Of DINOs and WINOs

For the sake of the seven or eight people who were hoodwinked into taking President Obama's July 2011 withdrawal-from-Afghanistan date seriously, Think Progress has helpfully rounded up some of the subsequent confirmation that this will be a withdrawal in name only:

Gen. David Petraeus: “There’s no timeline, no ramp, nothing like that.” [Fox News Sunday]

National Security Adviser James Jones: “It is not a cliff. It is a glide slope. And so certainly, the President has also said we are not leaving Afghanistan.” [CNN State of the Union]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “Well, first of all, I don’t consider this an exit strategy. And I try to avoid using that term. I think this is a transition.” [ABC This Week]

... On Meet the Press, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We’re not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline.” Gates added, “We will have a significant — we will have 100,000 forces — troops there. And they are not leaving — in July of 2011.”

The symmetries of DINOs (Democrats in name only) announcing WINOs (withdrawals in name only) are more than merely verbal: the latter is a perfect illustration of the former.

To those of us who still retain a sense of identity with the Democratic party -- we the current center-stage suckers of American politics -- Obama's announcement of a withdrawal timeline was one of a few tangibles by which we could favorably distinguish last week's speech from any Bush-era speech on Afghanistan or Iraq. The current administration of DINOs couldn't even be bothered to foster this delusion, small and qualified as it was, for a full week.

Brrrr

In another unambiguous refutation of the very idea anthropocentric global warming, it is suddenly very cold here in fair Puddle-town despite it being several days away from the formal onset of winter.

I need better gloves. Everybody needs a clear understanding of the distinction between climate and weather.

Films of the 00s

Gareth Higgins of The Film Talk blog offers his top 10 films of the 00s, which stretches to considerably more than ten items. While I have no quarrel with expanding a top ten list to numbers larger than ten, I shall nonetheless focus on the disagreements, reservations, qualifiers, cavils, and complaints I have with his list because that's my kind of pointless. Higgins:

There Will Be Blood: A story about oil and greed that isn’t a metaphor for anything. It’s just a story about oil and greed.

Sweet Jeebus in blue jeans! He didn't really type that, did he? If there's anything this film is not, that would be just a story about oil and greed. It is a retelling of Moby Dick, Frankenstein, Paradise Lost, and, in turn, all the grand epics of which those are retellings. It's about capitalism's interaction with Christianity, greed's interaction with love, the life-changing and history-making power of hatred, a statement on the nature of family, a meditation on ideologies and their limits, and in other ways an exploration of the human condition as revealed through a thoroughly unlikeable exemplar. This film has something -- something terrible and yet deeply compelling -- for kids of all ages.

Moving on:

Synecdoche New York: I have a feeling this film will only become more like a friend as I watch and re-watch; nothing less than an attempt at conveying in cinema the experience of one person building a whole life.

Or -- and this is my feeling about it -- it is a case of a filmmaker, Charlie Kaufman, being too clever by half, and churning out a few tedious hours (it only seemed like more) of over-thought, charmless, obscurantist crap. There, I said it: let it be known that for all his cachet and indie-ness, Charlie Kaufman gets no critical matador's cape on this precious, precious blog. He wins some, he loses some.

But wait, there's more:

The Dark Knight: George W Bush’s retirement tribute video; the best-looking critique of the ancient scapegoat myth that ever made a billion dollars.

I wish people would stop saying that The Dark Knight defends the Bush-Cheney notion that civilization can go fuck itself if its rules come into tension with fighting lawless rogues, sociopathic fanatics, or guys with significant facial scarring.

By end of the film, Batman acknowledges that he has to be scorned by the community, indeed blamed outright for excesses, transgressions, chaos, and destruction whether or not he is actually responsible for it, e.g., he demands to be blamed for the film's last death. He accepts both the darkness and the knighthood, openly acknowledging that public scorn will be the wages of his mission. Whereas the Bushes and Cheneys of the world expect to flout and flush the rules in whatever ways seem expedient, and then to be praised, thanked, and adored for doing so -- and beyond that, they still expect to be taken seriously as truth-tellers, delineators of moral clarity, and exponents of the rule of law. This is not a trivial distinction, and it is not the only one that renders The Dark Knight something beyond "George W Bush's retirement tribute video."

Higgins again:

No Country for Old Men: The only film I can think of that climaxes with a serial killer giving up violence without being forced to do so by a gun or handcuffs.

