Monday, July 12, 2004

Winds of Change.NET: What Does “Anti-American” Mean In America?

One more time: On being anti-american, WoC refers to Schuler’s bit .
A few nice thoughts in there, but...From the anti-gay constitutional amendment people, we’ve learned that we love the sinner, not the sin.

It seems highly appropriate to apply that to America itself.

We can love a child, but a child is not a perfect being.

Didn’t the Bible have something to say about pride? Why is pride so often associated with patriotism?

Personally, I think pride should be taken, at most, in something you’ve done or earned. Taking pride is something you simply are is, well, kind of pompous. Schuler said:

“If you look down on or despise your fellow Americans (or anyone else for that matter) you may have a lot of great and wonderful qualities but you are not pro-American.”

Taking pride in something you are is looking down on other people, who aren’t.


Posted by Ross on 07/12/04 at 02:42 AM
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Friday, July 09, 2004

It’s the (not so) little things

Partisan Politics

I’m in the middle of reading Slavenka Drakulic’s fascinating memoir of growing up in Communist Yugoslavia, “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed.”

If I ever teach 20th century political history, I will assign this book for its central, potent, and utterly irrefutable observation: any regime that cannot, will not, or does not care to make any feminine hygiene products whatsoever available to its populace is doomed. Call it the tampon theory of historical determinism. While I cannot speak to what goes on in North Korea (which is arguably a more thoroughly totalitarian state than any in the former Soviet Bloc ever were), I think this is a crucial point that hammers home just how much central planning sucks in practice, even at its best. 


Posted by Johno on 07/09/04 at 04:12 PM
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Bleatage

Lead Pipe Cruelty

This is from a couple days ago, but I always enjoy a good Michael Moore bitchslap.  Better than average banner image, as an added bonus.

My favorite aunt and my mom went to see the film last weekend.  My dear mother is liberal, and my aunt very liberal.  Neither were terribly impressed with the quality of the reasoning in this little bit of black propaganda.  Yet fatso is staring at me from the cover of two major magazines in the supermarket.  I should be so lucky.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/09/04 at 02:30 PM
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Perfidious Strategic Planning Conference

Perfidy

My already light posting habits will be further reduced, as the Buckethead clan heads north to the birhplace of liberty, Massachusetts.  Or was that the birthplace of witchburning?  I can never get that straight.  There, we will join with Johno, and hopefully Geeklethal for a convivial evening of drunken excess, world takeover planning, and maybe some vegetarian food.  Johno and his lovely wife will no doubt have a full itinerary of educational, instructional and enlightening activities laid on board as well.

In other news, I may soon rejoin the working week.  More on this potentially kickass job later, but my return to the world of regular schedules should also herald the return of regular posting habits.  Be warned!

A brief political note: my favorite aunt says that John Edwards is cute, and this will be the controlling factor in the election.  I hereby renounce all connection to conservatism, and the GOP; and will henceforth only vote for those candidates approved by Aunt Susie.  (But Susie, what if they’re both ugly?)


Posted by Buckethead on 07/09/04 at 01:38 PM
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Thursday, July 08, 2004

*I’m your private writer, writing for mo-ho-ney*

Perfidy Responds

Posting has been light recently thanks to *actual work* and actual *freelance writery,* though not of the paying kind despite my too-clever-by-half headline.

Will usual volume resume shortly? Who cares!


Posted by Johno on 07/08/04 at 08:17 PM
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Reap:Sow

Filthy Lucre

The archdiocese of Portland, OR is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under the weight of $160M in lawsuits over child molestation by priests.

Bad idea, I think. Back at the height of its own scandal, the Boston AD considered doing the same, but chose not to for two good reasons: 1) everyone gets to see your private records, and 2) just how is it gonna look when plaintiffs in child abuse suits have to go to the back of the line of creditors? Will that make you seem more, or less concerned with the well-being of your congregation and Church?

Ugly, ugly, ugly.


