Dean's World

I have always liked Joe Biden.

No, I mean always, even back when I was a loyal Democrat, a guy who fervently voted for Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. I actually thought that whole "plagiarism" accusation that scuttled his candidacy in the 1980s was overblown.

But my goodness, Joe: Obama is the first black man to run for President who is 'articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy'????

Joe. We all open our mouths and insert our feet now and then. I more than anyone understand that. But jeebus, dude, this makes "macaca" look like nothing by comparison.

Not that you can't fix it, Senator, but you'd better both apologize AND show a sense of humor about yourself when issuing that apology. Something along the lines of, "Oh jeez, that came out so wrong I'm totally embarrassed."

Molly Ivins has died at age 62 of that horrible beast known as cancer.

It's hard for me to know what to say about this. It's like finding out that Ann Coulter or Maureen Dowd have died. I can't quite think of what exactly I should say.

I always liked her Texas attitude--I am a fellow Texan after all--and I tend to like ballsy women. Even if they are faux-liberals like Molly.

But it's hard to think of any major political commentator of the last few decades who's been more shallow and spiteful, except maybe Michael Savage or Paul Krugman or Ann Coulter or Maureen Dowd. On the other hand, there's much to be said for just saying what you honestly think and let the world be damned.

I'm sure she was much beloved by her friends, and admired by devoted fans to whom she devoted a career to saying every nasty thing that they ever wanted to hear. She also had a tough life in a lot of ways, usually undeservedly so, which probably fed a lot of the anger that so obviously fueled most of her work.

So I guess I'll just say:

Go with God, Molly.

Congress, which has ultimate authority in all war declarations, is probably the most pusillanimous body on Earth--regardless of which party controls it. Especially the House.

Neo has some typically on-target observations.

Me and some friends hit Ann Arbor last night and we dropped by a store by the name of "The Vault of Midnight." It caters mostly to comic books fans but also stock anime and anime-related goods. While there I picked up the trade paperback, Superman: Red Son. I was looking for Batman: The Killing Joke but apparently it's hard to find.

Not being able to find the Batman book I wanted I wandered over the the Superman section. I've recently begun work on an Elseworlds story about Superman that I plan to submit to DC and I wanted to read a few more important Superman tales.

As Superman: Red Son is also an Elseworlds tale it isn't considered canon but it's an important Superman tale nevertheless. What's weird is that the story I'm working on is similiar to this one in a number of ways. But, I suppose when you make Superman leader of the planet only so many things can happen and will be expected to happen just by staying logical and true to human nature. This discovery hasn't deterred me but, rather, shows me I'm going in the right direction with my tale.

Anyway, Superman: Red Son asks the question, "What if infant Kal-El landed 12 hours early?" That would place him in the U.S.S.R. He grows up to farmers just like his canonical counterpart but is instilled with communist ideals of the loyal worker rather than apple pie, white picket fences and the Red, White and Blue.

It's a very good tale. What's nice is that he never really becomes a villian in the traditional snese of the word. He thinks what he is doing is right and he never resorts to violence to sway people. When the world is under his rule and the United States is the only power holding out, he doesn't attack. He knows he can take the nation by force if he wanted, and the suffering in that country would be lifted should he do so, but that's not who he is. While he worked close with Stalin he never adopted Stalin's ways.

He felt people should choose communism. It shouldn't be forced on anyone.

'Course, once in you best not get out of line or you'll find yourslef labotomized.

Looking for the Superman equiviliant of my seminial Batman stories this one does well. Still, I don't know if it is as good a Frank Miller's or Jeph Loeb's works. That's one of the reasons I began work on my tale. I can't find the Superman story I'm looking for. Superman: Red Son is close. But not quite there.

If I have one complaint it would be the epilogue. Rather than seeing Kal-El (or Kal-L) launched into a predestination paradox I would have liked to have seen the wishes of Kal-L parents' realized. The writer of the story took us by the hand and showed us the Soviet Superman, it would have been nice if he brought us back to Smallville. If he left us with the Superman we know.

If you read the book you know what I'm talking about.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, go buy the book!

How are the cold temperatures in Chicago, the tilt of the earth, its orbit around the sun, and the relative wealth of the Northern Hemisphere compared to that of the Southern Hemisphere related? Are they related?

More here.

This may be old news to y'all but if you like birds, true love, adversity, and raising young 'uns (I may be repeating myself here), check out

A Tale of Two Cockatoos

Lots of pictures. Touching story if you're a soppy romantic like me.

I’m not sure how many people in this crowd are familiar with the Second Life online community/game. It is essentially a MMORPG like World of Warcraft or EverQuest, but with the twist that it creates a virtual world similar to the real world, but where the ‘residents’ (players) build the world themselves. There’s been a good deal of hype about Second Life, particularly in the British press, which of course lead to the typical warnings about the addictive nature of on-line gaming, the dangers inherent in virtual communities and the ever-present notion that this is all a scam.

Oh, and of course, there is also a parody site, Get a First Life.

There is also a letter to the parody site from the Linden Labs (creators of Second Life) legal department. Get a First Life is pretty funny. The letter is priceless.

Via /.

Yes, I'm watching American Idol this year. I watch it every year. Great show.

I just don't like the early rounds. All those endless shots of awful singers doesn't thrill me. I become interested when serious singers finally get their shot.

I'll begin a weekly commentary about it once they've settled on their final few dozen or so. I find the show a waste of time--and a little too manipulative for my tastes--until they get there.

By the way, as a matter of simple mathematics, it is statistically nearly impossible that the three celebrity judges see more than a tiny fraction of contestants in any city they go to. You realize that, don't you? Because it's obvious if you do a little arithmetic.

(Via Professor Reynolds. More right here.)

The latest Grand Rounds is up at Envisioning 2.0.

Thanks to my geekette wife's talents, we figured out what was wrong with the DVR and why it was only picking up "Heroes" on the Friday night SciFi Channel rerun rather than the NBC first-run. So now we're getting the Monday episodes again.

