that the news media provide information on candidates' specific policy plans, but 61 percent believe that the news media is not providing enough coverage of policy plans
* 67 percent say that coverage of embarrassing incidents or mistakes that make a candidate look bad is not important, but 68 percent say the news media is providing too much coverage of embarrassing incidents and mistakes
The conclusion was painfully obvious: Citizens claimed they were getting "exactly the type of campaign coverage that they want the least," according to the report. [Emphasis added.]
Monday, December 17, 2007
Calling Ms. V-S!
Just started listening to my S&G playlist some more today, and realized I'd never heard back from the authori-tie. How 'bout it? Was I right or wrong about the "whoa!whoa!whoa!" part?
Btw, Ms. V-S, I hope your final goes well tomorrow! FREEEDOOMMM!!! is not far...
Btw, Ms. V-S, I hope your final goes well tomorrow! FREEEDOOMMM!!! is not far...
Just in case you thought C's C couldn't get any awesome-r...
A sentiment on behalf of which, as of early this afternoon, I'd have been willing to argue...
Here is a vid of them performing a Paul Simon song!! None other than "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," natch. Enjoy!
Here is a vid of them performing a Paul Simon song!! None other than "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," natch. Enjoy!
Caedmon's Call Cover of Paul Simon
[via FoxyTunes / Caedmon's Call]
Passing on some things from Pops
The first is from a Garrison Keillor article. In Dad's words,
I just came across this quote from Garrison Keillor about Christmas. The Christmas stuff is good, but the description of church at the end of paragraph 1 is… priceless!
"This magical story [of Christmas] is a cornerstone of the Christian faith and I am sorry if it's a big hurdle for the skeptical young. It is to the Church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent -- it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become a sort of lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures.
On Christmas Eve, the snow on the ground, the stars in the sky, the spruce tree glittering with beloved ornaments, we stand in the dimness and sing about the silent holy night and tears come to our eyes and the vast invisible forces of Christmas stir in the world. Skeptics, stand back. Hush. Hark. There is much in this world that doubt cannot explain."
-- Garrison Keillor, Salon, 12/5/07 (h/t, KNM)
The second came accompanied by the following disclaimer:
As a father (-in-law) I must advocate against imitation… but this does look like something that would be an incredible, er, RUSH:
"Ready for a little excitement today?
These videos were taken in Norway , in fact only a few hours drive from Bergen. The suit used in these stunts were developed by people bored with simple sky diving. Some of the cliffs shown are essentially vertical drops of 3,000 feet."
Nice to have this sort of thing for anytime you begin to get a little too big for your britches, right? I mean, it'd be like, "Yeah, I'm pretty badass...check out my HUGE mar...oh. Um. Nevermind."
Final note for right now: I'm listening to Caedmon's Call's "In the Company of Angels 2: The World Will Sing," and all I've got to say is, "WOW." Their last couple albums ("Back Home," "Share the Well," and "Overdressed") have all taken a few listens before I began to enjoy them. I dunno, something about them just a little while for them to grow on me. I know love all of them, except for "Overdressed," which is still in the process of waxing...but ICA 2 is AMAZING, and I'm diggin' it from the get-go. Sort of the way I felt about the original ICA, and the eponymous album. I think the choice of my progeny's name has once again been vindicated.
(The only problem is that at this point, Caedmon's calls have been horrid, tinged with that desperation and ragged edge that colic brings. We're on a week solid and counting...if only I could get him to just take a page out of the band's book...)
I just came across this quote from Garrison Keillor about Christmas. The Christmas stuff is good, but the description of church at the end of paragraph 1 is… priceless!
"This magical story [of Christmas] is a cornerstone of the Christian faith and I am sorry if it's a big hurdle for the skeptical young. It is to the Church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent -- it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become a sort of lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures.
On Christmas Eve, the snow on the ground, the stars in the sky, the spruce tree glittering with beloved ornaments, we stand in the dimness and sing about the silent holy night and tears come to our eyes and the vast invisible forces of Christmas stir in the world. Skeptics, stand back. Hush. Hark. There is much in this world that doubt cannot explain."
-- Garrison Keillor, Salon, 12/5/07 (h/t, KNM)
The second came accompanied by the following disclaimer:
As a father (-in-law) I must advocate against imitation… but this does look like something that would be an incredible, er, RUSH:
"Ready for a little excitement today?
These videos were taken in Norway , in fact only a few hours drive from Bergen. The suit used in these stunts were developed by people bored with simple sky diving. Some of the cliffs shown are essentially vertical drops of 3,000 feet."
Nice to have this sort of thing for anytime you begin to get a little too big for your britches, right? I mean, it'd be like, "Yeah, I'm pretty badass...check out my HUGE mar...oh. Um. Nevermind."
Final note for right now: I'm listening to Caedmon's Call's "In the Company of Angels 2: The World Will Sing," and all I've got to say is, "WOW." Their last couple albums ("Back Home," "Share the Well," and "Overdressed") have all taken a few listens before I began to enjoy them. I dunno, something about them just a little while for them to grow on me. I know love all of them, except for "Overdressed," which is still in the process of waxing...but ICA 2 is AMAZING, and I'm diggin' it from the get-go. Sort of the way I felt about the original ICA, and the eponymous album. I think the choice of my progeny's name has once again been vindicated.
(The only problem is that at this point, Caedmon's calls have been horrid, tinged with that desperation and ragged edge that colic brings. We're on a week solid and counting...if only I could get him to just take a page out of the band's book...)
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Catching up on back reading
...is one of the wonderful things about being on break. I'm finally getting around to making a dent in my stack of Time and Newsweek magazines (8 deep at last check), and that's sure to result in lots of posts regarding articles I appreciate.
This one is from the Dec. 17 issue of Newsweek (the one that profiles the Huckster -- I'm telling you, this guy seems like a FAR better option than any of the other Republicans), and is by Fareed Zakaria, one of my favorite authors on foreign policy and foreign affairs. Why would that be?...Oh, right! Because he's a moderate, and a realist! (In the PoliSci sense, not in the "accepting of reality" sense.)
Side note: that reminds me of one of my favorite Stephen Colbert jokes, where he's railing against the liberal bias of the "Factinistas," etc. etc...."And as we all know, reality has a well-documented liberal bias!"
ZING!!
K, sorry. I promise I'll behave. At any rate, it's this opening paragraph of Zakaria's article that snagged my attention this time around:
"Imagine, for a moment, what the world looks like to Iran. The country is surrounded by powerful states with nuclear weapons--Israel, India, Pakistan, China, and Russia. Across one of its borders stand some 170,000 American troops (in Iraq), across another are more than 50,000 NATO troops (in Afghanistan). The United States has been bitterly opposed to the Iranian regime for three decades. The current American president has made clear time and again that he regards the Tehran government as evil and wishes that it would fall, and Congress set aside $75 million last year to "promote democracy" in Iran. Now, if you were in Tehran, wouldn't you buy some insurance? And in the world of international politics, a nuclear program is the ultimate insurance policy."
