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<HEAD><TITLE>Zompist's Rant Page</TITLE></HEAD>
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<H2>Zompist's Rant Page : 2002</H2>
<i>New year, new rant page, same shtick: political tirades,
comments on books or movies, jokes or </i>aperçus<i> that don't need a page of their own,
great thoughts from readers. Newest entries are at the top.
</i>
<p><table width=100%>
<tr bgcolor="#B0D0D4">
<td>Rants for</td>
<td><b><a href="rants.html">2001</a></b></td>
<td><b>2002</b></td>
<td><b><a href="rants03.html">2003</a></b></td>
<td><b><a href="rants04.html">2004</a></b></td>
<td><b><a href="rants05.html">2005</a></b></td>
<td><b><a href="rants06.html">2006</a></b></td>
<td><b><a href="rants07.html">2007</a></b></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr>
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="rants03.html#1"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="50">28 Dec 2002</a>: <b> More on good & evil jobs </b></center>
<td> <a href="#49"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
It took me awhile to get back to this, but here's the feedback I got on <a href="#47">what careers are good and evil</a>, with brief explanatory comments.
Thanks to everyone who wrote!
<p><b>Good</b>
<br>The arts ("hard for any kind of cliquish high school mentality to take hold")
<br>Programmer ("politics was something Managers did")
<br>Lawyer ("litigators are judged first and foremost on how well they do in court")
<br>Programmer (petty politics only from outside the department)
<br>tech-level population biologist/researcher (mostly rational, but degree needed to advance)
<br>flunky at a consulate (judged by "ability and accuracy")
<br>Pizza driver ("60% ability... 40% humoring cheap-ass manager")
<p><b>Evil</b>
<br>Grade school teacher ("competence is irrelevant")
<br>Grad student ("Non-egoists need not apply")
<br>University instructor ("a lot of backstabbing")
<br>University instructor ("politics and stupidity are of the essence")
<br>a Crown Corporation ("stupid and nasty")
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#50"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="49">17 Dec 2002</a>: <b> When pundits go bad </b></center>
<td> <a href="#48"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I'm rapidly losing respect for Christopher Hitchens.
He devotes <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2075659">a whole column today</a> to
mocking demands for "multilateralism". He suggests, as if it were a answer, that everyone
simply support the U.S.; then our actions would be "multilateral".
<p>Now, Hitchens has decided that war on Iraq is a good thing, and even self-importantly
resigned from <i>The Nation</i> in order, somehow, to underline this. And a case for war on Iraq
can be made. Unfortunately, Hitchens isn't making it; he's playing word games instead.
<p>Hitchens carefully erects a straw man: the critics want all U.S. actions at all times to
be "multilateral". But missing the point isn't clever. The criticism is that when the U.S.
proceeds in contemptuous disregard of the rest of the world, it's usually either wrong, or
about to get itself in big trouble. Whether it's Vietnam, global warming, pollution,
Israeli settlement policy, the Cuban trade embargo, or opposing universal health care
or the metric system, we're just not at our best when we're most alone.
<p>Maybe he has an argument why Bush is right in this case... but then he should make it,
not attempt to belittle the general principle.
<p>Columnists have their off days-- but this isn't the first time Hitchens has decended to
this level. He wrote <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073772">a very similar column</a>
mocking the idea that we might be suspicious of people calling for war who, in their day,
managed to avoid ever serving in one. Does he really see no validity at all in this
complaint? Does he, in general, think that experience is irrelevant to
making decisions? Is it just foolish to expect that people asking others to make
sacrifices know what they're asking?
<p>What's annoying about these columns is that the opinions are so obviously calculated--
without saying so-- just to support his views on Iraq. Did criticisms of unilateralism
or chickenhawks ever bother him before? And instead of worrying about these relative trivialities, why
not confront the real issues: whether we should undertake another war when al-Qaeda is
still unbeaten; whether a new regime in Iraq will be an improvement in five years;
whether outraging world opinion will really keep Americans safe. You don't answer these
concerns by bullying people to just trust us.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#49"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="48">9 Dec 2002</a>: <b> Wonder if Andy Rooney covered this </b></center>
<td> <a href="#47"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Customer service phone lines have discovered a new way to suck: voice recognition
software. It feels mighty stupid to be talking out loud to a machine, but wait,
there's more! You can have conversations like this:
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
Machine: Please give the patient's birthdate.
<br>Me: 8, 18, 25.
<br>Machine: Please say the patient's birthdate.
<br>Me (<i>wondering which part it can't understand</i>): oh-8, 18, 1925.
<br>Machine: Please say the patient's birthdate.
<br>Me: August 18th, 1925.
<br>Machine: Is that August 1st, 1925?
<br>Me: No.
<br>Machine: Your call cannot be processed without the patient's birthdate.
<br><i>--sound effect of me tracking down the programmer and ripping his lungs out</i>--
</font></blockquote>
Didn't it occur to anyone that a system that understands "eighteen" as "one" is
not ready to be put into production? Would it have killed them to explain whether
to say month names or numbers, or whether ordinals are understood? Who thought it
was better to go through this half-minute rigmarole rather than take two seconds
to type out the birthdate using the numeric keys conveniently provided by the phone
company?
<p>Of course, having worked in the software industry, I know the answer to all
these questions: it didn't matter what anyone said; management loved the idea when
it was PowerPointed at them,
and would never have to live with the consequences. And it may not be coincidence
that it was an insurance company, which in the short run is perfectly happy to
discourage customers from getting service.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#48"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="47">13 Nov 2002</a>: <b> Good vs. evil careers </b></center>
<td> <a href="#46"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Comparing notes with my wife, I sometimes think that our different career areas
are staffed from different species, or at least separate cultures.
<p>She's worked in editing and education, and in both areas she's run into
lots of politics and stupidity. Competence is usually measured by what degree
you have, and the interpersonal dynamics are strictly high school-- cliques,
cool and uncool kids, and all.
<p>I'm a programmer, and despite the headaches of the field, I've always found it
blessedly free of politics. Competence has nothing to do with schooling,
everything to to with how well you can do the job. Programmers generally don't
care <i>who</i>'s cool, though they like to geek out on <i>what</i>'s cool.
<p>I'd like to see if this is true generally. So, <A href="contact.html">send me mail</a>
telling me what field(s) you've worked in, how much they were dominated by petty
politics, and how competence was measured. When I get a bunch of responses
I'll summarize <a href="#50">the results</a>.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#47"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="46">6 Nov 2002</a>: <b> Big stupid loss </b></center>
<td> <a href="#45"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Well, this time it's clear: the electorate wants budget deficits,
handouts to the rich, drilling in Alaska, and war in Iraq. Or, more precisely,
it doesn't much care whether these things happen or not.
<p>Some folks are offering excuses, but to lose a midterm election in the middle of
an recession isn't just bad luck.
I think <a href="http://www.salon.com/politics/conason/2002/11/06/bush/index.html">Joe Conason</a>
is right: Democrats have only themselves to blame. They're not saying anything
that resonates with the changeable middle 20% of the electorate that decides elections.
<p>In fact, it's hard to detect that they're saying anything at all, besides
some low-level griping. And has the Democratic Party ever been at such a loss
for recognized leaders? I personally hope Al Gore doesn't run again; he not only
lacks the charisma to win, but lacks any substantive vision, and he stands in the
way of any more substantial candidate.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#46"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="45">1 Nov 2002</a>: <b> Half-century report </b></center>
<td> <a href="#44"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Current politics is always dismal; it always looks like the bad guys are about to win.
The best way to get some perspective is to look at something from half a century back.
I've been rereading a book of essays by George Orwell, and it's perked me right up.
<p>Even after all this time, Orwell is a singularly perceptive observer of both left and right,
and entirely free of B.S. He's a demonstration that it is possible to write about politics (and everything else)
with a clear head and without jargon. The only jarring note is an occasional bit of unexamined
ideology-- e.g. he says at one point that "only socialist armies can fight efficiently".
(Curiously, elsewhere he doesn't give in to this bit of wishful thinking; he knows that fascist armies,
such as the one he fought against in Spain, can be very efficient indeed.)
<p>What's remarkable, and rather reassuring, is how much better the world is than it was
sixty years ago. Orwell wrote at a time when to believe in democracy was to be as isolated and
irrational as Don Quixote. The intellectuals were mostly communists of the most irresponsible sort;
the upper classes were solidly and stupidly reactionary; and Europe was caught in a
totalitarian nightmare-- and worse yet, the totalitarians seemed immeasurably more practical
and successful than anything the free world could come up with. (Despite Tolkien's protestations,
the atmosphere of near-hopeless confrontation with near-omnipotent evil in <i>LOTR</i> was very much of the times.)
<p>And at home, Orwell's country was so comically misruled and class-ridden that it wasn't hard
to conclude that only a revolution could improve the lot of the average person (though if you were
Orwell, you knew that the chance of a revolution actually doing so was dismayingly low).
<p>Orwell's political insight is always good, but his economic understanding doesn't always stand up.
Perhaps his biggest mistake is his supposition that British prosperity depended on "exploiting the coolies".
There's no doubt that England misruled her empire (Orwell was there and saw it for himself),
but it's now seen as more likely that the empire was a net financial loss. The problem in today's
world is not that the First World gets rich off the backs of the Third; it's that the Third World
is tragically irrelevant to our prosperity.
<p>The Third World has been transformed even more dramatically than the West. Orwell describes a visit
to Morocco, where it seemed that nothing had ever changed nor ever would, and where white people had
difficulty even noticing human beings with brown skin. We're far from having universal justice or
prosperity, but the Third World is no longer a medieval wasteland; it's full of skyscrapers and superhighways
and corporations, and the simple sickening racism Orwell describes is simply no longer possible.
<p>All this would surprise Orwell less than one might imagine; he himself points out how much better
his world was than Victorian England.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#45"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="44">25 Oct 2002</a>: <b> Your teapot weather report </b></center>
<td> <a href="#43"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Did Harry Belafonte commit an unpardonable error in calling Colin Powell a house slave?
<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/col/sullivan/2002/10/25/belafonte/index.html">Andrew Sullivan
thinks so</a>, and ends up demonstrating the foolishness of getting upset over name-calling.
<p>Sullivan thinks Belafonte should be ostracized for "playing the race card"-- in other words,
he should be shunned for his language. Yet Sullivan has no problem himself calling Belafonte
"racist", "a bigot", "reactionary". By his own argument, shouldn't he too be "ostracized" for
these words (which also "play the race card")?
<p>Despite his criticism of the left, Sullivan is following one the left's chief idiocies:
mistaking words for deeds. It sounds noble to say that no one should utter hurtful words;
but it only creates hypocrisy, and demeans real oppression. It's not that words can't sting;
but racism is not a matter of stupid jokes and mean names; it's a matter of being denied
housing or jobs or education or the vote, being killed by vigilantes, being harrassed by the police,
receiving second-class service for the same money.
