Ragged Claws

Two Quotes

2011-07-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

(1) "I love how most of these comments create some sort of ridiculous scenario in where these people would need to have government involvement. Kid beer? Give me a break. People don't obey the law because it's the law. When laws outline common sense, there need not be a law. I don't know one freedom minded individual who would sell a kid beer."

-Commenter The Federal Crime, in a discussion of this Planet Money piece about putting libertarian ideals into practice.

(2) "I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord:

'What is your best-your very best ale a glass?' For it was a special occasion. I don't know what. It may have been my birth-day.

'Twopence-halfpenny,' says the landlord, 'is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale.'

'Then,' says I, producing the money, 'just draw me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.'

The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot, with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his shirt sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as, what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond."

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, page 116 of this edition. First published in 1850, the novel is often considered to be Dickens' most autobiographical work.

Today in Out-of-Context Sentence Theater

2011-05-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

"And British monarchs have kept their right to dead whales washed ashore."

-Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process," in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Overheard at a quizbowl tournament yesterday

2011-02-13T07:00:00.001-08:00

Player 1: Wait, are you hypoglycemic or hyperglycemic?

Player 2: Hyperglycemic.

Player 1: Dude, maybe that soda wasn't such a good idea, then.

The basics, vol. 2

2010-06-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

See here for last year's results.

Search completions suggested by Google, June 19, 2010.

Who

do you think you are
is
wants to be a millionaire (two variants)
is Clark Rockefeller
is the richest person in the world
vs. whom
what wear
went home on American Idol
invented the internet

What

does my name mean
is my IP address (two variants)
celebrity do I look like
to do when you're bored
not to wear
to do in San Francisco
is love
time is it
to expect when you're expecting

When

I look at you lyrics
is Easter (two variants)
is Mother's Day (two variants)
is Daylight Savings 2010
is Father's Day 2010
in Rome
is Passover 2010
are taxes due

Where

the wild things are
is my refund
is Chuck Norris
does Justin Bieber live
is the love lyrics
2.0
the wild things are soundtrack
the sidewalk ends
are they now
the red fern grows

Why

did I get married too
can't I own a Canadian
is a raven like a writing desk
is my poop green
is the sky blue
do dogs eat poop
did the chicken cross the road
did I get married
do cats purr
does Google say Topeka

How

to train your dragon
I met your mother
to tie a tie
to kiss
to lose weight fast
to get a girl to like you
many calories to lose weight
to make it in America
to get pregnant
to download Youtube videos

Gravity normal, air returning, terror replaced by cautious optimism

2010-06-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

I was fairly cynical about yesterday's primary election, what with the demon sheep, the ad campaigns in which Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner attacked each other for doing and believing entirely reasonable things (and hotly denied the vicious calumnies of their opponents - they'll have you know that they've never held any remotely reasonable position in their entire lives, thankyouverymuch), and propositions which were the usual mix of decent ideas, half-cocked schemes so crazy they just might work, and abominations unto Nuggan. The worst of the propositions was probably Prop 16, which was local power giant PG&E's attempt to pass a law making it harder for elected officials to threaten power company profits. PG&E poured a lot of money into a campaign in favor of the law, and underwrote ads which framed the issue as one of voters restraining reckless politicians "who want to go into the power business." (For some utterly inexplicable reason! That has nothing to do with profit-gouging rate hikes or poor service by incumbent power companies! Because they're politicians, and like to burn taxpayer money just to watch the pretty, pretty flames!*) By contrast, the opposition seemed to have almost no money, and no presence whatsoever on the airwaves. My prediction was that the proposition would pass, and the notion of a public interest distinct from private profits would be eroded in California that much more.

And yet, despite the absence of any well-funded campaign to counter it, Prop 16 (narrowly) lost last night. (As wu ming at Calitics points out, there's considerable overlap between the counties with PG&E service and the counties with "no" majorities on 16 - to know PG&E is, apparently, to want the option of escaping from PG&E.) Following California politics involves a lot of disappointment (and occasional, tooth-grinding rage), so it's always heartening when the system somehow manages to confound your worst expectations for it.

*Apologies to Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner for any offense conveyed by the suggestion that politicians usually choose to act in the interests of their constituents. I of course take Whitman and Poizner at their word that they are creatures of pure ideology, who could never, ever be influenced by considerations of practicality or good governance.

Lessons learned from a 2-year-old issue of Allure at the gym

2010-06-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

1) Sexiness comes from self-confidence.
1a) And makeup.
1b) And an artfully tousled ponytail. The creation of which requires several
different hair products and electrical implements.
1c) And pheromones. Although maybe humans don't have these. Although William
Shatner says that they do. Or at least, he says that he does, and they explain
his sexual magnetism.
1d) And stilettos.
1e) And seriously, we mean it about the makeup.

2) Over the years, Charlize Theron has worn many different dresses.

3) High-waisted denim bikinis!

4) When booking a hotel room, savvy travelers will take the physical location of the hotel into account.

5) If you extract fat from one part of your body and inject it into another part, most of that fat will be reabsorbed within six months.

6) Ali Larter's whipped cream bikini in Varsity Blues was actually made of shaving cream.

7) Plutarch was unimpressed by Cleopatra's physical beauty, although he allowed that her personality was enticing.

8) To take good pictures of your friends, try to ensure that they remain within the frame of the shot.

9) There is a surprisingly wide amount of price variation among sunless tanning establishments.

10) The human face is a disgusting, pitted, mottled, lined, lumpy, sun-ravaged hellscape, which should be concealed with as many chemicals and minerals as physically possible.

One of the many, many - oh, so many - things wrong with Transformers

2010-05-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

If you're falling from a considerable height, and a giant robot "catches" you in its hand, you're still smashing into metal at a high velocity. The fact that the metal is hand-shaped doesn't actually make it safer to hit than the ground. Just saying.

How to advertise an academic talk

2010-05-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT LINE: It is permissible to include the title of the talk in your email subject line, especially if this provides no hint to the actual content of the presentation. However, references to the time, date or location of the talk are frowned upon.

BODY: Ideally, there will be no text in the body of the email, thus preserving a sense of mystery and intrigue. Brief uncapitalized messages, such as "flyer attached" are also tolerated. It is a faux pas to write more than a single clause, or use any punctuation whatsoever. Including descriptions of the speaker or her research is unacceptable, and providing any material of visual interest will result in immediate termination.

ATTACHMENTS: All attachments should be composed in Wingdings.

Anecdata

2010-05-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

I spent some time the other day with a four-year-old boy, the adorable son of a friend. At one point, while he was playing with some sticks of different sizes, he referred to the larger one as "mommy stick" and the smaller one as "baby stick."

I'm sure that sweeping conclusions about innate gender differences can be drawn from this.

Two words frequently used by Alan Knight that more historians should take advantage of:

2010-05-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

(1) Congeries

(2) Fissiparous

It mattered. It all matters.

2010-05-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

Massive Wire spoilers.

In a fascinating interview with Vice magazine, David Simon said of the television show he created, "A lot of what The Wire was about sounds cynical to people. I think it’s very cynical about institutions and their ability to reform. I don’t deny that, but I don’t think it’s at all cynical about people."

This is a regular theme in discussions of The Wire - that the show is about the failure of institutions, the collapse of cities, the limits and incapacities of police departments, schools, the media and government itself. There's plenty of evidence to justify this interpretation, even discounting explicit statements of intent like that made by Simon. However, one of the things that made the The Wire The Best Show on Television (TM) was the layered intricacy of its storytelling, which rarely offered viewers a simple or singular takeaway message. With that in mind, I'd like to argue for an interpretation of the show that runs completely counter to Simon's: The Wire is fundamentally idealistic about institutions, but deeply cynical about the weak, self-interested individuals who operate within them. Progress comes when characters embrace the values of an institution and work within its strictures; violence and grief result when characters place personal priorities ahead of the institutional good.

To see this, it's important to recognize that the show's protagonist is not its hero. The rogue cop - who doesn't play by the rules, but gets results! - is such a stock figure that audiences are primed to cheer for him from the moment he appears on screen. The Wire's Jimmy McNulty at first appears to be cut from the same cloth as Axel Foley or Martin Riggs, with his cocky grin, disdain for protocol, passion for his job, and unacknowledged alcoholism. Over the course of the show, however, it becomes more and more obvious that McNulty is fundamentally a screw-up. His talent and zeal as a detective aren't sufficient to bring about the results he most desires, and his scorn for the department hierarchy damages his career and hurts his associates. Moreover, McNulty's unwillingness to work within the system, initially a mark of distinction, ultimately hobbles his effectiveness as a police officer. By the last season, McNulty's lies to superiors and recklessness in gathering evidence have hamstringed the prosecution of Marlo Stanfield, and almost torpedoed the department’s case against the entire Stanfield drug organization.

By contrast, some of the most positively portrayed characters within the series are those who believe in the power of institutions to achieve social goals, and who work within a set of established rules. Kima Greggs and Rhonda Pearlman, who both serve to some degree as the consciences of the show, are generally sticklers for process. In the first season Greggs refuses to identify a shooter that she didn't see, while in the fifth she blows the whistle on McNulty and Freamon's schemes (with both of them acknowledging that she was correct to have done so). When Greggs assumes some of McNulty's traits during the third season this is presented in an essentially negative light, an indication that she's lost control personally and professionally. Pearlman is also someone who generally places institutional values above immediate objectives. As a prosecutor, she insists that the police officers adhere to the rules of evidence, and is horrified when she learns that McNulty and Freamon have been pursuing a case through fraudulent means. While Pearlman is not above blackmailing a defense attorney in order to salvage something from the wreck that McNulty and Freamon cause in the fifth season, this action is an aberration for the character. Pearlman's main role is to maintain the value of law as an abstraction, even when that slows or complicates the course of investigation. Unlike McNulty, who ends the series unemployed and adrift, we last see Greggs as a respected member of the Homicide Unit, and Pearlman serving as a judge.