The article's title is "Make Iran an Offer It Might Refuse." Ry? You know what to do. :-)
And as a bonus, because the readership of this blog is unnaturally skewed toward amateurs of the English language, with a few geeks thrown in, I give you...Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year: W00t!
This one is from the Dec. 17 issue of Newsweek (the one that profiles the Huckster -- I'm telling you, this guy seems like a FAR better option than any of the other Republicans), and is by Fareed Zakaria, one of my favorite authors on foreign policy and foreign affairs. Why would that be?...Oh, right! Because he's a moderate, and a realist! (In the PoliSci sense, not in the "accepting of reality" sense.)
Side note: that reminds me of one of my favorite Stephen Colbert jokes, where he's railing against the liberal bias of the "Factinistas," etc. etc...."And as we all know, reality has a well-documented liberal bias!"
ZING!!
K, sorry. I promise I'll behave. At any rate, it's this opening paragraph of Zakaria's article that snagged my attention this time around:
"Imagine, for a moment, what the world looks like to Iran. The country is surrounded by powerful states with nuclear weapons--Israel, India, Pakistan, China, and Russia. Across one of its borders stand some 170,000 American troops (in Iraq), across another are more than 50,000 NATO troops (in Afghanistan). The United States has been bitterly opposed to the Iranian regime for three decades. The current American president has made clear time and again that he regards the Tehran government as evil and wishes that it would fall, and Congress set aside $75 million last year to "promote democracy" in Iran. Now, if you were in Tehran, wouldn't you buy some insurance? And in the world of international politics, a nuclear program is the ultimate insurance policy."
The article's title is "Make Iran an Offer It Might Refuse." Ry? You know what to do. :-)
And as a bonus, because the readership of this blog is unnaturally skewed toward amateurs of the English language, with a few geeks thrown in, I give you...Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year: W00t!
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Quick pic post
I'm exhausted from only catching up 12 hours of mostly baby-uninterrupted sleep last night after being on the go for 39...I don't know how people do this.
Anna and I just finished watching the 3rd 'Pirates' flick -- so bad, it's good! ...ish. I think Anna was just completely confused by the end of it all. But at least the new soundtrack is bad A--!
So, to honor Laurie's request, here's a quick update on little Cae:
dude has begun to sleep less at night than he was, and Mommy is therefore tired. All the time. I am too, but now that I'm home from school hopefully I'll be able to rest, or take him out and about so Mommy can sleep during the day. We'll see how all that works out.
He's 8 lbs. 7 oz. and 21+ inches now, so he's growing healthily. Mostly controls his head (at 3.5 weeks!), accidentally put in his own pacifier earlier today (don't think THAT one's replicable), eats like there's no tomorrow and is still quiet MOST of the time. When he does cry, though, boy...it's a doozy. Anna's gotten him this all-natural anti-colic stuff. Hopefully he doesn't actually HAVE colic, but I guess we'll know pretty soon based on his crying patterns.
Let's see, what else...oh, he handles Kala licking his head pretty well, but HATES to have her lick his feet. She's fascinated by his dirty diapers (natch) of which he has MANY in any given day.
Here's a photo for y'all:
Dang...it is HARD WORK being this cute...
Oh, and one final one. Anna got a ticket from the cops the other day for driving the speed everyone does in a place that's actually 10 mph slower than you'd guess from observing behavior. Oops.
In the next TWO days, all of THIS has shown up in our mailbox:
Ten. Count 'em...TEN letters. All from attorneys' offices, ALL offering Anna legal services...I dunno, I don't THINK I'm biased against lawyers, but something about this just rubs me the wrong way. I'd like to say that it somehow points to what's wrong with America, but I'm not sure it actually does in any substantive way, and I'm too incoherent to articulate it properly anyway. I'm just wondering how many more we'll have when it's all said and done.
Anna and I just finished watching the 3rd 'Pirates' flick -- so bad, it's good! ...ish. I think Anna was just completely confused by the end of it all. But at least the new soundtrack is bad A--!
So, to honor Laurie's request, here's a quick update on little Cae:
dude has begun to sleep less at night than he was, and Mommy is therefore tired. All the time. I am too, but now that I'm home from school hopefully I'll be able to rest, or take him out and about so Mommy can sleep during the day. We'll see how all that works out.
He's 8 lbs. 7 oz. and 21+ inches now, so he's growing healthily. Mostly controls his head (at 3.5 weeks!), accidentally put in his own pacifier earlier today (don't think THAT one's replicable), eats like there's no tomorrow and is still quiet MOST of the time. When he does cry, though, boy...it's a doozy. Anna's gotten him this all-natural anti-colic stuff. Hopefully he doesn't actually HAVE colic, but I guess we'll know pretty soon based on his crying patterns.
Let's see, what else...oh, he handles Kala licking his head pretty well, but HATES to have her lick his feet. She's fascinated by his dirty diapers (natch) of which he has MANY in any given day.
Here's a photo for y'all:
Dang...it is HARD WORK being this cute...
Oh, and one final one. Anna got a ticket from the cops the other day for driving the speed everyone does in a place that's actually 10 mph slower than you'd guess from observing behavior. Oops.
In the next TWO days, all of THIS has shown up in our mailbox:
Ten. Count 'em...TEN letters. All from attorneys' offices, ALL offering Anna legal services...I dunno, I don't THINK I'm biased against lawyers, but something about this just rubs me the wrong way. I'd like to say that it somehow points to what's wrong with America, but I'm not sure it actually does in any substantive way, and I'm too incoherent to articulate it properly anyway. I'm just wondering how many more we'll have when it's all said and done.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sounds almost like Jim Wallis
The Christian conservative vote is, apparently, splintering. Younger evangelicals are increasingly said to be interested in putting their faith to greater use than bashing gays, promoting guns and putting God on the presidential ticket. That would seem to indicate that we’re facing a moment of opportunity: a chance to expand and amplify the reach of the voice of religious moderation. The silence I’m hearing makes me think, though, that as a society we’ve come to accept the slippage of prejudicial and hateful attitudes into religious doctrine as somehow normal. Whether that’s due to cynicism or due to cowardice, it’s very troubling.
This sort of thing is why I find Jim Wallis of Sojourners so appealing -- the idea that your faith as a Christian should have SOME impact on the way you see the world, and therefore your politics. It doesn't mean that good Christian = bleeding heart liberal, but it DOES mean you should think consistently about what living your faith actually entails.
This sort of thing is why I find Jim Wallis of Sojourners so appealing -- the idea that your faith as a Christian should have SOME impact on the way you see the world, and therefore your politics. It doesn't mean that good Christian = bleeding heart liberal, but it DOES mean you should think consistently about what living your faith actually entails.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
45 pages and 130 endnotes later...
I am done with academic responsibilities for the semester.