And above all it's a matter of power.
Belafonte doesn't have the power to oppress Colin Powell.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#44"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="43">4 Oct 2002</a>: <b> Blue and Gray, 137 years later </b></center>
<td> <a href="#42"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I just read a fascinating little book, <i>What They Fought For</i>,
by James M. McPherson: an analysis of what soldiers on both sides of the Civil War
thought they were fighting for, and what they thought about slavery, based on
their letters and diaries. (Somewhat disturbing historical note: that was the
<i>last</i> of our wars when such communications were uncensored.)
<p>In general, the Southerners were fighting for independence and against
"a dastardly, plundering, oppressive, and cowardly foe", as one of them put it.
Northerners felt that they were fighting for the preservation of republican
government: if "traitors be allowed to overthrow and break asunder ties most
sacred-- costing our forefathers long years of blood and toil," then the world
would conclude that self-government was impossible; the 'United' States would
collapse into anarchy, leading to "a long night of tyranny."
<p>It occurred to me, after writing <a href="libertos.html">that libertarianism rant</a>,
that the Civil War is still relevant in our politics. Northerners were
satisfied that they achieved what they fought for; but Southerners could not
have been; they had to rejoin that "nation of thieves and robbers".
<p>As Garry Wills has noted, anti-federal sentiments predated the Civil War;
but it may well have cemented them for half the country-- indeed, the half
that's still more anti-Washington.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#43"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="42">20 Sep 2002</a>: <b> If the poor can eat, the terrorists have already won </b></center>
<td> <a href="#41"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Move over, Cadillac-driving welfare queens; the right has an even better
scare story now: the <i>welfare-abusing terrorist!</i> Yes!
<a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071033"><i>Slate</i>'s Mickey Kaus</a> is pushing the
notion that welfare causes terrorism, based on the observation that one "Muslim extremist"
manages to make a living from welfare-- in Germany. (Coming up next:
anti-pollution laws cause terrorism! Taxing the rich causes terrorism!
Dirty movies cause terrorism!)
<p>Now, to his minimal credit, Kaus doesn't seem to advocate that all poor Americans
be thrown out onto the streets because of the thoughtcrime of some Syrian
in Hamburg. He only wants to deny welfare benefits to immigrants. Well, sure,
look at all those Puerto Ricans who were implicated in 9/11.
<p>(By the way, Osama bin Laden is a multimillionaire, so perhaps Kaus should
also conclude that inordinate wealth causes terrorism.)
<p>Of course, it <i>is</i> fun to pick on atavistic European attitudes toward
immigrants. Europeans used to look down on American racism; now it looks like
we're better at assimilating immigrants than Europe is.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#42"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="41">20 Sep 2002</a>: <b> The drunk and the lamppost </b></center>
<td> <a href="#40"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
The best thing I've read on Iraq lately is an article by Nicholas Lemann
in last week's <i>New Yorker</i>. Most of the media has simply been complaining
that Bush hasn't made a case for invading Iraq. The experts Lemann quotes
have a better point: it's foolish to start a war with Iraq when we haven't
yet won the war against al-Qaeda. As Stephen Van Evera says:
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">There are large risks in a war against
Iraq. There could be a lengthy, televised public slaughter of Muslims by
Americans. A wide imperial rampage through the Middle East-- what do you do
after you win? We're not out of Bosnia and Kosovo yet, and Iraq is much bigger.
It's a huge occupation and reconstruciton. We aren't good at this.</font></blockquote>
Al-Qaeda has been weakened, but not destroyed, and the campaign in
Afghanistan shows the limits of American power-- and resolve. Despite
the World War rhetoric, Bush committed fewer troops in Afghanistan than
Clinton stationed in the Balkans. Al-Qaeda fighters slipped through our
fingers at Tora Bora and the Shah-e-Kot Valley, in part because of an
unwillingness to expose American troops.
<p>We obviously have the power to take over Iraq-- but if we don't know how to
rule it, we may end up with less security, not more. Destroyed states
like Afghanistan or Sudan are natural havens for al-Qaeda. So is much of
Pakistan, which is one military strongman away from giving nuclear capabilities
to Muslim fundamentalists. It might help if, say, the US removed tariff
barriers against Pakistani textiles, but this hasn't been done. Bush also
suspended funding for programs to secure and dismantle ex-Soviet nukes.
<p>After 9/11, Americans wanted to go after somebody. And so we should,
but instead of just fighting someone we think we can beat, we should go after
the people responsible for 9/11. They're not beaten yet, and a war on Iraq
is a distraction from that unfinished business.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#41"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="40">17 Sep 2002</a>: <b> Tympani and big baboons </b></center>
<td> <a href="#39"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I like primatology. Not to actually do, of course. I want someone else
to go and sit in the savannah all day long for twenty years, then tell me
what happened. One of the best such reports (and probably the only funny one)
is Robert Sapolsky's <i>A Primate's Memoir</i>.
<p>What I found most curious about Sapolsky's baboons is how different
their personalities were. Among successive alpha males, for instance, some
were tyrants who terrorized the troop; some were dithering incompetents;
one got to the top and didn't seem to care for the post, leaving to spend
more time with his kids. One approached the American ideal of leadership:
he was tolerant and never provoked a fight, but beat the hell out of anyone
who challenged him. (Note for foreign friends: I said "ideal". Like Abe
Lincoln, or Bugs Bunny.)
<p>Anyway, it gives me some hope for our own primate species. We don't
<i>have</i> to be ruled by jerks.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#40"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="39">1 Sep 2002</a>: <b> How I create </b></center>
<td> <a href="#38"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I noticed the other day how I create things for Almea, at least these days.
I look for patterns-- spurious ones, if necessary-- and extend and rationalize them.
<p>For instance, last night I needed to organize the Cuzeian invasion of the
Plain. I had the names of the four chief nobles, and a rough chronology for
the Atlas, but little idea how to proceed. I noticed that the chronology
covered about 125 years, which would make about 5 generations. Dividing the
chronology into 25-year generations, and matching the nobles with the mini-states
that were created, suggested a pattern: initial conquest;
consolidation, loss of the central areas to the Cadhinorians (which suggested
a tale of corruption among the Cuzeians), civil war, and final union.
<p>Another example: I've been working on the language of the elcari (a dwarf-like
species that lives in the mountains), basically starting from one word,
<i>nmurthankh</i>, the name of one of their enemies. Long ago I created
an etymology for this: 'those who deny elcarin solidarity and are ugly, too',
analyzed as <i>n-</i> agentive + <i>murth</i> 'community' + <i>-ban</i> 'anti-'
+ <i>-kh</i> deprecative.
<p>This was mostly jocular, but I started working out what the language might
look like if that was a typical word. I created a few more single-phoneme
prefixes and suffixes, noted that the affixes were in reverse order from English
and decided that it must be a VOS language, and divided <i>murth</i> in two:
<i>mur</i> 'cooperation' + <i>-th</i> habitual.
<p>Another word I already had was <i>ebdunmak</i> 'excavation-stealer';
the <i>n</i> looked like the same agentive, so that suggested that <i>nmak</i>
was the 'stealer' part, and <i>ebdu</i> was 'excavation'. That in turn
suggested that either <i>e-</i> or <i>-u</i> was a nominalizer (I went with
the latter).
<p>This is probably why it's hard to get started on the history of Arcel,
the other major continent... it's so open-ended that there's no little hooks
to play with.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#39"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="38">1 Sep 2002</a>: <b> How we look to them </b></center>
<td> <a href="#37"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
At Border's tonight I found something really strange: a book on how to draw
bishoujo-- manga-style pretty girls-- from around the world. The instructions
on drawing "Mongoloid" girls are interesting
(to make girls look Chinese you slant their eyes; to make them look Korean
you give them slim necks), but what's truly frightening
is the artist's depiction of a "Caucasian" girl.
<p>I've looked, but I can't find a scan on the web... suffice it to say that
what Hikaru Hayashi considers to make up a pretty Caucasian girl
is, to Western eyes, more what makes up a witch: sharp face, long nose,
V-shaped mouth, small-pupilled eyes, lots of sharp nasty little penstrokes.
<p>His black girls are also odd-looking, though not scary. They're
allowed to have a teensy bit more lip, and Hayashi advises making their skin
look "shiny".
<p>Artistic conventions are fascinating... to my eyes manga (especially in comparison with traditional
Japanese art) already makes the girls look Western. To find Asian
girls that look Asian you have to look in Western comics. (Relatively
modern ones... not too long ago, it appears, Asians looked ugly to
Westerners. Go figure.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#38"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="37">30 Aug 2002</a>: <b> Iraq 'n Roll </b></center>
<td> <a href="#36"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
So. You think we're going to invade Iraq? The cute news here is that
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/30/powell.iraq/index.html">a number of Republican honchos</a>
either oppose an invasion, or suggest that the administration is going about it wrong,
or hasn't made a case for it.
<p>There's plenty of quibbles to make. We could certainly take over the country,
and perhaps it doesn't matter to anyone if Saddam gasses our troops or the Israelis
or his own citizens along the way. The real problem is, what to do with the place afterward?
The U.S. has a pretty poor record actually managing the countries it's intervened in.
Saddam and Osama, after all, are U.S. clients gone bad, and the Iranian regime
is a good example of what happens when the U.S. overthrows democratic regimes
and installs friendly dictators.
<p>Unfortunately, I don't even think the administration is really doing
geopolitics. Rather, it's a rite of passage for Republican presidents to
invade somebody, somewhere... coupled, in this case, with Dubya's apparent need
to undo what was widely perceived as his father's mistake in not taking Baghdad.
<p>Reagan at least maximized the theater and minimized the actual event,
taking an island of 100,000 people in the Caribbean. Bush Jr. has a chance
to do some real damage.
<p>This has been on Bush's plate for a long time, but the timing of the current
news blitz is interesting: just in time to distract attention from
the continuing recession and accounting shenanigans in the boardrooms.
However, Bush has probably studied his father's mistakes enough to schedule
the actual invasion for (say) fall 2003, so he can sail into primary season
with Baghdad (if not Saddam) under his belt.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#37"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="36">26 Aug 2002</a>: <b> UI Wars </b></center>
<td> <a href="#35"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
<i>Salon</i> had a few pages of letters from angry Apple readers castigating
some woman who had the effrontery not to be immediately delighted with her Mac.
<p>The litany is "The Mac is <i>so much easier to use.</i>" Well. That was
true up to about 1995. Since then, Windows has been comparable. The Mac has an
edge in some areas; but Windows has made a few respectable UI improvements. E.g.:
<ul>
<li>Windows can be resized from any edge. (Mac windows can now be <i>moved</i>
that way, but that tends to be less useful.)
<li>Windows can be minimized. The Mac equivalent, the windowshade thing, is lame:
it leaves the entire title bar, and doesn't move it out of the way.
<li>Windows can be maximized to full-screen. The Mac notion of switching
between two sizes is arcane and nearly useless.