Similar dynamics play out in the drug world, although system-builders like Stringer Bell and Proposition Joe are denied the happy endings that Greggs and Pearlman receive. Nevertheless, one of the recurring themes from the first season onward is that violence is minimized and group profits maximized when the players in the drug trade subordinate individual ambition to corporate functionality. The Stanfield organization briefly gains an advantage from murdering Joe and dissolving the New Day Co-Op, but Marlo’s coup creates an inherently unstable and dangerous situation. In particular, Cheese’s decision to respond to overtures from Marlo and pursue his own self-interest at the expense of the co-op ends poorly. Although Cheese manages to gain increased power for a time, his ambitions are cut short when Slim Charles executes him in revenge for betraying Joe. After Cheese’s death the New Day Co-Op is reassembled, seemingly without the participation of Stanfield organization members. Institutional strictures and procedures maintain a beneficial equilibrium which is upset by individual ambition.

The importance of institutions is also depicted in other areas – the schools, the docks union, the courts, the newspapers. The tragedies that we are shown in all of these spheres fundamentally stem from the lack of resources, not flaws inherent to the systems themselves. As with the Major Crimes Unit, which is constantly agitating for the equipment and manpower necessary to pursue its cases, we see teachers working in overstuffed classrooms with few supplies, newspapers cutting experienced staff to the bone, and crime labs with a months-long backlog. As we watch characters struggling to perform their jobs under trying circumstances, and devising various penny-wise but pound-foolish solutions, it’s hard to conclude that institutions are working as they should. Yet in none of these cases have institutions “failed;” rather, they’ve been hollowed out and maimed until they can barely function. When adequate resources are provided – the middle school pilot classroom, Fletcher receiving extra time to work on his profile of Bubbles, Phelan insisting that Burrell investigate the Barksdale organization – the results are usually positive, even if successes prove difficult to sustain.

In general, the characters of The Wire aren’t guided by powerful moral compasses, but act according to their own particular psychologies and circumstances. The right structures will push them towards the right choices, the wrong structures towards the brink of damnation. The challenge is that the processes of building institutions like a police force, a school system or a newspaper are slow and painful; the means of destroying them far simpler. Institutional values and aspirations are constantly being corroded by considerations of short-term personal advantage, especially in the political realm. Personal interest also interferes with institutions’ ability to regulate themselves, as backchannel deals circumvent formal processes. Nevertheless, the highest points of many character arcs – Carver’s decision to write up Colichio, Pryzbylewski finding innovative ways to teach math, Bunk doggedly investigating the murders in the vacants, Kima reporting her friends’ wrongdoing – result from decisions to adhere to the highest standards of the institutions to which the characters belong. Ultimately, The Wire suggests that for all of their flaws, institutions are essential for channeling and containing the chaos that results from unmediated human nature.

Something I'm seeing this semester for the first time

2010-05-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

Is people using computers while they're exercising at the gym. The little netbooks fit well on the magazine ledges, so the more diligent students can actually type away at their papers while they're using the reclining bikes. I've been a little puzzled as to what function the iPad is supposed to serve that a laptop wouldn't, but this actually seems like a good use for them - especially given the campus wifi. Pounding through a bunch of Party Down episodes on the elliptical seems like it would make physical activity much more...bearable.

El ley SB 1070

2010-04-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

SB 1070, the immigration law recently passed in Arizona, is a profoundly repulsive piece of legislation. Some of its more appalling provisions:

”For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. The person’s immigration status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code Section 1373 (c).

So, do you ever leave the house without a driver’s license, passport, or certified copy of of your birth certificate? That’s very, very irresponsible of you. You should always carry your papers, so they can be promptly displayed to any police officer who has a “reasonable suspicion” about your immigration status. (Maybe you were speaking a foreign language in public, or have a Spanish surname, or expressed a preference for salsa picante over ketchup, all of which are also extremely irresponsible behaviors.) The point is, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that you shouldn’t be detained and jailed. I mean, that’s what America, like, stands for and stuff.

A. It is unlawful for a person who is in violation of a criminal offense to:
1. Transport or move or attempt to transport or move an alien in this state in a means of transportation if the person knows or recklessly disregards the fact that the alien has come to, has entered or remains in the United States in violation of law…
B. A means of transportation that is used in the commission of a violation of this section is subject to mandatory vehicle immobilization or impoundment pursuant to section 28-3511.

Did you give a friend of a friend a ride home from a party without asking to see his papers, and then get caught speeding? Ha ha! Lose your car, sucker!

It is an affirmative defense to a violation of Subsection A of this section that the employer was entrapped. To claim entrapment, the employer must admit by the employer’s testimony or other evidence the substantial elements of the violation…L. An employer does not establish entrapment if the employer was predisposed to violate Subsection A of this section and the law enforcement officers or their agents merely provided the employer with an opportunity to commit the violation. It is not entrapment for law enforcement officers or their agents merely to use a ruse or to conceal their identity. The conduct of law enforcement officers and their agents may be considered in determining if an employer has proven entrapment.

So although undocumented immigrants allegedly pose a great and growing threat to Arizona’s workforce, police may still have to “[provide] the employer with an opportunity to commit the violation” in order to make a case. Law enforcement is hard! But really, if someone is “predisposed” to do something, they’ll totally get around to doing it eventually, right? Looked at this way, the police are just acting as life coaches, making sure that employers don’t put off until tomorrow the crimes that they can commit today.

The law also has several provisions to prevent state agencies or local governments from exercising any discretion when it comes to enforcement. For example, a town’s police department and elected representatives may believe that their community’s interests are best served if all residents are free to report crimes and give evidence without fear of deportation. But SB 1070 explicitly prohibits Arizona officials from “adopt[ing] a policy that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.” It eliminates the possibility of flexible government response, and prioritizes the enforcement of federal immigration law over more important societal goals.

And finally, SB 1070 is as racist as all get-out, passed by 17 Arizona state senators who, judging from their pictures, will never themselves be faced with a police officer demanding to see proof of their immigration status. And who can’t imagine, or who don’t care, what it might be like to be treated as a suspect outsider based on language or skin color. To whom the words “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in” signify only a contemptible state of dependency.

Court challenges to SB 1070 have already been promised – let’s hope that basic constitutional principles will soon extinguish this vile legislation.

Some quotes are better out of context

2010-03-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

"The senate discussed the disturbance, and it was moved that the praetors should be empowered to have ballet-dancers flogged."

-Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, 1.77.

Approximately 2/3 of the conversations on Lost take this form

2010-03-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

Person 1: You need to do (x) right now! I can't explain why!

Person 2: No way am I trusting you! You're the person who lied to me/manipulated me/shot me/tortured me/drowned me/drugged me/tricked me/assaulted me/kidnapped me/led me into an ambush/stole my stuff/stole my child/locked me in a polar bear cage/locked me in a shark tank/murdered someone I loved/murdered me.

Person 1: It's really, really, important that you do (x).

Person 2: Okay, (x) it is!

And to think that I saw it on Bancroft Street

2010-03-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

A man riding uphill on a unicycle, holding a paperback copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Not quite as good as the girl who was unsuccessfully trying to walk a cat on a leash, but close.

It's the season of light coming out of the void

2009-12-25T21:47:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

From Christmas in Berkeley

Things that in no way bring to mind the words "sketchy," "fly-by-night" or "huh?"

2009-12-16T00:29:00.001-08:00

The tutoring service that I've been working for over the past semester just sent out an email, saying that the agency now provides both tutoring AND model/talent services. All current tutors are encouraged to apply for jobs such as "male/female model, singer, actor...model bartender, model waitress, golf caddy...'singing telegram' singer...or you can recommend a talent we haven't thought of yet." As it turns out, previous experience as a model is not necessary! Also, if you find your own "sponsor," a portion of that sponsor's "donations" will be given to you. It is not specified why, in that case, the agency should receive any money at all. The email concludes by twisting into a loop of glorious nuttiness: the modeling agency is a nonprofit, so customer donations are "20-40% tax deductible" and will go to fund "cultural arts programs for children" - programs in which the agency's modeling and talent clients may be eligible to work as tutors!

I swear to God that I am not making any of this up.

Great moments in NPR interviews

2009-11-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

From the November 13th episode of Fresh Air:

Terry Gross: There was a period, and maybe you still feel like you're in this period, when you were struggling to figure out what kind of songs you wanted to write and what your best song-writing process was to come up with a decent song, so you started keeping a journal, and experimenting with different approaches to writing songs. It sounds like a very analytical approach to something that for some songwriters is really very intuitive. Can you describe a little bit a couple of the different processes that you tried in songwriting?

Rivers Cuomo: Yeah, for a couple of years there...Well, I've always been an analytical person, but for a couple of years I just got really analytical and...keeping track of every detail of the process of writing a song and intentionally varying individual elements to see what the result would be. But sometimes...sometimes these experiments were indistinguishable from how any other rock person would write a song. For example, in mid-2000 somehow my experiments evolved to the point where step one was, take a pill of Ritalin; step two was take three shots of tequila; step three was go out in the backyard, sit down in a chair; step four was close your eyes and imagine, imagine the song. And that's how I wrote "Hash Pipe."