Well, isn't that an optimistic interpretation of the film's ending! I do not share it. I see no basis for believing that anything has changed in the mind of Anton Chigur at the end of this film, nor did I get such an idea at the end of the book. That compound fracture looks painful, but we've seen him in pain before. Suffice to say pain did not instruct him then, and I see no reason to believe it will do so going forward.

More:

The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions: I know saying this puts my reputation at stake (if I even have one by now): but these sequels were deeply misunderstood. Evidence? Can you name another big budget action film series that ends with the opposing parties being reconciled through a non-violent negotiation? Doesn’t this make The Matrix trilogy one that at least has a compelling central idea, and vast imagination compared with its reputation?

OK, these films were not entirely without redeeming qualities -- there were ideas afoot, that's undeniable -- but they were almost entirely without redeeming qualities, particularly the second and third.

As to the question of another action film that ends with a non-violent negotiation, I have to confess I cannot name one. As I could not make it all the way to the end of either of these, and have no desire to, I will defer to Higgins's judgment that these are the only examples in the entire history of film.

Moving on:

The Corporation: Smartest documentary of the decade: not merely a polemic, but a genuine intellectual exploration.

I did admire this film, not least for its soundtrack, but I have to say that it broke little new ground in its intellectual explorations. If you've read any amount of Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, or Z Magazine, this adds little to what they've been repeating for decades. This does not detract from the salience of the ground the film covers, and surely there's something to be said for addressing important realities in ways that can reach new audiences, e.g., audiences of people with the good sense not to have read excessive amounts of Parenti, Chomsky, or Z Magazine.

Here's another:

The Hours: An unfilmable novel became an undefinable film – a central character abandons her family and we’re not sure whether or not we’re supposed to like her; Meryl Streep gets the only decent role she’s had in years (with the exception of her having enormous fun in ‘Mamma Mia’ – a film that is only not enjoyable if you don’t know how to laugh at silly exuberance); and Philip Glass writes his best score since ‘Koyaanisqatsi’. Two characters take their own lives, and one is at least indirectly responsible for the death of another, but you emerge from watching ‘The Hours’ full of gratitude for being alive.

Blogga please. Meryl Streep is, perhaps, hailed as The Leading Actress of Her Generation to the point of monotony, but there's a reason she's constantly praised in this way. I have a hard time imagining anyone else matching her portrayal of Mother What's-Her-Pants in Doubt.

Top ten lists are much like assholes, and I know from assholes.

Hearing the Illinoise

Even knowing that fifty million Frenchman and roughly as many music critics can indeed be wrong, it would require no small perversity to eschew a recording that has won almost universal acclaim among critics and listeners. Such was my thinking when, upon seeing Sufjan Stevens's Illinoise at or near the top of every best-albums-of-the-decade list (e.g., this one, this one, and this one), I gave in and picked up a copy. Wikipedia gives a sense of the album's critical reception:

• Allmusic 2005
• Alternative Press ^[...]
• The A.V. Club (favorable) 2005
• Blender 2005
• Robert Christgau (A−) link
• Pitchfork (9.2/10) link
• NME link
• David Daugherty (10/10) 2005
• PopMatters 2005
• Rolling Stone 2005
• Spin (A-) 2005

Despite the odd decision to spell the title as Illinois rather than Illinoise -- I am looking right at the cover art, and he spelled it Illinoise -- metacritic scores it at 90, confirming its positive reception among critics. A dubious but good enough sense of its appeal to listeners shows in its 4-1/2 rating on Amazon dot com.

What can I say? I find it strange and wonderful. A look at the song titles tells this is a concept album, but I could not say what the concept is -- a musical evocation of the state of Illinois, I gather, but there's more here -- and I question whether I want to know in any detail. There's something delicious about leaving a few Rosebuds unexplained, or finding one's own interpretations for the emotional, musical, and lyrical puzzles an album as abundantly suggestive as this one throws forth.

This bit from Paste sounds right to me:

His music pushed boundaries between pop and classical, and the emotional weight of his lyrics grounded his feather-light voice. There was a distinct peculiarity about Illinois and Stevens himself, who gave his songs titles like “To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament.”

Here is the first song on the album, "Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois":

Shorter Barack Obama

President Obama on Afghanistan:

• Same shit, next administration.

Single-party rule is what we voted for, but I'm pretty sure most voters are with me in thinking we voted for single-party rule by Democrats. Well, aren't we magnificent dupes!

In fairness, unlike many other areas of great importance, Obama did not campaign on a promise to exit Afghanistan. He did, however, speak often and forcefully of the need to define success and exit strategies for Afghanistan. Evidently that was more empty talk.