<li>Windows has had the taskbar for years, and didn't load it up with useless glitz. (128-pixel-high icons? Come on.)
<li>Right buttons, and the convention to have right-click bring up an options menu.
<li>It's easier to make an alias.
<li>Long before the Mac, Windows had menus that stayed open when you clicked on them.
<li>Windows was also first to have scrollbars where the thumb indicates the relative
size of the visible area.
<li>PC keyboards came with a numeric keypad back when it was a separate add-on
for the Mac. Standard paging keys are nice too.
<li>Windows apps always provide keyboard equivalents for all mouse actions.
Mice are nice, but once you know the app, speed is better.
</ul>
Of course a similar list could be made for the Mac. But the point is,
at some point the idea that "Macs are easier" became primarily religious.
Which is a pity; I'd be a lot happier if the Mac had stayed ahead.
<p>I've programmed for both (tho' not for the Mac for years), and I've always
preferred programming Windows apps. Once you get used to it, it's much more
consistent and object-oriented. (That doesn't go for COM tho'. That's a horror.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#36"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="35">26 Aug 2002</a>: <b> Crash different </b></center>
<td> <a href="#34"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Man, Apple's list of reasons to switch to the Mac annoys me. <i>Especially</i> the one about crashing.
<p>Now, I love Macs. Also hate them. I got my first Mac in 1985 or so, back when it was still insanely great. It had that tiny little screen, but it had fonts and graphics at a time when if you wanted to draw a box on a PC you had to use a set of special characters.
<p>Eventually, Windows came out, which only increased the scorn of the Mac community. I got a Centris in about 1993; it cost less and did a hell of a lot more than my first Mac, and still easily outclassed Windows. A couple of times it did destroy the System, but I managed to restore it from disk.
<p>I got the iMac in 2000, and it promptly crashed. It crashes once a night, on average. By contrast, my Windows 2000 Pro machine at work almost never crashes-- when it does, it's because I'm programming something evil, and not (as on the iMac) browsing or writing. I haven't got the Blue Screen of Death in ages, though I've gotten the Unhappy Mac often enough. And I dread adding hardware to the machine, since it's sure to screw up one of the other USB devices.
<p>The Apple ads say that you can share files with PCs, but don't mention the hassles-- e.g., I can't use Word 2000 because it hangs, so I still use Mac Word 5.1, which of course can't read most PC files. I can't download PC Civ3 games. It's also tiresome to wait an extra six months for Mac versions of good games. And the gamma thing is extremely annoying. Somehow the ads don't spend much time on <i>that.</i>
<p>On the plus side... well, it's nice not to have to worry so much about viruses...
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#35"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="34">5 Aug 2002</a>: <b> Over on the consie planet </b></center>
<td> <a href="#33"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire080202.asp">A <i>National Review</i> column by John Derbyshire</a>
has a list of reasons why conservatives should always be depressed. It's a humor piece,
but sometimes humor functions as a disinhibitor-- it allows people to recognize, with an
embarrassed laugh, beliefs that they'd be ashamed to state seriously.
<p>As such, it's a fascinating excursion into the conservative mind. For instance,
despite the Right's brandishing the occasional J.C. Watts or Clarence Thomas,
it's still fundamentally racist
("nobody will ever be able to devise a test
of knowledge or understanding on which groups with different population-genetic histories all record identical
statistical profiles"). Ultimate virtue, in fact, lies only with "Anglo-Saxons"; Europeans
(a category which presumably excludes Scots and Irish, but not actual Saxons)
don't know how to "do democracy".
<p>Weirdly, to be a "true conservative", you have to believe that the world is always going
downhill, <b>and</b> that "poverty and hardship build character". Surely these can't both be
reasons for gloom, since the worse things get, the more character gets built? (And if poverty
builds character, shouldn't we elect our poorest citizens to public office?)
<p>Consies love to feel beleaguered: Derbyshire thinks the Ronald Reagan of 1980 would be
"unelectable" today, because "every medium of mass entertainment and mass information"
has been preaching against conservatism for twenty years. With a stroke of his quill pen,
Derbyshire has eliminated a billion-dollar conservative media industry. He's also forgotten
that a conservative, one George W. Bush, came awfully close to being elected President
a couple of years back.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#34"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="33">24 Jul 2002</a>: <b> These guys are starting to piss me off </b></center>
<td> <a href="#32"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Somewhere, someone is writing a tortured explanation of why Israel hasn't itself
embraced terrorism. A couple of days ago, Israel executed an F-16 airstrike
on a Palestinian residential neighborhood, killing one terrorist-- plus
his wife and three children and 10 more people-- and wounding 150 more.
Ariel Sharon considers this operation a "great success".
<p>The last Palestinian terror attack, by contrast, killed 8 people; the one before that, 3.
<p>The point is not that war is messy. The point is that any defense applies
to the Palestinians as well. If it's OK to kill Palestinian civilians
because of mumble-mumble, then it's OK to kill Israeli civilians as well.
If it's OK to fire missiles at Palestinian cities,
then it's OK to fire missiles at Israeli cities.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#33"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="32">16 Jul 2002</a>: <b> Advice for young writers </b></center>
<td> <a href="#31"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Often young people with an artistic bent come to me, with their berets and their
long hair and their absinthe, and ask old Uncle Zomp about writing. I pour myself a cigar, light
up a J.D., and launch into a diatribe about the blindness and corruption of the publishing industry.
And then, when they've fallen asleep, I offer this advice.
<ul>
<li>You learn to write by writing. A lot. A good rule of thumb is:
unless you're a genius, the first thousand pages you write will be crap.
So go and write them and don't bother the world with them. By page 1001
you'll probably have learned something.
(Another good rule of thumb: no, you're not a genius.) <p>
<li>Forget "voice" and "style" and the other stuff creative writing people talk
about. If that stuff means anything at all, it's something that comes unbidden out of
you-- it's not a garnish you can add at will, like cilantro. <p>
<li>People will tell you to "write what you know". Please don't... the world
has enough Livejournals already. Write about what interests you. If that happens
to be something you don't know anything about, go find out stuff. (Hint: research
is a great guilt-free activity for times when you don't feel like writing.)<p>
<li>Read a lot. When you're 20, you're aware-- or you should be, you little snipe--
of the intimidating volume of things you haven't read yet. You're lucky if you've read one
book by each of the biggest authors, and you just know that someone's going to call you
on not having finished Proust, or <i>War and Peace</i>, or <i>Journey to the West</i>.
By the time you're 40, you've read a whole lot more; and best of all, what you
haven't read yet matters a lot less. You realize that you'll probably just never
get to <i>Middlemarch</i>, and that's fine.<p>
<li>Find a writing buddy-- mine was a high school friend, Jim Magruder; for
five years or so we ripped each other's manuscripts apart. I've found that not
everyone likes this sort of frankness-- most people want reassurance and praise,
and don't really want someone to go through their manuscript with red pen and
mark up every sentence. I think the harshness helps; you can't learn from
the errors no one points out, and editors these days have no time to teach you.
(On the other hand, I wish I'd learned a few years earlier not to
try to write to please Jim.) <p>
<li>Be brutal with your writing-- but only after you've written it.
While you're composing, the important thing is to get it down, <i>not</i> to get it right.
Writer's block, in my opinion, is mostly the fear of writing something bad.
Just <i>accept</i> that it'll be bad.
Once it's down, edit the crap out of it.
</ul>
OK, that's it for now. No, I don't want to see your manuscript. Scram.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#32"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="31">8 Jul 2002</a>: <b> Punishment for Vietnam </b></center>
<td> <a href="#30"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
The great mystery of <a href="predic.html">the last century in America</a>
is why wages rose across the board from 1950 to 1970, and only for the rich after that.
(From a wider perspective, the return to robber baron economics is not so
surprising; but then the mystery is the postwar period of liberalism.)
<p>A partial explanation occurred to me today: the attitudes of the wealthy
changed in light of the previous wars.
<p>World War II was ostensibly fought for freedom, against an enemy that
explicitly championed racial purity. It would be a bit embarrassing if
the people who had successfully fought for their country returned to
the traditional poverty and disdain. The mood of the country was thankful:
the returning soldiers were given access to cheap loans, affordable housing,
and rising wages. There was a feeling that the whole population had sacrificed,
and everyone should benefit.
<p>A generation later, the elite saw no need to be grateful
for the actions of the young-- quite the opposite. The young were hairy and rebellious,
and if they bothered to go fight our wars at all, they lost. So, why help them out?
The elite shrugged and got down to increasing its own pile and no one else's.
<p>The present generation of the elite has little reason to resent the young;
but the wars we've fought recently, and those we're likely to fight in the next
decades, will be small-scale actions, nothing like the mobilization of the
whole population seen in WWII. So in the near future we'll probably see some
relaxation of robber barony, but not a return to a wide-scale sharing of the wealth.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#31"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="30">6 Jul 2002</a>: <b> An open letter to the Nigerian Scam writers </b></center>
<td> <a href="#29"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Dear esteemed sirs,
<p>It is my great pleasure to inform you that your missives
are pearls among spam. They are original, eccentric, well written, and always contain a story worthy of the time of any reliable person recommended to you by the chamber of commerce of your country.
<p>Nonetheless an unfortunate difficulty presents itself. My story is this. At present I, though in no way associated with Nigerian State or Democratic Republic of Congo, receive approximately three Nigerian Scam letters per business day, offering me stakes of more than US$132,000,000 total. I have received letters from all surviving family members of former President MOBUTU as well as those of Gen. Sani ABACHA excepting two uncles and a grandmother.
<p>I urgently recommend, for greater credibility, that scam letters be dispatched no more than once per business week.
<p>I will highly appreciate it if my request is given
utmost priority and consideration.
<p>Best Regards,
<br>ROSENFELDER Mark Mr.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#30"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="29">26 Jun 2002</a>: <b> Farther and farther from peace </b></center>
<td> <a href="#28"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Like the Middle East itself, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/bush.mideast.speech/index.html">Bush's speech on Palestine</a>
contains a couple of worrisome contradictions.
<ul><li>Bush wants "democracy" for the Palestinians; but he also demands
new leaders who will fight terror, oppose Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
and normalize relations with Israel. Now, I'd like to see that happen
myself; but Bush's assumption here is that if Arafat could be suppressed,
the Palestinians would freely choose a more "moderate" leader.
<p>Unfortunately, that's about as likely as them electing Elvis.
The popular pressure on Arafat is all the other way: his popularity
plummets when he talks to Israel, and if he was seen to give in to
Israeli demands, his reward would very likely be assassination.
(Remember what happened to Yitzhak Rabin?)
<p>
<li>Bush also calls for "freedom of movement" for the Palestinians,
as well as Israeli withdrawal to its pre-incursion line of control.
Again, that would be nice; but it would also make it easier for
terror bombings.