"I said I'd been sick with viral pneumonia, but you thought I said 'blue roses.'"*

2009-09-29T00:35:00.000-07:00

I learned tonight that I had been mishearing a line in the Stars song "Life Effect." The actual lyrics are these:

Sorry for wasting your time
Five long months on the telephone line
Hours of asking if you were fine
And saying I was fine too.

However, I heard the latter lines as:

I wasn't asking if you were fine
And saying I was fine too.

Which version, honestly, I think I prefer for its wry humor. And since it's not actually what Stars sang, the line can be redeployed in other contexts, without it being blatant theft! Woohoo! (Okay, some rewording might be necessary. But still, it's nice to have a clever line just dropped into your lap like that, no conscious effort required.)

My favorite personal mondegreen, though, is probably the transformation of "Bid my blood to run," from Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life," into "be my binturong." Despite recognizing from the outset that this interpretation could not possibly be correct (in a strictly literal sense), I still stuck with it because hey, it's correct in a deeper moral sense. And in the end, isn't that what's important? (The answer is no.)

*In a post about semi-plagiarism, it's probably appropriate to note that this line comes from the one-act play "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls," by Christopher Durang.

How to write a Grey's Anatomy speech

2009-09-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

1. Pick a topic sentence. Extra points if it’s nonsensical!

Example: “There was no mustard on the hamburger.”

2. Repeat topic sentence with extra emphasis.

Example: “There was no mustard on the hamburger.”

3. Pause. Allow the audience to ponder the significance of the topic sentence. Have another character ask “What?” or cut to a baffled reaction shot.

4. Summarize the current plot situation. Use short sentences, preferably constructed in the form “[Proper noun] is [adjective] OR [gerund].” Around half of the words in this section should be emphasized, but it doesn’t really matter which ones. Any combination will work.

Example: “My life is in ruins, and all I can do is play solitaire. I have been sitting at this computer, for hours, playing solitaire. Christina is happy. Izzy is knitting. Alex is hagiographic.”

5. Repeat the topic sentence, preceded by the word “And.” The topic sentence should be delivered with even greater urgency than previously.

Example: “And there was no mustard on the hamburger.”

6. Longer pause. Another character may suggest that the speaker has been working too hard, and needs to get some rest. This character should be cut off in mid-sentence.

7. The “No! Don’t you get it?” moment.

Example: “No! Don’t you get it?”

8. Explain the metaphorical significance of the topic sentence.

Example: “When I got that hamburger at lunch today and saw there was no mustard on it, I realized: this is what life really is. In the end there’s no spice. No flavor. Just a lump of dead meat. We are all just lumps of meat. And one day, we will all be dead! We face that every day as surgeons, and so we try to ignore it, or distract ourselves. We play solitaire. We make scarves. We compose pious lives of the saints. But in the end, we’re nothing but flesh and blood.”

9. Repeat topic sentence. It may be varied slightly, or said in a choking half-sob.

Example: “There is no mustard on the hamburger.”

10. And...voilà! The speech is done. Your options now are to cut to another plotline, show a passionate embrace between the speaker and the listener, or write a response to the speech in which another character expands and elaborates upon the topic sentence.

Example: “What if there’s no mustard on the hamburger…but there’s ketchup and lettuce and pickles? What if…you can choose your own topping?”

Be warned, though, that if more than one character uses a particular phrase or metaphor, it creates an obligation to repeatedly return to that wording over the course of the season. So before allowing your topic sentence to proliferate, think carefully about whether overexposure will make the audience will get sick of it...ha ha, just kidding, because who doesn’t love a catch phrase! Remember, repetition creates familiarity, and familiarity is just about the same thing as adoration, so have at it! Ah, no mustard on the hamburger…classic.

Back in Berkeley!

2009-08-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

YO soy el príncipe mestizo, Harry!

2009-08-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

I saw Harry Potter y el Misterio del Príncipe recently, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Unlike the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was pretty much incomprehensible if you arrived in the theater more than 30 minutes after finishing the book (and even then, it would have been wise to scribble some notes on your hand and tuck a cheat sheet into your shoe), the sixth movie in the franchise remained intelligible all the way through. In this outing, screenwriter Steve Kloves seems to be more comfortable editing and reworking his sprawling source material, possibly because now that Rowling has finished the series it’s easier to discern the story’s critical features and chart a through-line to the end. The movie is also served well by its special effects, which construct a gorgeously detailed world without falling into flashy gimmickry (except perhaps for the IMAX-friendly flight scene at the beginning). By this point in the series the production team seems like a well-oiled machine, and it should be fun to watch their vision and craftsmanship at work in the final two installments.

The one major issue I had with the movie was the portrayal of Horace Slughorn. Jim Broadbent is a great actor, but his hangdog face and slightly apologetic aspect don’t align with the character. Slughorn is jovial, shrewd, oleaginous and vain, with a keen eye to his own advantage. He’s also a character that broadens the universe in important ways, by showing how characteristically Slytherin traits might serve positive ends. With the exception of Snape, the Slytherins shown up to this point in the series have been a highly unlikeable group, vicious as children and villainous as adults (and even Snape’s true loyalties are left in question until the end of the final book). Slughorn breaks from this mold. He’s venal, but not evil. Moreover, his venality fuels his achievement, and alerts him to the potential for achievement in others. Slughorn’s cultivation of budding talent springs from intense self-interest, but is still valuable to his proteges. Although Harry is wary of Slughorn and Dumbledore amused by him, Rowling suggests that such “collectors” may fill useful social functions, even as she criticizes the callousness and limitations of a purely instrumentalist view of human relations. The introduction of Slughorn thus helps to resolve a major plot hole – why does Slytherin House exist, given that Slytherins seem to do nothing but combat the forces of good – while complicating and deepening the story’s moral perspective. It’s fitting that as Harry and his friends approach graduation and adulthood, the reader also begins to experience their world in more nuanced, mature terms. By contrast, the film mostly ignored these thematic considerations and instead used Slughorn as a device for plot advancement, a convenient source of potions or information whenever necessary. It’s an understandable choice in light of running time limitations, but it deprives the character – and the story – of some potential richness. (Of course, it’s possible that these comments don’t apply to the English-language version of the movie. Actually, given my own frequent clumsiness in Spanish, it’s possible that they don’t even apply to the version I saw...so if that’s the case, never mind!)

From this angle, you look like a giant acorn

2009-07-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

The squirrels in Chapultepec Park are small and agile, their pale grey coats flecked with velvety splotches of auburn. In the world's largest city they're also some of the most accessible wildlife around, of considerable interest to visiting children. It's not uncommon to see a family staring up into the tree branches, entranced by the sight of a squirrel flicking its tail, or trying to coax a squirrel into taking food from the hand. No slouches, the squirrels recognize a good thing when they see it and are thoroughly acculturated to the humans in their midst. So when I halted in my run yesterday, it wasn't surprising that a nearby squirrel would come over to investigate. It was unexpected, however, when the squirrel decided to jump onto my leg, remaining put for several seconds before allowing itself to be shaken off. It then retreated back a few yards, with a slight air of wounded dignity. If you didn't want me to climb on you, it seemed to rebuke me, why did you stand still and look at me for several seconds? And you know, fair enough - there was an implicit offer there which was, from the squirrel's perspective, precipitously withdrawn.

Too much wine and too much song, wonder how I got along

2009-07-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

One of the most endearing things about Mexico City is the presence of music in public spaces. Merchants hawk cds or dvds on the street, vendors tuck speakers into specially designed backpacks in order to sell mp3 collections on the metro, and the teenage boys who steer rickety green buses up and down Reforma blast their favorites as they drive. 2009 has been the summer of Michael Jackson - it's hard to walk through the Alameda without hearing "Beat It" or "Smooth Criminal" pulsating from stalls along the path. This is the first time I've been here that a single artist has been so dominant, although it's true that loose musical themes usually emerge during each visit. Last year the mysterious entity which produces and markets mp3 discs was pushing a collection of '80s and '90s hits, so it was common to hear wistful snippets of "Losing My Religion." In 2004, the song which made its presence felt was "Seasons in the Sun," by Terry Jacks (who sings the line "Goodbye, Michelle, it's hard to die" with remarkable gusto, as if telling Michelle that while yes, dying is hard, it's a challenge he is eager to tackle. "Seasons in the Sun" also includes the immortal verse "But the stars we could reach/Were just starfish on the beach.") I think the repeated encounters with this song in 2004 were just coincidence, though, not the work of any larger structural forces. (At least, I hope this is the case, since it's terrifying to think of some malevolent hand deliberately sowing schmaltz throughout the fabric of space and time.)

The most serendipitous Mexican musical experience, though, happened in a pedestrian underpass last summer. Because I am now old enough to be out of touch with the Youth of Today and their internets, toaster phones and tweet tweet splats, I was listening to an NPR podcast about pop culture. (Yes, I know that getting information about popular culture from NPR compounds the geezer factor tenfold, then raises it to the power of a million, then multiplies it by itself a few times just for fun, then lightly drizzles some maple syrup and powdered sugar on top and serves it up as an Early Bird Special.) The NPR hosts were discussing the then-novel phenomenon of Rickrolling, in which internet users are tricked into watching a video of the 1987 Rick Astley song, "Never Gonna Give You Up." So I was walking through the underpass, headbanging to NPR, when noises from the outside world started to seep through. Speakers blared from inside a small hardware booth, and those speakers were playing..."Never Gonna Give You Up." Seriously, it was like walking by a pet store, and seeing a live performance of the hamster dance, but even more meta. That's one of the best things about having all of this public music available - it allows for the creation of fortuitous connections and associations, enlivening what would otherwise be more workaday spaces.

