The internet is a sham.

I miss Berkeley, sometimes.

2008-12-01T22:28:00.001-05:00

Most blogs are about mundane things, so why should mine be any different?

I really like the song "Berkeley Pier," by Tilt. It's one of the songs I've loved since I was a teenager. Unfortunately, it is the last track on 'Til It Kills . . . but it isn't the final song. There's a hidden "bonus" track that is separated from the end of the song by a lengthy pause. I don't know why the pause wasn't given its own track, but now it means that my music-tracking (whether it's iTunes' play count or last.fm) software does not accurate keep track of how many times I've played the song. Bah.

The Descent to Tarantino

2008-07-23T23:13:00.005-04:00

I recently bought Hard Core Logo on DVD, and I was really upset to find the DVD case tainted with Quentin Tarantino's name. To make things worse, the positioning of his imprint makes it appear that he directed the movie. Have a look for yourself:

All of which got me thinking about what I have against Tarantino anyway...

The problem with criminal-as-protagonist movies is that, somewhere along the line, they seem to have forgotten why the criminal was a compelling antihero. "Criminal" only denotes the violation of laws, which are sadly often far removed from correct behavior. The criminal, therefore, was not necessarily immoral. The smuggler, for example, might be heralded as a free market pioneer. The drug user might be a civil libertarian and a perfectly upstanding, moral individual. But there seems to have been a conflation between those who break the law yet are not immoral and those who are immoral for the sake of immorality. The transition happened in phases, and obviously these aren't in chronological order so much as general trends:

Virtuous criminal as hero: think Spartacus. Nominally, he's a criminal, but in reality he's supposed to be understood as a tragic hero. (Disregard historicity, for simplicity's sake.)
Self-interested but not necessarily immoral criminal as hero: Han Solo. Sure he's a smuggler, but he's just trying to make a living and those laws were probably arbitrary anyway, right?
Reluctant, immoral criminal: Michael Corleone, the upstanding war hero who wants nothing to do with the family business gets pulled into being a mob boss anyway. At this point, you can still sympathize with the man, even though you know he will do evil deeds.
And here we reach the worst of the lot: unapologetic criminals who are often shrouded in byzantine plots meant to further portray their moral ambiguity (Reservoir Dogs or Snatch). But there isn't really too much moral ambiguity in these scenarios after all, we are meant to sympathize with "bad guys" doing bad things.

Obviously, I don't have a fully fleshed-out thesis here. But I do find a lot of (needlessly) violent movies repulsive (sometimes sickeningly, stomach-turningly so) because I feel they're asking me to root for people doing things I find abhorrent.

DOMI

2008-07-01T12:22:00.001-04:00

Jenn mentioned a blog post about the difference between apartment and house dwellers that focused on the words "home" and "house" in the common understanding. It reminded me of one of the interesting things about the word "home," namely that it is the only remaining example of the locative case in the English language.

From Bede to Bloch

2008-06-08T02:05:00.000-04:00

A couple years ago, I wrote an essay that considered the work of the modern historian Marc Bloch (who was a hero), as described in The Historian's Craft, and the work of the medieval historian Bede. Here's the conclusion:

The powerful intuition of students of history, amateur historians, and the general educated public has always been that history is a "mirror" of present society. Beginning with the decline of God (who had kept Descartes' evil demons at bay), many thinkers in the nineteenth century began to doubt both the existence of objective reality and our ability to perceive it if it does exist. This extreme skepticism led some scholars to completely solipsistic worldviews (like existentialism or Freudian analysis of history, for example). On the other extreme, this skepticism was wholly rejected by some theorists like Marx who held that we could measure the arc of history using economic rubrics alone. Against this backdrop, historians had to find a way to justify their discipline both to themselves and to others. Some turned to very narrow specialization in an effort to make history more like a science. In fact, there is a direct echo of this sentiment in Marc Bloch, who very much wanted to consider "history" the "science of men in time." If there is one thing that scholars have learned from twentieth-century science it is this: even overwhelming intuitions can be wrong, the paradigm case being Einstein's special relativity. But even with such a powerful injunction away from assuming the historian can purport to learn how the world "really was" at a certain time, it is nonetheless overly cautious to treat all societies (or periods) as if they happened in a vacuum. It would be overstating Bloch's case to accuse him of doing this, but it is clear from his fear of seeking origins that he is more sympathetic to this counterintuitive idea than he is to a sober application of the traditional norms. Bloch's skepticism of our ability to make objective judgments about history extends beyond the idea of origins:

Are we so sure of ourselves and of our age as to divide the company of our forefathers into the just and the damned? How absurd it is, by elevating the entirely relative criteria of one individual, one party, or one generation to the absolute, to inflict standards upon the way in which Sulla governed Rome, or Richelieu the States of the Most Christian King!