The more the phrase is endlessly repeated, the more I lose sight of just what it is that 30,000 additional American soldiers are supposed to be training Afghans to do. The Afghans don't know how to round up thugs? They don't know how to imprison or kill the thugs they round up? They don't know how to establish and maintain a constabulary force? They don't know how to operate a military? They don't know how -- and they don't have any independent means or resources on which to call -- for constructing and maintaining roads, bridges, schools, courthouses, government ministries?

They don't know how to do these things in Afghanistan? That is the problem, or a primary element of it? They need 30,000 American troops to train them in these things? It's really a question of knowing how? It's a question of training? And military troops are the best method for addressing a knowledge deficit of this kind and degree?

Really? As always, Jon Stewart plays the truth-telling clown, with emphasis on truth:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
30,000
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

'Shorter' concept lovingly borrowed from Sadly, No!

Sex Sells? Who Knew?

I now offer some breezy comments on a Matter of Great Importance: that Newsweek cover photograph of Lady Also, a.k.a Caribou Barbie, a.k.a. Dotard McCain's Dotty Girlfriend, the photo that was cribbed from the back pages of Runner's World. Lindsay Beyerstein captures the spirit of the kerfuffle well enough:

There's nothing scandalous about Palin showing some skin, or wearing Spandex. But this cover image is deliberately styled to make the then-governor of Alaska look like a Vargas pinup girl. Unlike the other images in the series, this one references her status as a governor. As she poses like a swimsuit model, she's clutching one icon of political power--the Blackberry--and leaning on another. The theme isn't Sarah Palin, athlete. The theme is Sarah Palin, Sexy Governor. (As in: one of those dime store Halloween costumes: sexy cop, sexy ladybug, sexy sanitation worker...)

Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek's use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this?

Sigh. All that was fine right up until it wasn't.

It may well be that Newsweek was holding this up to make a "who does this?" sort of statement, but I think that gives too much credit to Newsweek, which is to say, this gives any credit at all to Newsweek. Whereas Newsweek is, at best, an unfunny joke -- a weekly vomiting forth of the laziest available conventional thinking.

I can tell you exactly who does this: lots of people, men and women. Each issue of Runner's World closes with the "I'm a Runner" feature, which includes a photograph very much like the one in dispute, in which a notable person is shown as a runner but also alongside accoutrements of whatever has made them notable or recognizable. I take this as Runner's World's attempt to say something far from "appalling," namely, that runners are everywhere, from all walks of life, including even famous people. Others featured have included actor Anthony Edwards, poet Kay Ryan, and scientist Wolfgang Ketterle in photographs roughly as "degrading" or "obectifying" or whatever. If this sort of photo spread offends your idea of human flourishing, be sure not to pick up a copy of Runner's World, and if you do, avoid the last page.

I am not convinced this is an instance of sexism.

First, sexism trivializes and reduces, and there's nothing in Lady Also that is amenable to trivialization or reduction: she is below zero and digging as doggedly as her enthusiasms for war, semi-literacy, and blastocysts will inspire.

Second, sex appeal has never been divorced from charisma, and charisma is a part of politics. Are there male politicians who have appeared on covers of discount newsweeklies baring their legs? I doubt it, but this is a false analogy because that's not the conventional visual for Sexy Man. The visual would be, well, what we see constantly on covers of discount newsweeklies and similar fountains of convention: images of male politicians wearing expensive suits and power ties in a pose that says, basically,

I have weighty and important things on my mind, and I have mowed down house pets, orphans, and grandmothers to reach this exalted state. I will continue doing so because I am as unstoppable, constant, strong, and firm as sharpened steel. You know you want to fuck me, but you'll just have to settle for voting for me -- at least until I stay overnight in your town.

If the plaint is that this sort of statement is not conventionally attached to female politicians, that there is a different standard for Sexy Female, then we've arrived at a trivial truth. Perhaps this should change. Any who would like to change it is welcome to begin thinking of, say, Madeleine Albright and Claire McCaskill as extremely sexy women on exactly the terms that at least some women seem to perceive Bill Clinton, however wrinkled and chubby, and any Kennedy male, however weirdly shaped.

Go ahead, I'll wait. I won't be holding my breath, but I'll wait for that. We will know the conventions have shifted in this desirable(?) way the first time an issue of Men's Health or another insipid man-mag comes out with a cover model that looks more like Hillary Clinton circa 2009 and less like Megan Fox circa last week. A few years after that, this new and better(?) convention will be so tired and entrenched that it will start showing up in the discount newsweeklies.