Last night's "Heroes" was fun, eh? Can't wait to see more of Claire's biological mom, and Hiro's dad. :-)

Okay, this is not really news, but hopefully this will put a dent in the armour of politically correct anthropological revisionism:

Nicholas Wade is a science writer for the New York Times, who used to be as Politically Correct as anyone in that mob on 42nd Street. No longer. Wade has discovered the new anthropology, now informed by a radically improved understanding of the human genome. The new evidence is clearly explained in his recent book, Before the Dawn: Recovering the lost history of our ancestors. It looks at the deep human past --- tens to hundreds of thousands of years --- combining written records, archeology, anthropology and the human genome. The result is spectacular. If this book is any indication, Politically Correct history is a goner. Rousseau's Noble Savage is French toast.

Wade presents compelling evidence that humans appear to be genetically predisposed to warfare. Among ancient hunter-gatherers, "incessant warfare" was the norm, just as it is today among the Stone Age tribes of New Guinea and South America. Humans have a long history of cannibalism, so much that we carry genes to guard against the toxic consequences of eating human flesh (similar to Mad Cow prion disease). Modern humans are less aggressive than our ancestors were. The very fact that we can live in mass societies at reasonable peace with each other is an extraordinary advance...

...Anthropologists have become famous by writing that cannibalism was just a slanderous lie invented by the West. It all fit the neo-racist myth of the White Man's Guilt --- as at Duke University. Such people peddle the myths of the peaceful Hopis and Bushmen, the Gandhi-esque Hindus, Buddhists and Sufis, and all the morally superior non-White cultures. (They somehow forget that Gandhi's independence movement led straight to four million ethnic killings during the Partition of 1948)....

Acknowledging human violence is not the same as excusing it. Just the opposite --- precisely because we have the capacity to destroy, we must be taught to act morally. That is the basic view of Western Civilization going back to the Code of Hammurabi. Civilized armed forces like the United States insist on high levels of restraint in their warfighters, even in the face of direct personal danger. But the civilized world is constantly faced with aggressive enemies willing to kill and die for some bizarre cause, from the heavenly glory of the Emperor to some Mullah's weird obsession with hanging sixteen year old girls who fall in love. Not to mention yet another Marxist scam to create a perfectly egalitarian paradise on earth, as is underway in Venezuela today.

One of the oddities of the Left is its constant sabotage of defensive warfare, even when the facts are as plain as the assault on the Twin Towers on 9/11. Today Europe is going through yet another revisionist version of its own bloody history, trying to deny the undeniable facts of the 20th century. Big German media like Stern and Der Spiegel loudly equate the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein with the war against Hitler. That version of history involves not just one but two Big Lies — One, that Saddam was an innocent victim of American aggression; and Two, that Hitler was, too. It's too weird for words. Let's hope they get over it - because if they don't, they could be setting the stage for yet another imperial adventure...

The Barbarians are always at the gate..

Instapundit has a roundup.

It's remarkable what a different picture you get when you look at objective data instead of the headlines. But almost no one wants to look at objective data.

See how many your Liberal friends have fallen for.

My personal favorite:

7-Iraq Is In A State of Civil War. Then so was Britain when the IRA was active, and so is Spain today because ETA is still active. Both IRA and ETA are terrorist organizations based on ethnic identity. India also has tribal separatist rebels who are quite active. That's not considered a civil war. This is all about partisans playing with labels for political ends, not accurately describing a terror campaign.

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghan bloggers. This week we have friends, the military action in Najaf, letters to a father, and much, much more.

Miraj of Baghdad Chronicles posts about herself, her circle of friends, and their experiences of the last 13 years. Interesting perspective.

Baghdad Connect's post is actually a plaint about crime and government corruption but I found his list of high prices (at which he's outraged) interesting. It looks to me as though the price of gasoline is still being subsidized.

There were a number of interesting (if disturbing) things posted at Roads to Iraq this week but I found this comment about the military engagement in Najaf yesterday the most interesting: apparently, the Shi'ite sect that was engaged was anti-Iran. Then Some! has a rather interesting commentary on the engagement:

what's the deal? suddenly our army can work as efficiently as the american forces?

seems like this has been planned for weeks and "our guys" had wind of it only some days earlier and managed to foil the whole thing.

Iraqi Konfused Kid has a lengthy commentary on the documentary Iraq in Fragments.

First Words, First Walk, First…in Iraq considers the good aspects of a power blackout.

Hammorabi recounts the story of Hussein, grandson of Mohammed.

Omar of Iraq the Model says the raid last week on a military base that resulted in the deaths of four American soldiers was an inside job.

The Mesopotamian has a solid post on the “new strategy”.

Where Date Palms Grow has a commentary on the state of things in Iraq in the form of three letters to his father.

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

See you later this afternoon.

My lovely wife recently linked this hilarious GEICO commercial.

She actually voluntarily, and spontaneously, for no compensation, put up a GEICO ad on her site. Why?

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: the new pact between advertisers and the audience is that if you entertain us, we will reward you with our support.

Well I guess that's not new. But this part is:

Entertain us, and we'll give you free advertising. Sort of like The Snickers "Happy Peanuts" Song.

The most effective ads of the early 21st century will be ads that are witty, intelligent, engaging, and maybe even a little subversive.

"Truth is stranger than fiction" is a phrase you often hear tossed around. I'd add a corollary to it: truth can be funnier than fiction, too.

Such was the case on tonight's "Hardball" where host Chris Matthews got so excited with his quest to blame the Bush admin for the Valerie Plame kerfuffle, he actually started drooling about it on the air, going past anything that "Saturday Night Live" actor Darrell Hammond has ever done in parody.

And no, that's not hyperbole. See the screenshot to the right and watch the video here in WMV or in RealPlayer.

This wasn't the first time Matthews has embarrassed himself regarding Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame. Last September, the notoriously effusive commentator couldn't find the words to describe the case once it became clear that Karl Rove would not be indicted.