And it is here, finally, that the medieval historian (Bloch) can learn from the medieval historian (Bede): humans are not so incomprehensible that we of one generation cannot learn to consider the values of another's. There is nothing that is so alien in human experience that we cannot, with open minds, learn to grasp. We may never appreciate the desire to enslave Africans and abuse them as human chattel, but surely, as uncomfortable as it would make us, we can understand that desire. We cannot be compelled to sacrifice our own children to Baal, but we can find powerful modern analogues to approach an understanding of how Carthaginians would be driven to do so. Unlike Bede, we may not be able to apply a stable moral framework (i.e. the relatively stable absolute morality of orthodox Christianity) against the deeds of our predecessors, Bloch is right in that; but this should not mean that we cannot purport to understand our forefathers nor should it mean that we cannot trace our own origins to those very slaveholders and child-sacrificers. It is, after all, not just to them, but also to the people whose values we still share that we owe our present. It is no wonder, after all, that Joseph Strayer, who obviously admired Marc Bloch, wrote the introduction to the English translation of The Historian's Craft. Indeed, Bloch is right to describe the ideal historian: "This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of the historian." In order to understand the living, Strayer and the overwhelming majority of historians before him (and a growing number today, even) are right to seek the origins of our social structures, biases, institutions, and cultures in those of our past.

The Sky is Always Bluer

2008-03-19T02:31:00.000-04:00

I didn't modify the colors at all: it was dark, gray, and overcast where I happened to be standing in downtown Manhattan, but it was clearly bright and beautiful somewhere nearby. I just wish I had a decent camera to snap this shot instead of my phone's.

A Million Days With You

2008-02-20T21:55:00.000-05:00

Everybody says they want a million bucks, but I'd rather have a million days with you.
Million Bucks, All

When I was younger, I always found that lyric to be (more than a little) silly but sweet. It never occurred to me that it was entirely self-interested. After all, wouldn't you trade a paltry million dollars for a 2739-year lifespan?

Martian Saints

2008-02-14T17:12:00.000-05:00

So several years ago, the Rutgers radio station (WRSU) had a contest. I don't remember what I did to win it, but somehow I did win it. And the prize they were supposed to give me was all of Mary Lou Lord's records up until that point.

So I never got my records.

I was bitter. Even though I really liked her voice, I couldn't bring myself to buy any of the music that I was supposed to get for free. I ended up buying one of her EPs (Martian Saints) used a long time ago. I listen to it rarely, but it's really good, actually. I've listened to it twice this week. I'm still pissed I never got my free records. Now I'm trying to figure out if I ought to break the moratorium, give in, and just start buying them myself or what.

Cats are assholes.

2007-11-20T15:07:00.000-05:00

Cats are assholes.

2007-10-26T03:20:00.000-04:00

Cats are assholes.

2007-10-21T03:19:00.000-04:00

Cats are assholes.

2007-10-02T04:31:00.000-04:00

Working definition of human interaction with felines: from day one (i.e. since the protohominids), the ones that could, ate us; the ones that couldn't, scorned us. Cats are assholes.

Not Dead Yet

2007-08-01T02:59:00.000-04:00

I'm not dead. I'll be back soon; I promise.

The Times Would Fail Freshman Philosophy

2007-06-27T04:16:00.000-04:00

I know that the New York Times isn't particularly well-known as a publication of philosophical rigor, but this article in yesterday's issue just really irritated me with its pseudo-philosophical babble trying to tie together philosophical theories of mind, theological theories of soul, and evolutionary science in a neat little pop-science package:

The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes's dictum, "I think, therefore I am," loses its force.

The big issue, of course, is that this completely misses Descartes' point. Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, is the same as: I think therefore I exist. It simply means that if i were in a world where I couldn't believe a single thing that I perceived with any certainty (suppose I'm in the Matrix), I could still have access to one bit of knowledge: by virtue of the fact that I can think I must exist.

It's true enough that Descartes separated humans (as soul-owners) from other animals. But this particular quotation, apart from being sound bite–worthy, has nothing to do with Descartes' separation of humans from animals. Furthermore, the view that humans are unique has been universal in western thought since western thought has existed. I don't mean to sound pedantic, but the Times can surely do better than this fluff.

Résumé Repair

2007-06-27T02:59:00.000-04:00

I recently decided to update my résumé since it had fallen into disrepair. In addition to new experience and credentials, I felt I needed to give it a little facelift as well. I opened up my old Word document version (in NeoOffice) and began to apply some of the suggestions in this article—but I found the process really irritating and quirky. So I tried using Google Docs but I found it just as unsatisfactory. Zoho is usually better than Google Docs, but no luck there either.

