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Showing posts from August, 2010

The Real War 1939-1945

That is the title of this amazing 1989 article from the Atlantic on the horrors of WWII: What annoyed the troops and augmented their sardonic, contemptuous attitude toward those who viewed them from afar was in large part this public innocence about the bizarre damage suffered by the human body in modern war. The troops could not contemplate without anger the lack of public knowledge of the Graves Registration form used by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, with its space for indicating "Members Missing." You would expect frontline soldiers to be struck and hurt by bullets and shell fragments, but such is the popular insulation from the facts that you would not expect them to be hurt, sometimes killed, by being struck by parts of their friends' bodies violently detached. If you asked a wounded soldier or Marine what hit him, you'd hardly be ready for the answer "My buddy's head," or his sergeant's heel or his hand, or a Japanese leg, complete with

Peace Corps super bloggers

I wondered the other day if there are other people like me in Peace Corps who lavish what is probably too much attention on their blogs. I decided to comb through the Peace Corps journals site to investigate. I had to quickly improvise a crude standard to sort out the most prolific authors; there are thousands of Peace Corps blogs. So I set a bar of at least 250 posts with at least one in the last month. Not exactly precise but close enough. I also decided to let returned volunteers in, because hey what the hell. Here they are: Matt's Samoa Blog Letters from China One Computer at a Time Aaron in Azerbaijan One Bloc East Cooper in Cambodia Belly Button Window Innocent A-Blogged Women and Geeks First! Musings of a Super Hero Lost in the Beauty of Everything Around Me Craig in Moldova makethislast Scooter in Mozambique Foy Update Peace Corps and Beyond Continually Expanding an Open Mind, Inshallah There were also a few discontinued blogs that had 250+ posts: Jim and Emily's

Why I don't like Megan McArdle

Observe : The people who were right can (and will) rewrite their memories of what they believed to show themselves in the most attractive light; they will come to honestly believe that they were more prescient than they were. This is not some attack on people who were against the war: I was wrong, they were right... They will also quite possibly simply be wrong about how they got it right; correct analysis often operates at a subconscious as well as a conscious level. Unlike the people who were right, there is a central fact stopping [those who were wrong] from flattering themselves too much: things are blowing up in Iraq and people are dying. Thus they will have to look for some coherent explanation. To be sure, many of those explanations are wan and self-serving--"I trusted too much." But others of them aren't. And the honest ones are vastly more interesting than listening to a parade of people say "Well, obviously, I'm a genius, and also, not mean." Me :

Book review: The Shackled Continent

Summary: this work from Economist writer Robert Guest contains a lot of the kind of free trade leg-humping one would expect. However his diagnosis of the current problems and the best probable solutions (drawn in very broad strokes) are fairly convincing. This book purports to answer three separate but related questions: what are the problems facing Sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as Africa)? why does this area have so many problems? and what are the best solutions? The answer to the second question is totally inadequate. Guest insists that colonialism is not the issue. He points to South Korea, which went from a post-colonial basketcase to a first-rank power in about fifty years, while most of Africa continued to languish in the dumps. He instead proposes that Africa has terrible leadership: inefficient, statist, corrupt, cronyist governments that provide an almost insurmountable barrier for anyone looking to start a business. Well, yeah. But why is the leadership s

Collected links

Why does Heinz dominate the ketchup market? A South African preacher says "Jesus had AIDS." Untangling the Kochtopus. Hipster Hitler. Pete Guither performs a surgical, measured takedown of Mark Kleiman on medical marijuana. UPDATE: Speaking of ketchup, there is not nearly the same uniformity here as in the USA. A lot of the "tomato sauce," or "tamatie sous," like the stuff they serve at Wimpy , is this watery pale stuff that is frankly inferior to good old Heinz 57.

Department of WTF, chemistry edition

Sorry for the blurriness of this shot, but you can see if you look close it's a bunch of chemicals I discovered the other day in an unlocked cabinet. It consists of two indicator solutions, some diethyl ether (which had of course evaporated), some mercury, some sulfuric acid, and some carbon tetrachloride. I'm not sure what I should do with them, but it is a bit troubling.