</ul>
Related news: <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067164">William Saletan</a> defends
the new Israeli policy of taking land after each terrorist attack
as a logical consequence of the "land for peace" idea. The idea is
that in return for peace, the Palestinians will get land; the new
corollary is that in return for war, the Palestinians will get <i>less</i> land.
<p>Who knows, it might work. Although I think Sharon doesn't know what
the hell he's doing, I think it's foolish and unrealistic to expect Isreal
to simply give up, leave the Palestinians alone, and let them come over and
bomb Israeli civilians.
<p>The Palestinian rejectionists have been given too much power by both sides.
The Palestinians (and allied states) arm and glorify them; and Sharon
and Bush have given them a veto over any move toward peace. It's become
clear that sending over envoys doesn't take care of the problem; and delaying
peace (which has been discredited among the Palestinians anyway due to the absence of economic progress)
doesn't lead to any understanding that terrorism is counter-productive.
But reoccupation might.
<p>The obvious objection is that it could make things worse. Well, it could
lead to war, and war is hell. But war sometimes teaches people lessons
that long-simmering standoffs don't. The Israelis could stand to learn
the cost of trying to rule the West Bank permanently-- and they might also
see whether they can do any better than Arafat at suppressing violence.
And the Palestinians might learn that terrorism was a bad strategy, and
try fighting a legitimate war of independence instead.
<p>Back at home-- a quote from Paul Krugman:
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
It's interesting to note that the planned Department of Homeland Security,
while of dubious effectiveness in its announced purpose, will be protected
against future Colleen Rowleys: the new department will be exempted from
both whistle-blower protection and the Freedom of Information Act.
</font></blockquote>
So much for limited government. You know, you consies, someday you won't
be able to steal an election, and Janet Reno will be in charge of this
unanswerable structure you've created.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#29"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="28">18 Jun 2002</a>: <b> A mess of Potterage </b></center>
<td> <a href="#27"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Spoilers ahead, so if you haven't read the Harry Potter books, off with you. Shoo!
<p>I spent much of the weekend catching up with Harry. The books
are really a lot of fun... Rowling is wonderfully inventive, and
often very funny. There's the standard Dark Overlord to defeat,
but so far this hasn't required a single quest. (A little like
<a href="bob6.html">Jaime Hernandez</a>, Harry Potter's world is
refreshingly everyday. Voldemort Shmoldemort, there's homework to do.)
<p>To most Americans, the boarding school portion of the story is just
as exotic as the magic... judging from some web reviews, though, it
gets Brits thinking about class and privilege and the Empire. There <i>is</i>
a feeling sometimes that time stopped in the wizarding world around
1920. I don't think much should be read into this; if nothing else,
it fits the logic of Rowling's world. Why do you need cars if you can
teleport using old tires?
<p>As well, it's silly and annoying to assume that a fantasy world is
a conscious or unconscious expression of the author's wishes or ideals.
Authors write to entertain, and wishes and ideals are rarely entertaining.
(Try reading <i>Looking Backward</i> sometime.)
<p>Even sillier is to object to Harry Potter because it "promotes
witchcraft". It's quite clear from the books (and even more so from
interviews) that Rowling writes as she does precisely because she
<i>doesn't</i> believe in the occult. The magic is used purely for
play. The author's serious beliefs come out in the books' rather
subtle sense of morality. Good and evil may be unmixed, but people
aren't; and where <a href="#5">Tolkien</a> was content to show the shading
within his good characters, Rowling applies this also to the dark side.
(Voldemort is murderous and power-hungry-- but he treats Harry with a
sort of courtesy, and as Tom Riddle he is a good deal nicer than, say,
the nasty little Draco Malfoy. Voldemort may have been bored, pretending
to be a sympathetic confidant to an 11-year-old girl-- but he was capable of
it; one can't imagine Sauron even trying.)
<p>From this point of view, one of the most intriguing characters is
Professor Snape. Harry has to learn anew each year that the ugly,
unpleasant Snape is not the ally of Voldemort. In the fourth book
the mystery deepens (and in structure the books are really more mysteries
than fantasies): we learn that Snape once <i>was</i>
a supporter of Voldemort-- but the headmaster, Dumbledore, trusts him,
and so far as we can see, with reason: Snape does not respond to
Voldemort's summons-- and Voldemort takes that sort of thing very seriously.
<p>There are few weaknesses in the books; one, perhaps, is that the
foreign schools introduced in book 4 have very little character;
indeed, despite the multiculturalism of Hogwarts itself (Harry's romantic
interest from book 3 on is Chinese-- though she's barely given a dozen
lines), Beauxbatons and Durmstrang give off
a whiff of traditional British xenophobia: decadent, untrustworthy
French; rigid, tyrannical Germans/Slavs.
<p>This hasn't kept the French and Germans from enjoying the series
as well... the French version even translates some of the names to
make them more accessible: Hogwarts becomes <i>Poudlard</i>; Prof. Snape
is (unimaginatively) <i>Rogue</i>; Muggles are <i>moldus</i>; the four
houses are <i>Gryffondor, Serdaigle, Poufsouffle, Serpentard</i>; the
Sorting Hat is (and this one is clever) <i>le Choixpeau</i>.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#28"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="27">5 Jun 2002</a>: <b> More on Civ3 </b></center>
<td> <a href="#26"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Whew... finally I've got a good game going, and I can almost convince myself
that I've learned some stuff.
<ul>
<li>Defense is much more important than in Civ2, because the AI knows how to
attack with a large force, which can no longer be killed off with just one blow.
In Civ2, two defenders behind city walls could hold off the AI indefinitely.
In Civ3 a front-line city needs at least four defenders, and expect to keep
replenishing them.
<li>Lots of defenders also keep a city from defecting. As a corollary, it
sometimes pays to raze a conquest, if you don't have enough forces to garrison it--
a lesson which goes against all my Civ2 training!
<li>In Civ2, the AI never seemed to know if your civ was well-defended. In Civ3
it does; it'll be all over you if you have a weak military, but it seems to
respect you if your cities brim with defenders.
<li>Even more than in Civ2, location matters. It sucks to not have strategic
resources, and sucks more not to have room to grow. And it takes forever to
get effective oceangoing; in one game I was stuck on an island with the Romans,
and couldn't get very far. (In my current game it's worked the other way:
the Germans and Russians were stuck on another continent, and are way behind--
and ripe for the taking.
I like to wage war like Colin Powell-- in this case, Cavalry vs. Pikemen.)
<li>The Civ3 AIs love to gang up on the weakest civ-- and in Civ3 the AI is
capable of wars of conquest. This is a lot of fun
when it's not you. One of my favorite exploits is to jump in as a noncombatant
with a settler to settle some vacated land.
<li>You also have to learn to exploit trade opportunities. Sell your science
advances... even the really good ones, since they'll pay a lot for those and
they'd get them soon enough anyway. If the AI offers to "trade world maps"
while sneaking in a request for a tech or resource, that's a sign that it'll
offer good money for the tech or resource alone. And if the AI has contacted me,
I try to trade <i>something</i>-- sell them my world map for a couple of gold, if
nothing else-- on the assumption that any trade increases their friendliness.
</ul>
<p>Complaints: it still bugs me how useless artillery is; and I <i>hate</i> losing
a Wonder with a couple turns to go. I also lost a UN vote once, which strikes me
as a worthless feature, no better than Random Dice Roll Win would be.
And the missing customizability bugs me-- I'm already a little sick of most
of the leaders and city names.
<p>On the other hand, I see that <i>Play the World</i> will include a dinosaur
scenario, which should rock... that was the best scenario in Civ2.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#27"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="26">3 Jun 2002</a>: <b> New fundamentalisms </b></center>
<td> <a href="#25"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
For some reason I've been running into new species of fundamentalists lately.
There was an incursion of Hindu fundamentalists into sci.lang, demanding that
the Mahabharata be taken as sacred truth, and objecting to any form of archeology and
linguistics that didn't have the Hindu religion and caste system in place (and
speaking classical Sanskrit) 9000 years ago.
<p>And the other day I got mail from someone who described himself as a shaman,
and suggested that historical linguistics be thrown out, replaced with conferences
of "shamans" from the cultures involved. These "shamans", however, could only hold
beliefs compatible with his own; if the peoples involved had some other religion,
too bad-- they had no magical insight into their own origins.
<p>In at least one case fundamentalist mythology is written into US law: when pre-Columbian
human remains are discovered, they're required to be handed over to Amerindians--
to the closest tribe, if no other identification is possible. The presumption is
that a tribe has existed in its area since the beginning of time. (This is impossible,
except, theoretically, for some folks who might have never left Africa's Rift Valley.)
<p>It seems that all fundamentalists want to opt out of one part or another of science;
quaintly, however, they sometimes show an exaggerated respect for the rest.
They love to cite any bits of physics or archeology that go their way.
If you really believed that science had gotten some major point completely wrong,
wouldn't it be more coherent to distrust it even in areas you have no problem with?
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#26"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="25">3 Jun 2002</a>: <b> More Punic facts! </b></center>
<td> <a href="#24"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I think I have a public duty to provide more factoids from the Punic Wars.
<p>You know about Hannibal and his elephants... the reality, however,
is that the elephants never did him much good, and arguably lost him his last battle.
Only one elephant survived the crossing of the Alps, though he got some reinforcements
later. They frightened the Romans the first battle or so, but the Romans soon learned
to chase them off with a shower of javelins. And the elephants very easily panicked
and ran off any which way-- often enough into their own lines. Hannibal's one failure,
the battle of Zama, was confused by just this-- he might well have won it if it weren't for the elephants.
<p>It's hard not to root for the Carthaginians, especially since Rome essentially
started all three wars, and was particularly duplicitous and vindictive during the
third one. True, Carthage did have this thing for infant sacrifice; but Rome itself,
at one particularly bad moment, resorted to some human sacrifice to please the gods.
<p>Cato, the Jesse Helms of his day, ended every one of his speeches with <i>Carthago
delenda est</i>-- "Carthage must be destroyed." (This was when Carthage was already
reduced to a harmless rump state. In addition to those damn Carthaginians, he blamed
Rome's problems on decadent Greeks.) This sentence illustrates one of my favorite
bits of derivational morphology: Latin verb + <i>-nd-</i> forms a participle meaning
"which needs to be verbed": <i>delenda</i>, that which must be destroyed (deleted);
<i>agenda</i>, things which must be acted upon; <i>legendum</i>, that which must be read.
<p>If you want more, I recommend the book I read on the subject: Adrian Goldsworthy's <i>The Punic Wars</i>.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#25"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="24">30 May 2002</a>: <b> Punish us all that way! </b></center>
<td> <a href="#23"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
A factoid from <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066355">a Michael Kinsley article on <i>Slate</i></a>:
the total compensation in 2000 for the CEO of Halliburton, a certain Dick Cheney,
was <i>$36 million</i>. (Net income for the same year was $501 million; revenues,
$11.9 billion.)