First off, I am a complete sucker for anything written by PJ O'Rourke. "Holidays in Hell" remains one of the best books I've ever read, period. If I was marooned on a desert island and had to bring two books with me, it would definitely be the second book I chose (the first being 100 Ways to Escape Off a Desert Island).

I'm also a reluctant fan of the free market. I'm hesitant about it because if I found something that worked better, I'd champion it. Unfortunately no system does, and while I continue to have difficulties with it, I still believe that it's the best system around.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is pretty much the bible of free market capitalism. So, when I found that PJ O'Rourke had set about reading and commenting on Smith's tome, I immediately bought it. Two tastes that taste great together: PJ O'Rourke and Free Markets. Yummy!

And the book does not disappoint. I'm reading the last chapter and am seriously bummed that the book is coming to an end.

What I find truly enlightening about the book is that Smith pretty much "got" most of the problems we have in capitalism. He understood that workers tend to avoid work and managers try to use the company to their own ends at the expense of the shareholders. He also shows that in essence, every free economic exchange creates benefits on both sides. For example, I value the double-cheeseburger that I ate for lunch more than the $1.06 it cost me, while McDonalds values the cash more than the burger. It's a win-win motivated by selfishness on the part of both myself and McDonalds. Of course I should add in the cost of the burger to my health, and to the nagging I would get from the Wife - but she doesn't read my writing...

This seems like common sense, but according to O'Rourke, Smith was big on common sense. He didn't care too much for complex philosophies although he was friends with David Hume, a philosopher of the Enlightenment. He was a moral man who wrote Theory of Moral Sentiments in which he lays out why people are attracted to nuts and flakes more so than steady, ethical types. Watch an hour of Vh1 to see why the Surreal Life is peopled by a porn star and screwed up B-list celebrities instead of your Aunt Martha and Uncle Bob whose idea of a party involves pinochle and chips with salsa.

This is one of Atlantic Monthly Press's "Books That Changed the World" series, in which a modern writer looks at one of the Classics. Up next: Darwin's Origin of Species in March. I hate to admit this, but while I love the ideas conveyed by the Classics, the language often puts me to sleep. Through PJ O'Rourke, Adam Smith's ideas about trade became alive and relevant to me today - which is exactly what the Classics are supposed to do.

BBC description of "Perky's" heroic struggle

Seablogger Alan Sullivan describes how we can sometimes be a little too civilized..

You might want to take a look at this op-ed in the LA Times dispassionately comparing the attacks on 9/11 (and our reactions to them) with historic parallels. Warning: take blood pressure medicine before reading.

It seems to me that there are a number of possible interpretations of the data other than the one profferred by the professor—that we've over-reacted. John Donovan's is that we've under-reacted. Another possibility is that the Soviet leaders did not value the lives of their citizens as we do (historically indisputable).

Or, perhaps, he's using the wrong yardstick. We took far more civilian casualties on that day than we did in the incidents that precipitated our entry into World Wars I and II combined. We also took more than $1 Trillion in physical and financial damages—again, far more than the precipitating incidents in World Wars I and II combined.

Tonight at 8:30pm CST/9:30pm EST Turner Classic Movies will be showing Tod Browning's Freaks. If you get TCM and haven't already seen the picture (and aren't watching Heroes), it's well worth your time.

Although sometimes characterized as a horror movie, Browning's 1932 parable of humanity and inhumanity is much, much more than that. It's the story of a beautiful trapeze artist who marries a man who's a sideshow attraction, infidelity, and revenge. I won't give away more than that—you'll have to watch it yourself to learn more. When it premiered three quarters of a century ago, it was considered so shocking it virtually ended Browning's career.

But there's another reason to check this movie out. Many of the performers in it were actual sideshow performers more than 75 years ago. And some of those people have conditions which simply aren't seen any more in America or Western Europe: they're routinely corrected at birth or very early in life. My wife, a teacher of special needs kids, was fascinated to see what might have happened to some of her students without today's remarkable medical interventions.

We've come a long way both in technology and attitudes and Freaks will bring those points home to you.

Hmmmm. Guess I'm doing the Battlestar Galactica posts now. Well, I know that Dean's enthusiasm for the show has waned of late so I guess it's up to the next generation.

With the show on at 10 PM on Sunday's that means I don't often watch it until the following Monday. To be honest the new day doesn't work for me at all. For example, I have a bi-weekly game I attend. It typically gets done at 11 PM. I need to get to bed afterwards for work the next day. It's a bloody pain in my posterior.

However, as these posts are coming up after the episode airs it allows me to give my thoughts (albeit via hidden text) on the post on the front page! Go me.

It bugs me sometimes that in early 21st Century America we sometimes can't be blunt about ethnic issues. We're always so worried about stepping on toes and being accused of prejudice and bigotry rather than just saying things how they are.

For example, a good friend of mine in his 70s from Michigan recently became a "snowbird" retiree: he has lived in Michigan his whole life, but recently bought a condo down in Florida to spend his winter months at. He'd been resisting it for years but he finally did it because the winter months were hurting him. His kids urged him to do it in fact.

We talked last night and he told me how much he loved it down there: the winters in Florida are balmy and gentle, and then he comes up here to Michigan during Spring and Summer to be with his grandkids (his wife, sadly, passed some years ago).

We were on the phone last night and he was talking about how happy he was, and I said, "Hey, I hear there are like 3 or 4 other Jews down there in Florida, so maybe you've made a friend or two?"

He laughed and said, "Oh my God, it's like Jew Central down here! I go play golf with all the other Jews, and go to synagogue every Friday night and we see each other--it's great!"

I guess if you were being mean about it you'd read a lot into that. Me? I think it's awesome.

I have the same reaction when I hear there are tons of Poles in Hamtramck, Michigan, or lots of Arabs in Dearborn, Michigan. I think you should just grin and say, "Yeah, and isn't that a great thing?" God bless America.

Lebanese bloggers Rampurple and Jeha, who both show up at times in my comments section, busted Hezbollah and Michel Aoun for peddling a blatantly doctored photograph on Hezbollah's An Manar TV channel.

Here is a screen shot of Aoun holding up the photo on TV.