Somewhat misplaced in translation

2009-07-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

It can’t be a fun job to translate movie titles, given the eminent blandness of so many of them. Do we have a piece of technical jargon that can be imbued with a faint air of menace? (Collateral Damage, Double Jeopardy, Flight Plan, Rules of Engagement, Proof of Life). Vaguely chipper cliched phrases? (Get Over It, As Good As It Gets, Home for the Holidays, Something’s Gotta Give, What Women Want) Song lyrics? (From the “Neither a Musical Nor a Musician Biopic” division alone, there’s Addicted to Love, Angel Eyes, Can’t Buy Me Love, Deck the Halls, Drive Me Crazy, Forever Young, It Had to Be You, Jingle All the Way, Man on the Moon, The Mighty Quinn, Pretty Woman, Simply Irresistable, Something to Talk About and The Sweetest Thing). The adjective “American?” (American Beauty, American Dreamz, American Gangster, American Graffiti, American History X, American Pie up through whatever wretched sequel is paying for Eugene Levy’s fourth beach house, The American President, American Psycho, American Splendor, An American Tail, American Teen, Wet Hot American Summer). Still, looking at Spanish translations of English-language movie titles, you get the feeling that considerations of either marketability or workload severely limit the range of words at the translator’s disposal. Consider the following:

Charlie Wilson’s War = “Juego de poder” (Game of Power)
Coach Carter = “Juego de honor” (Game of Honor)
Cruel Intentions = “Juegos sexuales” (Sexual Games)
Four Play = “Juego de cuatro” (Game of Four. At least this is literal, even if it loses the double entendre.)

Then look at the slapdash prurience of these titles:

Love’s Labour’s Lost = “Pacto de amor” (Pact of Love)
There Will Be Blood = “Petroleo sangriento” (Bloody Oil)”
Lord of War = “Hombre peligroso” (Dangerous Man)
Quills = “Letras prohibidas” (Forbidden Writings)
Little Children = “Secretas íntimas” (Intimate Secrets)
My Sister’s Keeper = La decisión más difícil (The Most Difficult Decision)

While here, someone just threw up their hands and called it a day:

Along Came Polly = “Mi novia Polly” (My Girlfriend Polly)

But then again, The Sound of Music is “La novicia rebelde,” which is an indisputable improvement. Home on the Range became the far cleverer "Vacas vaqueras." And you can only admire the patriotic snark of whoever decided to turn Not Another Teen Movie into “No es otra tonta película americana,” or “Not Another Stupid American Movie.” While a lot of spoof movies fall in the “tonta película” category – Meet the Spartans is “Una tonta película sobre Esparta,” Date Movie is “No es otra tonta película de amor,” etc. – the sentiment in this case seems especially...pointed.

Job application

2009-07-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

During the Mexican Revolution, the capital city was occupied by a number of different governments and military authorities. In 1910, the elderly dictator Porfirio Díaz presided over lavish celebrations of the national centennial, secure in the belief that his decades of rule had resulted in a stable, prosperous, progress-oriented country. By 1911 Díaz was gone, replaced by Francisco Madero, an idealistic aristocrat who denounced the corruption and authoritarianism that existed under the previous regime. In early 1913 Madero was assassinated at the orders of Victoriano Huerta, who had been a strong supporter of Díaz and was allied with the dictator's nephew Félix. Huerta's coup sparked a series of further uprisings, as revolutionaries with separate constituencies and agendas worked together to unseat him. While Huerta maintained power for a time, ironically strengthened by foreign attacks meant to dislodge him, he fled the country in 1914, to die in a U.S. jail two years later. Huerta's departure exposed the faultlines in the revolutionary coalition, which realigned into the opposing factions of Conventionalists and Constitutionalists. The Conventionalists were led by Pancho Villa in the north and Emiliano Zapata in the south, while the civilian former governor Venustiano Carranza directed the Constitutionalists. During this portion of the struggle, Mexico City was occupied by both Constitutionalist and Conventionalist forces before Carranza finally established himself securely in the capital during the spring of 1916. Carranza would more or less maintain national power until he overreached and was killed on the orders of Álvaro Obregón, his most capable general, in 1920. (Obregón himself would later be murdered by an ardent Catholic infuriated by restrictions on Church activities. Similarly, both Zapata and Villa died from assassins' bullets. It’s one of the great ironies of the Revolution that the only one of its major figures granted a peaceful death was Díaz, the man whose policies had triggered the entire affair.)

All of which is to say that anyone who sought work from the Constitutionalist government in 1916, even employment of the most innocuous type, was treading a political minefield. One applicant who desired a post in the offices of the national museum had to provide satisfactory answers to the following questions:

Have you been an employee of the Government?

Have you served in an army? Under whose orders did you serve, during which time, and which rank did you achieve?

During the dictatorship of Díaz…what positions did you fill?

When the government of Sr. Francisco I. Madero was established, did you continue in the same position, or did you obtain another one?

After the assassination of Sr. President Madero, did you serve the usurper Huerta, keeping the same position as previously, or did you obtain another one?

During the occupation of this capital by the Constitutionalist Army, in August of 1914, did you apply for and obtain a position, or keep that which you had?

Did you follow the Constitutionalist Government when it moved to Veracruz? If not, explain the reasons why.

During the so-called Government of the Convention, did you continue in the position granted you by Sr. Carranza, or did you obtain another position?

Additionally, the truth of these statements had to be verified by witnesses “of recognized adherence to the Constitutionalist cause.” Despite providing recommendations from two Constitutionalist army officers, our poor applicant was still denied the job he sought. Although the government was generally reluctant to hire outside applicants for positions, our applicant's fortunes could not have been helped by his lack of service in the victorious army - keeping your head down, it seems, can only take you so far.

Lo básico

2009-07-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

Search completions suggested by Google México, July 8, 2009.

Quién

te admite (two variants)
te eliminó (four variants, including te borró del MSN and te bloqueó)
inventó el teléfono
inventó la computadora
inventó la televisión
inventó el radio

Qué

es el amor
es un ensayo
son las valores
es ciencia
es una entrevista
es internet
es la amistad
es el hule
es el tabaquismo
es el calentamiento global

Cuándo

es Semana Santa (2 variants)
tus ojos me miran
me voy a morir (3 variants)
se estrena Rápido y Furioso 4
el destino nos alcance
un hombre ama a una mujer
juega México

Dónde

ir
puedo ver películas gratis
puedo ver películas
está Wally
están los Chicharrines
habitan los ángeles
hay misa
comer
viven los serpientes
está el amor

Por qué

el cielo es azul
se originan los huracanes
te amo
a mi
te quiero
te quiero tenerte para mí
flotan los barcos
llueve
me tratas así
es tan cruel el amor

Cómo

bajar videos de Youtube
hacer un currículum (2 variants)
bajar de peso
saber si estoy embarazada
besar
hacer un ensayo
cuidar el agua
hacer un papalote
ser emo

The basics

2009-06-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

Search completions suggested by Google, June 19, 2009.

Who

Wants to be a millionaire (3 variants)
Is
Is Mysterion
Moved my cheese
Is my congressman
Killed the electric car
Invented the Internet
Got voted off American Idol

What

Is Twitter
Is my IP (two variants)
Not to wear
Does my name mean
Time is it
Time is the inauguration
I like about you
Is love
Is a good credit score

When

Is Easter 2009 (two variants)
I grow up lyrics (two variants)
Does Twilight come out on DVD
Is the Superbowl (two variants)
Will I die
Is St. Patrick's Day 2009
Will the world end

Where

The wild things are (3 variants)
Is my refund
I stood lyrics
Does the vice president live
Is the love lyrics
The hell is Matt
The red fern grows

Why

Is the sky blue
Do men have nipples
Did the chicken cross the road
Do cats purr
Men cheat
Did Chris Brown beat Rihanna (3 variants)
Do dogs eat poop
Did I get married

How

To tie a tie
I met your mother
To kiss
To get pregnant
Stuff works
To
To lose weight
To make a website
To write a resume
Do you sleep lyrics

Living in the future is awesome

2009-06-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

As we all know, a good indication that one is living in the future is the presence of machines offering convenient access to exotic goods or services, such as Raktajino, or a slow and horrible death. Getting off the train tonight, I learned that Contra Costa County has inched a step closer to the glorious world of tomorrow with Library-a-Go-Go, a boxy blue machine that allows commuters to instantly check out library books, which can be returned later to the same location. The relatively compact, TARDIS-like kiosk tempts passersby with a wide selection of titles, including a number of children's books that busy parents can pick up on the way home from work. Library-a-Go-Go is an absolutely brilliant idea, a boon to local residents that might also increase public support for the CCC library system more generally. Congratulations county bureaucrats!

