Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I'm underemployed (historically particularly as an editor in book and magazine publishing), recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 606
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 30 sign-ups; 24 cancellations; Total= 6
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 7 sign-ups; 3 cancellation; Total= 4
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration. Later note: forget I ever said this.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
My recurring nightmare -- literally -- is that, when all this is over, I meet up again with some of the friends I made in Iraq (and who I talk to everyday by e-mail), and they say to me: "You knew we hated Saddam, with his torture chambers, his secret police and his 100 per cent 'election' results. You knew we were desperate to overthrow him. You knew about the 5,000 people he gassed at Halabjah. You knew. So when British and American planes were just miles away, waiting to kill Saddam so we could begin to rebuild our country, what did you do?"
How could I possibly tell them I went on a march opposing the war? How will I explain that one million people in my home town actually did?
A suspected mass grave has been found in the Ivory Coast's western town of Man containing what is thought to be hundreds of bodies.
The BBC's Joan Baxter in Man says the positions of some of the bodies indicate summary executions.
The corpses are strewn across the local cemetery on the outskirts of the town, she says.
Some of the bodies are wrapped in plastic sacks and others are charred.
[...]
The rebel group the Movement for Justice and Peace which controls Man alleges the area contains the bodies of civilians massacred by government loyalists.
They say 12,000 people have been killed in Man since Ivory Coast's civil war started five months ago.
But it's worth paying attention to, right? Notice how all the bloggers have taken note, are blogging up a storm, and arousing the mainstream media and politicians?
Right? Right?
No. Because it doesn't fit in easily as a useful Weapon in the Pet Ideological Battle, to prove that the X Party is evil and has evil policies. And that's what blogging's all about, right? Winning a battle, by any means necessary, any accusation that can be hurled.
And if it's merely a case of foreigners being massacred, and it's not a partisan issue -- well, then, why pay attention? Why?
I write this to protest against all those people who oppose the war against Saddam Hussein, or as they call it, the "war against Iraq". I am an Iraqi doctor, I worked in the Iraqi army for six years during Iraq-Iran war and four months during Gulf war. All my family still live in Iraq. I am an Arab Sunni, not Kurdish or Shia. I am an ordinary Iraqi not involved with the Iraqi opposition outside Iraq.
I am so frustrated by the appalling views of most of the British people, media and politicians. I want to say to all these people who are against the possible war, that if you think by doing so you are serving the interests of Iraqi people or saving them, you are not. You are effectively saving Saddam. You are depriving the Iraqi people of probably their last real chance get rid of him and to get out of this dark era in their history.
My family and almost all Iraqi families will feel hurt and anger when Saddam's media shows on the TV, with great happiness, parts of Saturday's demonstration in London. But where were you when thousands of Iraqi people were killed by Saddam's forces at the end of the Gulf war to crush the uprising? Only now when the war is to reach Saddam has everybody become so concerned about the human life in Iraq.
Where were you while Saddam has been killing thousands of Iraqis since the early 70s? And where are you are now, given that every week he executes people through the "court of revolution", a summary secret court run by the secret security office. Most of its sentences are executions which Saddam himself signs.
I could argue one by one against your reasons for opposing this war. But just ask yourselves why, out of about 500,000 Iraqis in Britain, you will not find even 1,000 of them participating tomorrow? Your anti-war campaign has become mass hysteria and you are no longer able to see things properly.
DON'T MISS THE 7TH ANNUAL KIMJONGILIA SHOW!: Which opens
...in Pyongyang today on the occasion of Kim Jong Il's birthday. Large posters were seen standing in front of the Kimilsungia-Kimjongilia exhibition, its venue.
Put on display in the hall were more than 17,000 potted Kimjongilias presented by ministries of the cabinet, national institutions, armed forces organs and working people from all walks of life from all provinces, foreign guests and overseas Koreans.
Seen on the stands were slogans and letters reading "Long live General Kim Jong Il, the Sun of the 21st Century", "Highest Glory to Respected General Kim Jong Il", "Peerlessly Great Man", "Army-Based Leadership" and "Devoted Defence", etc.
[...]
Vice-Premier Kwak Pom Gi, chairman of the DPRK Kimilsungia-Kimjongilia Federation, addressing the ceremony said that Kimjongilia is an immortal flower that represents the personality of Kim Jong Il as a great man and a flower of the sun best loved by the Korean people. It is the highest pride of the Korean nation and the desire of humankind to widely cultivate and propagate the flower, he added.
He reiterated the need for the participants to swap achievements and experience they gained in cultivating and propagating the flower during the exhibition period and strengthen exchange and cooperation in the field.