Below is the photo. It supposedly shows a (Christian) Lebanese Forces “militia man” in the lower-left corner pointing a weapon at Lebanese soldiers. Notice the cross on his sleeve. The man and the cross were photoshopped in.

Here is the real picture.

And here is the picture that was used as bad photoshop fodder. It was taken during last summer’s war and was itself criticized as propaganda for its inaccurate caption. Notice the cross on the sleeve isn't there. That's because this man is Hezbollah, not a member of the Christian Lebanese Forces.

Hats off to Lebanese bloggers for exposing this one. Busting propagandists for fauxtography isn’t just for Americans any more.

UPDATE and CORRECTION: Lebanese blogger Nancy says Aoun and Hezbollah were busted on television by Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. So this isn't just a blogosphere thing. And N10452 posted this at Rampurple's site, not Rampurple herself. Credit where it's due.

UPDATE: Beirut's Daily Star picked up the story.

UPDATE: Apologies to EU Referendum. I should have said "Westerners," not "Americans."

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be "the height of irresponsibility" to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.
...
"We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office" in January 2009, the former first lady said.

This has to be a joke...

Let's just start with the illiteracy of making the prince be the one who doesn't want Montague and Capulet to marry...

And let's end with: "With the help of their friends Friar Lawrence and Kissy (the kissing fish), the day is saved and the young lovers are reunited"

Happy ending?!

This might be the best possible argument for indefinite copyrights...

At the urging of a lefty friend I have been forcing myself to sit through an anti-American propaganda film, "Why We Fight." Fortunately, I can link it for you without worrying that the film makers will profit from it, since it's now available online for free: if you've the stomach, you can just click right here.

It's agonizingly bad. At least, the first 30 minutes are agonizingly bad. Noam Chomsky hasn't shown up yet but Gore Vidal has, natch. There's not a single thing in here that I haven't heard before. It's the standard boilerplate anti-American stuff that anyone who seriously watches politics has heard thousands of times before. Some of it's true, some of it's arguable, some of it's false, and all of it is outrageously slanted.

Hey, did you know that President Truman refused to accept Japan's surrender in the summer of 1945, just so he could drop the atomic bomb on them, establish a new American imperialism in the region, and start a world-wide war against Communism? Yep, that's the truth according to this film.

I'm not sure I can force myself to watch the remaining 60 minutes or so. Yet somehow I know my friend will accuse me of being "closed minded" and not able to watch things that I disagree with if I don't. When what he really needs to know is that you have to be very isolated and sheltered from other points of view to swallow a film like this.

Can't think of a nice way to tell him. Well maybe I'll go ahead and sit through the rest and think about it some more. Anyone else who wants to join me in this, let me know if you have any thoughts.

*Update*: Ugh, I'm still gamely struggling through. Just when I think the film's getting slightly reasonable, suddenly now we're on Evil Dick Cheney and Halliburton. And just when they start raising some salient points that are worth considering, they go off on the deep end and make him look like Darth Vader. My God, they must all love this film over at Daily Kos.

Question for the audience: will Dean make it all the way through this film and retain his sanity? What's the over and under on this thing?

*Update 2*: Okay, now we're almost an hour in, and we're hitting the cliched theme of "poor wide-eyed innocents who sign up for the military, seduced and fooled into signing up because they are given incentives to do so." Oh, these poor helpless innocent babes in the woods, seduced into committing mass-murder for the Military-Industrial Complex that reduces human beings to objects! I'm guessing a Chief Wiggles would not be allowed to appear on camera in a "documentary" like this.

Not that there isn't a Military-Industrial Complex, and not that it shouldn't be viewed with skepticism. But oy. I'll give the filmmakers this: it's a good polemic.

And Oh My God! They're now interviewing a South Vietnamese woman who is talking with some pain about how the Americans abandoned the South Vietnamese--and the film-maker has somehow managed to elide that whole point and make it look like it's the military that's at fault for that! Oh My God! Nothing about the evil that was Ho Chi Minh, nothing about the evil that was Communism in Vietnam--no, just elide all that so you can make it look like America was bad!!

I'm opening up a beer at this point.

Update 3: Okay, now we're just past an hour and we're on "Saddam was our friend." And the Project For A New American Century is now central focus. And Think Tanks are sinister things. Someone shoot me please.

Update 4: At about an hour 10 minutes in, we're up to Saint Dan Rather of Texas, evil Donald Rumsfeld, and even--I swear to God--they're demonizing the idea of having reporters embedded with American troops, as if that's a bad thing. Wow.

Update 5: At 76 minutes, almost on cue, Robert Byrd appears. Heroic Robert Byrd! I wish I had some whisky and not just beer.

Update 6: At an hour 20 minutes, we have pictures of people horribly hurt in Iraq by American invasion. Gutwrenching. Not one word about all the people tortured and murdered by Saddam's evil regime. Nothing. The Americans just came in and murdered people. Plus: precision-guided munitions that minimize civilian casualties are now being demonized. Wow. Just: wow.

Update 7: At an hour and 28 minutes into this painful "documentary," I find the most nakedly dishonest part, where the film reaches Michael Moore-ish levels of dishonesty: they imply strongly that a couple of years after the liberation of Iraq, the White House was "forced to admit" that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Omitting the entire fact that the administration denied that repeatedly before the invasion began, and which was why they sought a separate war declaration against Iraq after the October 2001 war declaration against Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. This is the vomit-inducingly horrible part of this documentary. I guess I should have seen it coming though.

Update 8: HOLY FRICKING COW. At an hour 32 minutes, they suggest that the first Democratic regime in the world was the Roman Republic. Oh my God. Plus an outright lie: that Congress gave the President the power to declare war on his own initiative. Please shoot me a second time.

Final Update: You know, it's not that those who made this movie--or those who agree with it--have nothing to say worth discussing. But the arrogance behind it, the prejudices, the paint-by-numbers presumptions, and the utter cowardice in refusing to bring on people who robustly refute their point of view, are what make it so galling. This film is nothing but a polemic. If those who made it, and those who watch it, don't realize that then we're all the poorer for it.