Another benefit of living in the future is seeing a global community of citizens begin to come into partial, hazy view. And although the electronic web binding this community together is still tenuous and fragile, its members are, sometimes able to support one another. This article from Wired offers a few suggestions of how to assist Iranian protesters who are using the web to organize and to tell their stories. While such measures mean very, very little compared to the actions of those actually risking their safety, it's still a little awe-inspiring to realize that such things are possible - that the social networking tools that have sprung into existence over the last five years might be transformative in ways we're only just beginning to realize. ¡Viva el futuro!

Tony Awards thoughts

2009-06-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

-The Broadway musical really is a strange beast. (This is said with all love, as someone who can sing just about the entire score of Chess from memory - "I'm the arbiter, my word is law!" "From square one, he'll be watching all..sixty-FOUR!") There's something indelibly goofy about expressing social or emotional conflict through impeccable vocals and choreography, but also something very endearing about the sincerity with which the actors commit to that goofiness. That so many musicals are about starry-eyed naifs who are initially mocked for pursuing their dreams, but eventually win over the cynics with boundless enthusiasm, talent and moxie, can be seen as a comment on the form itself.

-Is it really worth showing only 5-10 seconds of each of the nominated plays? Some people are sitting around a dinner table, voices are raised, and we cut out. At that point you might as well go full-on conceptual - show the tableau, show the first speaker opening his or her mouth, and finis. It would make a point about the futility of trying to reproduce the vitality of a live performance in the impersonal format of an electronic broadcast, or something. (Because if there's one thing the viewing audience always wants more of, it's oblique allusions to the work of Walter Benjamin.)

-The "In Memoriam" photo montage was set to "What I Did For Love," from A Chorus Line. The original cast recording of this song takes three minutes and 44 seconds. This performance clocks in at 3:37. The point? That clapping enthusiastically for every photo shown during that span of time should not require onerous levels of physical exertion. It's ridiculously tacky to applaud only the famous departed. All of the photos represent people who contributed something to the community and presumably left behind loved ones; your palms won't become bruised and chapped if you applaud as much for a press agent or a character actor as you do for Bea Arthur or Paul Newman.

Walking clothes hangers

2009-06-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

This week on The Fashion Show (aka Project Runway, with the silky unctuousness of Tim Gunn replaced by the exquisite cattiness of Isaac Mizrahi), designers were required to create clothes for “normal” women. (What “normal” meant in this context was clients who were not professional models, but who were still conventionally attractive, and generally slender to boot.) This sort of challenge was a staple on Project Runway as well, and while most of the designers are able to take it in stride, there are always some who seem genuinely confounded and indignant at being asked to design for bodies that can’t be described as “walking clothes hangers.” (One PR contestant even claimed that he wouldn’t mind being sent home during a similar challenge, because there was quite simply no way he could have prepared for it. Bear in mind that PR has also asked designers to create clothes out of items purchased at a grocery store, or garbage, which to the uninitiated might seem like a bigger stretch than “create an outfit for which a substantial customer base might exist.”) And although The Fashion Show is explicitly oriented around commercial appeal (eliminations are formalized with the phrase “We’re not buying it”), some of the contestants nevertheless found this week’s challenge to be an affront to their artistic sensibilities. The most vocal was probably James-Paul, who commented, “I’ve never believed that a person’s movement in fashion should be led by some…entity outside, and I sort of lost my voice as a designer” and “I don’t do normal – I’ve shunned it in my life.”

I think that this is a defensible position in some ways – there’s nothing wrong with wanting to create art in the medium of fabric and thread. If that’s the point, though, I don’t understand why living models are necessary at all. Why limit your creative expression to what can fit on a human form? Why not really push the boundaries with a dress meant for a creature with four arms, or an icosahedral torso? Or, if the goal is to allow clothes to hang as freely as possible, why not use a conveyor belt to whir actual hangers around the runway, dry cleaner style? That such options are rarely selected seems to indicate a baseline understanding that the fashion designer’s art requires fitting garments to actually existing human bodies, just as a poet writing a sonnet must develop his ideas within a specific structure. In that sense, I think comments like those above actually betray a lack of creative vision, an attempt to evade rather than embrace the challenges of a particular artistic form. There’s no reason why all poets should write sonnets, but if one chooses to make a career of doing so it’s silly to then complain about having to produce 14 lines, rather than 11 or 12.

That said, the episode also revealed some of the basic structural obstacles to designing for non-models. One of the most striking was that the contestants had to modify their dress forms by hand, adding batting or padding material in order to reproduce the body shapes of their clients. The fact that there is no easy or natural way to modify dress forms up to a size 10 or 12 speaks volumes about the basic assumptions of the fashion industry. Additionally, one contestant commented that another designer “just got out of school, so she hasn’t had much experience designing for real women.” (The school in question was the London College of Fashion.) While it’s common for graduate programs in many areas to emphasize theory over practice, it’s still more than a little baffling that advanced education in fashion would fail to provide students with the tools necessary to sell to a diverse client base. (Actually, maybe this is reminiscent of Ph.D. programs that assume all graduates will end up tenure-track at an R1, so teaching skills are irrelevant…but that’s not a model that should be emulated.) Although the just-out-of-school contestant ultimately won the week’s challenge, that seems to have been more a testament to her talent than to her training. I’m glad that high profile fashion TV shows occasionally acknowledge that people with BMIs over 18 might like to wear attractive clothes, but it also seems clear that not just individual but systemic change is necessary to make designers enthusiastic about serving those prospective clients.

Teenagers on the bus

2009-04-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Teenage boy #1: I dare you to lick that pole.

Teenage boy #2: Yeah? What will you give me?

Teenage boy #1: I dare you.

Teenage boy #2: [Licks metal pole.]

Teenage boy #1: Ewww, dude, gross! I can't believe you did that! You're totally going to die now!

Ah, youth.

In which I am disappointed by the Pussycat Dolls' lack of professionalism

2009-03-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

If you were doing an English-language remake of "Jai Ho" that kept A.R. Rahman's chorus in place, wouldn't you at some point learn how to pronounce the TWO SYLLABLES that make up the title of the song? Did no one involved with this business venture of a multi-million dollar corporation realize at any point that "Jai" is pronounced "Jye" rather than "Jay," and that having both versions in the same song is slapdash even by the standards of prefab quasi-burlesque pop groups? AARGH. Let us watch the awesome original version, and never speak of this again.

BSG series finale thoughts

2009-03-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

In the last hour of the Battlestar Galactica series finale, the show's overwhelmingly grey and black palette gave way to the lushest possible greens and blues. The show depicted Pleistocene Africa as the garden of Eden, a point hammered home by the revelation that Hera was "mitochondrial Eve." In this landscape of peaceful bounty, the fighter jocks and maintenance workers and cult members (that's a job, right?) could finally lay down their burdens, renounce technology and return to the land as farmers or hunter-gatherers.

It's a beatific ending for the characters, but it runs completely counter to one of the overriding themes of the series, which is the reconstitution of civil society in the wake of devastating disruption. The struggles to establish a government independent of military chains of command, to reinstate the rule of law, to develop mechanisms by which grievances can be expressed and resolved, all became meaningless the moment Lee Adama decided that he'd really rather be hunting antelope. A conclusion like this doesn't just abandon one of the series' central concerns, but negates the significance of what's come before. And that's leaving aside the massive drawbacks of the decision - a few weeks ago a tube of toothpaste was one of the most valuable items in the entire fleet, but now everyone will put up with rotting teeth, untreated wounds, precarious food supplies and backbreaking physical labor just...because? I didn't buy it in David Copperfield when the urban Micawber family solved its problems by going off to Australia and becoming sheep farmers, and I don't believe that setting off into the prehistoric wilderness without tools, seeds, or knowledge of the local plant and animal life is conducive to long-term survival. Over the course of its run BSG has done a very good job of combining science fiction with mythic fantasy, but the last episode tilted too far in the latter direction, jettisoning all plausibility for as it reached for an allegorical grandeur it couldn't quite achieve.

On the other hand, the acting was great, the special effects, music and cinematography were firing on all cylinders, there were many heartwrenching character moments and the series as a whole has been one of the best works of television's new Golden Age. So, you know, there's always that.

Nicolas Cage rejects your puny human concept of "mortality"

2009-03-16T18:28:00.000-07:00

At least according to the promo for Knowing, his new movie:

Frightened boy: Are we going to die?
Nicolas Cage (using his Very Intense voice): I will never let that happen.

Berkeley's graffiti artists are getting pretentious

2009-03-09T18:27:00.000-07:00

Someone spray painted DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDAM inside the Shattuck tunnel. Apparently there are people who take the term "Gourmet Ghetto" a bit too literally...

Gail Trimble illustrates the concept of "reframing"

2009-02-27T18:30:00.000-08:00

Having, um, something of a personal interest in weirdly judgmental public reactions to women who answer trivia questions, I loved watching Gail Trimble deftly take ownership of the above interview. Trimble was the captain of her college's University Challenge team, and got hit with the firehose of public attention after leading her squad to victory in the finals. (The team was later disqualified after it turned out that one member had graduated several months previously, a development which exposed Trimble to further media nattering.)

The entire interview is great, as Trimble emphasizes the contributions of her teammates, distinguishes between recall of facts and other types of intelligence, and forthrightly says that sexism conditioned much of the public kerfuffle over her performance. The best part, though, comes around 7:08. In response to a vapid suggestion from the male interviewer that she might enjoy being "celebrated" in a "tasteful photo shoot" for a lad magazine called Nuts, Trimble politely disembowls the entire premise of the question. She notes that while positive comments on one's appearance are better than negative comments, ideally no one would feel obligated to remark on her appearance at all. It's a beautiful pivot, and it leaves the interviewer scrambling to eat his previous words and agree with her. And it can't be said too often: The decision to present oneself in public, even on tv, is not a request for feedback on one's appearance. Thank you Gail Trimble for articulating that point with so much clarity and dignity.