I'm also running on 32.5 consecutive hours with no sleep, and remaining remarkably coherent...but there ain't no way in HELL I'm driving us to the doggie park. No way, no how. Instead, I'm just gonna meditate on that massive behemoth of a paper I just wrote.
As I told my buddy Jode who was experiencing the same thing alongside me, "it all comes down to whether I want to make bold statements and hope my reader is credulous, or whether I want to SUPPORT things." I mean, 45 pages?! Hell, for the undergrads it was a 15-page paper, and for the grad students it was nominally going to be 25-ish. I was going to owe a little something extra at some point in the term in order to expiate my sins (missing 2 weeks of class for Germany + the late arrival in the class), but I fear this will only compound my sins...
I can't decide if it was primarily a matter of my wanting to produce a really well-researched paper combining with the fact that I know exactly Jack S. Quat about history, and so feel the need to lay out EVERY BIT OF BACKGROUND possible, and cite every single thing, (option A) or that I'm still traumatized from being hosed LAST time I wrote extensively about Islam (senior thesis at Alma...), and therefore need to console myself with finding a source who will back up every single thing I've deduced, even if the ideas were my own to begin with. Hm...
Btw, English buffs, I snuck the word "perquisite" into the paper. Awww, yeah!! [Channeling Laurie]
In the process of writing it, I came across another hint that Marnia Lazreg is not a native English speaker:
"...his own view of women was all but liberal. At the celebration of International Women's Day...he made a speech before a primarily women's audience, arguing that city women should count their blessings in comparison with the sorry lot of rural women." (The Eloquence of Silence, p. 150-151)
"All but..."? Not "Anything but..."?
As far as I'm aware, the former means "he's SO liberal it's not even funny," whereas the latter means "he's the farthest thing from liberal you can imagine." (side note: Farthest vs. Furthest? A = distance, B = degree; in this case, I can't decide what would be right...)
I welcome input on either of the 2 interesting questions posed immediately above.
At any rate, that's all for now.
Tootles!
I'm also running on 32.5 consecutive hours with no sleep, and remaining remarkably coherent...but there ain't no way in HELL I'm driving us to the doggie park. No way, no how. Instead, I'm just gonna meditate on that massive behemoth of a paper I just wrote.
As I told my buddy Jode who was experiencing the same thing alongside me, "it all comes down to whether I want to make bold statements and hope my reader is credulous, or whether I want to SUPPORT things." I mean, 45 pages?! Hell, for the undergrads it was a 15-page paper, and for the grad students it was nominally going to be 25-ish. I was going to owe a little something extra at some point in the term in order to expiate my sins (missing 2 weeks of class for Germany + the late arrival in the class), but I fear this will only compound my sins...
I can't decide if it was primarily a matter of my wanting to produce a really well-researched paper combining with the fact that I know exactly Jack S. Quat about history, and so feel the need to lay out EVERY BIT OF BACKGROUND possible, and cite every single thing, (option A) or that I'm still traumatized from being hosed LAST time I wrote extensively about Islam (senior thesis at Alma...), and therefore need to console myself with finding a source who will back up every single thing I've deduced, even if the ideas were my own to begin with. Hm...
Btw, English buffs, I snuck the word "perquisite" into the paper. Awww, yeah!! [Channeling Laurie]
In the process of writing it, I came across another hint that Marnia Lazreg is not a native English speaker:
"...his own view of women was all but liberal. At the celebration of International Women's Day...he made a speech before a primarily women's audience, arguing that city women should count their blessings in comparison with the sorry lot of rural women." (The Eloquence of Silence, p. 150-151)
"All but..."? Not "Anything but..."?
As far as I'm aware, the former means "he's SO liberal it's not even funny," whereas the latter means "he's the farthest thing from liberal you can imagine." (side note: Farthest vs. Furthest? A = distance, B = degree; in this case, I can't decide what would be right...)
I welcome input on either of the 2 interesting questions posed immediately above.
At any rate, that's all for now.
Tootles!
1 down, 2 to go
Got that Finance final out of the way, and got back that paper. You know, the one that represented the worst writing I'd ever done?
I'm pretty convinced Prof. Finance never read beyond the first page. It earned me an 87, which is absurd (-ly high), and the only note was at the end of the first paragraph--apparently I didn't address the question of trade and how it's an option for combating 3rd-World poverty without resorting to debt forgiveness. Hell, 'course I di-int deal w/ that! It never occurred to me, given my sleep-deprived, baby-addled state...I might be able to hash it out now, but certainly couldn't have at that point.
Anyway, we'll see. I need to fix the citations/bibliography of my Terrorism paper and submit it sometime within the next 8.5 hours (CAKE!!), and then I'll have nothing to do but work on Prof. Feminism's paper. I'm feelin' decently good about this, all in all.
Two things to share:
For my Michigander friends, a gold mine of unintentional comedy...straight from the Mitten!
Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch (MLAW) annual Wacky Warning label contest
How 'bout some of that personal responsibility, eh? I'm ALL for it. I assume Republicans are HUGE on tort reform, right? Like, there aren't any Republican John Edwardses out there who've made their bucks on frivolous lawsuits and ambulance chasing, right? ;-) [Only partially tongue-in-cheek...where DO the Elephants stand on this issue? And make sure you give me a nice, simple, no-nuance answer about the beliefs of the monolithic Republican party--no internecine disagreement allowed!]
And, finally, a quote from my little bro. Ry, I sent that article you shared with me to my bros. and Dad to get their thoughts on it, since they're both scientists in the physical sciences and he was a rhetorician/logician in college (YEAH, philosophy majors!!). Unfortunately, Pops took a pass on it, Dave went bonkers on it (totally expected--he's a hard-left liberal), and Mikey took his standard joking approach:
All I know is that, in my humble and uneducated opinion, global warming IS real. The basic impression I've gotten about the whole thing is that one of the major effects is that it screws up "normal" weather patterns.
And I know that NC is in a SERIOUS fricken drought (and has been so all summer), Durham's got about 50 days of water left, and it's been ~80 ºF all week... and a quick glance at the calendar says it's the second week of Dec.
Q.E.D.
Publish THAT!
I love my bros. :-)
And, just for kicks, here's another anecdotal illustration of Mike's sense of humor and method of defusing conflict. I was playing doubles with Dave, Mike, and Emmy (Mike's wife) when someone started talking about politics. Dave's a hard-left liberal, and while extremely intelligent and fully capable of assimilating nuance into his reasoning, is not prone to do so w/r/t much of the far-right's positions on social issues (esp. the idea that whether someone's anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage is ALL the bona fides you should consider in choosing to vote for them). Emmy's folks are Republicans, partially because they are conservative Christians, and partly for fiscal reasons...so they were getting into a pretty heated argument, which isn't pretty. Mike then breaks in...
"Whoa, whoa, whoa...guys, guys. I took not one, but TWO dumps today. Both huge. Discuss."
I literally collapsed on the court in laughter. Crisis averted!