Guest story: Chairlift to Satori

[ Front matter: this piece from my Dad is about a ski trip to Telluride , near where I grew up. He wrote it right after Bush II was reelected. ] There is no real equivalent in human relations to a ski lift ride with a perfect stranger. There will be 6 to 14 minutes of cheek-to-cheek proximity and few other givens. Verbalization is allowed but not mandatory. Touching, apart from what is necessary, is strictly forbidden, as in a crowded elevator. It is acceptable to be utterly oblivious to one’s seatmate. You can even mouth the words to whatever is on headphones and sing every other word of the chorus out loud. No one will object if you spend your moments together craning around in the seat and shouting to acquaintances below. Should any party make the choice to interact, snow condition and weather are safe but relevant topics. Geographic origins are commonly used as an opening statement, as in; “I’m from Tampa and it looks like pretty good snow to me,” which serves to place a

My senator says hi

This is something I forgot to mention when it came several months ago. My home state senator is Mark Udall—the Udalls are kind of like the Kennedys of the Southwest. He has two cousins in the Senate. I've actually met the guy, and my parents are fairly good friends with his brother Randy (I went down Grand Canyon with his family once), as well as his cousin Brad. Mark reminded me a little bit of the Reed College president Colin Diver. One of the better senators, though that's not saying much. Good on him for dropping me a line.

Richard Francis Burton

I've been writing a bit of fiction while this strike drags on. It's a kind of exploration story, and some research led me to this crazy guy : Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages. Burton's best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang's abridgement), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa's greatest explorer guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route informati

The cabbie slasher

Some guy allegedly stabbed a Muslim cabbie in New York City: Two seemingly contradictory portraits are emerging of Michael Enright, the 21-year old aspiring filmmaker arraigned yesterday on hate crimes charges for allegedly stabbing a New York City cab driver because he was Muslim. There's the Michael Enright who volunteered for an interfaith group, whose Facebook profile picture was with a young girl he met on his trip to Afghanistan, and who liked the book Angela's Ashes, movies like "Boys Don't Cry" and music by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Michael Enright that neighbor Alma Quinlan knew was a "great kid who is very sociable and attentive to his mother." Then there's the Michael Enright who kept a personal diary filled with anti-Islamic rants, had a serious drinking problem and slit the throat of a cab driver while yelling "This is a checkpoint, this is checkpoint, motherf**ker, I have to put you down." Enright's referenc

Inflation in South Africa

Jesse piqued my interest in this post : Workers are asking for an 8.5% increase in pay across the board, and the government has said it would only find 7.7% to be reasonable, as it feels anything higher would put a strain on government funds. [...] The argument made by union leaders, SACP Deputy General Jeremy Cronin, and others is that if South Africa can spend well over 1 billion Rand on the World Cup, why can’t it give a moderate increase that matches historical inflation rates? Why build super-stadiums that may go unused when you can build better housing and improve schools and hospital facilities? I don’t understand much about the inflation of the Rand, nor am I an economist in any sense, but I do understand that inflation matters, as it effects the cost of items and the value of currency. Many historically disadvantaged black South Africans are making much less then their management is regardless of inflation being a factor, and almost 3 or 4 times less then white workers. In the

Book review: Neuromancer

Up today: Neuromancer by William Gibson. Summary: this seminal text in the cyberpunk genre remains excellent but a bit of research is necessary to really appreciate its originality. I've been hitting the science fiction hard lately, I realize. Actually, during our world cup trip I read a half-dozen normal books but haven't felt inclined to lay down my thoughts. But I make no apologies; I still agree with Kurt Vonnegut: "It seemed to me that science fiction writers were writing about the most important issues of our time, and that the mainstream writers and those most respected by critics were still dealing with the subtleties of human character and motivation and all that. Meanwhile, we've created these monstrous engines and social schemes and so forth which are having more influence on us than anything else. So I created Kilgore Trout to say 'maybe these guys can't write so well, but they're sure talking about what needs to be talked about.'"