Also, Kim Jong Il was made a medical doctor by Peru!
The president said that they deemed it the greatest honor and pride to present the certificate of honorary doctor and medal to Kim Jong Il, who is the great thinker and theoretician and most outstanding statesman of the era, carrying the boundless respect and reverence for him.
He's so inspirational! I tell you an anecdote now!
Anecdote about Kim Jong Il
Pyongyang, February 12 (KCNA) - General Secretary Kim Jong Il visited a naval unit in March Juche 87 (1998). In a bedroom he found that beds were placed in a way that the wall would be the first to be seen by seamen when they woke up.
He told commanding officers of the unit that beds should be repositioned so that they could see the sky of the homeland when they opened their eyes in the morning.
He then said that the seamen, seeing the sky of the homeland, would feel good and deeply cherish feelings of love for the country and the pride of fighting to defend it.
You are a geek. Good for you! Considering the endless complexity of the universe, as well as whatever discipline you happen to be most interested in, you'll never be bored as long as you have a good book store, a net connection, and thousands of dollars worth of expensive equipment. Assuming you're a technical geek, you'll be able to afford it, too. If you're not a technical geek, you're geek enough to mate with a technical geek and thereby get the needed dough. Dating tip: Don't date a geek of the same persuasion as you. You'll constantly try to out-geek the other.
The movie is, in short, your money's worth, better than we expect, more fun than we deserve. I am getting a little worn out describing the origin stories and powers of superheroes, and their relationships to archvillains, gnashing henchmen and brave, muscular female pals.
They weep, they grow, they astonish, they overcome, they remain vulnerable, and their enemies spend inordinate time on wardrobe, grooming and props, and behaving as if their milk of human kindness has turned to cottage cheese. Some of their movies, like this one, are better than others.
NOT KEEPING UP: Elvis Mitchell doesn't like the new Daredevil movie, though it doesn't seem to be for lack of sympathy for comics, of lack of knowledge -- he refers to John Romita, Sr., and Bill Everett, among others, in his review. Oh, well, I haven't see it yet, and thus as yet have no opinion -- though I do wish Kingpin had been kept a huge, incredibly strong, apparently fat, man -- I'm a traditionalist.
But one wonders which Spider-Man movie Mitchell saw:
And in several scenes Daredevil scurries up walls in a way that doesn't make sense for someone with no superpowers to speak of. He seems to have been bitten by the same radioactive spider that attacked Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man."
That would explain it. It would be an entirely different spider than the genetically altered spider that bit Peter Parker in the movie, rather than in the comics.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for a mildly entertaining review, if you're interested.
THE WAR ARGUMENTS: Thomas Nephew has come to a decision in a long, typically thoughtful, careful analysis.
I did not vote for George W. Bush, but I am not so far gone down the road of blind partisanship or ideology to argue he and his office are incapable of being right or truthful -- even if they are wrong all too often.
TOTAL VALENTINE'S AWARENESS: Want to give your sweetie that creepy you-are-a-stalker feeling lovers everywhere cherish? Love that logo for the Total Information Awareness Office? Than you want these!
The TIA teddy bear! The TIA thong! And more!
Sexy! And when you start drooling:
Not to mention the flying disc, the wall clock, BBQ apron, boxer shorts, toddler button-up, mousepad, and, of course, the lunchbox. (Proceeds to the ACLU.)
U.S. Special Operations troops are already operating in various parts of Iraq, hunting for weapons sites, establishing a communications network and seeking potential defectors from Iraqi military units in what amounts to the initial ground phase of a war, U.S. defense officials and experts familiar with Pentagon planning said.
The troops, comprising two Special Operations Task Forces with an undetermined number of personnel, have been in and out of Iraq for well over a month, said two military officials with direct knowledge of their activities. They are laying the groundwork for conventional U.S. forces that could quickly seize large portions of Iraq if President Bush gives a formal order to go to war, the officials said.
And, if not, they've got terrific notes for a new tourist guide.
What most people don't know:
Military officials familiar with the war plan say it is possible that a fairly substantial ground operation could take place not after the air campaign, as in the Gulf War, but either before or simultaneously with it.
When it is fully developed - it will never be finally complete - it will display an image of the cover of every magazine of the genre in the English language that can be located. In these early versions of Visco, we are a long way from that aim. About 1200 magazine issues are depicted out of a possible 9,000 or more.
Good stuff. See:
Still tons to add, though: nothing at all from Astounding or Amazing, or....
IT'S STILL A GOOD LIFE?: Bill Mumy will reprise his role as Jerome Bixby's Anthony Fremont in a sequel to the Twilight Zone story based on Bixby's classic short story.