I'm pretty convinced Prof. Finance never read beyond the first page. It earned me an 87, which is absurd (-ly high), and the only note was at the end of the first paragraph--apparently I didn't address the question of trade and how it's an option for combating 3rd-World poverty without resorting to debt forgiveness. Hell, 'course I di-int deal w/ that! It never occurred to me, given my sleep-deprived, baby-addled state...I might be able to hash it out now, but certainly couldn't have at that point.
Anyway, we'll see. I need to fix the citations/bibliography of my Terrorism paper and submit it sometime within the next 8.5 hours (CAKE!!), and then I'll have nothing to do but work on Prof. Feminism's paper. I'm feelin' decently good about this, all in all.
Two things to share:
For my Michigander friends, a gold mine of unintentional comedy...straight from the Mitten!
Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch (MLAW) annual Wacky Warning label contest
How 'bout some of that personal responsibility, eh? I'm ALL for it. I assume Republicans are HUGE on tort reform, right? Like, there aren't any Republican John Edwardses out there who've made their bucks on frivolous lawsuits and ambulance chasing, right? ;-) [Only partially tongue-in-cheek...where DO the Elephants stand on this issue? And make sure you give me a nice, simple, no-nuance answer about the beliefs of the monolithic Republican party--no internecine disagreement allowed!]
And, finally, a quote from my little bro. Ry, I sent that article you shared with me to my bros. and Dad to get their thoughts on it, since they're both scientists in the physical sciences and he was a rhetorician/logician in college (YEAH, philosophy majors!!). Unfortunately, Pops took a pass on it, Dave went bonkers on it (totally expected--he's a hard-left liberal), and Mikey took his standard joking approach:
All I know is that, in my humble and uneducated opinion, global warming IS real. The basic impression I've gotten about the whole thing is that one of the major effects is that it screws up "normal" weather patterns.
And I know that NC is in a SERIOUS fricken drought (and has been so all summer), Durham's got about 50 days of water left, and it's been ~80 ºF all week... and a quick glance at the calendar says it's the second week of Dec.
Q.E.D.
Publish THAT!
I love my bros. :-)
And, just for kicks, here's another anecdotal illustration of Mike's sense of humor and method of defusing conflict. I was playing doubles with Dave, Mike, and Emmy (Mike's wife) when someone started talking about politics. Dave's a hard-left liberal, and while extremely intelligent and fully capable of assimilating nuance into his reasoning, is not prone to do so w/r/t much of the far-right's positions on social issues (esp. the idea that whether someone's anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage is ALL the bona fides you should consider in choosing to vote for them). Emmy's folks are Republicans, partially because they are conservative Christians, and partly for fiscal reasons...so they were getting into a pretty heated argument, which isn't pretty. Mike then breaks in...
"Whoa, whoa, whoa...guys, guys. I took not one, but TWO dumps today. Both huge. Discuss."
I literally collapsed on the court in laughter. Crisis averted!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Amen, McCain!!
Now, if only we agreed on ANYTHING else!
"I'm not going to condone a practice that we used as the rationale for prosecuting the Japanese for war crimes in World War II."
"I'm not going to condone a practice that we used as the rationale for prosecuting the Japanese for war crimes in World War II."
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
It's tough to type with a baby chewing on your neck
Just in case you all didn't, you know, realize that.
Anyway, Li'l Slade's been preventing me from getting anything done ever since Mommy headed off to get some exercise at a "new mothers" class at the hospital. This gave me time to find this article, which I find well-argued and convincing, if wholly demoralizing: Integrity or Craft: the Leadership Question.
Anyway, Li'l Slade's been preventing me from getting anything done ever since Mommy headed off to get some exercise at a "new mothers" class at the hospital. This gave me time to find this article, which I find well-argued and convincing, if wholly demoralizing: Integrity or Craft: the Leadership Question.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Summertime senioritis - in winter?
I'm just taking a break from writing my papers for Terrorism and Feminism. Partly it's because I'm getting too frustrated (ever have crucial sources go AWOL on you? yeah, me too...), but partly it's because it's too freakin' beautiful outside to be sitting in front of a computer.
Let's see...what's today's date? Hmmm--oh, right! December 10th!
And, uh, what's the temperature outside?
78 degrees! (although Weather.com assures me it feels like 79)
It's sunny, it's warm, there's even a light, warm breeze...all the leaves have turned, and most are scattered about on the ground...I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN THIS FREAKING LIBRARY!!
Whew. Done.
Let's see...what's today's date? Hmmm--oh, right! December 10th!
And, uh, what's the temperature outside?
78 degrees! (although Weather.com assures me it feels like 79)
It's sunny, it's warm, there's even a light, warm breeze...all the leaves have turned, and most are scattered about on the ground...I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN THIS FREAKING LIBRARY!!
Whew. Done.
Friday, December 7, 2007
No 'Terrorism Class' circular this week
However, we did have a little bit of fun.
So, fire up Google, and type "French military victories." Into the search field. Click "I'm feeling lucky!!"
Behold a current Googlebomb! YEAH!!
Then you can just search it straight up and go to the site of the people who set that first result up. They've got a wonderful listing of French military history, including this gem regarding the Hundred Years' War:
Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." Sainted.
Enjoy!
So, fire up Google, and type "French military victories." Into the search field. Click "I'm feeling lucky!!"
Behold a current Googlebomb! YEAH!!
Then you can just search it straight up and go to the site of the people who set that first result up. They've got a wonderful listing of French military history, including this gem regarding the Hundred Years' War:
Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." Sainted.
Enjoy!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
AHHH!! J'Malcolm Sighting!!
Dude was J'Malcolm's doppelgänger!! FOR SERIOUS REALZ!!!, as Slick from Sinfest would say. 'Cept rather than Brooks Brothers, this dude was wearing preppy pre-distressed jeans, a Carhartt coat and a fancy-schmancy button-down shirt (which, since I have read GQ, I can tell you refers only to the COLLAR, and not to the front...how 'bout that?).
That is all.
Nah, j/k. Have a bonus pic of Cae w/ Uncle Mikey:
Now how's THAT for a contrast in size?
That is all.
Nah, j/k. Have a bonus pic of Cae w/ Uncle Mikey:
Now how's THAT for a contrast in size?
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
My son is Bob Costas incarnate
"Why?" you ask? Well, it's like this: he never blinks.
How often do you blink in a given minute? Any idea? Apparently the average for adults is around 20, with each blink lasting a quarter of a second.
The only time Cae EVER blinks is when you ask him a question regarding doing something, and he just seems totally disinterested. There'll be a L-O-N-G, S-L-O-W blink, he'll turn his gaze to the side, and then look back at you when you've moved on to something else.
It's really weird. Anna's getting kinda freaked out about it, actually.
Anyway, if you happen to remember the Barcelona Olympics ('92, I believe...a very good year...), Costas was the anchor. His bio says he anchored 161 hours of coverage. I probably watched only a couple dozen of those hours, but THE MAN NEVER BLINKED. It's my enduring impression of Bob Costas, no matter what else he may go on to do.