Classical Values notes the latest horrors in Palestine.

And should for some time now.

You know, I've been hearing since the early 1990s now that Moore's Law is stopping, or has stopped, or will stop very soon.

It never has, and shows no signs of it now.

I've been telling people for ten years now that the idea that low-fat, low-cholesterol diets were healthy was rubbish. They don't do more than marginally help with weight loss, and they don't help prevent cancer or heart disease or reduce mortality in any detectable way.

You know, it's amazing the names I and others have been called for saying so, but it's increasingly the accepted medical view.

I mention all this just because I saw this article this morning on Instapundit: Unhappy Meals.

Most of the advice nutritionists and physicians have been giving people on diet over the last couple of decades has simply been wrong. Tragic, eh?

Allison Kraus & Union Station Live is easily one of my all-time favorite recordings.

God she's got a beautiful voice. God that is one tight band.

I have placed Erectile Dysfunction and the Modern WRiter in our Best Discussions Archive.

Not because anyone "won" or "lost" that discussion but because the entire thing was funny and also insightful. I challenge any literature professor to say that she's seen a more robust discussion in any undergrad class.

"You admit that you can’t see so beg my pardon
Honesty’s a virtue that can hurt you let it be..."

Open thread go.

The leaders of the Google corporation admit that cooperating in the Chinese government's oppression of its people was a mistake.

It's rather interesting that they start by just saying it was a "business mistake," i.e. that it hurt their business. Then, "perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense."

Unprincipled approaches making perfect business sense, of course, so long as profits remain high. Which is, in the end, how most publicly corporations always have operated, and always will operate. Because that's how these state-created, state-sustained fictional entities are structured, no matter what the people in charge really say.

Oh well. I forgive them. At least, in the sense of being less reluctant to do business with them. I may even put their actual search engine back on Dean's World.

Maliki recently won broad support for the new security plan to firmly crack down on violence in Baghdad. He even won significant Sunni support in the parliament. You can hear the report on this on NPR. They also note that significant terrorist leaders in Iraq have been stepping away from violence, as the AP reported earlier this week.

(Thanks, Michael.)

I like the show Heroes. It's not what I'd call "great television," but it's certainly great fun. If you missed it, or if you want to check out the show, you can now watch all episodes online for free.

I generally catch Heroes when it airs on SciFi. So I see the show returned from its mid-season hiatus this week. Pretty good episode. Claire, Jessica, and Hiro are still my favorites, and Mohinder still gets on my nerves. I'm especially curious what's going to happen with Jessica.

It was also cool to see Christopher Eccleston (aka Doctor Who) on the show. I didn't recognize him at first with the beard and the midwestern American accent. It's also cool to see that George Takei will be joining the cast in future episodes.

At Nation-Building, I tried to seed a discussion about Iraq with the following constraints:

I'd like to discuss Iraq for once, without mentioning Saddam, Bush, WMD, or neocons. I'd like to discuss Iraq, for once, without mentioning Democrats or Republicans, or invoking a concept like "victory" whose meaning is completely variable depending on which particular intersection of competing interests you choose to embrace. I'd like to discuss Iraq without nebulous worrying about a Shi'a Crescent. I'd like to discuss Iraq without hearing about Democracy, or about Israel, or America. Iraq is Iraq. Can we have that discussion, or are we too bound up in our interests outside Iraq to discuss Iraq, for its own sake?

Click over to NB to see some questions I came up with that I think met these constraints, and my own answers. I am not optimistic about this experiment but I feel it's worth a shot. I would like to see what we Esmayites come up with too. What do you think?

6:35 PM Eastern.

Open thread go!

I went to South Lebanon looking for Lebanese civilians who witnessed the July War between Israel and Hezbollah and who could, perhaps, clarify some controversial claims. Did Israel bomb indiscriminately? Did Hezbollah use human shields?

Some civilians did testify that Hezbollah used people in their village as human shields. And I found evidence that Israel at least sometimes struck with precision, if not at all times.

Lebanese civilians, though, weren’t the only witnesses to the war. Hezbollah was there, too – although I’m officially blacklisted with the organization and am denied access to interviews.

The Israeli Defense Forces also were there. I found a soldier who spent the entire war in and out of South Lebanon. He was willing to talk to me by phone even though our interview was illegal – he’s still in the army and is not supposed to talk to anyone in the media about what he did and what he saw. He did anyway, though, and he did not say what I thought he would say. The number of people killed in South Lebanon may be more heavily tilted toward Hezbollah fighters than most of us realized.

To preserve his anonymity I can only identify him as “an Israeli soldier in a long-range patrol unit.” So I’ll just call him Eli, which isn’t his name. Our conversation by phone was recorded. Here is the transcript.

read the rest at michaeltotten.com

This is good news, sort of - Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq

First the bad news...

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.

Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing. The country's nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Tehran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq.

"There were no costs for the Iranians," said one senior administration official. "They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back."...

...In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.

...and why the press release?

UPDATE: Of this news, Wretchard at the Belmont Club says:

...in war timing is nearly everything. The difference between a brilliant attack and fiasco might be a few hours and here the counterstroke has been delayed for a year. The real danger to this tentative aggressiveness is that may be too little — and too late. Just as the Sunni insurgency may have been fueled by the decision to abort the First Battle of Fallujah, Iranian aggression has been allowed to grow to the point where confronting it now risks a serious confrontation. As in the case of a man who has let a scratch become a gangrenous infection, the choices are now between bad and worse. But because the Mullahs have been allowed to run rampant for so long the force required to halt them will be high. An administration which spent its political capital mollifying its critics may now find it has none left to stop the nation's enemies. The patient may refuse the amputation as unnecessary, even as he refused the antibiotics as unnecessary earlier. The sands run out both comically and tragically.

If this cautionary tale is about anything, it should be about the dangers of showing weakness in the face of the enemy. What "catch and release" has been to the Iran and the insurgents is exactly what "cut and run" will be to civilization's terrorist enemies. Not a path to peace but a route to catastrophe. The realization will come, but it will come too late.

