All things weird and wonderful, 15

17 01 2012

Physics and nerve:

This child of the Midwest never surfed.

If—if—the waves got big enough on Lake Michigan, one might have some fun body-surfing, and I have some hazy memory of someone sometime with a board somewhere on the beach, but as big a lake as Lake Michigan is, it ain’t the ocean.

Now, water skiing, that I could do, though usually on one of the smaller (and warmer) lakes in the area. And I’ve gone jet skiing, which (like snowmobiling) is stupid and polluting and a lot of fun.

Anyway, I always thought of surfing as tossing oneself into a tidal wave like this, and I wondered how the hell anyone could do that. It was as if the waves were magic and the surfers, magicians.

I never considered that most surfers are not sliding down forty-foot walls of water, but are happily dinking about in six or ten foot waves, working themselves up to 15 or maybe 20 foot waves. Maybe they get a chance to crouch through a tube, but most are probably just trying to let it ride.

I could do that. Hell, there are places to surf in parts of Queens and out on Long Island, with waves big enough to get up and small enough for an old newby like me to give ‘er a try.

I just might. Maybe. Y’know, someday.

Could be fun.

h/t  The Daily What, Chris Bryan film


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Martin Luther King, Jr.: American political philosopher

16 01 2012

Every man must ultimately confront the question, “Who am I?” and seek to answer it honestly. One of the first principles of personal adjustment is the principle of self-acceptance. The Negro’s greatest dilemma is that in order to be healthy he must accept his ambivalence. The Negro is the child of two cultures—Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures. Some, seeking to reject their heritage, are ashamed of their color, ashamed of black arts and music, and determine what is beautiful and good by the standards of white society. They end up frustrated and without cultural roots. Others seek to reject everything American and to identify totally with Africa, even to the point of wearing African clothes. But this approach leads also to frustration because the American negro is not African. The old Hegelian synthesis still offers the best answer to many of life’s dilemmas. The American Negro is neither totally African nor totally Western. He is Afro-American, a true hybrid, a combination of two cultures.

Who are we? We are the descendants of slaves. We are teh offspring of noble men and women who wer kidnapped from thie native land and chained in ships like beasts. We are the heirs of a great and exploited continent known as Africa. We are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

But we are also Americans. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. In spite of the psychological appeals of identification with Africa, the Negro must face the fact that America is now is home, a home that he helped to build through blood, sweat, and tears. Since we are Americans the solution to our problem will not come through seeking to build a separate black nation within a nation, but by finding that creative minority of the concerned from the ofttimes apathetic majority, and together moving toward that colorless power that we need for security and justice.

In the first century B.C., Cicero said: “Freedom is participation in power.” Negroes should never want all power because they would deprive others of their freedom. By the same token, Negroes can never be content without participation in power. America must be a nation in which its multiracial people are partners in power. This is the essence of democracy towards which all Negro struggles have been directed since the distant past when he was transplanted here in chains.

Martin Luther King, responding to the Black Power movement, in Where Do We Go From Here?


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Mayan Campaign Mashup 2012: misc bits

15 01 2012

So unfair. So irresistible.

Greg Marmalard

Mitt Romney

I  should be better than this: comparing a presidential nominee to a fictional character from Animal House.

I really should. But like I said: irresistible.

~~~

On a more serious note, some conservatives in the Republican party are wondering if Mitt is really one of them, or whether he’d govern as a moderate if elected president.

To which I respond: not really, and probably not.

Not really: He’s an establishment guy, through and through, who smiles when he’s irritated and whose voice falls to a faux-whisper when denouncing the perfidy of the president. In the past, presenting as an even-keeled establishment type would have been more than enough to, well, establish oneself as a presentable conservative Republican, but today, among the excitables,  if you’re not constantly outraged, you’re suspect.

So he is, justly, suspect.

As to how he’d govern if elected, there’s a good chance, as others have pointed out, that he’ll try to do what he says he’ll do.

Yes, he governed Massachusetts as a moderate Republican—just as he said he’d do. Now he espouses conservative social policies, has surrounded himself with conservative advisers, and says he’ll govern as a conservative Republican.

Take him at his word. Really.

So to all of the excitables hyperventilating about the true shape of Romney’s malleable heart, settle down: he may not really be one of you, but he’ll govern as if he were—and isn’t that enough?

~~~

The former senator of Pennsylvania is shocked, shocked! that someone is lying in campaign politics:

The new ad by the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future hits [Rick] Santorum on supporting earmarks, backing the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” raising the debt ceiling five times and voting to “let convicted felons vote.” The ad will be broadcast in South Carolina and Florida. . . .