I actually began this post intending to post the link for an article that I think Ry and Co. will enjoy (Sweet vindication for the hawks!): The Case for Facing Facts by Charles Peters.
That having been done, since I HAVE mentioned Cae quite a bit, here's a pic:
"Behold the Stuffed Mobile Monster OF DOOM!!!!"
Bonus pet peeve: when people write "[Yadda yadda yadda...some inane title] by, Some Fool's Name." Seriously, people, is the concept of a comma REALLY that hard to grasp?
How often do you blink in a given minute? Any idea? Apparently the average for adults is around 20, with each blink lasting a quarter of a second.
The only time Cae EVER blinks is when you ask him a question regarding doing something, and he just seems totally disinterested. There'll be a L-O-N-G, S-L-O-W blink, he'll turn his gaze to the side, and then look back at you when you've moved on to something else.
It's really weird. Anna's getting kinda freaked out about it, actually.
Anyway, if you happen to remember the Barcelona Olympics ('92, I believe...a very good year...), Costas was the anchor. His bio says he anchored 161 hours of coverage. I probably watched only a couple dozen of those hours, but THE MAN NEVER BLINKED. It's my enduring impression of Bob Costas, no matter what else he may go on to do.
I actually began this post intending to post the link for an article that I think Ry and Co. will enjoy (Sweet vindication for the hawks!): The Case for Facing Facts by Charles Peters.
That having been done, since I HAVE mentioned Cae quite a bit, here's a pic:
"Behold the Stuffed Mobile Monster OF DOOM!!!!"
Bonus pet peeve: when people write "[Yadda yadda yadda...some inane title] by, Some Fool's Name." Seriously, people, is the concept of a comma REALLY that hard to grasp?
Ninja Day? Who knew?
I didn't, that's for sure! Until this evening, when we were driving back from downtown (where we'd gone to pick up Cae's birth certificate) and heard The Ninja come on All Things Considered. Wait a minute...what's The Ninja (of AskANinja.com fame!) doing on NPR?
Answer: Providing advice for the striking writers! BRILLIANT!
So here's my answer to Ryan's Huck 'n' Chuck ad (which, naturally, was great): 'Ninja Got Answers' for Hollywood Writers on Strike.
That's about it for now, methinks.
Answer: Providing advice for the striking writers! BRILLIANT!
So here's my answer to Ryan's Huck 'n' Chuck ad (which, naturally, was great): 'Ninja Got Answers' for Hollywood Writers on Strike.
That's about it for now, methinks.
In re: Ry, w/r/t S&S by JM
OMG! LOL!
...Sorry, once I got started with the title, I just couldn't help myself.
To Ryan, I respond "you ought to read the entire article." :-) You know, with ALL that free time you've probably got.
I think you're probably correct about the idea that the gov't ought to be freaking out about it to some extent so the populace doesn't have to--on the other hand, the main thrust of Mueller's paper is directed toward policymakers and national leaders. He directs probably 95% of his comments at people in power, not at Johnny Q. Public.
You can download the paper from his site, here. Beware, though--it's 54 single-spaced pages (47 of which contain the actual paper; the rest are references), so it may take a little while. Also, you might find the entire first 30 pages somewhat aggravating, although they're necessary for you to appreciate his thesis later. He essentially feels that there's a pendulum that swings from under-reaction to over-reaction, and since WWII we've been swinging into the over-reaction camp...so he spends the entire paper pointing out people who have been breathlessly proclaiming "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" (somewhat along the lines of the footnote I excerpted in the last post) for years and just how wrong they've been. (There's a tone of smug condescension that creeps in at some points, and is galling b/c it's EASY to be a Tuesday-Morning Quarterback...I'd be far more impressed if he'd decried his subject's hysteria in real-time...although if he'd done so, he probably would never have earned a job in academia, 'cause he'd have been excoriated...)
I know you're probably busy, but if you get unfathomably bored at some point, check it out.
...Sorry, once I got started with the title, I just couldn't help myself.
To Ryan, I respond "you ought to read the entire article." :-) You know, with ALL that free time you've probably got.
I think you're probably correct about the idea that the gov't ought to be freaking out about it to some extent so the populace doesn't have to--on the other hand, the main thrust of Mueller's paper is directed toward policymakers and national leaders. He directs probably 95% of his comments at people in power, not at Johnny Q. Public.
You can download the paper from his site, here. Beware, though--it's 54 single-spaced pages (47 of which contain the actual paper; the rest are references), so it may take a little while. Also, you might find the entire first 30 pages somewhat aggravating, although they're necessary for you to appreciate his thesis later. He essentially feels that there's a pendulum that swings from under-reaction to over-reaction, and since WWII we've been swinging into the over-reaction camp...so he spends the entire paper pointing out people who have been breathlessly proclaiming "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" (somewhat along the lines of the footnote I excerpted in the last post) for years and just how wrong they've been. (There's a tone of smug condescension that creeps in at some points, and is galling b/c it's EASY to be a Tuesday-Morning Quarterback...I'd be far more impressed if he'd decried his subject's hysteria in real-time...although if he'd done so, he probably would never have earned a job in academia, 'cause he'd have been excoriated...)
I know you're probably busy, but if you get unfathomably bored at some point, check it out.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Several EXCELLENT observations from John Mueller
Alrighty, people. You've demanded more pictures of Li'l Slade, and as such I must comply. HOWEVER...
I have just finished reading a paper for my Terrorism class that BEAUTIFULLY encapsulates much of my frustration with our country, and our administration. Ry, I'm dove-ish less because of any inherent distaste for warfare (I've strongly considered joining the military at various points, and I grew up playing with guns just like any other kid) than because I feel like the entire mess in which we find ourselves was a result of tragic overreactions by our leaders. Unfortunately, our leaders were hardly alone in their hysteria and overreacting--viz., all the guys on 3rd floor Mitchell screaming "Let's BOMB those M-F-ing ay-RABS back to the Stone Age!!!"--but I had hoped for more from them.
So, I've taken several photos of Cae from Mommy's photo sessions with him, and from Grandma Long's visit, and have captioned some of them. However, they are interspersed in the midst of several of my favorite passages from the following paper:
Mueller, John. "Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration." Prepared for presentation at the National Convention of the International Studies Association, in Honolulu, HI, March 1-5, 2005.
Note: This guy isn't some kind of partisan hack--he absolutely SHREDS Carter for his actions during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and tears Clinton several new ones over Black Hawk Down and various other terrorist incidents--just so y'all don't accuse me of confirmational bias...
(Everything italicized comes from the paper--my favorite lines have been rendered in boldface as well.)
As always, comments from dissenters are heartily welcomed.
Picture #1: Cae during his first stint in his crib.