<p>First, a quiet whistle of amazement. Executive compensation isn't just out of
control; it's big enough to impact the company's stategy and bottom line.
$36 million is enough to buy a small company or build a factory... it's just absurd
as a payment to one man.
<p>And on top of that, I get mail from consies who talk about how taxes "punish"
the rich and destroy their incentives. I really have to wonder what it looks like
in their heads... I suppose, like October 1917, with the Bolsheviks storming
the Winter Palace and worthies forced to bury their jewels in the birch woods. In the
real world, meanwhile, the rich have never enjoyed such rewards nor been so
secure in their political control of the country.
<p>Also in Slate this week, Joe Klein is writing about France. Or, ostensibly
about France: he seems to be a reverse Baudrillard, using foreign travel as an excuse
to navel-gaze about his own country. So when he says that France's treatment of
Arab immigrants and the implosion of the Socialist Party resembles the U.S. of the
1970s and the eclipse of the Democrats, I have to wonder if he's making a valid
observation, or just projecting.
<p>I also wonder how much analysis you can really do through an interpreter.
Even if the interpreter is tireless, interviewees aren't. I'd expect it'd be an
invitation to trot out a miniature public statement, a suitable nuance-free cliché
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#24"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="23">24 May 2002</a>: <b> Carthago legenda est </b></center>
<td> <a href="#22"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I've been reading about the Punic Wars, and learning all sorts of interesting things--
such as how Hellenistic warfare worked, and why Rome won, though an outside observer in 270 BC
would have considered them an upstart underdog-- but one of the most fascinating things
is how much of our political vocabulary derives from this little Italic tribe.
<p>We still use the names of Roman officials-- consul, dictator, tribune, magistrate,
senator. A "triumph" was originally the top celebration that could be accorded a general-- though we
no longer paint the victor's face red. We use the next rank of celebration too: an "ovation".
It's not too old-fashioned to talk about plebeians and patricians, to wonder if an event
augurs well, or to invoke legions and cohorts.
<p>The one personality from the war who seems to be
immortal comes from the 'enemy': Hannibal. How many people are still named after the
corresponding hero on the Roman side, Scipio?
<p>(Oh, and why <i>did</i> Rome win? In a nutshell, because they took war, and themselves,
far more seriously. Hannibal convincingly defeated them on their own turf-- in a battle still studied in
military academies. By all the conventions of Hellenistic warfare, the Romans should have
sued for peace... exactly as Carthage did, in fact, when it was similarly threatened
in Africa. But the Romans refused to negotiate, and essentially waited him out.
(It helped that one of the most difficult things in Hellenistic warfare was to capture
a city. Hannibal had the run of the countryside, and found some Italian allies, but
couldn't take any cities by direct assault.) The Carthaginians had some
brilliant individual generals, but were unable to mobilize the entire state in the way
the Romans could.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#23"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="22">14 May 2002</a>: <b> Oh Lord, not Israel again </b></center>
<td> <a href="#21"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Two fascinating and strangely complementary articles in <i>The Atlantic</i>.
The first is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/06/brooks.htm">one by David Brooks</a>
on the pervasive glorification of suicide bombing among Palestinians,
and should leave you feeling depressed. It's hard to imagine how any progress
will be made while this attitude prevails; and only the Palestinians, I think, can change it.
Their victimization does not in any way excuse terrorism; and we can only hope
they realize soon that the terrorism <i>prevents</i> anything being done about the victimization.
<p>Then, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/hoffman.htm">Bruce Hoffman tells an amazing story</a>:
how the PLO, in the mid-'70s, managed to defuse a terrorist unit which had served its
purpose and now posed only dangers. One rather expects some scheme to massacre them--
but no; the high command assembled a hundred beautiful Palestinian girls, invited the
terrorists to a mixer, and promised a total of $8,000 and an apartment to any couples
that settled down and had a baby.
<p>The plan succeeded spectacularly: <i>without exception</i>, the terrorists married,
and settled into their new lives so thoroughly that they wouldn't even accept non-violent
assignments abroad, for fear of being arrested and losing their wives and children.
<p>Now that's nonlinear thinking.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#22"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="21">6 May 2002</a>: <b> Creationism vs. science</b></center>
<td> <a href="#20"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Here's a nice demonstration of the difference between science and "creation
science." Some creationists make this striking claim:
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
Since 1836, over one hundred different observers at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory have made direct visual
measurements which show that the diameter of the sun is shrinking at a rate of about .1 % each century or about 5 feet per hour!
... one must conclude that had the sun existed a million years ago, it would have been so large that it would have heated the earth so much that life could
not have survived.
</font></blockquote>
<p>That's from http://www.watchmanmag.com/0204/020415.htm; other representative
instances can be found at http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-082.htm,
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/2760.asp,
http://www.harvestbaptistministries.com/creation/youngearth.htm,
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/earthage.html.
(At that last one, the name of the institution has been permuted to
the Boyal Observatory.)
<p>Now, this scientific-sounding factoid happens to be wrong. The
sun is not shrinking 5 feet per hour. The original report was flawed;
it now looks like there's an oscillation involving slower rates of
growth and shrinkage. You can see <a href="http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Astronomy-Cosmology/PSCF9-86VanTill.html">the full story here</a>,
or <a href="http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v04/n11/sunshrink.html">a summary</a>.
(There's also the troubling matter of extrapolating far into the past;
extrapolation is about as reliable as entrail-gazing.)
<p>The real point, however, is in the different ways the scientific community
and the creationists handled it.
The scientists puzzled over the report (which was presented as a puzzle,
not as solid results),
investigated further, and discovered that it was wrong.
The creationists seized on it and repeated it with no curiosity and
no caution. 23 years later, they're still chanting it without modification.
<p>In a sense the creationists are practicing standard medieval
sort of scholarship: you seek out and list things that support your
position, and all the better if they're in a respected published source.
However, you can never find the truth that way. Truth requires
skepticism and investigation-- and you have to be <i>especially</i>
skeptical of the data that seem to go your way.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#21"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="20">24 Apr 2002</a>: <b> Why I hate editorial cartoons </b></center>
<td> <a href="#19"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Here's <a href="http://images.ucomics.com/comics/po/2002/po020415.gif">a recent Pat Oliphant cartoon</a>
on the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church; here's <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/04/24/pope.talks/index.html">a CNN story</a>
on the Pope's discussion with the cardinals. Notice any discrepancy?
<p>Let's make it a little clearer. Oliphant is accusing the
Pope of hostile indifference to cute, abused little tykes. In fact
the Pope has strongly condemned the abuse ("by every standard wrong
and rightly considered a crime by society; it is also an appalling
sin in the eyes of God") and made it clear to the cardinals that abusers
could not be hidden in the priesthood. Notice any discrepancy?
<p>This is why I don't like editorial cartoons... especially when they're well done.
Oliphant's cartoon is masterful-- just look at those massed blacks,
the way the ominous power of the Papacy, as well as the creepy half-hidden
priest, looms over the helpless, crying kid. The evil Pope is drawn with
subtlety-- no fangs or exaggerated jowls; just a massive presence
and a darkened profile suffice to suggest his power and menace.
Every tool of the art is used to support a simple and powerful message
which is also a lying crock of shit.
<p>Editorial cartooning has long moved past those silly illustrated
allegories (stereotypes labelled LABOR or BRITAIN or CIVIL RIGHTS).
The best practitioners are experts at reducing issues to a single,
obvious moral point. And that's precisely the problem. No major
political issue needs to be reduced; they need to be expanded, put in
context, the complications explained. An op-ed piece is rarely long
enough for this; indeed, if you haven't read a book on an issue, your
opinion on it is probably not worth listening to.
<p>The priestly abuse scandal is no exception. Oliphant's position
here is not courageous: everyone is against child abuse. But then what?
It's not so easy as saying that the Pope should listen to the cute little
boy (and turn the damn light on). The sort of emotion Oliphant is
stirring up will demand immediate action and witch hunts. That's not
such a hot idea... remember the "recovered memory" epidemic from
a decade back or so? Much of that was mass hysteria, which ruined
reputations with false allegations. Children are very suggestible,
and investigators who hound them for stories of sexual assault
are themselves abusers of a rather nasty kind.
<p>The Catholic Church also has this idea that people can repent and
be forgiven. As it happens, in the case of sex offenders, most psychologists
disagree-- they consider it incurable. That's tricky, and not least because
psychology has a way of changing its mind. Unfortunately for the
Oliphants of the world, evaluating treatments and diagnoses takes
a long time and a cool head.
<p>The only editorial cartoons I find redeemable are multi-panel ones
that do some research and present some actual facts; examples are
<a href="http://www.thismodernworld.com/">Tom Tomorrow</a>,
<i>Doonesbury</i>, and my pal Greg Peters's <a href="http://www.suspect-device.com"><i>Suspect Device</i></a>.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#20"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="19">22 Apr 2002</a>: <b> The Finance Minister's Guide </b></center>
<td> <a href="#18"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Forget trifles like the crisis in Israel; the really big unanswered question is,
how does a country <b>develop into a modern nation</b>?
<p>There seem to be about three major models:
<ul>
<li><b>Resource exploitation</b>-- e.g. parlay a trove of oil (Arabia)
or bird poop (Nauru) into riches. This can be dazzlingly successful,
but the problem is that it doesn't last, and the bust comes before
any serious attempts are made to diversify. No one's much interested
in the remains of a busted boom (e.g. Amazonia's rubber, Uruguay's beef).
<A href="#7">Saudi Arabia's day may already be past</a>.
<p>
<li><b>Outside investment</b>. This is the IMF's model,
and rests on the same basic principle as the
Pacific cargo cults: if you build something that looks like a modern
economy, you'll get one, via sympathetic magic.
The islanders build airstrips and fake airplanes;
the finance ministers invite multinationals to build factories
(or <a href="#17">take over public utilities</a>).
The U.S. version of this is to build <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~gregp1134/0227.html">casinos</a>.
<p>A few people get rich off this, but the country as a whole doesn't
develop. The problem is that the very fact that a company is
advanced enough to locate a plant anywhere means that it doesn't
use any local resource except cheap labor. It doesn't use local
suppliers, and thus doesn't stimulate local industry. Its expert
knowledge is also imported, and thus doesn't foster local expertise.<p>
<li><b>Import substitution</b>. This is essentially how the U.S. and
Japan developed. You import some goods. You take them apart and find
out how to make them; then you start manufacturing them yourself;
finally you export them.
<p>The Japanese auto industry is the canonical example. The Japanese
didn't start by inviting Henry Ford to set up a factory in Tokyo; that would
have taught them nothing. The story started earlier-- with bicycle
repair shops. There wasn't yet the expertise even to manufacture
bicycles; but a network of people developed who knew bicycle parts
and how bicycles worked. Small shops started making the parts themselves
instead of importing them. By the time bicycles could be made
domestically, there was an entire infrastructure of inventors, suppliers,
small manufacturers, and machine shops, well placed to apply the
same process to manufacturing cars.