Finally I decided to just create my own (X)HTML version. So this is my résumé. After I'd put together a valid XHTML 1.0 Strict template, I decided that maybe others might find it useful, so I'm sharing a stripped-down version of the template. If you find it useful or have any questions/suggestions, let me know.

The Greedy Fraud Behind the 'Kabul Beauty School'

2007-06-04T19:51:00.000-04:00

Up until recently ( play or download mp3), Deborah Rodriguez has been congratulated as a conscientious activist for social change in Afghanistan. Her work in putting together a beauty school in Kabul where, up until a few years ago, the Taliban would publicly beat women for putting on makeup is just the sort of heartwarming story that Hollywood and American book publishers love.

In fact, they loved her story so much that Random House gave her an $80,000 advance for the book and there's a movie deal in the works.

And the plucky budding Afghan beauticians?

They get nothing. They get worse than nothing. Apparently, they claim that Rodriguez promised she would not publish photos of them because they live in a violent repressive society (remember how Islam is a religion of peace?) and they feared their lives would be in danger if it ever became public knowledge that they are running a beauty school. Sure enough, those photos did appear in the book—the book that has earned the Afghan women nothing—and they do now fear for their lives. And where's that warm-hearted made-for-Hollywood heroine from Michigan amidst all this? Long gone. She left Afghanistan last month. But she hasn't fully abandoned her friends:

Rodriguez says that she knows the women are angry and terrified—but that they should realize that things take time. She also claims the girls misunderstood what she promised them.

That's right, ladies . . . I mean girls, I know you're afraid because I knowingly endangered your lives after I promised I wouldn't, but you have to realize: they were giving me a lot of money! Surely you see that, right? And it's not like I've completely forgotten about you: I'm working really hard to get you out this mess, but these things take time. And of course I want to share some of my newfound good fortune with you:

She says she plans to give the girls a small part of the royalties from the book, along with 5 percent of her earnings from the movie Sony Pictures is planning.

What a saint.

Rome Redux: the Dictatorial Presidential Directive

2007-05-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

There have been countless articles dedicated to the similarities between America's growing imperialism and ancient Rome's. The similarity, of course, is too pronounced to ignore, though its accuracy and degree may reasonably be debated.

Now we have taken yet another step in Rome's direction. The Roman Republic had, as part of its governance structure, the emergency office of dictator which could only be held for six months in states of emergency. The dictator was just that: an authoritarian figure whose pronouncements carried the force of law. The office had such a short term limit because it was designed to free up impediments to solving an immediate crisis, and once that crisis had been resolved, the regular rule of law was supposed to resume.

Of course, that's not the way it always worked. The dynast Sulla managed to install himself as dictator indefinitely. And, importantly, Julius Caesar's demand that he be made dictator for life was the final nail in the coffin of the Roman Republic.

There are plenty of cases where authoritarian regimes come to power in times of national emergency, and this was clear to our Founders. Nonetheless, they never created a constitutional office of dictator even in cases of severe national distress precisely because they were so acutely aware of what that provision had brought about in the Roman Republic. And yet, here we are now. Our president has created the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive which effectively gives him dictatorial control of our branches of government for the duration of:

any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions

I wonder how long our republic will last.

Mitt Romney and the Case of the Ticking Time Bomb

2007-05-16T19:19:00.000-04:00

When asked about torture, people inevitably point to the "ticking time bomb scenario" as an example of a situation in which torture is justified. Most of the time, torture apologists don't point out the no ticking time bomb scenario has ever been recorded in history. Read that again. There has never been a situation where a terrorist has been captured and torture would have been able to save lives in imminent danger.

And yet we have mealy-mouthed presidential candidates like Mitt Romney who claim that we need to engage in "enhanced" interrogation techniques (in Romneyspeak that means "not torture") in ticking bomb situations. He wants to double our detainment camp at Guantanamo for the express reason that it denies prisoners of the rights they would be afforded on American soil. The line about doubling Guantanamo, by the way, was the money line that drew enthusiastic applause from the audient. You see, suspected terrorists are like radioactive HAZMAT, we can't risk them touching the very land we live on!

Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's any real chance at all the Mitt Romney will be the Republican candidate for president, but it's a sad state of affairs where a man who is as wrong as he is on security is considered a serious candidate.