Posted by Johno on 07/08/04 at 05:47 PM
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Jim, ya canna’ change the laws of aging!

Entertainment

Actually, that’s just a horribly tasteless headline to note the sad news that James Doohan, Mr. Scott, of Star Trek fame has been diagnosed with alzheimers. Why do I even post this? Because getting old scares the living hell out of me. I live in my mind and dread above all else the possibility that my memories and creativity may one day be stolen from me without my even knowing. I don’t care for things, for stuff, which is good because at this rate I’m never going to have any stuff anyway, but I DO care about the life of the mind. That’s why my wife looks at me funny when she finds out that one of the boxes we schlepped all the way to Massachusetts contains nothing but my notebooks from high school-- chem notes, Spanish, doodles, unfinished stories, all useless crap that I’ll never need again. But that box and the others like it are my brain’s offsite storage, making room in the active brain space for useful things: the rules to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition. All the words to Monty Python’s “Philosophers’ Song.” The causes and outcomes of The Whiskey Rebellion. The recipe for Godzilla Punch. What am I without these things?


Posted by Johno on 07/08/04 at 04:51 PM
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Baby, If You’ve Ever Wondered…

Entertainment

Wondered, whatever became of other dorks who had to secretly pine for Bailey because you just knew Jennifer would break your heart and she was so fake anyway but saw that Travis could have bagged Bailey whenever he wanted but she dug Fever and besides Travis was Mr. Carlson’s boy toy....

Um, someone started a new WKRP blog here.


Posted by on 07/08/04 at 02:42 PM
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A perfect solution

Partisan Politics

Fafnir does some Monday-morning quarterbacking of Kerry’s VP pick.

It’s a great idea… Fafnir’s choice is strong on defense, stands up for the little guy, and a successful businessman to boot. Who is it?

A Kerry-Batman ticket would be sure to win everybody but hardcore social conservatives and superstitious and cowardly lots. Batman brings his tough-on-crime stance a lot of bipartisan credentials and a surprisingly strong Latino support, plus he has some innovative ideas on tort reform. With his years of opposition to the evil Ra’s al Ghul Batman has a lot of counterterrorism experience, plus his tenure with the Justice League makes him an ideal internationalist. Now I know the big drawbacks to Batman are always (1) he is a big Republican (2) he is kind of a crazy hawk an (3) he doesnt exist but I really think Kerry coulda made it work if he threw him somethin in the platform like extra funding for security in Arkham Asylum which we totally need anyway, what is up with that place the Joker escapes like once a month.

Well, I’ve always kind of thought that Dan Quayle didn’t exist, and that worked out fine for Bush The Elderest, not to mention that asylum issues seem to actually help VPs-- Spiro Agnew, John C. Calhoun, and Hannibal Hamlin all were asylum escapees, and Cheney currently runs an asylum. Fafnir’s problems with Batman aside, I don’t think I could in good conscience vote a Kerry/Batman ticket. I’ve always been something of a Marvel man, myself.


Posted by Johno on 07/08/04 at 01:17 PM
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(Slow-moving and creaky) death from above!

War

Fred Kaplan writes in Slate about the logistical issues that coulda-- but did’na-- derailed the US military’s Iraq invasion you may have heard something about last year. Kaplan details problems with spare parts, medical supplies, soldiers going hungry for want of MREs, motor pools scavenging oil and gas from Iraqi military vehicles, and more. His information is drawn from a 500-page report commissioned by the Pentagon and subsequently buried for fertilizer. (Not really… it’s just that it’s hard to find, not available for print or filesave, and rather discursive).

A Kaplan highlight:

“Literally every” commander in the 3rd Infantry Division—the Army unit that swept up the desert to Baghdad—told the study group that, without more spare parts, “he could not have continued offensive operations for another two weeks.”

And another from the report itself, in the section discussing the 507 Maintenence Company (remember Jessica Lynch?)