“That is an absolute lie,” Santorum said of the ad’s claim. “I voted for a provision that that said if a felon serves his term, serves his parole and probation, and then after that period time he can be restored his voting rights, which is exactly the law that’s here in South Carolina. But we had a federal law at the federal level. … Gov. Romney should be saying to his PAC say take that ad down, it’s false. It gives the impression that I want people to be voting from jail.” [emph added]

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

(Credits: still photo from Animal House footage; WBUR.org)


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Mayan Campaign Mashup 2012: Perry as [white folks’] champion

12 01 2012

You noticed who’s not there, right?

What, they don’t need a champion? What the hell?

And Perry looks rather too much like like the previous occupant of the White House in that shot of him standing next to his plane.

He has no chance of winning of course, but I like that he’s pissing away the millions given to him by conservative donors.

As I used to say when working for a left-wing paper and we were criticized for taking money from non- and anti-lefty advertisers: Spend it all—make them spend it all!

(This one’s for you, dmf.)


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Mayan Campaing Mashup 2012: Mitt’s unwit

12 01 2012

Shocking news: I am not a fan of Mitt Romney.

I’m not at all clear why he’s running for president, other than that he wants to be president, and I don’t think he’d be any good at the job.

I also think that for all his professionalism as a campaigner, he doesn’t really understand what the presidency requires.

Matt Yglesias has a nice take on this:

Of course there is envy in America, but there’s also spite. And I think you see some of it in Romney’s reply. He has a lot of money, personally. That money is very useful to him in a number of ways. It lets him consume more goods and services. It offers him security against the ups and downs in life. It lets him be assured that his kids will have a leg up in life. But over and above that, Romney seems to revel in the idea of being better than the lower orders of society and resists the leveling impulse even though it would in concrete terms leave him with plenty of money.

I don’t know if he’s spiteful or not, but  statements about envy and [the out-of-context] “I like being able to fire people” make it difficult to conclude otherwise.

Narrative, man, narrative! You do not want to feed your weaknesses: it doesn’t turn the weakness into strength, but strengthens the weakness. Tch tch tch.

Anyway, this gives me another chance to pull out a much-used Rousseau quote:

[I]f one sees a handful of powerful and rich men at the height of greatness and fortune while the mob grovels in obscurity and misery, it is because the former prize the things they enjoy only to the extent that the others are deprived of them; and because, without changing their position, they would cease to be happy, if only the people ceased to be miserable.

This is not the impression you want to leave with would-be voters.

h/t  James Fallows


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All things weird and wonderful, 14

11 01 2012

Be Good Tanyas over under around thru Townes van Zandt:

A friend who booked the BGTs to his venue observed that they fought like hell with one another. And then they got on stage.

That Townes, he influenced all the right people.


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Mayan Campaign Mashup 2012: Mancrushing Ron Paul

11 01 2012

Katha Pollitt on lefties-for-Paul:

What is it with progressive mancrushes on right-wing Republicans? For years, until he actually got nominated, John McCain was the recipient of lefty smooches equaled only by those bestowed upon Barack Obama before he had to start governing. You might disagree with what McCain stood for, went the argument, but he had integrity, and charisma, and some shiny mavericky positions—on campaign finance reform and gun control and… well, those two anyway.

Now Ron Paul is getting the love. At Truthdig, Robert Scheer calls him “a profound and principled contributor to a much-needed national debate on the limits of federal power.” In The Nation, John Nichols praises his “pure conservatism,” “values” and “principle.” Salon’s Glenn Greenwald is so outraged that progressives haven’t abandoned the warmongering, drone-sending, indefinite-detention-supporting Obama for Paul that he accuses them of supporting the murder of Muslim children. There’s a Paul fan base in the Occupy movement and at Counterpunch, where Alexander Cockburn is a longtime admirer. Paul is a regular guest of Jon Stewart, who has yet to ask him a tough question. And yes, these are all white men; if there are leftish white women and people of color who admire Paul, they’re keeping pretty quiet.

Ron Paul has an advantage over most of his fellow Republicans in having an actual worldview, instead of merely a set of interests—he opposes almost every power the federal government has and almost everything it does. Given Washington’s enormous reach, it stands to reason that progressives would find targets to like in Paul’s wholesale assault. I, too, would love to see the end of the “war on drugs” and our other wars. I, too, am shocked by the curtailment of civil liberties in pursuit of the “war on terror,” most recently the provision in the NDAA permitting the indefinite detention, without charge, of US citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism. But these are a handful of cherries on a blighted tree. In a Ron Paul America, there would be no environmental protection, no Social Security, no Medicaid or Medicare, no help for the poor, no public education, no civil rights laws, no anti-discrimination law, no Americans With Disabilities Act, no laws ensuring the safety of food or drugs or consumer products, no workers’ rights.