Until then, the likes of Lady Also will continue projecting sexually-charged starbursts, and the likes of Dick Cheney will continue projecting intimations of hardness -- assuming they want to succeed in a game where sex sells and sales win.

The Bleats of a Bloated Bag

Sure, crap sack pastor Rick Warren is willing to look past gluttony and the wearing of mixed fibers, but when it comes to The Gay, President Obama's completely-not-regrettable choice for ventriloquising god's blessing on his inauguration lolls between insipid indifference and fiery condemnation:

Pastor Rick Warren has come under fire for refusing to condemn an Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda that would make some homosexual acts punishable by death. “[I]t is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations,” said Warren. On his Twitter feed, Warren is now trying to change the subject, claiming that “no one” cared when 146,000 Christians died last year (so why should he now care about gay men and women in Africa?)

Stay classy, Rick Warren, and be sure we'll all hold you to that principled non-interference in the politics of foreign nations.

What we'll likely get instead is a selective invocation of Jesus's teachings -- only the most rotten of the rotten, wrung for maximum rottenness -- and more rationalizations of the form something something no one cared when Christians were persecuted something something Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve something something.

(via Ophelia Benson)

Let's Talk Man-Boobs

When I first read of Jeremy Piven's man-boobs in a "friend's" Facebook posting, I immediately thought two things: one, that I would have lived happily never to have heard a single mention of Jeremy Piven's man-boobs, and two, that the explanation given for Jeremy Piven's man-boobs, the over-consumption of soy milk, was almost certainly an instance of right-wing bullshit.

While my certainty of the first thought was never in doubt, confirmation of the second came later, via Sadly, No! and, more thoroughly, Amanda Marcotte:

Debbie Schlussel has decided to make the subtext of so much conservative angst aimed at vegetarians into the text, by telling her audience that male vegetarians can literally expect to grow “man boobs” from eating all that soy. Her evidence? Some movie star claims that’s what happened to him.

While I, like Amanda Marcotte, am not interested in engaging the endocrinologists of the world on this matter, I am confident that the most probable explanation for Jeremy Piven's man-boobs, such as they are, is straightforward weight gain.

After all, I have seen countless thousands of man-boobs over my lifetime, many of them far more pronounced than anything that has ever filled out the sweaters of Jeremy Piven, and in every case where I can name the person off whom they're inelegantly cantilevered, I can name only one who would willingly drink soy milk. Well, make that two since I should count the man-boobs I've seen in mirrors in times past.

Normally, this is the point where I would leap to the defense of soy milk and vegetarianism, before reeling back with a qualifier to the effect that I am not a nutritionist. Alas, normal blogs bore me, and I refuse to involve myself with one, so I hereby declare, with all the authority of the internets, my years of observing man-boobs, and yes, my thorough understanding of nutrition, that if you want to have a manly chest, you had better put away the animal-based milks and start drinking as much soy milk as you can pack into your bodily frame. Drink a gallon before you go to bed tonight, and another before you leave for work / school / aggressive panhandling tomorrow. Add soy milk to all your recipes -- all of them. Do it now or you'll get huge man-boobs, horrible breath, a sour personality, several deadly diseases, and multiple organ failures. Do it now or you will never experience joy or love.

Or don't. Just know that I have exactly as much insight into the effects of soy, nutrition, and hormones as some ridiculous back-bench rent-a-hack from Michigan, which is to say, a lot. If you want to live well, you'd better listen to us and be sure to pass information like this along without checking on it with a trained nutritionist, medical doctor, or other subject matter expert.

Dead Ends Illustrated

A far-flung friend took and shared this photo illustrating, in candid and sunlit space-time somewhere in New Orleans, three concepts that are tightly bound together: religious, nuns, and dead end.

There's little to add to this beyond the suggestion that there's at least one cross in the photograph, which, if you accept that interpretation -- they're just boards, but then again, crosses have always been just boards -- would make this a foursome of the intertwined.

Sometimes, a picture is worth several thousand words.

Jesus's Sword

Andrew Sullivan runs down the Catholic church's rightward lurch in recent years, citing its unhinged institutional enthusiasms for blastocysts and child-rape and against homosexuals and women, and expects more of the same:

[D]esperate for short-term political highs, all the while undermining their long-term coherence. I suspect that what we will see in the future is a church basing itself in the developing world, and adopting more African [sic] views on the subjugation of women, criminalization of homosexuality, and the evils of Western liberal capitalism. Europe will remain the enemy, Islam a useful ally and America's Republican Party Christianists a source of money and power as the Western flock shrinks to the rump that Benedict devoutly wishes for.