Quoted:

At 35, he is younger than many sheiks. And his Sunni Arab tribe is not one of the largest in Al Anbar province. But Sheik Sattar Bazeaa Fatikhan projects the aura of power and seriousness that comes to a man who has taken a stand.

After Sunni insurgents killed his father and four of his brothers last year, Fatikhan declared war against the insurgency.

He convened a summit of about a dozen prominent sheiks. From that meeting came a document called "The Awakening," in which Fatikhan persuaded all but one sheik to join him in opposition to the insurgency.

The sheiks pledged to encourage young men to join the police force and even the Shiite-led army. The document states that killing an American is the same as killing a member of their tribes. Since the gathering, Fatikhan said, the sheiks have "eliminated" a number of insurgents.

Read the rest here.

Then, of course, there's this:

Mahdi Army fighters said Thursday they were under siege in their Sadr City stronghold as U.S. and Iraqi troops killed or seized key commanders in pinpoint nighttime raids. Two commanders of the Shiite militia said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stopped protecting the group under pressure from Washington and threats from Sunni Muslim Arab governments.

It remains as true today as it has been from the beginning: long-term, the greatest danger we face is if we lose our own spines and our own patience.

(Via Black Five.)

A fascinating collection of historical political cartoons.

(Via Instapundit.)

After you sign this pledge, you might also want to read Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Iraq.

Quoted:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

Please sign this petition.

After you've done that, feel proud and check out Bill's latest photos.

Okay, you gourmet coffee fans: I dare you to drink this.

Black Five notes:

Last October, my sources began telling me about rumblings among the insurgent strategists suggesting that their murderous endeavor was about to run out of steam. This sense of fatigue began registering among mid-level insurgent commanders in late December, and it has devolved to the rank and file since then. The insurgents have begun to feel that the tide has turned against them. In many ways, the timing of this turnaround was inadvertent, coming at the height of political and bureaucratic mismanagement in Washington and Baghdad. A number of factors contributed to this turnaround, but most important was sustained, stay-the-course counterinsurgency pressure. At the end of the day, more insurgents were ending up dead or behind bars, which generated among them a sense of despair and a feeling that the insurgency was a dead end.

The Washington-initiated "surge" will speed-up the ongoing process of defeating the insurgency. But one should not consider the surge responsible for the turnaround. The lesson to be learned is to keep killing the killers until they realize their fate.

Read the whole thing right here.

Just hit this and start reading. And looking.

Science blog Reference Scan has returned.

Add it to your blogrolls.

My nephew's visa crisis has been resolved and he's on his way to France.

Thanks to everyone for the advice!

"Naturally," wrote the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, in one of her essays on poetry, "I prefer I writer who feels but doesn't write to one who writes but doesn't feel."

I'm with her. The world is dying from repression, wherever you look. I know of no more brilliant prophecy of our castrated society than the novella "St. Mawr," by D.H. Lawrence, in which an American Aristocrat falls in love with a horse who throws her British, Upper U, perfectly ghastly, erudite, pithy, nothing-from-the-hips down husband off his back. Fixes it so he is liteally as well as figuratively paralyzed from the waist.

An outtake--a scene between the society bound, depressed mother and the nature seeking, isolationist daughter, as they prepare to sail back to America, from England.

"My dear daughter, whatever else the human animal might be, he'd be a dangerous commodity." "I wish he would, mother. I'm dying of these empty, dangerless men, who are only sentimental and spiteful."

"Nonsense, you're not dying.

"I am, mother."

The deep, wild, merciless humor of D. H. Lawrence rarely gets acknowledged.

Since I am having so much fun, and before the net comes down and closes around me and lifts me thrashing to my next cage, let me quote the ever brilliant Mr. Lawrence on what he meant with that horse, St. Mawr, (and do read it if you haven't for it is Lawrence at his terrifying best.)

In his last work, Apocalypse, written in 1931, Lawrence explained:

"The horse is a dominant symbol...he links us, the first palpable and throbbing link with the ruddy-glowing Almighty of potency: he is the beginning even of our godhead in the flesh and as a symbol he roams the dark underworld meadows of the soul...Within the last fifty years man has lost the horse. Now man is lost...lost to life and power."

Lawrence wrote that in 1931.

So why do I bring this up? Because I am thinking of blood rush, rage, horses, war. Men. Women. The word. Lawrence's Mawr is said to be, "...a conflict between the raw vitality of wild nature and what he considered to be the sterility and sickness of modern industrial society."

And thank Pan he is not here to see this.

We live in a world where we have permitted the pharmaceutical industry to govern even the blood flow of the male erection. In modern journalism, which I like to spitefully call Pottery Barn Journalism, we have de-weeded all words and sentiment that grow against prediction-- a very precisely measured height of grass blade. All else makes us panic and reach for our "crazy" metaphors. No wonder Hunter S. Thompson could take no more. When blood flows into language, when feelings get to be real feelings and not lies, sulphuric and ungovernable, we all rush in to close the wound, an instinctive tourniquet against blood flow. I do it too. But I have been alerted to the disingenuity of this reflex. An epistolary exchange, here:

Isaiah Washington has started counselling after a furor erupted over a gay slur that he directed against fellow cast member T.R. Knight on the hit television hospital drama back in October, and later repeated at last week's Golden Globe Awards when asked about it. Mr. Washington, who earlier this week met gay and lesbian groups in Los Angeles, said in a statement he had begun counselling "as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again". "I appreciate the fact that I have been given this opportunity and I remain committed to transforming my negative actions into positive results, personally and professionally," the actor added.

Shonda Rhimes, the black creator and executive producer of "Grey's Anatomy", said that ABC and show producers had been working to address what she called Mr. Washington's "behavioral issues": "I speak for all the executive producers here at Grey's Anatomy when I say that Isaiah Washington's use of such a disturbing word was a shocking and dismaying event that insulted not only gays and lesbians everywhere but anyone who has ever struggled for respect in a world that is not always accepting of difference. We've been working within the Grey's family as well as with ABC and Touchstone to address the issue in a way that underscores the gravity of the situation while giving us all a foundation for healing. We applaud and encourage Isaiah's realization that he needs help and his subsequent choice to seek immediate treatment for his behavioral issues."