As Chapman and Harris put it, "our nation's priorities remain radically torqued toward homeland defense and fighting terrorism at the expense of objectively greater societal needs" (2002, 30). Or, in the words of risk analyst David Banks, "If terrorists force us to redirect resources away from sensible programs and future growth, in order to pursue unachievable but politically popular levels of domestic security, then they have won an important victory that mortgages our future" (2002, 10). Accordingly, three key issues set out by risk analyst Howard Kunreuther require, but rarely get, careful discussion (2002, 662-63):
How much should we be willing to pay for a small reduction in probabilities that are already extremely low?
How much should we be willing to pay for actions that are primarily reassuring, but do little to change the actual risk?
How can certain measures, such as strengthening the public health system, which provide much broader protection than terrorism, get the attention they deserve? (34-35)
Picture #2: Big Yawn!
There is no reason to suspect that George W. Bush's concern about terrorism is anything but genuine. However, his approval rating did receive the greatest boost for any president in history in September 2001, surpassing even that achieved by Jimmy Carter when U.S. hostages were taken in Iran in 1979. It would be politically unnatural for him not to notice. His chief political adviser, Karl Rove, in fact was already declaring in 2003 that the "war" against terrorism would be central to Bush's reelection campaign the next year. It was, and it worked. The Democrats, scurrying to keep up, have stumbled all over each other with plans to expend even more of the federal budget on the terrorist threat, such as it is, than President Bush. (35)
As Benjamin Friedman notes, "Telling Kansan truck drivers to prepare for nuclear terrorism is like telling bullfighters to watch out for lightning. It should not be their primary concern. For questionable gains in preparedness, we spread paranoia." (35)
As has often been noted, however, the media appear to have a congenital incapacity for dealing with issues of risk and comparative probabilities--except, of course, in the sports and financial sections. If a baseball player hits three home runs in a single game, press reports will include not only notice of that achievement, but also information about the rarity of the event as well as statistics about the hitter's batting and slugging averages and about how many home runs he normally hits. I may have missed it, but I have never heard anyone on the media stress that in every year except 2001 only a few hundred people in the entire world have died as a result of international terrorism. (35-36)
Picture #3: The Long ladies and Cae
Retaining his worst case perspective, however, Joshua Goldstein worries about terrorists exploding nuclear weapons in the United States in a crowded area and declares this to be "not impossible" or the likelihood "not negligible." [...] But there are, of course, all sorts of things that are "not impossible." Thus, a colliding meteor or comet could destroy the earth, Tony Blair or Vladimir Putin and their underlings could decide one morning to launch a few nuclear weapons at Massachusetts, George Bush could decide to bomb Hollywood, an underwater volcano could erupt to cause a civilization-ending tidal wave, bin Laden would convert to Judaism, declare himself to the Messiah, and hire a group of Roman mafiosi to have himself publicly crucified. (37)
**Speaking of which, any of y'all remember when Marilyn Manson made headlines with a similar stunt? Whatever happened to that guy?
Anonymous 2004, 160, 177, 226, 241, 242, 250, 252, 263. One of the book's many hysterical passages runs: "To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and Georgia, in France and on the Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large numbers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large number is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover, will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows." In the acknowledgements, the author thanks Ms. Christina Davidson, his editor, "who labored mightily to delete from the text excess vitriol" (Anonymous 2004, xiii, 241-42). Perhaps Ms. Davidson should have labored just a bit more mightily. (Footnote, 38)
Picture #4: The family (minus Kala)--why is Cae the only one who looks rested?
The sudden deaths of that many [10,000] Americans--although representing less than four thousandths of one percent of the population--would indeed be horrifying and tragic, the greatest one-day disaster the country has suffered since the Civil War. But the only way it could "do away with our way of life" would be if we did that to ourselves in reaction. The process would presumably involve repealing the bill of rights, boarding up all churches, closing down all newspapers and media outlets, burning all books, abandoning English for North Korean, and refusing evermore to consume hamburgers. (39)
In general, it seems to me that the efforts against terrorism should be considered more like a campaign against crime than like a war, however much the war imagery may get the juices flowing (see also Howard, 2002). Wars end, but since they are carried out by isolated individuals or by tiny groups at times of their own choosing, terrorism and crime never do. One cannot, therefore, "conquer" terrorism or "bring it to an end." Like crime, one can at best seek to reduce its frequency and destructiveness so that people feel reasonably--but never perfectly--safe from it. Of course, military measures may sometimes be useful in the campaign, as they may have been in Afghanistan. But to frame the campaign against terror as a "war" risks the danger of raising unreasonable expectations. [...] Since the creation of insecurity, fear, anxiety, hysteria, and overreaction is central for terrorists, they can be defeated simply by not becoming terrified and by resisting the temptation to overreact: as Friedman aptly puts it, "one way to disarm terrorists is to convince regular Americans to stop worrying about them" (2004, 32). (40)
Picture #5: Cae checkin' out Daddy from the safety of his Snoopy-clad knees...
That is, instead of inducing hysteria, which seems to be one of the terrorism industry's central goals, officials and the media should responsibly assess probabilities and put them in some sort of context rather than simply stressing extreme possibilities so much and so exclusively. What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: "How worried should I be?" Instead, the message, as one concerned Homeland Security official puts it, is "Be scared. Be very, very scared. But go on with your lives" (Gorman 2003a, 1461-62). [...] What we need, then, is more pronouncements like the one in a recent book by Senator John McCain: "Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It's still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave....Suck it up, for crying out loud. You're almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you're not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That's not a life worth living, is it?" But admonitions like that are exceedingly rare, almost non-existent. Instead, we get plenty of alarmism from the terrorism industry and almost nothing--nothing--about realistic risks and probabilities. The result, as Bart Kosko points out, is a situation in which "government plays safe by overestimating the terrorist threat, while the terrorists oblige by overestimating their power" (2004). (41)
**Yet another reason why I like John McCain...
Picture #6: Mommy, I am NOT amused...
Instead of maintaining that the terrorists might strike anywhere at any time, and thereby stoking the fear of random violence, it might make sense to suggest that only certain (relatively small) areas are primarily at risk. If the benefit from the reduction of fear in the excluded areas is greater than the costs of fear enhancement in the designated ones, the measure would presumably be, on balance, sound public policy. (44)
It might also be useful to plumb the "cry wolf" phenomenon for possibilities. [...] However, for this to work, there are four special issues. First, because the people in charge are aware of the cry wolf problem, it is important that they not give in to the temptation to refrain from issuing warnings after they have been repeatedly mistaken: they must keep it up. Second, the warnings must be specific enough to be falsifiable: according to one version, Aesop's boy cries "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" a claim the villagers are able quickly to falsify. He does not issue such unfalsifiable outcries as "I have intercepted some chatter recently suggesting that a wolf might chase the sheep at some time in the indefinite future, or, then again, maybe not." Third, it would be important to consider the cost of the alert itself: for example, Orange Alerts cost the Los Angeles airport alone $100,000 per day (Goo 2004). And fourth, it is crucial to the process that the community remembers the false alarms and tallies them up. In the real world, doomsday scenarists are rarely held to account because few remember their extravagant predictions when they fail to materialize. (44)
**Anybody else ever listen to the Capitol Steps' "The Fright Before Christmas"? It's the one narrated by "Michael Chertoff"...absolutely BRILLIANT!! Mueller's boy who cries wolf is very reminiscent of that track...