And as she noted about his alleged anti-police-state stance: “Not to harp on abortion, but an effective ban would require a level of policing that would make the war on drugs look feeble.”

I, of course, have no problem harping on abortion. That’s one of the things a harpy does.

Anyway, it is telling that libertarians tend to attract the strong or those who consider themselves strong or those to whom it is really really really important to be stronger than someone else.

Have I kicked around Ayn Rand enough? No, I have not, mainly because I try not to think of Ayn Rand (and I have a story about reading her for the first time that’s just, pfffffffff, does not reflect well on me but I should tell you anyhow—but not right now). Still, this bit from Paul Bibeau* is a propos:

[L Ron Hubbard] “Fine,” he said huffily. “Who would you go after?”
[Ayn Rand] “Rich white college kids.”
“Jesus,” he said. “That’s… that’s perfect.”
“I know, right?”
“They’re the worst.”
“God, they’re horrible.”
“But what are you going to do to them?”
“I’m going to convince them… that they’re just too nice.”

Makes her almost likable—so clearly a parody.

I know, Ron Paul is not Ayn Rand (and no, his son Rand is not named after her), and she would probably disdain him because she disdained everyone who was not her (and who knows, possibly also herself as well, but, again, really prefer not to spend too much time thinking of her), but even if he’s not as interested in ripping off-while-misunderstanding Nietzsche as that third-rate author was, they’re both chewing on the same overcooked piece of fuck-the-weak spaghetti.

*h/t Fred Clark at slactivist


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Mayan Campaign Mashup 2012: Santorum’s choices

8 01 2012

In 1996, Rick Santorum’s wife Karen had a difficult pregnancy.

The health of the fetus severely compromised, she decided to undergo surgery to correct the problems; this surgery led to a life-threatening infection, which in turn led to a course of antibiotics which had the (known) effect of starting labor. Doctors then gave her a drug to bring the labor along, resulting in the early delivery of a 20-week old fetus the Santorums named Gabriel.

Prior to the surgery, Karen Santorum was adamant that she wanted doctors to do everything possible to try to save the pregnancy; even after she agreed to take the antibiotics, she and her husband hoped that the fetus could be saved, to the point that Santorum initially refused the Pitocin which sped up labor. However, Santorum admitted that had labor not resulted, she would—reluctantly—have agreed to an abortion to save her life.

The fetus, named Gabriel, lived for two hours. After his death, the Santorums took him home to their then-three (they now have seven) children so that they could  “absorb and understand that they had a brother.”

Karen Santorum later wrote on book on the experience, Letters to Gabriel, and the experience apparently reinforced her husband’s views against abortion.

Three points:

1. It is good that Karen Santorum had the choice to decide how to deal with a difficult pregnancy, including the choice to risk her own life.

The person who has to live with the consequences of any decision ought to be the one to make that decision.

2. It is a dicey matter to criticize how people mourn. Eugene Robinson and Alan Colmes have come in for a great deal of criticism for mocking the Santorums for bringing the dead fetus home. While both Robinson and Colmes seem more weirded out by rather than contemptuous of the Santorums, they both imply that Santorum’s action reflects poorly on his ability to lead.

I have nothing good to say about Santorum, not one damned thing, but I also strongly believe in judging public officials by their public actions. Even shitty politicians get to have a personal life, whatever the shape of that personal life may be.

And as an aside, I don’t know how weird it is to bring a loved one’s corpse home. In most cases, of course, this isn’t an option, but into the 20th century in the US many of us dealt with our own dead. Perhaps there were those in the community who were called upon to help wash and prepare the body, but death in the home was not uncommon.

And in some sense both the right-to-die and the hospice movements (which are usually in political opposition) have reacted against the depersonalization of death in their efforts to allow people a decent death at home. I am among those who would prefer to bring death home, to see death as the end of life, not separate from it. Whatever my view of the status of the fetus, I don’t know that the urge of the Santorums to bring what they considered their son’s body home is really all that strange.

It seems quite human.

3. Anything goes, winning is the only thing, whatever you can get away with—I don’t take back a word of it. While I might think it politically dicey to bring up Santorum’s actions in this matter, I don’t think it’s out of bounds, mainly because I don’t think anything is out of bounds. My own personal beliefs on the respect for privacy have nothing to do with observations on political tactics, and in political campaigns, anything that can be used, will be used.

This is even more the case when you refer to your personal life in order to score political points. If, like Santorum, you use you and your wife’s ordeal to buttress your political attacks on abortion, then you transform that ordeal into political fodder, fodder which may now legitimately raked over and flung back at you.