If I had been asked to predict the church's future ten years ago, I would have deemed this far too pessimistic a view. But Benedict's papacy has made all the difference. I no longer believe in any revival of a vibrant and truth-seeking Christianity under the Catholic hierarchy in my lifetime.

Sullivan expects to die long before this grim picture improves, but as dour as all that may be, this being Andrew Sullivan and his precious, precious church, the next word is but:

But I can still hope. Because the truth of the Gospels is so much stronger than the politics of the papacy at any given moment in history.

True enough, but not in the way that Sullivan intends. There is plenty of warrant in the tradition and the Gospels themselves for Rome's embrace of divisiveness, authoritarianism, and repression, such as Jesus's own words in Matthew 10:34-38:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

Sullivan is mislabeling the rule as an exception. Having the wrong sexual inclinations, he has been and remains on the sharp end of the sword Jesus introduced to the world, and so it is and has been for most people for various reasons, e.g., advocating equality between the sexes, putting the needs of family above Jesus, interrogating the legitimacy of given institutions, expecting answers to the wrong questions, etc.

It is for Sullivan to rationalize clinging to an institution that would have, for much of its history, gleefully burned him alive for his thought crimes, even as he clings to those thought crimes. Meanwhile, clear-thinking people who value justice and truth will eschew the sword altogether.

Reading to Architecture

I am almost completely at a loss when it comes to geeking out about architecture, but I can spot an interesting structure when I see one, and spotting one is easier when, as in the case of the Seattle Central Library, it has been the subject of so much commentary in architecture circles. In 2006, the New Yorker declared Rem Koolhaas's design

the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating. Koolhaas has always been a better architect than social critic, and the building conveys a sense of the possibility, even the urgency, of public space in the center of a city. The design is not so much a rejection of traditional monumentality as a reinterpretation of it, and it celebrates the culture of the book as passionately, in its way, as does the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The Seattle building is thrilling from top to bottom.

I'm not sure about the bulk of that, but I'll agree it is a thrilling building through and through -- modern without being cold, monumental in an age and a city known for irony, if not outright cynicism.

I could read there.

Seattle Marathon 2009 - Not Quite Sunny

Then again, the sun is overrated.

My butt hurts because earlier today I finished the Seattle Marathon in 3:23:31 (7:46 mi/min pace, official), a result for which I am happy given the difficulty of the course, my persistent and strong effort, and, maybe best yet, the absence of any muscle cramping.

It's a beautiful course as one would expect from such a beautiful city, and for today, at least, there was not a drop of rain, not even any of those teensy Seattle-size raindrops that always seem minutes away. I say that as though I would have minded the rain had it fallen, but I wouldn't have minded it at all.

I thank all the volunteers who were out in surprisingly large numbers, and I offer a special bit of praise to the Seattle Atheists, who operated one of the first water stations along the course. I was surprised, delighted, and encouraged to see their "we believe in you" banner.

Objects Unanalyzed

The Film Talk blog recommends the documentary Objectified:

‘Objectified’ is sedate, but not slow – peaceful yet thought provoking – it’s a reverie on the nature of the designed elements around us. Comprised of interviews with many the worlds leading designers and commentators on design the pic is a reflective – exuberant in a minor key – paean to both the practice of design and its effects on us.

I would call that an accurate and complete summary of the film, but for whatever reason -- maybe the title? -- I expected it to move past the idea that we live in a designed world and offer some reflections, possibly some arguments and criticisms, about the pros and cons of this. That is, I was expecting an analysis of design and its implications for the world, and less a straight celebration of design.

I should probably form expectations of films based on something more than the title, but then again, titles are 'designed objects' and they therefore involve elements of tone-setting, evocation, persuasion, arguably 'social control.' I expected the film to feature speakers with European accents making claims like that, or rather, wildly exaggerated versions of such claims delivered with absolute solemnity.

I wouldn't necessarily have accepted, agreed with, or declined to snigger at high-minded theorists waxing on about how Apple's, Ikea's, and Target's design choices are implicating humankind in oppressive totalizing metanarratives or whatever, but I expected perspectives that go beyond "design is awesome!" and I think the film would have been stronger with them.