Off-hand this strikes me as pointlessly unnecessary. But perhaps they'll surprise me; I certainly enjoyed Mumy's work in the flawed-but-worthwhile Babylon 5.
"It's Still a Good Life," written by executive producer Ira Steven Behr and directed by Allan Kroeker, airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Feb. 19.
That's in the US, on UPN. Read The Rest Scale: for more detail and quotes from Mumy and such.
UPDATE: Having seen it, I credit the actors with satisfactory performances, and don't fault any other details of the production, but, yes, in the end, it struck me as pointlessly unnecessary, save as a hook to pull in viewers (like me).
And the intro crediting the story to Rod Serling and TZ, with no mention whatever of the fact that the story frigging existed exactly as the classic it is, much anthologized, long before TZ adapted it with absolutely no creative changes or additions, was intensely aggravating.
By the late 1980's, however, a new generation had emerged in mutant form. At first glance, the new fish appeared the same, until one looked closer and saw that the fish said Darwin inside and had two feet sticking out from below, apparently trumpeting the car owner's belief in evolution.
The response to the new fish was swift and sure. A Truth fish could soon be seen devouring a Darwin fish. Or sometimes a Darwin fish could be spotted upside down on a car, its little legs poking into the air, dead.
Evolution, whether natural or otherwise, is notoriously difficult to stop. Eventually car fish radiation produced the Evolve fish, which is a tool-user (holding a wrench), the Gefilte fish, the Hindu fish (with an udder), the Pagan fish (ideal for the pagans who insist that the fish was stolen from them by the Christians, who are still fuming that the Darwin-enthusiasts stole it from them). There is even a flaming Satan fish.
Some say they've spotted a shark that says Lawyer, a Rasta fish smoking a pipe and Lutefisk fish (a kind of cod soaked in lye — the haggis of Norway) as well as increasingly diverse and enigmatic car organisms like dolphins, dead fish, aliens and chili peppers.
Aliens and hot peppers may not seem to have any direct connection to fish, but when it comes to plaques on cars evolution proceeds in leaps that are completely unpredictable, perhaps because of the kind of selective pressure at work.
While natural selection drives biological change, the evolution of car fish seems to have been driven by ideological one-upsmanship at first, and then by market forces and irrepressible silliness. The newest species is the Sushi fish, a truly odd symbolic development in which the fish actually represents a fish.
What, precisely, it is suggested that he should do about North Korea somehow never, ever, is specified. Appear on tv every day to announce that he is "worried and concerned," perhaps, and then look worried and concerned.
Because the fact is that there's little to be "done" about North Korea, now that we have an insane totalitararian dictator armed with nuclear missiles there, except obfuscate, try to use diplomacy with other countries, particularly China, to use what small influence they might have with North Korea, and basically give in as best we can to Kim Jong Il's blackmail, and just play for time and hope for the best.
The only military choice open regarding North Korea would start a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Koreans, and likely would include a few nuclear warheads going off. I've yet to see someone argue a case for this as desirable, and it would seem particularly unlikely for someone from the left to so argue, but what else is being argued when the case for "George Bush should pay attention to North Korea, the real danger, not Iraq!" is argued from the left? Is some other translation available for this mantra? Anyone?
Does it come with a plan of action, or just a meaningless affirmation that "North Korea should be a priority!" (A priority to do what is strangely never specified.)
That the present North Korean situation is the pro-war-with-Iraq argument -- the point being that you can only usefully move against a dangerous power about to acquire nuclear weapons before those weapons are available -- seems somehow to go right past those uttering the "North Korea-should-be-a-priority" mantra."
I would be cynical if I thought that this is because what those observing this line are most often engaged in is simply looking for a line -- any line, one of dozens in use, any will do, really -- to be used Against Bush and Anti-War. And there are valid reasons to be ABAAW. But "North Korea should-should-be-the-priority!" isn't. It's just. most often, a convenient stick that happens to be a boomerang.
(How can anyone look at North Korea now, and not worry about Iraq-in-a-few-years; or not observe that we had a Diplomatic Solution with North Korea -- worked great, didn't it?; the inspectors solved the whole problem!)
"The President eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it and tries to force it on The States!"
Damn leftists. Or was that said about Clinton?
"Office-holders, office-seekers, robbers, pimps," he called them in a screed published that year, "body-snatchers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers . . . blind men, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with the vile disorder . . . crawling serpentine men, the lousy combings and born freedom sellers of the earth."
Actually, that's Walt Whitman, on President Pierce, and other politicians then in office.
Nice screed on the place of The Rant in contemporary American politics. What's the solution?