There’s a big foggy territory between the personal and public for politicians. Yes, their minor children (and grandchildren) are used in photo ops and they may make occasional jokey references to something that their kids said or heard, but such uses are stylistic tropes, and are generally ignored, as are generic references to family in order to humanize oneself. When the politician goes deep into, say, a family tragedy, whether we see the person as been courageous and honest or cynical and conniving, and how the story can be used politically, likely depends on our views of the politician in the first place.

This is where the the “can be used/will be used” meets the “whatever works”: Will going after your opponent’s personal life help or hurt your campaign? If bringing up his personal life helps you, you do it; if it is likely to spark a backlash and hurt you, you don’t. That’s it.

It is noteworthy that those who criticized the Santorums’ decision are pundits, not anyone connected to any campaigns. The other candidates or their strategists might also think this is (further) evidence for his unfitness, but they will keep their lips zipped because there is nothing to be gained and too much to lose. That calculus is what regulates their behavior—period.

The point is to win.


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Dice are rolling, the knives are out

4 01 2012

This man will not be president:

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

He will not be president because he will not win the Republican nomination, and he will not win the Republican nomination because he has no money, no organization, and an agenda which causes jaws to slacken, genitals to shrink, and the uncontrollable urge to giggle.

And no, I’m not talking about his Google problem.

ThinkProgress has a nice rundown of the top ten terrible tenets of the former senator from Pennsylvania, but I’d like to point out just one: the man is opposed to contraception. For everyone.

One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.

I remember my eight grade science teacher (a thoroughly decent man) try to teach sex ed by asking us to submit—anonymously—any questions we may have about sex in writing, which he would then try to answer.

Poor man. He never had a chance. I didn’t know a person’s face could turn that shade of red.

Yes, a class of mostly virgins somehow managed to come up with questions about “things in the sexual realm” which were “counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Santorum may also be a thoroughly decent man—although, given the nasty things he says about people who aren’t just like him, I doubt it—but unlike the stifled sniggers which greeted the science teacher, the ex-senator will be met with full-blown guffaws the moment he decides to engage the country in his version of sex education.

The sweater vest won’t help.

So I’m going to enjoy both Santorum’s moment in the media-sun and the evisceration soon to follow, a disembowelment made all the more sweeter because it will be performed by his fellow Republicans.

Ah, the carnage of campaign politics: couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.


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What are words/If you don’t really mean them

3 01 2012

Hippy nude yer. Or something.

Anyway, words. Specifically: home in/hone in. Every so often a new word or phrase creeps into the (more-or-less mass) media, hangs out for awhile, then fades back into either occasional use or goes away completely.

Remember paradigm and paradigm shift? Still around, but less ubiquitous. It also was yanked out of Kuhn and made to apply to shifts which were, in Kuhnian terms, decidedly not paradigmatic, but that’s how it goes when jargon moves the mainstream.

I also recall peregrination—a fine word—and one which now resides mainly in dictionaries.

Unpack and problematize both wandered out of the academy for awhile, but are now safely tucked back inside. And every so often someone pulls epistemology out of her sleeve, but then one gets caught up in questions of the existence of the sleeve and is it even possible even to pull knowledge out of clothing and, well, you see why epistemology prefers to hide out in back corridors of academia.

There are others, which I can’t think of offhand. Oh, Look, is currently quite popular among opiners, mainly as a way to say I am done talking about this and/or I am [no longer] willing to explain why I believe this. I think this augers the return of Listen as a stylistic alternative.

Now, about home in/hone in. The correct term is home in, as in, nearing a target or center or, y’know, home, but about half of the time I see the term the word hone is incorrectly substituted.

Hone: to sharpen,  make ready, as in, hone a sword or honing one’s rhetorical skills. Not to lock on target.

Yes, this is a simply matter of wrong word use, based on a spelling error.

Still.

I’m half a word snob. I try to avoid split infinitives, irregardless, and journaling; distinguish between disinterested and uninterested; prefer the original term empathic to its more recent commonalization as empathetic; anguish over repeatedly confusing compose and comprise; and try very hard to use the correct version of lie and lay. On the other hand, I’m not opposed to neologisms on principle (although some in practice), understand that usage changes (e.g. Let’s do lunch), do not disdain all cliches, enjoy playing around with words in casual circumstances (see: commonalization) and quite like that English is a scavenger language.

Still.

Hone is its own word, with its own meaning. Given that there is no necessary, absolute, and eternal meaning to hone, could we please please pretty please try to uphold its definition as is?

We already have the term you’re looking for: Home in.

Thank you.


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