<p>This is what's missing from the previous model. An auto factory that
arises from a city's own industry is just the tip of an iceberg.
To develop a country, you need that whole industrial infrastructure;
you can't just graft a few factories on top of a pre-industrial economy.
</ul>
Now, there's more to it than that; but it's odd that almost no one
promotes the last model-- despite it being the only one, historically,
that works.
The major reason for this, I think, is that neither outside investors
nor finance ministers find bicycle repair shops sexy. They like
factories. There's money to be made bringing in that Sony plant,
even if it does nothing for the country as a whole.
<p>(For more on all this, see Jane Jacobs, <i>Cities and the Wealth of
Nations</i>. I think there's also some synergy with Hernando de
Soto's <i>The Other Path</i>. And for lots of interesting stuff
about foreign trade, see almost anything by Paul Krugman.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#19"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="18">19 Apr 2002</a>: <b> In the news </b></center>
<td> <a href="#17"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
There's a nice <a href="http://slate.msn.com//?id=2064500">article in <i>Slate</i> by Robert Wright</a>
explaining why Arafat wasn't crazy to reject Barak's "generous" peace deal.
<p>And while we're surfing the news, I wonder why Italian authorities are
insisting that the crashing of a plane into a Milan skyscraper
was "an accident". There were reports of trouble with
the landing gear; I'm no pilot, but in that case, wouldn't a responsible pilot with
30 years experience fly, like, away from the city?
How likely is it that he crashed into the country's tallest building,
barely six months after 9/11, by chance?
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#18"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="17">17 Apr 2002</a>: <b> The robber barons today </b></center>
<td> <a href="#16"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
<a href="rants.html#56">Robber baron capitalism</a> isn't dead; it's
just moved south.
<p>In 1994, the inhabitants of the Villa San Miguel shantytown in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, started digging a well for fresh water-- a pressing
need in most of the Third World. They had to go down 350 feet, but
in three years of work (by all the residents, plus foreign volunteers)
it was completed, and the neighborhood had relatively cheap water.
<p>Then, in 1999, following an IMF-dictated privatization plan, the Bolivian government sold
the city's water system to a European company, International Water.
Private water systems such as Villa San Miguel's were simply expropriated
and given to International Water; the company could install its own
meters-- at the residents' expense-- and charge residents for the
use of the well they'd built.
As if that wasn't enough, the contract
guaranted the company a 15% annual return.
<p>In a sense, the story ends happily: the people of Cochabamba organized
and resisted, and the company was chased out of town. But the
local water utility doesn't have money to extend the system, and
the US may
declare the breaking of the contract an "expropriation", which would
choke off outside investment.
(Naturally, it didn't complain about the original expropriation from the residents of
Villa San Miguel in favor of International Water.)
<p>(For more on this story, see the <i>New Yorker</i> for April 8.
For why the world is back in the hands of them what has the gold,
see my <a href="predic.htm">essay on the last century</a>.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#17"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="16">15 Apr 2002</a>: <b> And there's hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut </b></center>
<td> <a href="#15"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Checking on referrals today, I found that my numbers page was linked by
<a href="http://www.planetproctor.com/2002/pp02-07.html">Phil Proctor</a>.
This is a thrill. I've been a Firesign Theatre fan since before I could understand the jokes.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#16"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="15">1 Apr 2002</a>: <b> The Evil Empire </b></center>
<td> <a href="#14"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Found this in an article on CNN today:
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
Like most software companies, Microsoft
has worked hard to make its Windows
system as compact as possible, Enderle
said. By intertwining code to minimize
overlap, he said, Microsoft makes a
product that saves valuable disk space but
becomes difficult to segregate. </font></blockquote>
To which my considered response is <i>BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!</i>
<p>The idea that any software company tries to minimize disk space is pretty
humorous; and that goes double for Microsoft. Let's see, Visual Studio takes up
880M on my computer. That's nearly a gigabyte for a glorified C++ compiler.
Office takes up another 142M. The OS itself takes up 950M. By contrast,
Netscape takes up a mere 30M. (Lotus Notes seems pretty bloated at 242M.)
<p>IE itself takes up only 1.5M, which I suppose means that they've successfully
"intertwined code" to shove most of its functionality into the OS. Not that I
believe for a moment Microsoft's slimy protests at how they can't make a
version of Windows without IE. Of course they could, in an afternoon.
They know, after all, which Windows DLLs are used only by IE and which aren't.
<p>Still, despite all the scumbagitude shown during the antitrust trial,
I can't entirely demonize Microsoft. On the whole I like Word and Visual C++,
and the Windows 2000 Pro machine I use at work is ten times more
reliable than the iMac I use at home.
<hr width="20%">
Mini-<b>Civ3</b> update: The AIs are definitely smarter. Something rather
interesting in my current game: the AIs ganged up on Zululand and all attacked
it together. I never saw anything like that in Civ2. However, they're still
not very good at capitalizing on a victory: I was able to step in and occupy
most of the Zulus' territory.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#15"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="14">23 Mar 2002</a>: <b> Civ3 - More thoughts </b></center>
<td> <a href="#13"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Main impression so far: Civ3 is much harder than Civ2. I'm playing Warlord, and though I'm now pretty safely ahead, it's almost impossible to get any Wonders, or to beat even a third-rate power. (I just spend about two hours building up my forces, under Democracy; I then tried a little war, and the citizens gave me about two turns before going up in flames. Gah.)
<p>Sometimes it feels like Sid & Co. decided to do away with everything that made wars easy to win in Civ2. Thus, artillery, ships, and planes have been nerfed (as a friend engagingly put it); E-Z World Conquest Mode, a.k.a. fundamentalism, has been removed, and Communism greatly weakened (e.g. it doesn't eliminate corruption); espionage arrives in the game only very late and very expensive; wonders can't be rush-built; you have to worry about the loyalty of conquered cities.
<p>This is frustrating; but there are compensations. Just last night the English sneak-attacked me, and my strongest units were all on the other side of the empire. I lost one small city, but took the opportunity to knock off three of theirs-- and their conquest rebelled and returned to the fold. Best of all, the war was wrapped up before the citizens got too discontented. (Continual war just isn't a Good Thing in Civ3.)
<p>I also found a neat strategy: the English destroyed a number of Aztec cities-- whereupon I sent in some settlers and took over the abandoned territory (and took over one more with propaganda). Result: they did the dirty work, and I reaped most of the benefits.
<p>But at the moment, frankly, I'm discouraged. Civ2 was the perfect balance of building and fighting. I don't just want to fight; if I did I'd play shoot-em-ups. But just building (à la Sim City) is tedious. I don't want to run a civ the way I want the real world to be run.
<p>(This just in: I finished out this game, and won on points. I did get about
five turns of war around 2042; this is still terribly painful under Democracy,
but it was a bit easier this time since I'd built some police stations. (I missed
Universal Suffrage by a few turns... I never got Leaders when I needed 'em!)
Also, I was ahead in science just by virtue of size, so I had Tanks and no one
else did. Bombers and battleships are moderately effective in bombardment--
though the damn things still can't take out a Rifleman on their own. Noticed
another anti-barrelling feature, too: you don't get a movement bonus from the
enemy's railroads.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#14"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="13">18 Mar 2002</a>: <b> Civ3 - First thoughts </b></center>
<td> <a href="#12"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I finally got my hands on the Mac version of Civilization III, and spent most
of the weekend playing it. On the whole it's a well thought-out and very handsome
game. Though the look is updated and very different, a lot of the changes are
subtle improvements to gameplay, obviously the work of people who played the
old game a lot.
<p>They've gotten rid of most of the tedious bits of Civ2, especially
trade caravans, city micro-management, pop-up windows, and unit upgrades. (That
was the main reason I almost never went for Alpha Centauri: managing 70-odd cities
in a peaceful world was just painful.)
<P>The AI seems quite a bit smarter, though I've only played at an absurdly low
level... maybe it just didn't have the resources to waste its minions on suicide
attacks, as it loved to do in Civ2.
<p>I like the implementation of culture and nationality. Though I was hoping to
win over some nearby towns with my awe-inspiring culture, and it hasn't happened
yet. (And when the damn Germans rebelled, that was a bitter blow...)
<p>I'm probably (like Civ2 addicts are supposed to do) misplaying a lot. The
SSC strategy didn't seem to pay off as well-- I got all the science wonders, and
yet the game is almost over and we're still only halfway through the industrial era.
<p>My biggest complaints so far:
<ul><li>The beautiful units take too damn long to move. I don't mind seeing the
battles, but I don't really need to see (more than a
few times) the cavalry going galumph, galumph, galumph down the map.
(There's probably a game option for this, but the one I tried didn't seem to work.)
<li>Artillery units and ships are big disappointments. In Civ2, an artillery shot
could wipe out an entire unit; in Civ3, you're lucky if you shave off a hit point.
Cavalry are too wimpy as well, since they can only attack once. I have a whole
campaign that went wrong when the evil Russians sent a rain of units at me;
there just wasn't enough power on hand to resist them.
<li>It bugs me that if you reject the game's choice of city name, it keeps
suggesting the same name with each city till you accept it. Civ2 would randomize.
<li>The units look too much alike. I suppose the Civ2 unit shields took up
too much room; but they allowed different units to have different color schemes,
which allowed for immediate recognizability.
</ul>
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#13"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="12">14 Mar 2002</a>: <b> Darth Vader as a corporation </b></center>
<td> <a href="#11"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Last year <a href="rants.html#30">I ranted a bit</a> about people who expect
to get all their music for free. I found that silly, but not evil.
You want evil, you have to look at the music industry. Here's <a href="http://www.dnalounge.com/">Jamie
Zawinksi</a> explaining the rules for broadcasting:
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
In case you're unclear on how RIAA, ASCAP, BMI, etc. work, it's like this: everyone who comes anywhere near any kind of music is
expected to pay them. They'll sue you into oblivion if you don't. Then, regardless of what music you were playing, they take your money, keep
most of it for themselves, and then divide the rest statistically based on the Billboard charts. That means that no matter what kind of obscure,
underground music you played, 3/4ths of the extortion money you paid goes to whichever company owns N'Sync; and the rest goes to Michael
Jackson (since he owns The Beatles' catalog); and all other artists (including the ones whose music you actually played) get nothing.
</font></blockquote>
As if that weren't enough, Courtney Love (no, I never thought I'd be quoting her)
notes that the RIAA snuck a provision into the latest copyright law
allowing them to treat music as "work for hire". If you're not familiar
with the term, this is legalese for WE 0\/\/NZ J00.
<p>Books, by contrast, are copyright by the author. The publisher is basically
a service provider, and the author can sell only restricted rights, and for a
restricted period. Publishers' main suckiness is in not publishing things of obvious
quality and worth, such as my stuff. But they're not evil.