It's what the people want

2009-02-26T18:57:00.000-08:00

I'm loving how the entire goal of Volkswagen's current advertising campaign is to emphasize that Volkswagen is not an American car company. "Let's have our mascot be an old-timey Beetle that speaks with a thick German accent! Let's have Brooke Shields obsess about the lure of 'German engineering'! Let's end every commercial with the slogan 'Das Auto'! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LINK US TO DETROIT WE'RE NOT THEM WE'RE FOREIGN LOOK sauerbraten Wagner Oktoberfest Bismarck techno music." Meanwhile, GM's advertising message seems to be "Please baby, we know we've let you down before, but this time it'll be different, we swear...aww, come on baby, why you gotta be that way."

Rhetorical tropes that need to go on hiatus

2009-02-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

1) "If you type {subject of essay} into Google, you get {some monstrously large number of hits! So many that if every hit was a penny, and you stacked them all on top of each other, the stack would reach the moon! And you'd be a billionaire with a bridge to the moon! That many!}. Therefore, {subject of essay} is clearly a {potent cultural force/hot new trend/growing cause of concern}, requiring a few thousand more words of exposition!" While number of Google hits probably does provide some general measure of societal interest in a topic, any results are going to be seriously skewed by how common the individual words in the search string are, whether the search string is associated with an obsessive subculture, and whether the search string relates to a phenomenon recent enough to have left a noticeable internet footprint. Moreover, the deeper reaches of Google's results can be bizarrely tangential to the original query. Searching for "starting a small business in mobile alabama," for instance, returns 275,000 results - but result #23 is about an Al Jazeera public relations effort, #56 is information about using Red Hat Linux, #57 describes a summit on Cuba, #75 is a newspaper obituary page, #84 a list of poker tips and #95 an article on "kick-starting the mobile Internet." Citing the number of Google hits for a given term is the lifestyle essay equivalent of starting a school paper with a dictionary definition: it makes a feint at gravitas without actually achieving it.

2) And speaking of student papers, my current bugbears are the "Since the dawn of time..." or "It is human nature to..." openings. God knows I've used these plenty of times myself, but part of my current mission as a teacher is to convince students that it's okay to write about some period or event without drawing conclusions that are equally valid for all places, times and people. Really, it's fine to just make an argument about the causes of the first world war, or the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution - you don't need to shoulder the burden of proving that man has always participated in unstable networks of overlapping alliances, or that one of the eternal struggles of human existence is the conflict between cottage industry and mechanized production. As with references to numbers of Google hits, claims of timelessness are attractive because they seem to create a requisite atmosphere of "seriousness" - my hope is to convince students that real seriousness in historical writing starts with humility about what can be known and demonstrated. (Of course, in grad school you also find out that it's possible to swing too far in that direction, until you reach the point where writing a simple declarative sentence becomes an agonizing and almost impossible task...but one step at a time, one step at a time.)

I expected it, and yet...

2008-11-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

...when Jon Stewart made it official I started to cry, the way you do when a load of stress suddenly slips off your back, and you realize how long you've been carrying it, and just how heavy it was.

Congratulations, President-elect Obama.

Things are different in Europe

2008-06-16T17:51:00.001-07:00

Swedish Roommate: How many weeks of vacation do you have [at your job in Mexico]?

German Roommate: About three.

Swedish Roommate: Wow, that's not very much.

German Roommate: I know.

Such a loss

2008-01-04T22:55:00.001-08:00

"G'Quan wrote...'The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.' " - G'Kar, Babylon 5

Rest in peace, Andrew Olmsted.

Since there are still a few more hours in which a holiday post would be vaguely appropriate...

2008-01-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

Reindeer car!

The Green Menace

2007-12-12T20:03:00.000-08:00

An enjoyable aspect of shopping for fresh foods in Mexico City is that you can usually specify the exact amount that you'd like to pay for a given purchase (for example, instead of asking for a pound of cheese, you can request 20 pesos of cheese). This system makes it very easy to budget for groceries, as long as you have a rough sense of how items are priced by weight. Occasionally, though, there are miscalculations, such as I made when assuming that 10 pesos (about 95 cents) would buy a medium-sized bunch of cilantro. As it turns out, the cilantro to peso exchange rate is rather higher than that, and there is now a staggeringly huge bag of leafy greenery colonizing the entire top shelf of the refrigerator. Seriously, it's enough cilantro to feed an entire rabbit army. Plus all of the rabbits' gopher auxiliaries. And their chipmunk opponents. (The war between rabbits and chipmunks, while poorly covered by the mainstream media, is ongoing and deadly.) And because my grandparents' Depression-era thrift somehow seeped indelibly into the souls of all their descendants, letting any of the cilantro go to waste would be unthinkable (after all, it cost 95 cents! 95 CENTS, PEOPLE! Why, back in the day that money would get you a cherry phosphate down at the drugstore, a spiffy new fedora, a waltz with the prettiest girl at the dancehall, and two tickets to the WPA cockfight.) So I've been adding the leaves to all my meals lately, although with no appreciable diminution of the amount in the bag. That's okay - it's a war of attrition (much like the other conflict that the chipmunks are engaged in, you know, the one with the voles), and I'm confident that, with time, there's a better than 40% chance I'll succeed in breaking the cilantro's will.

Las Calaveras en Reforma

2007-11-26T22:31:00.000-08:00

One of the many impressive things about Mexico City is the number and variety of public art installations along the main avenues. This month, Day of the Dead festivities culminated with the placement of dozens of large, creatively decorated skulls, or calaveras, along the Paseo de la Reforma, where they'll remain until December 15th. I've had trouble articulating just how cool these sculptures are when trying to describe them to people, but fortunately some kind souls have made photos available through Creative Commons. Aren't these neat?

Calavera antrera! posted by M.a.r.i.a.n.i.t.u.x.

DSCF3183 posted by Gary Denness

DSCF3175 posted by Gary Denness

DSCF3158 posted by Gary Denness.

DSCF3143 posted by Gary Denness.

DSCF3152 posted by Gary Denness. As a side note, the building in the background that appears to be a church is actually a gay disco.

DSCF3269 posted by Gary Denness. To me this is the most impressive of the bunch - while it may be hard to see in a small photo, the design on this calavera was created with thousands of yellow, black and white corn kernels, making it an obsessive's masterpiece.

What I Learned Today

2007-10-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered that copal, a translucent golden incense produced from tree sap, is not, in fact, the same thing as candied ginger. Not the same thing at all. Fortunately, this discovery was made before any copal-flavored cookies could be baked. However, today's finding does lay the groundwork for other promising lines of inquiry - in particular, with careful experimental design and rigorous data analysis, it may be possible to one day determine which other substances are not candied ginger. Right now I have a strong hunch that radishes, sesame seeds and coal may also prove to be agingerous, but of course only time and a great deal of study will serve to confirm or contradict such hypotheses.

One of the Things I Love About the Walk from Work...

2006-11-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

...is that my office is downwind from a Ghirardelli chocolate factory. When you step outdoors in the evening, you're greeted with a rich smell of chocolate that's like walking into a kitchen moments after a pan of brownies has been pulled from the oven. Mmm.

The area as a whole is fairly industrial - besides the Ghirardelli factory, the BART tracks pass metal and paper recycling plants, yards full of tires and shipping pallets and, most enjoyably, a dour brown complex studded with smokestacks, whose logo proclaims it to be "Mother's Cookies...The Best Little Cookie Company!" Ah yes, that brings back happy memories of the old family assembly line, and how we'd rush home from school every day to eat the thousands of pounds of preservative-laced cookies that our robot mothers had manufactured for us. Good times, good times.

But Whose Favorite Food Isn't Milquetoast?

2006-11-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

So the Democrats have won a majority in both houses of Congress, allowing me the small but definite hope that for the next two years our government may be capable of doing more than that which falls somewhere on the spectrum from "bungling" to "malevolent." Given that the success of Democratic candidates in conservative districts is emerging as one of the main narratives of this election, it will be interesting to see how this affects Ellen Tauscher, the local representative for CA-10. Tauscher does a good job on some issues, especially the environment, but also made a poor judgement call earlier this year when she tried to push aside grassroots favorite Jerry McNerney in California's Eleventh District in favor of Steve Filson, a former Republican who explicitly disdained progressive support. What's troublesome isn't that Tauscher interfered with another district's primary process - she has every right to support the candidates she believes will best serve the interests of the party, just as other California Democrats sought to advance party interests by sending money to a primary challenger in Connecticut. (Cough. Cough. Ahem.) It's also understandable, if not exactly endearing, that Tauscher would prefer a CA-11 representative who's mainly indebted to her rather than to local activists. Instead, the worrisome aspect is that Tauscher doesn't seem to have learned one of the most basic lessons of the last six years, which is that candidates who present themselves as watered-down versions of their opponents ("We hold the same values, only I'm less committed to them!") seldom do all that well. When one of the major complaints against Democrats has been "But they don't seem to stand for anything," it shows a lack of both leadership and good sense to select a candidate whose main quality is his presumed inoffensiveness to the presumed immutable political predilections of the district's voters. McNerney's victory, on the other hand, demonstrated that articulating a positive message and offering a clearly defined contrast to the opposition can be a winning strategy, especially when facing an opponent as unbelievably sleazy as Richard Pombo.