Picture #7: His first naked bath! (And, now, naked pictures!)
Also useful might be to reconsider the standards about what is harmful in some cases. The potential use of "dirty" bombs apparently formed the main concern during the Orange Alert at the end of 2003 ('Dirty Bombs' 2004; Allison, 2004, 56-57). However, while a "dirty" bomb might raise radiation 25 percent over background levels in an area and therefore into a range the Environmental Protection Agency officially considers undesirable, there ought to be some discussion about whether that really constitutes "contamination" or indeed much of a danger given the somewhat arbitrary and exceedingly cautious levels declared to be acceptable by the EPA. In fact, since "dirty" bombs simply raise radiation levels somewhat above normal backgrounds levels in a small area, a common recommendation from nuclear scientists and engineers is that those exposed should calmly walk away. But this bit of advice was not been advanced prominently (or even, perhaps, at all) by those in charge. (45)
In fact, the war in Iraq will probably prove encouraging to international terrorists because they will take even an orderly American retreat from the country as a great victory--even greater than the one against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.86 Osama bin Laden's theory that the Americans can be defeated, or at least productively inconvenienced, by inflicting comparatively small, but continuously draining, casualties on them will achieve apparent confirmation, and a venture designed and sold in part as a blow against international terrorists will end up emboldening and energizing them. A comparison might be made with Israel's orderly, even overdue, withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 that insurgents there took to be a great triumph for their terrorist tactics--and, most importantly, so did like-minded Palestinians who later escalated their efforts to use terrorism to destroy Israel itself. People like bin Laden believe that America invaded Iraq as part of its plan to control the oil in the Persian Gulf area. But the United States does not intend to do that (at least not in the direct sense bin Laden and others doubtless consider to be its goal), nor does it seek to destroy Islam as many others also bitterly assert. Thus just about any kind of American withdrawal will be seen by such people as a victory for the harassing terrorist insurgents, who, they will believe, are due primary credit for forcing the United States to leave without accomplishing what they take to be its key objectives. Moreover, the insurgency in Iraq seems to have developed as something of a terrorist breeding and training experience (Priest 2005). (46)
Hysteria and hysterical overreaction to terrorism are hardly required, and they can be costly and counterproductive. There are uncertainties and risks out there, and plenty of dangers and threats. But these are unlikely to prove to be existential. The sky, as it happens, is not falling, nor is apocalypse creeping over the horizon. Perhaps we can relax a little. (47)
Picture #8: I'm not so sure about this new bathing thing...
I have just finished reading a paper for my Terrorism class that BEAUTIFULLY encapsulates much of my frustration with our country, and our administration. Ry, I'm dove-ish less because of any inherent distaste for warfare (I've strongly considered joining the military at various points, and I grew up playing with guns just like any other kid) than because I feel like the entire mess in which we find ourselves was a result of tragic overreactions by our leaders. Unfortunately, our leaders were hardly alone in their hysteria and overreacting--viz., all the guys on 3rd floor Mitchell screaming "Let's BOMB those M-F-ing ay-RABS back to the Stone Age!!!"--but I had hoped for more from them.
So, I've taken several photos of Cae from Mommy's photo sessions with him, and from Grandma Long's visit, and have captioned some of them. However, they are interspersed in the midst of several of my favorite passages from the following paper:
Mueller, John. "Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration." Prepared for presentation at the National Convention of the International Studies Association, in Honolulu, HI, March 1-5, 2005.
Note: This guy isn't some kind of partisan hack--he absolutely SHREDS Carter for his actions during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and tears Clinton several new ones over Black Hawk Down and various other terrorist incidents--just so y'all don't accuse me of confirmational bias...
(Everything italicized comes from the paper--my favorite lines have been rendered in boldface as well.)
As always, comments from dissenters are heartily welcomed.
Picture #1: Cae during his first stint in his crib.
As Chapman and Harris put it, "our nation's priorities remain radically torqued toward homeland defense and fighting terrorism at the expense of objectively greater societal needs" (2002, 30). Or, in the words of risk analyst David Banks, "If terrorists force us to redirect resources away from sensible programs and future growth, in order to pursue unachievable but politically popular levels of domestic security, then they have won an important victory that mortgages our future" (2002, 10). Accordingly, three key issues set out by risk analyst Howard Kunreuther require, but rarely get, careful discussion (2002, 662-63):
How much should we be willing to pay for a small reduction in probabilities that are already extremely low?
How much should we be willing to pay for actions that are primarily reassuring, but do little to change the actual risk?
How can certain measures, such as strengthening the public health system, which provide much broader protection than terrorism, get the attention they deserve? (34-35)
Picture #2: Big Yawn!
There is no reason to suspect that George W. Bush's concern about terrorism is anything but genuine. However, his approval rating did receive the greatest boost for any president in history in September 2001, surpassing even that achieved by Jimmy Carter when U.S. hostages were taken in Iran in 1979. It would be politically unnatural for him not to notice. His chief political adviser, Karl Rove, in fact was already declaring in 2003 that the "war" against terrorism would be central to Bush's reelection campaign the next year. It was, and it worked. The Democrats, scurrying to keep up, have stumbled all over each other with plans to expend even more of the federal budget on the terrorist threat, such as it is, than President Bush. (35)
As Benjamin Friedman notes, "Telling Kansan truck drivers to prepare for nuclear terrorism is like telling bullfighters to watch out for lightning. It should not be their primary concern. For questionable gains in preparedness, we spread paranoia." (35)
As has often been noted, however, the media appear to have a congenital incapacity for dealing with issues of risk and comparative probabilities--except, of course, in the sports and financial sections. If a baseball player hits three home runs in a single game, press reports will include not only notice of that achievement, but also information about the rarity of the event as well as statistics about the hitter's batting and slugging averages and about how many home runs he normally hits. I may have missed it, but I have never heard anyone on the media stress that in every year except 2001 only a few hundred people in the entire world have died as a result of international terrorism. (35-36)
Picture #3: The Long ladies and Cae
Retaining his worst case perspective, however, Joshua Goldstein worries about terrorists exploding nuclear weapons in the United States in a crowded area and declares this to be "not impossible" or the likelihood "not negligible." [...] But there are, of course, all sorts of things that are "not impossible." Thus, a colliding meteor or comet could destroy the earth, Tony Blair or Vladimir Putin and their underlings could decide one morning to launch a few nuclear weapons at Massachusetts, George Bush could decide to bomb Hollywood, an underwater volcano could erupt to cause a civilization-ending tidal wave, bin Laden would convert to Judaism, declare himself to the Messiah, and hire a group of Roman mafiosi to have himself publicly crucified. (37)
**Speaking of which, any of y'all remember when Marilyn Manson made headlines with a similar stunt? Whatever happened to that guy?