My Iraq Withdrawal Plan

2007-05-14T01:58:00.000-04:00

The latest craze these days is to come up with an Iraq withdrawal plan, preferably with bullet points. Well, budding political strategist that I am, I've written up my plan to withdraw the troops from Iraq and paved the road to the White House for any candidate who has the courage to take me up on it. Look at the footer of this page, this plan is licensed under a Creative Commons license (as if that were relevant). You, too, can adopt the Darian Plan For Withdrawal From Iraq:

Announce immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, return of habeas corpus rights for all Americans, and a renewed commitment to the Geneva Conventions.
Immediately begin public, high-level negotiations with Iran and Syria and ask those countries for help in Iraq. Our interests are aligned with theirs. Cease beating the war drums against Iran.
Having thus laid the groundwork for a return to international law (you may also want to close our "secret" CIA prisons and our "extraordinary rendition" programs), go back to the U.N. and tell the truth this time. Offer to pay for whatever international U.N. troop numbers are necessary to bring some measure of order back to Iraq and withdraw American troops. One of the reasons the United States is losing the war of ideas is because we started this war under false pretenses and we've turned Iraqi life into a living hell. The U.N. does not suffer from our deserved lack of credibility.
Broach that subject we've desperately avoided: maybe Iraq is not a viable state; maybe it needs to be broken into a Sunni, Kurdish, and Shiite state. This is an international debate and belongs on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly in addition to the Iraqi Parliament.
Open all of the civilian contract work bidding up to international corporations. Sever the sweetheart deals that have made a mockery of the sacrifices our armed forces have made. With a transparent bidding process, other nations will have a stake in rebuilding Iraq and the American people won't have to be fleeced by the likes of Titan, C.A.C.I. and Halliburton (among others).

Always remember that Iraq ≠ Baghdad. We have not been able to pacify the capital of Iraq, so it's time to admit our mistake, seek outside help, and, yes, pay for it.

How to 'fix' reddit: reclaiming the pre-DiggMelt glory days

2007-05-13T01:26:00.000-04:00

Everyone on reddit has been complaining lately that the quality of posts (both suggestions and comments) has gone down along with the variety of topics. This may well be true, but I don't know that the problem is caused by the influx of ex-Digg users. Rather, I think these new users are just doing what reddit itself has naturally set them up to do. The problem of article variety, in any case, is something that's caused by one of reddit's core features: karma.

That's right, karma.

As a measure of relative importance in the reddit pecking order, karma is something all new users naturally want. And the only surefire way to gain karma points is to suggest articles that other redditors will upmod. The new users (in addition to the fairly homogeneous reddit old-schoolers) almost invariably upmod the same few topics, so new users have every incentive to suggest (as frequently as possible) every new Dawkins utterance, Bush gaffe, or cute cat picture in lieu of seeking out new content and posting infrequently.

Of course, karma is not to blame for all of reddit's problems. The general decline in redditor literacy is indeed a product of reddit's new success, but for me, anyway, that is a smaller price to pay than a decline in the quality and variety of daily stories. Particularly for RSS users, the top 25 or so posts are the most important part of the site and removal of the karma feature (or at least making it hidden from end-users) may help re-orient reddit's downward trajectory.

Lucy the Girl in the Window

2007-05-06T05:04:00.000-04:00

Help David find Lucy, please. Distribute this link as far as possible and maybe it'll work out for them. The internet shouldn't only ruin people's lives!

We done caught us some terrorists!

2007-04-14T18:55:00.000-04:00

The incredible gall of James Zumwalt's op-ed contribution in today's New York Times strains the limits of shamelessness. He claims that six Muslim imams who were singled out by "concerned passengers" (ostensibly because they looked "suspicious," i.e. Muslim) are intimidating good, honest, terrorist-fearing 'mericans by bringing suit against both the airline and the passengers who were clearly spooked by seeing "ragheads" onboard their plane. This is classic blame-the-victim rhetoric in which obviously the imams were asking for it! Far be it from to defend any religious leaders on grounds that they are "holy" men—but, come on! Really?

Witnesses described conduct that suggested something ominous might in fact be in the offing. The imams, the passengers reported, prayed loudly in the open terminal before boarding, sat in different seats on the plane from those assigned, positioned themselves near exits, asked for unneeded seatbelt extensions (which they then placed under their seats) and, most disturbingly, made anti-American comments.