Ripclawe, a black conservative Republican blogger, sarcastically calls it Mr. Washington's re-education process: "I am all for the public humilation for bone headed moves done by Washington twice using the term faggot, but this has turned into a farce sending him in for 'psychological assessment'....Shonda Rhimes sold him down the river big time."

My response: Am I missing something here? Is there more to Mr. Washington's past, and this story? In rehab for what? Just exercise better control over what you say, fool. And why ain't white lesbian Rosie O'Donnell - who works for the same employer (ABC and Disney, its parent company) - in "rehab" after those recent racist comments that she said on air? Has she met with Asian groups? Yeah, right....

I'm a "member" of vocalpoint, (a product of Procter & Gamble) which is essentially a truly ambiguous e-newsletter with an equally ambiguous website.

Scott Karp, at Publishing 2.0 wrote about it once, and was under the impression that members would receive "a steady steam of samples," but what really happens is something else.

While they have sent me a few samples of products, what they've sent me mostly is promotional materials. Most of these are worthless. For example, when they were touting the Hamilton Beach Wave blender, they sent me a packet of cards containing nothing more than informational material on the blender. I don't know if they expected I'd stand on a street corner and hand these out, or what.

They sent me a DVD of Meerkat Manor last summer, prior to the programs' debut on TV, which I appreciated, but mostly it's like the blender thing. Junk promo stuff.

I get better promo stuff from the ad agencies who have me on their mailing lists. At least they send usable items once in a while, things like blow-up balls I can give to the kids.

The thing about Vocalpoint is that you always have the feeling there's something going on you don't know about. Somehow they choose members to do all kinds of things, yet there's no place on the website to find out what's next or volunteer to take part. They do have "surveys" on various things, but 5 or 6 questions with limited answers does not a study make.

If this is somebody's idea of "building community," then maybe they need to spend half an hour with Seth Godin, Dave Winer, or Doc Searls.

Of course I knew what this thing might be when I signed up, either as a data mining operation or a ham-handed way to build "buzz." I can see how some might feel used by this "community," since all the communication appears to be one-way, and then yesterday I got a message in my weekly newsletter that really made me wonder.

They introduced another online "community," and said at some point in the future, we valued members would have an opportunity to comment. Like we couldn't figure out where and what this thing was. My word!

This is what it is

I don't know what "capessa" might mean in any language, but it certainly does not mean "we have respect for our customers".  Capessa is also a production of Procter and Gamble, the multinational corporation that has hired the The Zizo Group, an ad agency, which is no better equipped to provide pertinent life information to women than any other ad agency.
Oddly, the site includes a Yahoo Group which now boasts over 200 members, most likely employees of one company or the other. So far all the messages appear to be professionally written.

You really need to see this shred of excrement to believe it. What they've got going on the main site is a bunch of visually charming individual women who are identified by first name only. Inexplicably, at least one is a familiar TV actress purporting to have faced and overcome one of a variety of life challenges featured. Yeah, right.

Of course I went straight to the story from Yolantha who claimed to have escaped domestic violence. Apparently, she watched Oprah one day and decided to change her life. Now she is either writing booklets about domestic violence or serving as a missionary in Haiti. One is not informed which way this particular story went.

Another woman married a divorced (yikes!) man. As the site says; "Beth swore off dating in the hopes that time by herself would give her a sense of who she was. The alone-time taught her to never settle for less than she deserved and opened her eyes to meeting the man of her dreams."

Still another "saved" her months-old marriage after figuring out that not everybody thinks alike. Duh.

Yolantha's story, and most of the others about all their wonderful lives, looks like something out of the creative department at ZiZo. Their "stories" are oh, so suggestive with very little meaning. All written at about a 5th or 6th grade reading level.

If they expect to address mature, adult women with this content, then they have gone wide of the mark. I suppose this "community" would serve fairly well for that limited group of teenaged and pre-teen girls with nothing but time on their hands.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the links they provide for "resources" on domestic violence, a site called "Healthwise," there is real danger here. They are giving bad, and incorrect advice.

They actually suggest to working women that the HR department at their company can help them. All any HR department can or will do at best is refer them to a women's shelter, where - guess what! They do not serve fulltime working women!

The shelter will counsel these women to quit their jobs and expect monetary compensation in a divorce from their X2B husbands. But they won't let them in otherwise, and not many women are eager to quit their jobs and go into a shelter these days.

They also provide information on obtaining restraining orders without any discussion of the repercussions of these serious legal procedures. The site claims "the batterer" will be arrested. This is incorrect. Most places that have "must arrest" policies automatically arrest the man present, without any consideration of his role in the incident.

They do not tell these women that even a temporary restraining order has the probability of permanently destroying her husband's career and future earning capacity. If her husband is in the military or belongs to any professional association, such as those for doctors, lawyers, or teachers, he will be forever excluded from their membership, due to their misguided "zero-tolerance" policies. Military men are barred from reenlistment, and so must find other employment.

None of this is helpful to women seeking practical help in a situation where abuse is occurring.

P&G, is, in effect, giving their Capessa "members" information that will ultimately diminish their capability of purchasing their products in the future.  Doesn't look like good marketing to me.

The always excellent Eric Scheie points to a story claiming that the Chinese government is banning pig references in order to avoid offending Muslims.

I'm not buying it.

Specifically, I'm not buying that any major Muslim group in China asked for this, and I'm not buying that it's a blanket policy in China. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if no Muslims in China were even asked about it. More likely the explanation is that someone in the government is unhappy with Nestle.

As one of Eric's commenters noted, references to the Year of the Pig are appearing all over the place elsewhere in China.