To be fair, Tauscher did support McNerney after he won the primary, lending her presence at fundraisers and contributing to his eventual triumph. Still, it would be nice to see more far-sighted strategizing from a congresswoman who seems to aspire to influence within the House of Representatives, and stronger recognition from the party establishment more generally that many progressive goals - such as a healthy environment, a strong social safety net, equality of opportunity and defense of civil liberties - are neither embarassing positions for sensible people to hold nor impediments to Democratic electoral success.

A Conversation

2006-07-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

Me to my husband, who is reading a book on the development of the Canadian military: So, how are those Canadian armies?

Husband: Professional.

Pause.

Husband: What? That's the thesis of the book!

Pause.

Husband: That makes it sound really boring, doesn't it?

Lieberman and the Torture Thing

2006-07-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago my family made a modest contribution to Ned Lamont's campaign (which I suppose makes us members of the "the demonizing, hating, virulent, character-assassinating left of the Democratic Party." (Also, I can't be the only one who thinks that quote suffers from its failure to include the phrase "fever swamp" - stop coasting, Lieberman supporters! There are plenty of other words relating to disease and criminality that can be used to describe the Democratic base!)) The donation was the fulfillment of a promise that I made back in 2005, shortly before the final vote to confirm Alberto Gonzales as attorney general. The hearings had made it abundantly clear that a vote for Gonzales was a vote in support of the policies that had led to Abu Ghraib. While Gonzales offered the requisite mealy-mouthed condemnations of "torture" in his testimony before the Senate, he also refused to specify what activities he was actually repudiating (Waterboarding? Naked human pyramids? Beatings that stop short of causing pain equivalent to organ failure?); to take a stand on whether the president may order the torture of prisoners or to clarify his views on the infamous "Bybee memo". Gonzales even declined to comment on whether the activities photographed at Abu Ghraib constituted criminal conduct. In any decent government, this wink-wink nudge-nudge hedging on the subject of torture would be absolutely unacceptable. And for the most part, Senate Democrats managed to stand together to make what should have been the utterly uncontroversial point that torture is very wrong, and that anyone who would facilitate or excuse it has no business serving as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer. Lieberman, however, took a rather different stance:

Again, Justice Gonzales said repeatedly at the hearing that he would not countenance torture, repeated what is the fact that the Administration made very clear, presumably with his Counsel, that the rules of the Geneva Convention applied to the Iraq war because Iraq was a duly formed government, a sovereign state, and a party to the Geneva Convention. And what happened at Abu Ghraib was embarrassing, was hurtful to our cause in the world, and was offensive. It is being dealt with within the military justice system, as we have seen.

Questions are raised about the connection, I suppose, between the Bybee memo, whatever involvement Judge Gonzales had in it, and the events at Abu Ghraib. There is simply no evidence to make a connection certainly between Judge Gonzales and what happened at Abu Ghraib. And any of the independent reviews that have gone on, most particularly Mr. Schlesinger's independent review, said that there was no connection between so-called higher-ups and what happened at Abu Ghraib.

So, in the end, I have to ask myself, because of a memo written by somebody else -- Mr. Bybee at the Office of Legal Counsel -- which has in it material that I find, as I’ve said, profoundly offensive, that judge Gonzales received and did something with, am I prepared to vote to deny him confirmation as Attorney General of the United States? And to me, personally, that would be an unjust result. And that is why I will vote to confirm. I understand the frustration of members of the Judiciary Committee about some of the answers -- many of the answers that Judge Gonzales gave at the hearing. Some of them were evasive, some were legalistic, but that wouldn't be the first time that a witness before a committee had proceeded in that particular way, particularly one who has privileges that he occupies and lives under as Counsel to the President of the United States.

On February 3 of last year (before the above speech was delivered but admittedly, too late to have even the slightest impact), I wrote to Lieberman urging him to reconsider his reported intention to vote for Gonzales. Since I'm not one of his constituents, I used the only point of leverage that an out-of-state Democratic nobody could be expected to have, and said that if Lieberman supported Gonzales then I would support any primary challenge that Lieberman might eventually face. (Unsurprisingly, I never received a response to this email.)

So, while there are plenty of good reasons to oppose Lieberman - his votes for cloture on the bankruptcy bill and on the Alito nomination, his Wall St. Journal editorial equating criticism of the president with treason, his continuing, inured-to-the-evidence support for the Bush administration's policy in Iraq - the most pressing issue for me is Lieberman's willingness to condone torture. Torture is not a complicated moral question about which reasonable people can reach different conclusions, although I've been horrified by the increasingly common tendency to portray it as such. Prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment is one of the basic tenets of American justice, a bright line that is supposed to differentiate the U.S. from nightmare states like Argentina under the Dirty War Junta or Iraq under Saddam Hussein. And without letting any of the architects or executors of the administration's torture policies off the hook (after all, they wouldn't let you off it!), there's something particularly galling when a former Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidate from a solidly blue state acts as if torture is an issue on which triangulation or "deference" to executive overreaching is appropriate. Stances like Lieberman's undermine both the rule of law and the ability of the Democratic Party to present itself as a strong, principled alternative to the Republicans. Claims to the contrary aside, therefore, I don't see our contribution to Lamont as part of an extremist antiwar "jihad" (although I guess I wouldn't, huh?), just a reminder that there's only so much contempt you can display for people's core values before they decide that hey, maybe they aren't that crazy about you either.

Viva AMLO!

2006-07-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm still rooting for López Obrador to pull ahead in the Mexican presidential race (although it seems increasingly unlikely that he'll actually do so), for all of the usual, boringly obvious Massachusetts-lefty-transplanted-to-the-Bay-Area reasons. (1) The most important reason to back López Obrador, though, is the shocking revelation made Sunday night concerning the true nature of his PAN opponent, Felipe Calderón. During Azteca America's coverage of Calderón's victory-according-to-selected-indicators speech, the wide-angle camera shots revealed that not one but two of the people standing directly in front of the main podium were wearing NY Yankees caps (tan and blue respectively, turned backwards so that the logos were clearly visible). Seriously, PAN, your candidate studied at Harvard and you still can't muster up any love for the BoSox? (2) For shame. That's the final straw - you're dead to me, PAN. López Obrador para siempre! (3)

(1) No, he's not perfect. The cartoon pamphlet that he distributed in 2004 claiming that "dark forces" were working against him was so over the top in its paranoia and sense of self-righteous aggrievement that when I first saw it I thought that it was that it was a piece of cutting satire produced by his opponents. (Then again, the various attempts to disqualify López Obrador from even entering the presidential race certainly lend some plausibility to notions of "fuerzas oscuras.") And the PRD's post-election rumblings and threats to disregard election results have been a bit disquieting (although once more, it's not as if there aren't reasons for PRD supporters to be suspicious of the validity of presidential vote counts). On the whole, though, I think López Obrador has gotten a raw deal from the U.S. press, which seems obsessed with fitting news from Latin America into a "resurgence of the populist-authoritarian left" storyline and which generally insists on measuring the region's leaders using standard Chávez units (according to some quick back-of-the envelope calculations, Fidel Castro tips the scales at a hefty 2.5 Chávezes, Evo Morales and Lula da Silva both come in at a respectable 0.7 Chávezes apiece and Alan García barely registers at only a tenth of a Chávez. To be fair, the López Obrador-Chávez comparison is not the sole creation of U.S. reporters, as the PAN also ran campaign ads linking the two.)While it can be useful to look at events within a regional context, individual and national differences are often as important as the similarities. Expressing concern for the poor does not automatically make a politician a ruthless demagogue, and advocating that wealthy citizens contribute more to their country is not one step away from dressing everyone in burlap and sending them off to collective farms. There are arguments to be made about López Obrador's merits as a politician, but painting him as a Chávez-in-waiting seems to miss the point.

2) Yeah, yeah, the men in the Yankees caps were probably photographers or reporters, and not actually affiliated with the PAN. Still, does a decent presidential candidate allow the Yankees to be supported in his or her presence? That's right, I didn't think so. (Yeah, Hillary. You heard me.)

(3) No, growing up in Massachusetts didn't bias me on this issue at all - why do you ask?

One of the Reasons I Love My Neighborhood...

2006-06-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

...is because there are frequent opportunities to say "I saw the peacock again." According to one of the neighbors, a nearby farm went out of business about a year and a half ago and left the peacock free to saunter through suburban streets. The last several times that I've seen it, the peacock has been entranced by a large mirror that one family put in their front yard, and was pecking compulsively at the threatening yet oddly handsome stranger in the glass. Not that I find it easy to pull my eyes away from such a striking creature either - between the brilliantly colored feathers, reptilian legs and thoroughly improbable tail, it seems like the bird found its way here from some less sensible but more interesting world. (Photo by Jessica Merz)

Lest They Be Forgotten

2006-06-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Before it disappears into the recycling bin of history (from which it will be taken to the pulping plant of oblivion, then reborn in glorious effulgence as the paper towels of tomorrow), here are some highlights from the California Primary Election Official Voter Information Guide for June 6, 2006:

"When Tax Laws [sic] change, the first thing I think is: 'How is this going to affect me?'" - Glenn Forsch, Republican candidate for Board of Equalization, District 4, page 37.