And so, gentle reader, America now faces a vexing problem: How can we as a society restore civility to the public discussion of our common problems?
First, we must realize that there are no simple solutions to any issue, that no one side has all the answers, that we must reason together in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Of course, reasoning together gets a little difficult when you've got these loudmouth screedmongers screaming like banshees. What's wrong with these people? Can't they carry on a civil conversation without hurling insults at anybody who doesn't agree with them?
I'm getting sick and tired of them. And it's high time we stopped pussyfooting around and tell it like it is! These knuckle-dragging knuckleheads are ruining the country!!
Are we gonna take this lying down? HELL NO! I say we get these un-American weasels off the air RIGHT NOW! We, the people, own the airwaves these spit-spewing loons use to spread their wretched drivel and I say we PULL THE PLUG!!
As for the rappers, spitting hate and expletives in their idiotic rhymes, I've got a solution for them, too: Put a nice hefty tax on crotch-grabbing and we'll bankrupt these antisocial thugs in no time! Probably balance the budget, too.
And I refuse to sit idly by while America's precious forests are chopped down to print a Michael Moore screed blaming Dick Cheney for killing Bambi or an Ann Coulter rant on how liberals cause earthquakes, floods, the common cold and the heartbreak of psoriasis! I say we boycott all books by authors whose sole qualification is that they once screamed incoherently about the topic on TV! That'll make bestseller lists once again safe for self-help books and celebrity autobiographies -- the way God intended it.
That's my simple solution to the screed problem and if you don't agree with me, you're a psycho nut case, a brain-damaged degenerate, a cougar-cuddling Commu-Nazi hyena, and who cares what you think anyway?
Yeah! ME, TOO!!!!!!!
Read The Rest Scale: it's pretty entertaining; 4 out of 5.
Compare this with the post-war image of Poland, which fielded the biggest wartime resistance movement in Europe, fighting to the death in the Warsaw ghetto and the Warsaw uprising of 1944. Yet its suicidal heroism got barely a passing glance from post-war Hollywood.
Who was that fighting in the Warsaw ghetto, and in the uprising of '44, again? Brave Poles, yes, but apparently nothing else about who they were is worth mentioning; they were just typical Poles, representative of, and beloved by, all their Polish neighbors.
Uh-huh.
Read The Rest Scale: minor story about American attitudes towards France; 2 out of 5.
MICHAEL LERNER, left-wing rabbi and editor of Tikkun magazine, continues to be banned from speaking at anti-war rallies by ANSWER, Not in Our Name, and United for Peace and Justice. Good show, guys. Anyone going to a rally interested in carrying a "Let Rabbi Lerner Speak Against The War!" or "Israel and Palestine Can Both Live In Peace!" or somesuch sign?
YOU DON'T KNOW: I just posted this in comments to Matthew Yglesias' fine blog, and I've decided to say it here, more loudly.
"I'm pretty sure that for the average resident of Baghdad, sanctions and autocratic rule are preferable to cruise missiles and "shock and awe" bombing of their homes. Just a hunch."
That's one of the crucial points of debate, of course.
I don't pretend to have a sure answer. But it's rather obvious that the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis Hussein killed either by his own minions or by his wars against Iran and Kuwait might have a different hunch.
If they weren't dead.
Their relatives might or might not. Most Iraqis are, I suspect, willing to accept some loss to get rid of Hussein. The relevant questions are: how much loss, and how much loss would there actually be? And if anyone knows for sure the answer to the latter question, I'd love to know, and to see proof.
But, alas, all we're going to get, from anyone, on any "side" is theory and estimate.
Which is why I'm again amazed at those who are so full of righteous conviction that we must not/must go to war.
Because whatever your position is, you don't know.
You don't know.
You're just guessing, and I wish you -- "you" being anyone who asserts a Sure Position -- would just quit it, and acknowledge that you don't know, and that you are basing your opinion on your hunch, or, more rationally, your best estimate of the risks of either policy. Not on what's Sure To Happen.
IDF pleased by PA's attempt to rein in terror and by its own success in thwarting suicide attacks. Two recent developments appear to back up the IDF General Staff's recent assessment that 'the worst of the conflict with the Palestinians is already behind us,' and strengthen the belief inside the PA that the intifada has exhausted its usefulness.
IDF imposes closure across West Bank due to terror warnings. Troops arrest 3 suicide bombers in W. Bank, one carrying 20-kilogram explosive device.
You can't have one minute in Israel with good news.
Read The Rest Scale: are you a masochist?