Anonymous 2004, 160, 177, 226, 241, 242, 250, 252, 263. One of the book's many hysterical passages runs: "To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and Georgia, in France and on the Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large numbers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large number is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover, will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows." In the acknowledgements, the author thanks Ms. Christina Davidson, his editor, "who labored mightily to delete from the text excess vitriol" (Anonymous 2004, xiii, 241-42). Perhaps Ms. Davidson should have labored just a bit more mightily. (Footnote, 38)
Picture #4: The family (minus Kala)--why is Cae the only one who looks rested?
The sudden deaths of that many [10,000] Americans--although representing less than four thousandths of one percent of the population--would indeed be horrifying and tragic, the greatest one-day disaster the country has suffered since the Civil War. But the only way it could "do away with our way of life" would be if we did that to ourselves in reaction. The process would presumably involve repealing the bill of rights, boarding up all churches, closing down all newspapers and media outlets, burning all books, abandoning English for North Korean, and refusing evermore to consume hamburgers. (39)
In general, it seems to me that the efforts against terrorism should be considered more like a campaign against crime than like a war, however much the war imagery may get the juices flowing (see also Howard, 2002). Wars end, but since they are carried out by isolated individuals or by tiny groups at times of their own choosing, terrorism and crime never do. One cannot, therefore, "conquer" terrorism or "bring it to an end." Like crime, one can at best seek to reduce its frequency and destructiveness so that people feel reasonably--but never perfectly--safe from it. Of course, military measures may sometimes be useful in the campaign, as they may have been in Afghanistan. But to frame the campaign against terror as a "war" risks the danger of raising unreasonable expectations. [...] Since the creation of insecurity, fear, anxiety, hysteria, and overreaction is central for terrorists, they can be defeated simply by not becoming terrified and by resisting the temptation to overreact: as Friedman aptly puts it, "one way to disarm terrorists is to convince regular Americans to stop worrying about them" (2004, 32). (40)
Picture #5: Cae checkin' out Daddy from the safety of his Snoopy-clad knees...
That is, instead of inducing hysteria, which seems to be one of the terrorism industry's central goals, officials and the media should responsibly assess probabilities and put them in some sort of context rather than simply stressing extreme possibilities so much and so exclusively. What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: "How worried should I be?" Instead, the message, as one concerned Homeland Security official puts it, is "Be scared. Be very, very scared. But go on with your lives" (Gorman 2003a, 1461-62). [...] What we need, then, is more pronouncements like the one in a recent book by Senator John McCain: "Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It's still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave....Suck it up, for crying out loud. You're almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you're not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That's not a life worth living, is it?" But admonitions like that are exceedingly rare, almost non-existent. Instead, we get plenty of alarmism from the terrorism industry and almost nothing--nothing--about realistic risks and probabilities. The result, as Bart Kosko points out, is a situation in which "government plays safe by overestimating the terrorist threat, while the terrorists oblige by overestimating their power" (2004). (41)
**Yet another reason why I like John McCain...
Picture #6: Mommy, I am NOT amused...
Instead of maintaining that the terrorists might strike anywhere at any time, and thereby stoking the fear of random violence, it might make sense to suggest that only certain (relatively small) areas are primarily at risk. If the benefit from the reduction of fear in the excluded areas is greater than the costs of fear enhancement in the designated ones, the measure would presumably be, on balance, sound public policy. (44)
It might also be useful to plumb the "cry wolf" phenomenon for possibilities. [...] However, for this to work, there are four special issues. First, because the people in charge are aware of the cry wolf problem, it is important that they not give in to the temptation to refrain from issuing warnings after they have been repeatedly mistaken: they must keep it up. Second, the warnings must be specific enough to be falsifiable: according to one version, Aesop's boy cries "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" a claim the villagers are able quickly to falsify. He does not issue such unfalsifiable outcries as "I have intercepted some chatter recently suggesting that a wolf might chase the sheep at some time in the indefinite future, or, then again, maybe not." Third, it would be important to consider the cost of the alert itself: for example, Orange Alerts cost the Los Angeles airport alone $100,000 per day (Goo 2004). And fourth, it is crucial to the process that the community remembers the false alarms and tallies them up. In the real world, doomsday scenarists are rarely held to account because few remember their extravagant predictions when they fail to materialize. (44)
**Anybody else ever listen to the Capitol Steps' "The Fright Before Christmas"? It's the one narrated by "Michael Chertoff"...absolutely BRILLIANT!! Mueller's boy who cries wolf is very reminiscent of that track...
Picture #7: His first naked bath! (And, now, naked pictures!)
Also useful might be to reconsider the standards about what is harmful in some cases. The potential use of "dirty" bombs apparently formed the main concern during the Orange Alert at the end of 2003 ('Dirty Bombs' 2004; Allison, 2004, 56-57). However, while a "dirty" bomb might raise radiation 25 percent over background levels in an area and therefore into a range the Environmental Protection Agency officially considers undesirable, there ought to be some discussion about whether that really constitutes "contamination" or indeed much of a danger given the somewhat arbitrary and exceedingly cautious levels declared to be acceptable by the EPA. In fact, since "dirty" bombs simply raise radiation levels somewhat above normal backgrounds levels in a small area, a common recommendation from nuclear scientists and engineers is that those exposed should calmly walk away. But this bit of advice was not been advanced prominently (or even, perhaps, at all) by those in charge. (45)
In fact, the war in Iraq will probably prove encouraging to international terrorists because they will take even an orderly American retreat from the country as a great victory--even greater than the one against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.86 Osama bin Laden's theory that the Americans can be defeated, or at least productively inconvenienced, by inflicting comparatively small, but continuously draining, casualties on them will achieve apparent confirmation, and a venture designed and sold in part as a blow against international terrorists will end up emboldening and energizing them. A comparison might be made with Israel's orderly, even overdue, withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 that insurgents there took to be a great triumph for their terrorist tactics--and, most importantly, so did like-minded Palestinians who later escalated their efforts to use terrorism to destroy Israel itself. People like bin Laden believe that America invaded Iraq as part of its plan to control the oil in the Persian Gulf area. But the United States does not intend to do that (at least not in the direct sense bin Laden and others doubtless consider to be its goal), nor does it seek to destroy Islam as many others also bitterly assert. Thus just about any kind of American withdrawal will be seen by such people as a victory for the harassing terrorist insurgents, who, they will believe, are due primary credit for forcing the United States to leave without accomplishing what they take to be its key objectives. Moreover, the insurgency in Iraq seems to have developed as something of a terrorist breeding and training experience (Priest 2005). (46)
Hysteria and hysterical overreaction to terrorism are hardly required, and they can be costly and counterproductive. There are uncertainties and risks out there, and plenty of dangers and threats. But these are unlikely to prove to be existential. The sky, as it happens, is not falling, nor is apocalypse creeping over the horizon. Perhaps we can relax a little. (47)
Picture #8: I'm not so sure about this new bathing thing...
Saturday, December 1, 2007
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