I don't know any Muslims who are offended to see a picture or cartoon of a pig. Since there are now literally hundreds of Muslim bloggers writing in English that can easily be found, can anyone find me any Muslim blogger anywhere who is religiously offended by images of pigs? Or any Koranic justification for such an attitude? They're supposed to avoid eating pigs; they aren't supposed to hate pigs. This is ridiculous.

Daniel Henninger:

The United States is talking itself into defeat in Iraq. Its political culture is now in a downward spiral of pessimism. In the halls of Congress, across endless newspaper columns, amid the punditocracy and on Sunday morning talk shows--all emit a Stygian gloom about America.

Yes, on any given day on some discrete issue (Prime Minister Maliki's bona fides, for example), the criticism of the American role is not without justification. But the cumulative effect of this unremitting ill wind is corrosive. We are not only on the way to talking ourselves into defeat in Iraq but into a diminished international status that may be harder to recover than the doom mob imagines. Self-criticism has its role, but profligate self-doubt can exact a price.

No kidding.

Read the rest right here.

Bill Ardolino is on his way home.

Well done, Bill. You served the men you covered proud.

From earlier comments: "It's neat as a toy, I guess. What else can it do?"

It can recognize a dozen or so faces. It responds to quite a few verbal commands. It does menial office tasks like fetching coffee or delivering interoffice mail or giving a guided tour of facilities. You can rent one for about a hundred thousand dollars a year.

It appears to be, to my eyes, about as smart as a trained cockatiel. More about it at Honda's web site.

In the ancient days of blogging--say, 4 years ago--it was obvious: the best thing about blogging was that you were dealing with real people writing what they honestly thought. Usually spontaneously, sometimes embarrassingly. But they were being themselves, and utterly honest to that.

What I've noticed about blogging lately is an ongoing effort to get more and more attention based on how well the blog serves a chosen audience: A Conservative. A Liberal. A Marxist. A Democrat. A Republican. A Feminist. An Anti-Feminist. A car nut. A rock freak. A movie reviewer. A Libertarian. Whatever.

Not that it's wrong to try to serve a specific audience. It has its place. But to me, if it's not about real people writing about what they honestly think and see and experience, it too easily slips into the old media game. "Serving a niche" is easy; being utterly true to yourself and the world as you experience it is often much harder.

Striving for strict intellectual honesty is even harder, and is often punishing. But it's usually worth the effort.

Trying to change the world around you and really make a difference is harder still. But is even more worth the effort. Just ask Anna Quindlen or Gareth Jones or Mark Twain.

The bloggers I really admired from the beginning? Rachel Lucas. Steven Den Beste. Michele Catalano. And a host of others. Why? Because they wrote about what they cared about, with passion and conviction but also with strict intellectual honesty and humility--and damn the consequences.

Who'm I kidding? I'll never quit. I hope none of my friends do either.

Update: But I'll probably take it easy for a little while.

"Though, to be honest, Wikipedia could steal my girl, key my car, and salt my lawn -- and I'd still think I'm getting the better end of the deal." - Ezra Klein

We of Internet geekdom don't often do this anymore. I've recently re-connected with some of my high school friends by e-mail, and what we do is short, choppy messages.  Sometimes your questions are ignored, other times (and most often) you get sidetracked by the immediate and forget all about what happened in the 30, 20 or even 5 years in the interim.

You start talking about right now, because everybody's got stuff going on.

I have one friend whose internet access is spotty at best. He doesn't have an easy time with computers, and frequently swears off the infernal machine. So he sends me handwritten letters, which take me six months, a year, or even longer to answer.

I've just spent a comfortable couple of hours writing a letter to be printed in hard-copy and sent by snail-mail. I hafta say it was right up there with a nice lunch out, or my step-granddaughter's eighth-grade graduation. Fun! In a minor key.

Funny, I got my start in blogging long before there were even personal computers. I had 30 penpals in England, circa 1984. I'd sit at my desk in the kitchen's bay window in my Detroit house, and churn out letters 2 and 3 at a time in one morning!  ;>)

At a Sears electric typewriter. With CorrectTape.

Can't imagine going back to that. Not all the time.

Still, it is nice to take some time and produce a nicely-crafted letter, especially when you know the recipient is going to read it, then set it aside and look over it again. Then maybe a few days or weeks later, send you something back.

I don't know why, but it felt like there was more meaning in this exchange. Can't explain it, sorry! I'm thinking it has to do with the reality of the paper.

Any thoughts?

I'm not going to be doing my Elementary Chef blog anymore. So much of it was about shopping, products, and prices, that it now becomes a little iffy.

My new job with the Bureau of Labor Statistics is all about visiting stores to obtain data for the Consumer Price Index. All of the info I collect is confidential. So I wouldn't want to give any appearance, for either myself or 451 Press, of any impropriety. I haven't yet gone out in the field, my training has yet to begin, but I want to be honest and transparent here.

For those of you who were participating in "The Cash-Less Fundraiser," there is another thing you can do to support DAHMW. You can write a check and send it to:
DAHMW
P.O. Box 252
Harmony ME 04942

Or you can volunteer. I'm in need of intelligent and committed people in the Yuma/ElCentro area, (southeast California, southwest Arizona) for in-person support groups, and Jan at the main office in Maine has need of volunteers both online and in-person, for a variety of jobs.

You can e-mail me at twschuettATpeoplepcDOTcom or see what Jan's got going here.

Bloomberg reports on a Japanese government crackdown on consumer lenders in Japan. It's long, but an excellent look into a very closed and misunderstood society.

And yes, there are indeed chihuahuas in the story.

Yahoo News:

Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao has vowed to "purify" the Internet, state media reported on Wednesday, describing a top-level meeting that discussed ways to master the country's sprawling, unruly online population. . ..
Hu, a strait-laced communist with little sympathy for cultural relaxation, did not directly mention censorship.

But he made it clear that the Communist Party was looking to ensure it keeps control of Chinas Internet users, often more interested in salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal than Marxist lessons.

Don't kid yourself: This is could be a very big deal. China can't be competitive as anything other than a source of slave labor if it shuts down the Internet, Cuba-st