Oh, yeah. The "good news" article by Amos Harel includes this:
In addition to invading Gaza, Israel has one other threat against the Palestinians - expelling PA Chairman Yasser Arafat. For the first time since the intifada began, there is unanimity among Israel's top officials - the prime minister and the defense and foreign ministers - that this needs to be done, and an operational plan already exists. Foreign reports say the elite Sayeret Matkal unit rehearsed it as far back as Operation Defensive Shield last April.
What is needed now is opportunity. Once the war on Iraq begins, American opposition to Arafat's expulsion might soften. Then, one mass-casualty attack on Israel, and the chairman will be gone. Such an attack is not unlikely since both money and orders for attacks have been arriving at an accelerated rate recently - mainly from Iran, but also from Syria and Iraq.
NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT COALITIONcontinue.
MK Avraham Poraz, head of Shinui's negotiating team, reiterated on Monday his party's vow not to join a government with ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties. However, he added that there was still a 50-percent chance that his party would be part of the next government.
Responding to a question about whether there was coordination between Shinui and the National Religious Party, which is Orthodox but not ultra-Orthodox, Poraz said, "We don't fit, but there are broad similarities between the NRP and us."
I'd be very happy to see Shinui in the government, but I'm pessimistic that it will happen. Here's why both:
Shinui MK Eliezer Sandberg said that his party would stand by its demands to institute civil marriages, draft ultra-Orthodox men to the army and begin public transportation on the Sabbath.
Meanwhile, of the party of the religious Sephardim:
The Likud coalition team told Shas during coalition negotiations Monday afternoon that the national budget must be severely cut, while Shas demanded that the status quo remain in place.
It would be nice to see Sharon tell Shas to stick it, and the vast gain Shinui, the party of secularism, made in the election makes this possible, but I'll wait to see it happen before feeling gratified.
Read The Read Scale: if you're a fanatic about Israeli politics, you've probably already read it; if not, you probably don't want more detail, and what matters most is the final agreement, anyway. Until it collapses, of course, after a few months. As usual.
Until Feb. 5, Chatterbox opposed going to war against Iraq [...] Chatterbox still believes that an Iraq invasion is likely to interfere with the war on al-Qaida, and he still believes the link between Iraq and al-Qaida mostly represents wishful thinking. But after seeing Secretary of State Colin Powell make his caseto the U.N. Security Council, Chatterbox no longer believes these two arguments outweigh the argument for toppling Saddam.
Taha, the 47-year-old mother and architect of Iraq's biological weapons program, has refused to be interviewed privately by U.N. weapons inspectors because she says she doesn't trust them.
Taha, who earned a PhD in microbiology from a British university, acknowledges producing "biological agents" including botulinum -- which makes the tongue swell until it causes the victim to suffocate -- and anthrax. She's also been credited with the creation of hemmorrhagic conjunctivitis, which makes its victims' eyes bleed, and gas gangrene, which makes its victims' skin melt and fall off.
"I'm Proud"
"I'm a scientist and I'm proud of myself, in fact," Taha said.
After all, gas gangrene is the best acne cure ever developed.
ANOTHER SIDESHOW: William Shawcross, the British journalist and author, perhaps best known for his excellent anti-Vietnam War/anti-Kissinger screed, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia, has dressed down critics of Tony Blair and other antiwar protestors, using such terms as "odious," and "way beyond debate."
The abuse that Tony Blair is receiving for his stand against Saddam Hussein is outrageous. You would never know from his more intemperate critics that the world faces a really serious dilemma.
[...]
The Prime Minister's critics are so certain of their rectitude that they can never even consider whether the world, as well as Iraq itself, might benefit from the strong stand taken by him and by President Bush. Mr Benn sees himself as a peacemaker, Mr Blair as a warmonger. The opposite is true.
[...]
A choice has to be made. Either the world can continue to be steadfast and compel Saddam to disarm as 1441 and many other binding resolutions require. Or we can return to the path of least resistance, as proposed by the French, the Germans and others, and "give the inspectors more time" -- much more time.
Superficially, that is the easier road to take. But consider what it would mean. The inspectors will still not be able to disarm Saddam -- because disarmament can only happen if the Iraqi regime takes the lead -- and it is not doing so even while faced with "serious consequences". They will remain only at his pleasure. The US and British troops around Iraq's borders cannot stay indefinitely in the desert. Their departure would be a huge victory for Saddam, showing that he had outfaced not just the United States but also the United Nations.
The French and the Russians would soon argue that Saddam containment had worked, sanctions were no longer needed and normal business could resume -- particularly with French and Russian oil companies.