<p>The music industry, though? Evil.
<p>This issue does point up the bad and good sides of libertarianism, though.
Bad: It's hard to see how someone can look at the music industry and not see
that corporations can't be trusted and property rights can be abused. Good: whatever
schemes they come up with to control the distribution of music will be
circumvented by anarchist hackers somewhere.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#12"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="11">12 Mar 2002</a>: <b> Prepare to be mocked </b></center>
<td> <a href="#10"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
The SpinnWebe folks like to make fun of things-- especially, things found on the web.
Sometimes the targets notice, and don't like it.
I have to wonder if people really get this pesky newfangled "web" thing.
<p>Livejournals, for instance. Do you people really understand that this is
going on your permanent record? In ten years, you know-- heck, in two months--
you yourself may regret that you explored your teenage angst in public
and told Kristin and Jamie exactly what you thought of them and defended
creationist nutcases and went over your latest arrest.
<p>And earlier than that-- say, at 2:15 this afternoon-- we might come by
and amuse ourselves reading your journal, your poems, your cartoons, etc.
We can do this because you've published them to a public place.
When you invited the world in, buster, you didn't just set yourself up
for adulation and those little bevelled "award" links, you also get
your fair share of criticism, argument, and the occasional snorted guffaw.
<p>For some reason, the loudest squawks seem to come from people whose own web
offerings boast a high vitriol content: the guy who wrote satirical poems
about his IRC opponents, the chick who drew angry cartoons about her bosses
and customers, the Livejournal users who fantasized on-line about beating up
his ex-friends.
<p>This isn't to say that anything goes-- there's an etiquette to mockery,
and without wit it's simply simian-- but you can't reasonably expect to
post things out in the open and get only warm fuzzies in return.
If you don't want any bad reactions, keep the damn stuff private.
<p>(What's that? You want to make fun of zompist.com? Have a party.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#11"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="10">12 Mar 2002</a>: <b> Forgetting the beer </b></center>
<td> <a href="#9"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Thomas Friedman has had an excellent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/columns/index.html">series of articles in the <i>New York Times</i></a>
on Arab/Israeli conflict. He has the ability, rare these days, to serve as
a two-way information conduit: explaining Arab rage to Americans, and at the
same time asking the Arabs hard questions (e.g. why the Arab press spotlights
every Israeli attack on Palestinians, but downplays hundreds of Muslims killed
by Hindu mobs in India; or why nominal U.S. allies encourage U.S.-bashing in
the schools, mosques, and media).
<p>As if to make up for this, William Safire channels Ariel Sharon, explaining
that Ehud Barak's <a href="rants.html#61">Bantustan plan</a> was a "surrender",
that Arafat "launched
the terror war", that the Arabs can be "defeated" by "pre-emptive action and
fierce counterattack", that Benjamin Netanyahu knows how to "pulverize terrorism",
that the U.S. should threaten to withdraw "much-needed
American protection" from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia if they squawk at a new war on Iraq.
It's quite a shower of testosterone.
<p>Actually, that last bit is pretty amazing; is Safire really unaware that
getting U.S. troops out of the Muslim homeland is perhaps Osama bin Laden's
number one concern? Does he really want to hand the 9/11 terrorists that victory?
<p>Safire should really have paid more attention to his old boss: Nixon
jacked up the testosterone in Vietnam and failed, and tried the peace route in
China and succeeded. (Of course it's fashionable to worry about China again;
but this doesn't diminish Nixon's achievement: our wary alliance with China
helped weaken the Soviets, and paved the way for the capitalist revanche
of Deng Xiaoping.)
<p>I found more sense in a posting from one "Uncle Davey" on sci.lang:
speaking of why the Germans don't hate Americans, he wrote:
"As anybody knows, the way to get anybody's respect and
love is to whop their arse and then give them your hand and go and have a
beer with them."
<p>There's a place for ass-whupping; but the key point here is the free beer.
Safire and Sharon forget that part, and that's why no matter how much
Israel fiercely pre-empts and attacks and pulverizes, it always ends up in
more danger, with no security in sight. Sharon has nothing to offer the Arabs, no free beer.
Without it, the whuppee just limps home and plots revenge.
<p>Safire tries to defuse calls for evenhandedness by noting that
"only the Palestinian side is targeting civilians". That's not quite true--
Israeli retribution often does target civilians, and there are Israeli
terrorists too-- but it's mostly right (and it's the Palestinian side's
greatest mistake). But Safire forgets that only the Israeli side
is occupying the enemy's land. Because of this, Israel cannot hide behind
the "war on terror". Sharon is demonstrating, more clearly every day, that
the Israelis cannot, practically or morally, rule the Palestinians.
And no amount of testosterone will allow them to do so.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#10"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="9">3 Mar 2002</a>: <b> More on pranownsing Inglish </b></center>
<td> <a href="#8"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
A correspondent notes that he has his own transcription system for English. Here's his example; can you say what dialect he speaks? More interestingly, can you guess what his native language is? (I'm not sure you can-- but you can try!)
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
Ai met à travlà from àn antîk land hû sed: tû vâst and trànklàs legz àv
stoun stand in dhà dezàt. Nià dhem, on dhà sand, hâf sànk, à shatàd vizij
laiz, hûz fraun, and rinkàld lip, and sniàr àv kould kàmând, tel dhat its
skàlptà wel dhouz pashànz red, wich yet rimein, stampt on dhîz laiflàs
thingz-- dhà hand dhat mokt dhem, and dhà hât dhat fed. And on dhà pedàstàl
dhîz wëdz â kâvd: "Mai neim iz ozimandiàs, king àv kingz! Luk on mai wëks,
yî maiti, and dispeà! Nàthing bisaid rimeinz. Raund dhà dikei àv dhat
kàlosàl rek, baundlàs and beà, dhà loun and levàl sandz strech fâr àwei. </font></blockquote>
<font color="#FF0000"><B>Answer</b> coming. Just a minute more. Hold on. OK, <a href="#ozy">here</a>.</font>
</font>
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#9"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="8">27 Feb 2002</a>: <b> Linguistry for everyone! </b></center>
<td> <a href="#7"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
The chat group was chewing over the word "irregardless" the other day, and
turned to me for Expert Linguistic Ammunition. I doubt that I made anyone
happy, and I think linguists haven't got their position across very well.
<p>People know about descriptivism; but they seem to interpret this as meaning
that there are no rules; or, realizing that language change is inevitable,
they figure you shouldn't even try to write properly.
<p>In fact languages <i>do</i> have rules, and plenty of them-- more even than your high school English
teacher dreamed of. (Take a look at James McCawley's <i>The Syntactic Phenomena
of English</i>: 800 pages about English syntax, and it's an <b>introduction</b>
to the subject).
<p>The thing is, though, this applies to <i>any</i> language variety, not just
the standard. Black American English has just as many rules; they just happen
to differ from standard American English in some obvious and many un-obvious ways.
People like to say that a nonstandard construction is just "wrong", or nonstandard
vocabulary "isn't a word"; this is just foolish from a linguistic point of view,
but we <i>will</i> allow you to say that a construction isn't standard English.
<p>And it does matter whether you use the rules of standard English-- not for
linguistic but for social reasons. Sociologists will talk about (say)
clothing conventions much as linguists talk about language varieties; but they'll
still advise you not to show up for the interview in jeans, or a Batman costume,
or nothing at all. Similarly, standard English is a variety that you should
be capable of using when necessary.
<p>As for language change-- sure, it's inevitable, but so is death, and most of
us don't run to embrace <i>that</i>. If you misuse a word, the error may eventually
become correct usage-- but linguists of the future may make fun of you, just as we
point to the medieval nitwits who came up with "pea" as the singular of "peas".
("Peas" was a collective, like "rice"; it does derive from a plural, ultimately
Latin <i>pisa</i>; but the singular of that was <i>pisum</i>.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#8"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="7">21 Feb 2002</a>: <b> Bad news for Islam </b></center>
<td> <a href="#6"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
The U.S. government will soon be starting up a 24-hour Arabic radio station,
the Middle East Radio Network, based in Dubai,
offering a mix of Western and Arabic music as well as news which won't
equate America with Satan.
<p>The irony is, this is precisely the sort of cultural projection
that so annoys the Islamic fundies. So, a direct consequence of their attack
on America is that they'll get more of what they were trying to get rid of.
<p>Other interesting news: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/opinion/20FRIE.html">Thomas
Friedman in the <i>New York Times</i></a> (catch the link while it's free)
notes that Saudi Arabia is now a poor country. Since 1980, the population
has boomed from 7 million to 19 million, and the per capita income has fallen
from $19,000 to $7,300-- with worse to come, since 40% of the population is
under 14.
<p>In the long run this could be good news: resource-based riches never last,
but while they do, real modernization is put off. But in the short term it's
bad news for everyone, since it can only increase the sense of helpless rage
that's widespread in the Middle East. It's not good when young Arabs grow up
with little to do but go down to the mosque to hear harangues about America.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#7"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="6">4 Feb 2002</a>: <b> Zompist's Law </b></center>
<td> <a href="#5"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
<i>The physics in an sf story or film may be fairly accurate; the biology will be B.S.</i>
<p>This seems to be a corollary of a general illiteracy in biology. A friend was telling me, for instance, about some creationists who suggest that Noah took not dogs, wolves, and foxes on the ark with him, but only one animal which after the flood generated all the species of canines. This is actually stupider than simply saying <i>"God just did it; don't ask questions."</i> It seems to come from a worry that, after all, canines <i>do</i> seem to be genetically related; but then it sweeps away the genetic relationship to felines, primates, birds, chordates, etc.
<p>Oh, that's just those wacky fundies, you think. But Larry Niven, who'd commit hara-kiri if he got his orbital dynamics wrong, commits exactly the same whopper, in <i>Protector</i>: he supposes that humans were transplanted to this planet a few million years ago. I think he may do some hand-waving to take care of the chimpanzees, but that leaves our mammalian heritage.
(Niven fans: molest me not with the 3-billion-year-old genetic programming folderol; it's hopeless.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#6"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="5">28 Jan 2002</a>: <b> Lord of the Films </b></center>
<td> <a href="#4"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
I finally saw <i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i>, and was fairly blown away. Just about
everything in it is right.
<ul><li>The casting and the acting are impeccable. Hugo Weaving for Elrond was an unusual
choice, but it works. Frodo is marvelous. I preferred Arwen to Galadriel, but then I
prefer brunettes. :)
<li>The adaptation is expert: much had to be cut, but nothing excessively, and the changes
in focus (a greater role for Arwen; Merry and Pippin a little sillier; Frodo rather than
Gandalf figuring out the Doors of Moria) make for greater accessibility.
<li>The visual design is simply spectacular-- way better than <i>The Phantom Menace</i>
(ho hum, another Lucasplanet) or <i>Harry Potter</i> (well done but standard Dickensiana).