Diagnosing twentysomethings, ctd

Jamelle Bouie adds his perspective : I finally got around to reading The New York Times Magazine piece on the aimless 20-something, and as a somewhat aimless 20-something, it strikes me as a little blinkered. For starters, outside of a few nods to the recession, there isn't much of an effort to understand why financial independence is so hard to find. But the truth is that the recession has wrecked havoc on job and career prospects for 20-somethings.[...] That said, my main problem with the piece was simply the fact that there wasn't much of an attempt at making class distinctions. It delves into the "extended adolescence" of relatively sheltered graduates from major universities, but what about the mass of 20-somethings who either didn't go to college or pursued degrees at community colleges and local universities? Amanda Marcotte chimes in , and goes nuclear on some Baby Boomer: By casting the entire situation as a matter of desire and choice, the author missed

A bouquet of awesome

Someone told me the other day that if I really want to be a writer, I need to start writing more original stuff and stop linking so much. Here's my response: Hark! unto the Great Zucchini. An oldie but a goodie on lobbying. The world supply of helium might be running out. This traffic jam in China will likely last until mid-September. A defense of liberaltarianism.

Inception review

Summary: this mind-bender from Christopher Nolan was flawed but ultimately excellent. I just returned from a trip to Kimberley to check out this flick, which I'm proud to say I watched twice. I think the first thing that must be mentioned about this movie is that it is cool. It exudes cool more than anything I can remember since Brad Pitt in Fight Club. The score, style, cinematography, editing, set and costume design all blended seamlessly. Perhaps the best example of this is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, who rocks a waistcoat better than anyone since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The plot is intricate but mostly solid. It's about a man (DiCaprio) whose trade is stealing ideas from people's minds while they dream. He shares lucid dreams with a team of people who break into someone's mind to either steal their secrets or trick them into revealing them; this is called extraction. Inception is planting an idea in the target's mind, as opposed to steal

Striking in Kuruman

Here you can see demonstrators marching on the local municipal headquarters. A bit tamer than the ones in Kimberley but still active.

Know hope

This is the new library. The librarian was helping the Grade One teacher read a book with the class; many of the books we got from biblionef are in Setswana. What's even more heartening is that I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I get diagnosed by the New York Times

Psychologists, bless their black little hearts, have been inventing new terms for twenty-somethings who are getting jobs, a spouse, and settling down later than ever. It's called "emerging adulthood," apparently : The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation. [...] Jeffery Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., is leading the movement to view

The Iraq War revisited

Matthew Yglesias takes a look back to 2002 as to why he was wrong about the war. He comes up with four sober reasons: erroneous foreign policy views, elite signaling, misreading the politics, and The Threatening Storm . He adds: You can, however, always get more psychological. I was 21 years old and kind of a jerk. Being for the war was a way to simultaneously be a free-thinking dissident in the context of a college campus and also be on the side of the country’s power elite. My observation is that this kind of fake-dissident posture is one that always has a lot of appeal to people. The point is that this wasn’t really a series of erroneous judgments about Iraq, it was a series of erroneous judgments about how to think about the world and who deserves to be taken seriously and under which circumstances. I still am stunned that fairly intelligent people like he and Ezra Klein were taken in by such hokum. But it's good of Yglesias to examine his past reasoning and try to learn f

Namibia reax, ctd.

Noah chimes in . Something I left out: One of the nicer stops along the way was a hot spring. Unlike the hot springs I went to in Hot Spring NC, you got to enjoy the spring from the source and it made all the difference in the world. Sure it was not that cold outside and the springs were scalding hot but the water was awfully nice on the aching muscles and sore feet. Sure it smelled pretty strongly of sulphur but the scenery outweighed the odor. And yes, we did run across a group of skinny-dipping college students but it made the experience much more primal.

Assorted links

Google maps steps into some political controversy. A bunch of brain scientists take a trip down the San Juan River. The Atlantic looks into electronic monitoring as an alternative to prison. This article, holy cow, just read it. It's worth it.

A half-decent Republican candidate for president

Gary Johnson . He was governor of New Mexico when I was growing up in Colorado twenty miles from the border, so I remember him pretty well. I doubt I'd agree with his economic policies at all, but this guy probably wouldn't embrace Bush's civil liberties program (though, truth be told, I said the same thing about Obama). More to the point, he's a candidate I wouldn't regard as president with howling disbelief. I see the possibility of the loyal opposition. So his candidacy is probably doomed.