Saddam would proceed apace on his infernal factories for weapons of mass distruction, financed by his new oil revenues. He would still murder and torture Iraqis. He would soon have nuclear devices and thus the means to terrorise the entire region. He would seek to dominate the world's oil market. He would threaten Israel. He would be untouchable. That's not all. America's friends could no longer trust the United States and its enemies would no longer be daunted by it. Chaos, radicalisation and proliferation would be the name of the new game -- it is beginning already in North Korea.
This seems a familiar scenario to me, since I've outlined it myself. The general anti-war response is "well, that probably won't happen; containment can be kept up and keep things safe, and if not, we'll deal with it later." Only a seer can say that this is unquestionably wrong; but I do find it a highly risky estimate that I see as not the highest probability; the scenario above seems to me most likely, and -- at least -- one that one has to face as a strong possibility at present. This remains a matter of judgment, of course.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 to, of course, find details to support the position you've already taken to either cut back on Big Government Spending, or support the children!
THE FIRST THING after the Iowa caucuses is the New Hampshire primary, as everyone who has a nano-clue about US Prez politics knows. Here is an interesting analysis from Seth Gitell of the Boston Phoenix of various details of how it works and can work, and how the current candidates look to play, as of now, in 2004.
Note the interesting tidbit about the Gore campaign allegedly beating Bill Bradley in 2000 with a highway caravan so slow traffic, and discourage voters, in an area Bradley was strong in. (Here's an analysis from December of how Howard Dean looks to play against John Kerry, of whom it is rather silly that he is now being called by many publications "the front runner.") (Via Stoutdem.)
Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5 if you're interested in Democratic politics.
Legionnaire Alan Barnes, a Dubliner with 15 years' service in the legion, tries to explain why things are going so badly wrong. "The rebels here are bloody crazy," he says. "They keep coming at us. When real soldiers open fire in Africa, rebels run; everyone knows that. But these keep coming."
"We're fighting them almost hand-to-hand - the guys are taking them out at 10 metres."
Nanotechnology, biotechnology, electronics and brain research are converging into a new field of science vital to the nation's security and economic clout.
[...]
Such convergence was given a name late in 2001: NBIC, for nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. The concept is new enough that researchers have not yet agreed on a pronunciation for the acronym. Some say "EN-bick"; some say "NIB-bick."
But convergence advocates are already laying plans to ask the Bush administration to invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year in a new program to encourage collaborative work in NBIC technologies, according to James Canton, a technology consultant involved in the effort through the National Science Foundation.
"NBIC are the power tools of the 21st century," said Mr. Canton....
More and more people are getting the idea, as the research grows faster and faster.
STAR WARS: THE MUSICAL is being performed by the MIT Musical Theater.
"We were thinking about how the Stormtroopers always make that 'clack-clack-clack' sound, and how we could turn that into a tap dance. And when we said that, half the people standing near us turned around and said, 'Did you just say tap-dancing Stormtroopers?'" An idea was born.
After several years of fooling around, the two found they had almost enough material to stage the entire trilogy. "I think the toughest song was the battle of Hoth," Shindler says. "We had previous songs with Han and Leia and the ghost of Ben, but we had nothing from mid Hoth to Cloud City, and we knew we needed something for the big epic battle. Eventually, I was listening to Miss Saigon, and there's a battle-sequence flashback in the second act that had the same feeling."
Of course. And the huge Star Destroyer flying over the audience's head must be something.
"Trilogy Tonight", based on "Comedy Tonight" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - "Star Trek tomorrow (Captain Kirk character goes slinking offstage), trilogy tonight".
"Two Little Droids in Deep", based on "Two Little Maids from School" from The Mikado
"I Am the Very Model of a Multipurpose Service Droid", sung by C3PO, also based on G&S
"Tatooine" - Luke sings about how boring life is on Tatooine, based on West Side Story's "America" - "Nothing to do on Ta-Too-Ine..."
"I Am I, Ben Kenobi", based on "Don Quixote" from Man of La Mancha
"Music of the Knight", from Phantom of the Opera
"Don't Cry for Me, Princess Leia", sung by the lost souls of the planet destroyed by the Death Star
"Death Star Assault Medley", a wonderful climactic battle scene, based on everything from the rumble song from West Side Story to "76 Trombones" - "And there were 6 x-wings in the first attack..."
"A Whole New Hope", based on that song from Aladdin, "A Whole New Day", I think it's called
Too bad it's only being performed for two weekends at MIT and then probably will never be done again. (Although there is some talk of a possible sequel next year...)
WHY INDIA DOESN'T BELONG ON THE SECURITY COUNCIL YET is cogently explained by Suman Palit. But, then, yes, Thomas Friedman was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek about that.
A useful brief summation of some of India's weaknesses.
Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for a good sense of that. Palit also notes that India just expelled the Pakistani Charge d'Affaires. Which isn't so good.
Smith said that although the fake stories looked identical to stories from CNN's website, the content was so absurd that they resembled parodies. Most were littered with spelling mistakes and bad grammar.
"People are just very gullible," he said.
Indeed. Several newspapers and TV news shows reported that the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley of TV and video fame, would be attending the local university. About 30 different versions of the story were generated, involving the University of Dayton, Miami University, the University of Cincinnati and Penn State, among others.
Some of the institutions received so many calls from reporters and students, they issued statements of denial.
ASSES: PETA calls on Arafat to not blow up donkeys.
Your Excellency:
I am writing from an organization dedicated to fighting animal abuse around the world. We have received many calls and letters from people shocked at the bombing in Jerusalem on January 26 in which a donkey, laden with explosives, was intentionally blown up.
[...]
For animals, there is no Geneva Convention and no peace treaty -- just our mercy.
If you have the opportunity, will you please add to your burdens my request that you appeal to all those who listen to you to leave the animals out of this conflict?
We send you sincere wishes of peace.
Very truly yours,
Ingrid Newkirk President, PETA
No sign yet of the formation for People for the Ethical Treatment of Jews, or PET Palestinians.
Ranked 13th in the dollar value of its federal business - and dwarfed by Lockheed Martin by a factor of 16 - DynCorp has operated in the shadows of the capital for five decades. It is neither the most visible nor the most powerful of the companies that rely on government contracts. But it has thoroughly mastered the byways of Washington, and its purchase by CSC shines a spotlight on the modern military techno-industrial complex.
DynCorp represents nothing less than the future of national security. While outfits like Raytheon make their money developing weapons systems, DynCorp offers the military an alternative to itself. In 2002, the company took in $2.3 billion doing what you probably thought was Pentagon work. DynCorp planes and pilots fly the defoliation missions that are the centerpiece of Plan Colombia. Armed DynCorp employees constitute the core of the police force in Bosnia. DynCorp troops protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai. DynCorp manages the border posts between the US and Mexico, many of the Pentagon's weapons-testing ranges, and the entire Air Force One fleet of presidential planes and helicopters. During the Persian Gulf War, it was DynCorp employees, not soldiers, who serviced and rearmed American combat choppers, and it's DynCorp's people, not military personnel, who late last year began "forward deploying" equipment and ammunition to the Middle East in preparation for war with Iraq. DynCorp inventories everything seized by the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Program, runs the Naval Air Warfare Center at Patuxent River, Maryland, and is producing the smallpox and anthrax vaccines the government may use to inoculate everyone in the United States.
That security work earns DynCorp about half its bread and butter. The other half comes from serving as the information technology department of just about every three-letter national security, law enforcement, and defense-related agency of government, as well as the more peaceable kingdoms of the Departments of State and Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Centers for Disease Control. Among its lucrative contracts, DynCorp is networking all the American embassies abroad, taking the government's emergency phone system wireless, and building a 29,000-terminal computer network for the FBI called Trilogy. As many as three dozen companies do contract work for the Pentagon, and many more sell IT services to the Feds. But DynCorp is special, because it manages both bits and bombs for Uncle Sam.
Isn't, like, the Justice League, or the Avengers, supposed to fight a group like this, usually?
JUDEO-CHRISTIAN: One of my pet rants is on the use of this term, which is akin to "tree-rock" or "banana-beef." It blurs together two theologies that are largely quite contradictory, in an attempt to, basically, co-opt Judaism as if it were essentially Christian, and also to appear broad-minded and inclusive.
This is almost always well-meaning, and innocent, but it's based on lack of knowledge of Jewish theology, and its many differences with Christian theology.
Thus I blog this piece which goes to a fair number of such differences, though there remain plenty more.
Read The Rest Scale: if the subject interests you; otherwise I just wanted to increase the chances of my finding this piece again. (Via Matthew Yglesias, who is in "blogging up a storm" mode.)
The tiny principality of Liechtenstein is putting itself up for rent in a bid to attract corporate conferences and bolster its tourism industry, a local official said Friday.
The new "Rent a State" program lets corporate clients symbolically take over the tiny country of just 33,000 residents tucked away among the Alps between Switzerland and Austria.
"The basic idea is that an entire, small country plays host to a conference with all the various possibilities at its disposal," said Roland Buechel, director of the state tourism agency in Liechtenstein, which covers an area of 60 square miles.
Batteries not included.
Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5. (Also via BoingBoing.)
CLAY SHIRKEY ON POWER LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION as applied to blogging.
In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.