None of this is a problem if the 507th is a singular example of a poorly equipped, poorly trained and poorly led unit. Nor is it a problem if the Army expects to operate with clear demarcation between “front” and “rear.” If, however, the 507th is indicative of an Armywide problem in training, equipping, and manning CS and CSS units, and if the Army expects to operate in a nonlinear, noncontiguous operational environment, Army leaders may need to examine everything from culture to equipment in CS and CSS units. Equally important, the Army should examine any concept that envisions operations in nonlinear and noncontiguous battlespace to determine how forces should be manned and equipped to operate in the so-called white spaces and on LOCs. Assuming that technical means of surveillance will protect those units may not be justified. The culture and expectation in the Army should be, to borrow a phrase from the Marines, that every soldier is a rifleman first, and every unit fights.

The part that really frosts my biscuits is this quote, pulled by Kaplan:

The A10s were absolutely fantastic. It’s my favorite airplane. … You can move, and when that A10 starts his strafing run, you can do anything you want to do … because the bad guy’s head is not coming off the hard deck.”

That’s an infantry commander talking about the A10 warthog, the only plane in the US arsenal intended for ground support. But what about the Army’s fancy AH-64 Apache attack copter? Well...the report sez

The day closed with the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment’s unsuccessful deep attack against the Medina Division near Karbala. There, the regiment lost two aircraft (one to hostile fire), had two aviators captured, and saw literally every AH-64 Apache helicopter come back riddled with holes. Worse, the targeted Medina units remained relatively unscathed from the attack. The Army’s vaunted deep-strike attack helicopters appeared to have been neutralized by the Iraqi air defense tactics.

Of course, the A10 is still the redheaded stepchild of our Air Defense, because the Air Force doesn’t care to get down where handheld fire can hit their planes. Kaplan notes about the Apache and Warthog,

These two points are remarkable, in two ways. First, here we have a team of Army officers criticizing the attack helicopter—the Army’s own weapon of air support—while gushing over the Air Force’s weapon. Second, the A-10 scarcely exists anymore. The Air Force, which never wanted to build it in the first place, stopped production in the mid-1980s and would have melted them down to scrap metal had they not performed so well in the 1991 Gulf War.

For all the vaunted technology and great toys our military has, many institutional problems remain that keep us from being, erm, all we can be.

[wik] Goodwyfe Johno saw a report last week on the Patriot Missile system, which apparently sucks all ass. SOP for Patriot operators was to run to mash the “abort” button every time a Patriot wound up to launch automatically, because almost every time the Patriot was either targeting an F-16 or nothing at all. In the end, they became worse than useless because the fully automated system doesn’t really allow time for manual vetting of targets. A CBS news report argues that in Gulf I, only 2 out of 44 Patriots actually hit an incoming missile. Most of the others just exploded in the sky, missing their targets (when they actually were targeting a real object). According to Ed Bradley, in Gulf II, “The Patriot had 12 engagements in this war, three of them with our own planes.” Yeesh.


Posted by Johno on 07/08/04 at 12:47 PM
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Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Stealth Computing

Just So You Know

http://www.humanbeans.net/powerpizza/index.html If you have need to use a laptop in a sly, subrosa fashion, here is the perfect accessory for you:

image

A laptop-holding protective pizza box.  Hand made in London!


Posted by Buckethead on 07/06/04 at 11:36 PM
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Friday, July 02, 2004

Marlon Brando leaves his body behind

Entertainment

Marlon Brando sleeps with the fishes. CNN says it’s from “unknown causes,” but anyone who has watched his weight balloon over the past few decades knows better. The legitimate news outlets can do Brando a proper obit better than I ever could, so I will leave it to them to do the chronologies, rave about his career, and wonder at his eccentric behavior. I have some thoughts of my own.