More on the Park51 mosque

Yglesias strings together some wise thoughts here : The other thing is that over the weekend some kind of hair-splitting distinction opened up between the idea of publicly and forcefully acknowledging the legal and constitutional right of the organizers to place their community center at 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan and supporting construction of the mosque. I sort of see what the distinction is. People have the right, legally speaking, to go stand on the sidewalk outside my office and scream obscenities at me when I go to lunch. But I really wish they wouldn’t do that, and I think sensible people would condemn the decision to behave in that manner. But when it comes to matters of religion, I think this distinction gets a bit confusing. I’m after all not a Muslim. And if pressed, I’d have to say that I think Islam is a false doctrine. It’s not the case that there’s is no God but Allah, nor is it true that Mohammed is his prophet. If everyone collectively decided that nobody should

Tobacco: snus, dip, snuff, and the PACT Act

When I was in high school, I was heavily into the anti-tobacco movement. It was a founding time for me, and though I don't regret those days (tobacco companies did and do things that are utterly reprehensible), my thinking has definitely evolved considerably since then. I think that what started as a legitimate campaign against sleazebag advertising and murderous delaying tactics of tobacco companies has gradually taken a sheen of moral disapproval of all tobacco use, smoking or no, and I believe free adults should be allowed to poison themselves in whatever way(s) they see fit. (It's an extreme view, I suppose, but lets set that aside for now.) However, smoking still remains about the only form of drug use where one can passively kill innocent bystanders. Thus—though I think it has gone a bit far in some places—I understand and basically support regulations restricting smoking in public places. But that argument does not apply to non-smoking forms of tobacco like dip (che

Namibia reax

Kristen lays down her take here . I'd like to emphasize this part: But then, after you’ve reveled in the gorgeous view and the general incompetence of your physical health, the fun part starts. That’s when you get to sprint down the side of the dune as fast as you can, yelling your lungs out and praying you don’t hit a firm patch of sand and faceplant. I was surprised by the amount of sheer exhilaration that can be gained from a mound of sand. It could have been the effects of physical exhaustion, but I’ll take what I can get. Few times before have I experienced such unadulterated joy. No room is left for thoughts or worries, just keeping your feet under you and careening down the face in 10-meter bounds. UPDATE: Ach! I just used meters without even realizing it!

The flooding in Pakistan

The flooding in Pakistan is almost too horrible to believe. Nearly a third of the country is underwater. This series of pictures from the redoubtable photography team at the Boston Globe is excellent and wrenching. I urge those of you with some spare change to donate what you can.

Quote of the day

"And just as an aside, there's something I've never understood about the right's standards for international comparisons. If the left suggests the U.S. pursue a public policy that's worked in, say, Germany, conservatives respond, 'They're trying to turn us into Europe!' But when Angle praises Pincohet's privatization scheme and suggests we emulate here, no one seems inclined to argue, 'Republicans are trying to turn us into a South American military dictatorship!'" — Steve Benen .

On different vacation styles

A few things have been stewing in my mind for the last few weeks since June. The World Cup trip was splendid, definitely ranking among my top five best vacations ever. It was rather the opposite from my trip to Eastern Cape last December, where we stayed in one place for nine days. This time we were booking it around South Africa at top speed, only staying at places for a day or two. Edward Abbey always railed against the road trip vacation, but there are things to commend about both methods. The whirlwind tour version, though I often wished to stay and explore, gave me a new feeling for South Africa, a better sense of the grandeur and scale of the place than I had gotten heretofore. Also I was struck by the jarring difference between different biomes--from the skeletal spare desert south of Namibia to the Mediterranean wine country in northern Western Cape to the organized, safe and temperate Cape Town. From the stark, drenched Tsitsikamma and Port Elizabeth to the warm sun of

Visions from your dystopian future

First up, from the Wall Street Journal, an excellent article series detailing the ways online companies have been selling your personal information. Second, something I've been predicting for years: the end of antibiotics . Last September, Walsh published details of a gene he had discovered, called NDM 1, which passes easily between types of bacteria called enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to almost all of the powerful, last-line group of antibiotics called carbapenems. Yesterday's paper revealed that NDM 1 is widespread in India and has arrived here as a result of global travel and medical tourism for, among other things, transplants, pregnancy care and cosmetic surgery. "In many ways, this is it," Walsh tells me. "This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae. We have a bleak window of maybe 10 years, where we are going to

The Eye of Kuruman

 I visited this finally for the first time. It's a little park on the main drag of Kuruman, with lovely trees and big pond filled with fish. It's a great spot for a picnic; admission is R10—a bit steep for a small park, but worth it because it keeps out the tsotsis. Apparently the thing has produced about 20 million litres of water every day since anyone's been keeping track.