I would quail at the prospect of simulating the art of Tolkien's elves-- which must be
not only exquisite but magical-- but Rivendell was lovely. And the landscapes... bookings
for New Zealand must be skyrocketing.
</ul>
I was a bit bothered by seeing orange carrots and fields of maize, neither of which could
have existed in the legendary past; but this is arguably in the spirit of Tolkien, who
cheerfully fed his hobbits potatoes, tobacco, and coffee. Much the same could be said of
the film's use of English for written text-- a bit jarring, but Tolkien in fact is one of
the few authors to really face up to the linguistic problem of characters in a foreign world.
The usual expedient is that they speak English, yet have un-English names and signage.
Tolkien decided that if they were to be represented as speaking English, the names and
other expressions had to change too, <i>including expressions in related languages</i>.
E.g. since the language of Rohan resembled the ancestor of the Common Speech, Tolkien
represented it with Old English.
<p>I've also been re-reading the books, which is a lot of fun. One surprise is how fast it goes-- each volume takes
only a day or two. I could've sworn this was a big book. :)
<p>As you can imagine, as a world-builder myself, I admire Tolkien immensely, perhaps most of
all for the beauty of his languages, and for the fullness of his creations. When his
characters refer (as they frequently do) to legends or ancestors or writing systems,
you feel that these really exist-- and no doubt they do, somewhere in his notebooks.
<p>Tolkien crankily warns against allegory, but it's clear enough what he's against, besides
Eeevil: the book is a long complaint about modernism. One sure sign of an evildoer in
Tolkien's books is <i>industrialization</i>. This is obviously tied in his mind to greed and
waste, but even more directly to ugliness and the wanton destruction of the natural world.
<p>(He evidently loves the pastoral world, represented by the Shire, but never quite addresses
the fact that this sort of landscape is also a transformation of the wild world, requiring the
wholesale destruction of forests and forest creatures. Perhaps it's all right if the
chopping was done half a milennium ago, or if the end result is still beautiful.)
<p>In other areas as well Tolkien prefers medieval ways;
he's a conservative in the best
and a few of the more questionable senses. (Though I hope he would disapprove of American
consies, who scornfully reject conservation and are in general allies of Saruman.)
<p>That's medieval, not classical; Tolkien seems to love the forms and personal loyalties
of feudalism, rather than (say) the rights-based citizenship of ancient Rome; and his
mind seems to pass quickly over ages of glory, and lovingly dwell on long periods of decline that
look back to them. (His pal C.S. Lewis shows more interest in the classical era.)
And though (unlike Lewis) he hides his Christian theology, so that Middle Earth seems
curiously free of religion and even explicit references to God, the very absence of
pagan elements and competing belief systems is reminiscent of the medieval universality
of Catholicism.
<p>(Something else that seems quaint these days, though it's not medieval but Victorian:
LOTR is a book almost entirely without sex, even in the larger sense. When women appear,
they're almost always lustless nature goddesses; so far as we can see every one of the
Fellowship is a virgin. The movie compensates for this, perhaps inadvertently, with some
almost homoerotic expressions of male friendship.)
<p>Every successful genre engenders a reaction, so it's probably unnecessary to point out
that the real medieval era was nasty for almost everyone, and by modern standards unhealthy
and dangerous for the privileged few who could enjoy the honors and beauties that Tolkien
admires. What worries me a bit more is the black-and-white worldview... or perhaps I should
say grey-and-black, since Tolkien is keenly aware of the mixed morality of his good
characters, though the evil ones are unalloyed with virtue. This is part of our Christian
inheritance-- Christianity divides the world into saved and unsaved, but warns the saved
to remember their own sinfulness-- but its absolutism, in a complex world, itself leads
to evil. It's unwise and unuseful to see anyone, even an enemy, as nothing but evil,
an unredeemable orc-like being that the good can destroy without mercy.
<p>As a corollary, I don't like Tolkien's biological determinism. I don't object
to the elves, creatures nobler than men: as Lewis said, there's nothing wrong with the
admiring glance upward. But I don't hold with the idea that some families of men are inherently
stronger, taller, and nobler (in his mythology, the Númenoreans), and there's something
ugly about the fact that darkness or 'sallowness' of skin, and even slanted eyes, to say nothing of
living too far south or east, are invariably associated in Tolkien's world with evil.
<p>But fortunately these things are entirely marginal, and indeed contradicted by the
storyline, in which the world is saved by a nobody who appears nowhere on the genealogical
charts of Gondor or of Eressëa.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#5"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="4">17 Jan 2002</a>: <b> Fundies be fundies </b></center>
<td> <a href="#3"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
There's one point where I venture to disagree with Bernard Lewis. He doesn't like calling
militant Islam "fundamentalist":
<blockquote><font color="#0040FF">
The protest of the so-called Muslim fundamentalists is not against liberal theology
or scriptural criticism [but] against the entire process of change that has transformed
a large part of the Muslim world during the last century or more, creating new structures and
proclaiming new values. The reformers... have seen these changes as a process of
modernization.... For the fundamentalists, these changes are evil and destructive: Their
values undermine Muslim morality, and their structures subvert Muslim law. Those who promote
and enforce such changes are infidels or the tools of infidels.
</font></blockquote>
Lewis isn't wrong about the Muslims; he's wrong about the Americans. Christian fundamentalists
are not just worried about "liberal theology"; they have, in fact, exactly the same objection
as their Muslim counterparts to the modern world, which seems to them profoundly immoral,
disruptive of the natural order of things, and contrary to the will of God.
They agree on wanting government to be explicitly based on religious law, and want education to
include and conform to religious teaching.
<p>The Christians do not generally call for death for their enemies, but this is more a
matter of preferred tactics than of principle. Even armed resistance to the state is
by no means a fringe doctrine among the religious right; and their long war against Clinton
was as defiant of democratic legitimacy as any ayatullah from Qom.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#4"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="3">14 Jan 2002</a>: <b> Media bias </b></center>
<td> <a href="#2"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Returning from a trip to England some years ago, I brought a few newspapers home, and
was struck by the judgments expressed openly in the news articles. An article on the
English equivalent of NAMBLA, for instance, talked about "these perverts". News on
politics similarly made the reporters' opinions clear. American newspapers, by
contrast, are excruciatingly neutral, even (as in the NAMBLA case) where the
judgment would be shared by 90% of the population.
<p>I commented on this to a friend of mine, and was surprised to find that he found
the American pose of objectivity to be completely false. This was my first introduction
to the consie complaint about "liberal media".
<p>We argued two days and didn't convince each other. Part of the problem, I now think,
is that there are really a multitude of issues, and it's important
to disentangle them.
<ul>
<li>Are consies detecting an actual liberal bias, or simply the lack of a conservative
bias? If you have the "whoever's not with us is against us" mentality, then not being
a conservative partisan is itself reprehensible.
<li>One conservative I argued this point with kept dragging non-news into the argument--
editorials, op-ed pieces, articles in opinion magazines. Of course those things show
an opinion; that's what they're for. But they're
irrelevant to whether news articles are biased.
<li>Consies also have (or pretend to have) trouble distinguishing between leftists and liberals, and
between left-wing and mainstream papers. <i>The Nation</i> is clearly leftist;
<i>The New Yorker</i> is liberal; nothing you find there has any bearing on whether
the <i>New York Times</i> is biased.
<li>If the media are so biased in favor of liberals, why did they give Clinton such
a hard time? Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have also extensively documented that
the mainstream news media, far from being outlets for anti-war protest, pretty much
reflected government information and opinion during the Vietnam war. Rightists, due
to their own bias, are unlikely to be able to detect anti-left bias in the news.
<li>Journalists, as a group, tend to be liberals. Well, so what? Newspaper owners,
as a group, tend to be conservatives.
</ul>
On the other hand, who knows? The starting point for lit crit these days-- one
due to (misguided) leftists, in fact-- is that total objectivity isn't possible.
You can omit the surface judgments, but your underlying assumptions will still
come through; and a friendly critic will be less likely to notice them than a hostile one.
(I don't completely agree with this, but it at least shows that objectivity isn't
self-evident.)
<p>And as Michael Kinsley points out-- supposing the main news sources are biased;
what then? Should there be an affirmative action program for consies in the media?
<p>Would consies stop whining if the <i>New York Times</i> made even more effort
not to favor liberals <i>or</i> conservatives? Somehow I doubt it; I think what
they really want is more right-wing media. And it's their right to create them
if they want them. And their obligation. No one but conservatives will or should provide news slanted to the
taste of conservatives.
<p>But besides making partisans happy, do we <i>need</i> biased news articles? The English
papers aren't much of an advertisement for the practice. Adding in those judgmental
adjectives is an exercise in self-congratulation, and pretty much ensures that
no one outside the intended party will take you seriously. I'd rather papers
be more like the <i>NYT</i> than more like <i>Pravda</i>.
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#3"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="2">11 Jan 2002</a>: <b> Don't be a penecabeza </b></center>
<td> <a href="#1"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
Saw a site the other day that purported to give insults in dozens of languages.
Sample: they translated "Kiss my ass" as <i>Besito mi asno</i>.
<p>OK, if you liked that, stop there. Otherwise I'll explain and draw lessons and stuff.
<p>A <i>besito</i> is <i>a</i> kiss-- that is, it's a noun, not a verb. An <i>asno</i>
is a donkey. This is what happens when extremely monolingual people pick up a
dictionary and attempt to use it as a codebook. (Even Babel does better-- it actually
produces a valid Spanish sentence-- though it too gets the wrong sense of 'ass'.)
<p>Oh, and don't trust all the sites out on that pesky Web. (A telltale on this
particular site: prominent appeals for more entries. Editing is good.)
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td> <a href="#2"><img src="back.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="1">4 Jan 2002</a>: <b> Argentina faw down go boom </b></center>
<td> <a href="rants.html#63"><img src="next.gif" align=absmiddle border=0></a>
</tr></table>
A quick question while watching Argentina go down the tubes:
<p>Is there any nation which has <i>increased</i> the median standard of living
following the dictates of the IMF?
<p><table bgcolor="#B0D0D4" width=100%><tr>
<td width=10%>
<td width=80%> <center><a name="ozy">12 Mar 2002</a>: <b> <a href="#9">More on pranownsing Inglish</a>: Answer </b></center>
<td>
</tr></table>
Pretty much everyone who responded realized that the writer is aiming at RP (Received Pronunciation, the British standard).
<p>Guesses as to his nationality included German, anything Germanic, French, anything Romance, Albanian, Indian, and Gullah.
<p>In fact the writer is a French correspondent of mine, Frank Legros. The biggest clue is orthographic: all the diacritics used in Frank's spelling system are found in French, though not with their French values (he devised the system for use with French typewriters).
I'm not sure that there's any good phonetic clue, except perhaps that Frank uses the same symbol (à) for short u (<i>sunk</i>) and schwa (<i>lifel<u>e</u>ss</i>).
<hr>
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