Right on, Glenn! Because the public interest is always fully compatible with the interests of a single individual.

"I will seek complete access to medicinal herbs which has [sic] relieved the suffering of thousands. Further, if elected I will promote the use of industrial hemp to help farmers and communities survive in tough economic times. I will seek environmental reforms to authorize new energy sources, especially those derived from the oil of hemp seeds." - Lynnette Shaw, Libertarian candidate for Lieutenant Governor, page 33.

I agree that it would be a good thing to decriminalize marijuana, but Lynnette's insistence that hemp will save California makes it sound as if through some wacky chain of circumstances she secretly inherited her great-uncle's pot farm and now has to run for lieutenant governor in order to sell the harvest legally and preserve the jobs of her new employees, who are eccentric but have hearts of gold. Maybe an orphanage needs to be saved as well, so the fate of some cute kids is also riding on the outcome of the election. Actually, if we're going with the kids then I think a ranch for retired circus animals should also be involved somehow. So okay, Lynnette's running for the sake of the quirky pot farm employees, the orphans, a couple of arthritic giraffes, a toothless lion and a family of performing meerkats. It's a good thing that the election's over, because I think I just totally talked myself into voting for her.

"As the state's financial watchdog, I will support efforts to secure our borders against terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigration. That will save billions of dollars spent on the jailing of illegal immigrants who are rapists, burglars, murderers, and other convicted criminals." - Abel Maldonado, Republican candidate for Controller, page 34.

Clearly, illegal immigration is the new gay marriage, an issue meant to provoke people to froth in anger because a group which lacks various social and political benefits is nevertheless Getting Away With Something. Maldonado can certainly froth with the best of them. The link he's trying to draw between saving money and securing the borders is completely specious, though, unless you share his bizarre belief that California is besieged by terrorists and violent criminals trying to sneak in to the state (damn Oregonians...) Can you imagine what kind of contortions Maldonado would have had to perform had the red meat issue du jour been, say, flag burning? "As the state's financial watchdog, I will protect tax revenue by ensuring that sparks from burning flags never incinerate homes or businesses...or that, um...okay, let's think...flag burning, finances, flag burning, finances...oh, whatever, I give up. Dirty hippies."

"For 13 years I worked with Nobel Peace Prize nominee and anti-gang children's book author Stanley Tookie Williams...To learn more about me, watch the award-winning movie Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (actress Lynn Whitfield portrays my character)." - Barbara Bechnel, Democratic candidate for Governor, page 39.

Aargh, this drives me nuts. Anyone can "nominate" anyone else for a Nobel Prize. If you're running low on funds this Father's Day, you can nominate your dad for a Nobel Prize in chemistry. Go nuts, and nominate your mom for a human physiology prize as well! Of course, the various prize committees will throw away your letters unread, because they have their own, strictly confidential process for selecting nominees.

And the pièce de résistance...

"I will be an Insurance Commissioner who will make rates affordable, guarantee access to insurance, and bring health insurance under the regulatory authority of that office. But I'm starting my campaign someplace different. With myself. Insurance rates reflect not just the behavior of insurance companies, but the behavior of Californians as well. And some of that behavior is not very good. Some people commit insurance fraud, some drive recklessly or under the influence...But the biggest factor in insurance costs is people not taking care of their health. In my case, it's my weight. A study by the US Department of Health's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that obesity in California costs $7.7 billion a year. I want to become an example to others to lead healthier lives by losing weight myself. Fighting the obesity epidemic will lower insurance costs. I will keep my progress and program on my website. (Unlike other political websites, this will be a site dedicated to noncommercial health and nutrition information.) If you or someone you know would like to start trying to live a healthier life, join me at "StartWithCruz.com." - Cruz Bustamante, Democratic candidate for Insurance Commisioner, page 42.

Thought one: Hey Cruz, if you think that one of the main reasons that insurance rates are so high is because too many people have unhealthy lifestyles, then how about getting health insurance plans to cover gym membership? I'd be going to the gym near work every day if it didn't cost $40 a month with another $100 in enrollment fees.

Thought two: Maybe when you're talking to voters, you might want to indicate that you prioritize their interests above those of the corporations that you'll regulate if elected?

Thought three: Aiming to be a poor man's Mike Huckabee is setting a low, low bar for yourself indeed.

"Oh honey, don't worry, they killed the evil TV show." Scream. Splat. "Huh, what d'you know - it's unkillable."

2006-05-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

So it looks like 7th Heaven will be coming back for an 11th season after all , staggering forth from the grave with worms protruding from its eye sockets and an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The show is the Little Zombie That Could, proving that nonsensical plotting, wildly inconsistent characterization, sub-Passions dialogue and dead-eyed, monotonic performances are all irrelevant as long as you cater to an underserved demographic. (Judging by the frequent spasms of product placement, that demographic eats large quantities of Campbell's soup and Oreo cookies. It's a mark of the ineptness of the show's writing staff that the reasons presented for consuming said products are far more convoluted and implausible than "they taste good" -Campbell's is an educational charity which just happens to make soup as a sideline, while Oreos when combined with milk function as a truth serum. Seriously, a truth serum. Yes. Seriously. A truth serum.)
I have to admit, though, that as a connoisseur of the craptacular I'm pleased with the renewal. (Of course, this feeling will change if Veronica Mars is left in eternal cliffhanger limbo so that the Camdens can discover yet again that those hormones sure make women do wacky things.) As implausible as it sounds, I don't believe that 7th Heaven has yet plumbed the depths it's capable of reaching. There are balrogs yet to be woken down there, and by the show's nondenominational Protestant God I want to see them arise wielding whips of fire. Can Ruthie attend a purity ball? Will the seven-year-old twin boys start "dating" a pair of twin sisters? Instead of having just one season arc focus on a character who doesn't appear onscreen (see: Mary's divorce), how about having two or three plotlines like this? Or maybe old footage could be spliced in to make it look like the characters are still hanging around - anyone up for seeing Season 9 Annie talk on the phone with Season 8 Simon? (In split-screen, of course.) Does Amanda Bynes have a less-famous sister looking to break into show business? The possibilities are endless. Lurch proudly into the future, 7th Heaven - I know you'll somehow manage to amaze us all.

My letter to the New York Times

2006-01-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

Hello,

In his article "Why Not a Strike on Iran ?," David Sanger outlines several strategic and political reasons why such an attack would be unwise. However, the piece is curious in that it seems to regard these abstract strategic concerns as determinative, implying that bombing another country carries no more moral weight than a move in a chess match. By discussing a possible attack in such antiseptic terms, Sanger manages to neatly circumvent consideration of the hundreds or thousands of Iranians who would die in U.S. strikes, the vast majority of whom would have no connection to any nuclear activities. It may be that in this age of preemptive war, raising the issue of civilian casualties will be seen as naïve or even gauche. Still, I doubt that the Times would regard the moral dimension as similarly irrelevant had a leading Iranian newspaper run an article entitled "Why Not a Strike on the U.S.?"

*******

The chess analogy was an attempt to make the letter classier - the real comparison I wanted to make was to some kind of world domination video game, where the obliteration of thousands of imaginary people is only problematic if it triggers some kind of retaliation. The version in my head also had a lot more profanity directed against people who act as if a "realistic" approach to geopolitics demands that we ignore the real death and suffering which result from military action. I should say that this criticism may not apply to Sanger himself - he had limited space to express his ideas, and the article was titled by a copyeditor who needed to create something snappy and expressive using a small number of characters. Still, it's scary how rapidly the doctrine of preemptive war has been normalized. Had Sanger's piece run four years ago, it's hard to believe that it would have displayed such a blase attitude towards the murder of civilians for the sake of a dubious future benefit.

My letter to Target

2005-11-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

Hello,

There are Targets next to the train stations at both ends of my commute. The stores offer convenient access to inexpensive products, and I usually enjoy shopping at them. I would like to continue to shopping at them in the future.

However, I've come to the realization that I can no longer support a company which permits its pharmacists to arbitrarily deny female customers access to medication, specifically to the emergency contraceptive known as "Plan B." While Target contends that its policies strike a reasonable balance between the needs of the customer and the religious rights of employees, this claim does not stand up to scrutiny. Given the time constraints involved in the use of emergency contraception, a pharmacist's refusal to fill a valid prescription is no trivial matter. Transferring prescriptions to another pharmacy is an unsatisfactory solution, both because of the burden imposed on the customer to travel to the new location (which may not be feasible if she depends on public transportation, has a strict work schedule, etc.) and because Target cannot guarantee that a third party will treat customers any more professionally than did Target itself. If Target pharmacists oppose emergency contraception, then by all means they should refrain from using it. But the decision as to whether others should purchase legal, in-stock medication is not the pharmacists' to make.

I might have more respect for Target's position if it treated the "religious rights" of all employees equally - for example, if Scientologist pharmacists could refuse to fill prescriptions for psychotropic medications, Jainist cashiers could refuse to ring up meat-based products, and devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster could abstain from any job activities which might profane His Noodly Appendage. Such a stance would at least be philosophically consistent (and would make going to Target an entertainingly wacky experience). But when the only religious beliefs granted special consideration are those of a pinched fundamentalism, obsessed with control of women's sexuality, I have to conclude that Target fears right-wing critics more than it values the health of its female customers. Until Target gives me reason to believe that it prioritizes the needs of customers over the bigotry of a few employees, I will not shop there and will encourage my friends not to do so either.

Thank you for your time and attention.