The New York mosque and the moon

Hendrik Hertzburg has the best commentary so far on the proposed Park51 mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, fittingly in the New Yorker . I can't add anything to his analysis, only emphasize the irony of Republicans who otherwise loathe New York and constantly complain about how they're enforcing their "liberal values" on "real America" suddenly rediscovering the sacredness of New York ground and decreeing what shall and shall not be built there. You can almost hear the thought: "why is New York hogging all the terrorism?" I caught In the Shadow of the Moon the other night. It was excellent, a moving look back at the greatest achievement in the history of the human race. (Michael Collins was the de facto star, as he's the funniest of the Apollo astronauts.) On looking back, though, the biggest feeling I get is irritation about our current situation. To me the moon landing period seems like an age of titans compared to now. It was a t

The Perseids!

It's meteor shower time ! Tomorrow is the apex of the Perseids , which are most visible in the northern hemisphere sadly. I'm going to check it out, though we just had another cold snap here a couple days back.

Bang your head against the wall

"There's some debate over how well certain forms of stimulus "work." That is to say, whether a tax cut increases spending, which increases jobs, which increases total economic output. But there's no debate over what state and local aid does: It allows the continuation of programs that are already ongoing, the preservation of jobs that people already occupy, the protection of tax rates that are currently in place. It doesn't promote economic expansion, which is a somewhat uncertain business. It prevents economic contraction, which is a much more predictable project. If states have to cut $120 billion from their budgets, that money -- and the things it does -- will just leave the economy. There will be fewer jobs, higher taxes, less financial aid. None of that is speculative. There's no theory in which it doesn't happen. This is a large economic contraction that we've decided to allow, because we would prefer to allow it than to put down the money -

Quote of the day

"A well functioning financial intermediary system is important to a modern economy, but we've had a wee bit of proof over the last couple of years that our financial intermediary system is neither healthy nor much of a financial intermediary system. It's a giant casino industry with a side gig in banking, and that banking side gig has meant the government will always guarantee the house bets." -- Atrios

Small town blogging

When people start talking about rural areas, the hackles on my neck tend to rise. Usually it seems to mean an exploitative jackass spewing what amounts to anti-urban bigotry (who often as not is from a city himself). The fact is that the vast majority of Americans live in cities, and that's as it should be. One of the lessons I took from New York was that the only way the world can sanely manage the number of people that currently exist is going to be in very dense areas like that. Moreover, rural areas tend to be hugely inefficient especially in terms of CO2 production. But I come from a very rural place, and there are things I like about rural places. One can delve into that in an honest way without dogging stupidly on cities, and that's what Miranda Lambert does here in a piece of decent country:

Glenn Beck's gold scam

Check out this cool graphic from The Big Picture : Infographic by The Big Picture

Happy 400th post!

Yay. It's likely that I blog more than any currently serving Peace Corps Volunteer. That's something. Good or bad, I'm not sure, but it's something. Let's celebrate with a music video about the new James Webb space telescope —the one set to replace the Hubble. UPDATE 10/1/2012: For some reason this post has been getting a nutty amount of traffic. Lo and behold the video I used to have here had "expired." So here's a different video instead: If you're curious, try a random post on the right.

I give up

Jon Stewart comes up with some political advertising I can believe in. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Free will, part II

This post is dedicated to Mark Bedau , my philosophy professor at Reed, a great guy and a wonderful teacher, by far the least pretentious philosopher I've ever met. He is responsible for this post only insofar as he sparked my interest in the subject; its many shortcomings are mine alone. Who's ready for some unqualified philosophical rambling? I'm not going to do much more than summarize, as this is probably one of the five biggest problems in philosophy and the material quickly gets out of hand. Anyway—let's start with some terms, appropriately hefty philosophical ones. (I'm going to steal shamelessly from Wikipedia, as the free will article is very good.) Free will is "purported ability of agents to make choices free from constraints." Some call it the "ability to have done otherwise," but that definition runs into problems which I'll describe later. Determinism is the view that all events are caused by previous events, while indet