Of all the actors of his generation, Brando understood the power of raw physicality better than anyone; he used his entire body as an expressive instrument. His first roles capitalized on his ability to project untamed raw violence and sexuality with an undercurrent of confusion and rage. His best early work, “The Wild One,” “On The Waterfront,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” all benefit from this talent. Entire books have been written on John Wayne’s physical vocabulary, and his conscious nods to classical statuary. But where Wayne, for all his grit, could throw a hint of effeteness into the mix when required (don’t believe me? Look at how he stood! Hip to the side!), Brando was never less than a bull. Even in their prime, noted overactors like heirs Al Pacino and Robert De Niro could more than echo the ferocity of Brando’s rages.

But the bull learned to be subtle too. Building on his Method roots acting on the stage, Brando came to understand that the camera sees everything. A mere twitch of Brando’s massive eyebrow could reveal entire universes below the surface, and the hunch of his shoulders could connote rage, confusion, self-loathing, defensiveness, or weariness. The same man who played Stanley Kowalski as an inferno played Vito Corleone as a smolder.

For a striking example of his versatility in this regard, compare Corleone to Colonel Kurtz. With nothing more than some cotton in his cheeks, Brando played Vito Corleone as a hunched old man who, though once physically powerful, was now terribly weak. Kurtz, on the other hand, emanated sheer black menace. Using the same set of postures—even sitting the same way—Brando managed to convey two completely opposite characters. Many under-actors, Ed Harris, Kevin Costner, David Duchovny, sometimes act entirely with their faces, and sometimes only with their eyes. Brando could act with his scalp-- “Apocalypse Now” proves it.

It is ironic that the greatest body actor ever to walk a silver screen got larger as his talent waned, as if he was cloaking his talent in fat and ego until he was a waddling joke in a muu-muu, grunting his way through embarrassments like “The Island of Dr. Moreau” as if his mere presence was enough to lent gravity to the silliness. And now, fittingly, his body is all that’s left.


Posted by Johno on 07/02/04 at 04:41 PM
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Storm Gods Not Angered, But Certainly Piqued

Just So You Know

Rather nasty storm last night on the frontier.  I was certainly surprised, because weather is usually mild here.  Even summer thunderstorms blowing in from the west or south that start out violent have vented most of their anger and energy on New York or Connecticut- as so many of us will- before they get here.  Typically we’ll get some snarling, but it’s brief and only signals sustained rain to come. 

Last night was different.  Between 2.30, when I was startled awake by what sounded like a tank’s main gun firing (CRACK!!!) beneath my window, until the worst had blown over and I got back to sleep around 3.40, was sustained electrical disturbance and violent atmospheric shockwaves therefrom.  Or what I used to call “thunderinlightning”. 

With me not being accustomed to sustained atmospheric violence, the storm gods certainly had my undivided attention.  I couldn’t remember the last time I experienced such a storm; there wasn’t even that much rain, really.  But it was certainly the first time I noticed the smaller subtleties within the larger cacophony.

Different thunders: sustained, tearing ones; low rumbling ones; sharp violent ones.  The tank gun “CRACK"s were sudden and powerful but over in a split second.  The low rumblers were like artillery, shaking the entire house for several seconds and even feeling reverberations in my own chest.  Others still did all of these things at once, or maybe simultaneous discharges made it seem so.  Oftentimes with many every minute.  And it went on...and on...and on, for over an hour. 

It was the light show though that made a true spectacle.  Everything was dark, with no ambient light, then lightning flashes would illuminate the whole room, but just for a second, in that purplish glow only lightning delivers and in a weird, pulsating strobe.  And as with the thunder, several times a minute for an hour. 

The whole experience was Studio 54 on the eyes and the Western Front on the ears. 


Posted by on 07/02/04 at 02:39 PM
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Thursday, July 01, 2004

Wonk!

Partisan Politics

This is too cool to live! An interactive quiz: can you guess the Presidential election year, based on that year’s electoral college map?

(Make sure not to hover your cursor over a map while you’re thinking… the link title gives it away!)

Thanks to Eugene Volokh, who has ruined my afternoon.


Posted by Johno on 07/01/04 at 08:43 PM
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