[...]
The basic shape is simple - in any system sorted by rank, the value for the Nth position will be 1/N. For whatever is being ranked -- income, links, traffic -- the value of second place will be half that of first place, and tenth place will be one-tenth of first place.
We also know that as the number of options rise, the curve becomes more extreme. This is a counter-intuitive finding - most of us would expect a rising number of choices to flatten the curve, but in fact, increasing the size of the system increases the gap between the #1 spot and the median spot.
Actually, that's exactly what my intutition says would happen, so I must be weird (this is not news).
Clay explains why.
But people's choices do affect one another. If we assume that any blog chosen by one user is more likely, by even a fractional amount, to be chosen by another user, the system changes dramatically. Alice, the first user, chooses her blogs unaffected by anyone else, but Bob has a slightly higher chance of liking Alice's blogs than the others. When Bob is done, any blog that both he and Alice like has a higher chance of being picked by Carmen, and so on, with a small number of blogs becoming increasingly likely to be chosen in the future because they were chosen in the past.
Isn't that intuitively obvious?
Read The Rest Scale: if you're interested in this sort of thing, 5 out of 5. (Clay is one of the many people I miss from not being with Panix any more, and able to hang out on panix.chat; not that I'd have time.)
ENETATION COMMENTS seems to be temporarily down. I'm optimistically assuming they'll start working again Real Soon Now. Their main page has no information, and my attempts to log in also fail.
THIS IS ONE VERY FUCKED UP FAMILY: The Moussaoui family.
Interestingly, of Zacarias' siblings, two of his sisters are schizophrenic, which does give one cause to wonder if there's something genetic in the family that also applies to him.
But is this a face that you could only love if she were your mother?
And the kids don't exactly have uniformly nice things to say about Mom, either.
The sister who has decided that she's, in her heart, Jewish, and become obsessed with things Jewish is as wacko-sounding as the rest.
Everyone's mood picks up, and when the cafe radio starts playing a popular Israeli singer, Nadia lights up. ''It's my favorite song,'' she says, and then Zacarias Moussaoui's oldest sister starts singing along, loudly, to a rocked-up version of ''Hava Nagila.''
The author also takes time out for this not-terribly-connected, but entertaining, 'graph:
The cabdriver, a Haitian man who has lived in France for 15 years, seizes the opportunity to expound on why he doesn't like the Jews: they think they're better than everyone else; they look down their noses; it's because they have too much money. We drive along in silence for a few moments before he volunteers that, come to think of it, he doesn't like the French much either. Why not? ''Well, you know the French,'' he says. ''They're all racist.''
"VIRGINIA POSTREL OPTIMISM" is ironically defined in her post, "MY OPTIMISTIC NATURE," dealing with everything from John Derbyshire's apocalyptic visions to Elf Sternberg, and in a subsequent post, "READING S.F.," touches on sf, though she mistakenly calls George R. Stewart's Earth Abides, The Earth Abides, and I'd argue that it deals with "resilience, by the adaptive but strange new social structures that might evolve in response to new dangers," if it wasn't for the fact that my not having reread it in twenty years leads me to be reluctant to argue anything about it.
She also had a terrific column here, which will disappear into the paid archive in a week, so go read it, and learn about the "evoked set"!
(Virginia mentions in e-mail that you can find her columns here, for free, for the indefinite future [and isn't it?]. She's also fixed the error, and slightly reworded what she said to allow that she's "generaliz[ing] wildly and beyond my actual knowledge.")
FREEDOM TO MARCH: As you know, I'm leaning pro-war.
But I'm damn sure for people's right to speak up in the other direction. From the United For Peace website, how you might help support that freedom in NYC, where the efforts to get a legal permit to freely assemble is being bogged down:
We are, however, facing a major fight over our basic democratic right to public protest. At our February 4 meeting with lawyers for New York City and the NYPD, our request for a march permit was again refused. We have asked to assemble near the United Nations, march directly past the U.N., and then continue through Manhattan to a rally at Central Park. We are consulting with our lawyers and will announce our next step late on Wednesday, February 5.
With only 10 days remaining before February 15, the continued stonewalling by the police can only be seen as an active effort to prevent us from voicing our opposition to this war. We will not be silenced -- the streets of New York will be filled with a cry for peace.
What can you do? Make more phone calls (numbers below). Make your travel plans. Recruit your friends. Donate some money. Fill more buses, hand out more leaflets -- and we'll see you in New York City on February 15.
**NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg: 212-788-9600, 212-788-3010, 212-788-3040 **NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: 646-610-8526 **NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito: 646-610-6710
Sexy! And when you start drooling: 