This is all hearsay, but let's go through the list, anyway:

They prayed loudly? Must be terrorists.
They sat in different seats on the plane than those assigned? Only terrorists make mistakes when boarding planes. Or perhaps only terrorists prefer the better seat that seems to be unoccupied.
They positioned themselves near exits? Only terrorists prefer the roomiest seats on a plane. (See tip 2 in that link.)
They asked for "unneeded" seatbelt extensions? I got nothing for this one. Perhaps we could ask them why they needed these. "Unneeded" is a little presumptuous: I'm pretty sure Mr. Zumwalt wasn't there to confirm that they did not, indeed, need the extensions. Besides, what can you possibly do with seatbelt extensions that you can't do with a common belt, anyway?
They made anti-American comments? Never mind, that's the clincher. If you don't like everything 'merica does, you can just get out! We'll bring democracy to your country soon enough anyway.

Let's be reasonable. Suppose there were terrorists on a flight and they planned to hijack the plane or crash it into something. Would they dress up as Muslim clergy and behave in an attention-grabbing way? Or maybe our citizen-heroes just saw past their clever disguises and their subtle terrorist tactics. With a nation full of Jack Bauers, I think we can all rest easy and fly the safe blue skies.

I can't believe I'm giving this guy the benefit of the doubt.

2007-04-09T06:05:00.000-04:00

Regarding this statutory rape case in Britain, involving a 20-year-old man who had sex with a 10-year-old victim, Jessica from Feministing is up in arms that the defendant is getting off without any jail time. The circumstances of the case seem to be that the girl looks over the age of consent, asked to have sex, and was outside a pub at the time. The prosecutor in the case sympathizes with the defendant's claim that he honestly believed the victim was old enough to consent. But apparently intent is not a factor in Jessica Valenti's calculus.

No prosecutor ever wants to be in a position that makes it appear that he condones sex between an adult and a 10-year-old. The judge in this case characterizes the situation as "wholly exceptional" which makes me think that perhaps this particular 10-year-old actually does reasonably appear to be old enough to consent to sex (this being a statutory case and not an aggravated rape)—especially given the setting of the encounter. Otherwise, it seems completely unbelievable to me that any judge or prosecutor in Britain would be willing to put his professional and public reputation on the line in favor of somebody who had sex with a ten-year-old.

The only way, it seems, that the defendant could have avoided this situation is if he'd asked the victim for identifying documents, I suppose. In America, even that would not have been enough as we have strict liability laws that define sex with a minor as statutory rape even if you meet the minor in a bar (where everybody is presumably over 21) and you check for ID (which is just an absurd proposition) and the ID happens to be fake.

Everyone's weighing in.

2007-04-05T19:28:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan says Britain is humiliated, Amos at Kishkushim says Iran is humiliated, The Independent covers the spin. But in the end, I think I like Terry Jones' take the best.

Iran. Them?

2007-04-03T16:41:00.000-04:00

In America, we have this way of overlooking the patently obvious. What is the American public's number one concern these days? Security. More specifically, terrorism. And what country is the bogeyman du jour? Iran. But let's just consider that perception:

Did the Iranians have anything to do with 9/11? No.
Did the Iranians have anything to do with the Madrid attacks? No.
Did the Iranians have anything to do with the London attacks? No.
Did the Iranians have anything to do with the Bali attacks? No.
Where did those attackers come from? Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt—basically Arab countries and Pakistan.
Were any of those attackers Iranian? No.
Do Iranians have any reason to fear us? Consider this map:

Notice those two bright red American-invaded countries on either side of Iran. Then remember all that "axis of evil" talk. Now think back to who has once already deposed Iran's democratically elected prime minister in favor of an autocratic king who ruled until he was overthrown during the revolution of 1979 (hint: it was us), who it was that armed Iraq in the first place (hint: it was us), and who it was that encouraged and directly supported Saddam Hussein's war on Iran (hint: it was us). Maybe they're afraid of us. And maybe they should be. Are they seeking nuclear weapons? Probably. They probably look over at their neighbor Pakistan, who has done much more to harm American interests and realize that Pakistan is an American "ally" because it's got the bomb.

I feel like a kid again!

2007-03-27T17:25:00.000-04:00

Maybe the people I know are anomalies, but none of my friends seems to dread going to the dentist as much as I do. I don't understand: to me it's self-evidently terrible. But if I have to spell it out, so be it:

First off, I hate the guilt trip you have to endure each time. Have you been flossing? Well then, have you been flossing the right way every day? How many times a day do you brush? Twice, well that's the minimum—if that's all you want to do it's your decision.

More than that, though, is the pain. Forget drilling or root canals. I'm talking about the run-of-the-mill cleaning pain. You know something is wrong when you're wondering, "do all women have hands this strong?" Basically, you sit there and have somebody scrape your mouth to hell and you have to submit obediently.

So to summarize, sitting down for forty-five minutes and being told what you're doing wrong with your life while your mouth is passioned up worse than Christ and waterboarded like Guantanamo is not my idea of a good time.