Something along the lines of Jill Lepore's discussion of business consulting, scientific management and taylorism would have been a good corrective:

In 1911, Taylor explained his methods—Schmidt and the pig iron, Gilbreth and the bricks—in “The Principles of Scientific Management,” whose argument the business über-guru Peter Drucker once called “the most powerful as well as the most lasting contribution America has made to Western thought since the Federalist Papers.” That’s either very silly or chillingly cynical, but “The Principles of Scientific Management” was the best-selling business book in the first half of the twentieth century. Taylor always said that scientific management would usher in a “mental revolution,” and it has. Modern life is Taylorized life, the Taylor biographer Robert Kanigel observed, a dozen years back. Above your desk, the clock is ticking; on the shop floor, the camera is rolling. Manage your time, waste no motion, multitask: your iPhone comes with a calendar, your car with a memo pad. [emphasis mine]

The connection between human minds, human work, and human tools is far from trivial. Change an object, and you change the nature of a task and thereby reshape the mind needed to do it. Whether you liberate possibilities or foreclose them by design choices, and what those possibilities are, is a weighty and important question, one this film only glancingly addresses.

It's easy enough to understand why: design is awesome, and this film shows many examples of elegantly designed objects. It's hard to watch this film without walking away understanding why people get passionate about it. Design also strikes me as one of those fields of endeavor for which everyone considers himself an expert or a 'natural.'

Meaninglessness's Referent

Michael Shermer offers several reasons for the resistance to accepting evolutionary science, including this one:

The equation of evolution with ethical nihilism. This sentiment was expressed by the neoconservative social commentator Irving Kristol in 1991: "If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded -- or even if it suspects -- that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe."

Meaningless to whom? And how?

For what little it may be worth, this line of thinking -- "life is meaningful because god says so" -- is actually an infinite regress, or maybe something worse. If our memories, reflections, and feelings vis-a-vis one another are not enough to make life meaningful, what does god add?

More power? God is the ultimate social-moving dandy with invitations to all the big social scenes, audiences with all the world leaders, back stage passes to all the concerts, sporting events, upscale dinner parties. He runs in fancy circles, knows everybody's numbers, can cite charming anecdotes about anyone you can name. Or maybe this simply means he can squash us like so many gnats or make sure we never work in the industry again.

On this view, having a relationship with god is like having a relationship with Colin Powell or Bono or Paul McCartney, only a thousand times better. As we are social animals, this is a more or less valid picture of 'meaningfulness,' but it's pretty far from noble when regarded in the light of day.

More time? God was thinking and feeling about our lives before we were born and will be around to remember us after we leave sublunary life. So? If there is something meaning-endowing about being thought about, felt about, and remembered, I see no reason why the meaning-endowing powers of thinking, feeling, and remembering goes to zero if it does not last forever. What is 'forever' to us but a word, an abstraction built on the negation of our everyday experience of time? It's a phantasm.

Concretely, I don't know what to think of anyone who was thinking about my day-to-day three trillion years ago and will still be thinking about it three trillion years in the future. The idea of that bores me beyond imagining, and this is my own day-to-day I have in mind.

With or without god, and with or without evolution, we gain meaning by the experience of life and how we reflect on it. Any 'meaning' beyond this is guesswork, and we should take care that these guesses don't negate or occlude the meanings available to us. We should live for what we know, and this entails trying to expand what we know within our finite limits.

Origin at 150

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published 150 years ago today. It revolutionized the science of biology, and arguably altered the way humankind has thought of itself ever since.

And everyone lived happily ever after. Yes?

This week, I am squirreled away in a super-secret redoubt somewhere in Cascadia, so blogging will continue to be even sparser than usual.

Stepping Up vs. Paying Up

Discussing the prospects of passing substantial health care and greenhouse emissions legislation, Matt Yglesias starts out soundly enough:

The crucial thing to remember is that Barack Obama didn’t emerge out of the ether with progressive policy proposals. Commitments to things like an aggressive carbon emissions target and a strong public option emerged over the course of a presidential primary campaign wherein activists affiliated with the environmental and labor movements created an incentive structure that led the main candidates to make those promises.

Only to arrive, curiously enough, at this:

[I]n general, what’s needed is more persuading and more organizing by the kind of people who did the persuading and organizing that got us the Obama agenda in the first place. [emphasis mine]

I realize what I'm about to say is anathema, heresy, terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad in some circles, but I actually think that now is precisely not the time for more persuading and more organizing. Now is the time for advancing the legislation for which all that effort was expended leading up to the 2008 elections. Now is the time for the president and the large Democratic majorities favored by all that organizing to enact the agenda those activists were promised.

This is especially true of matters currently before congress that were, as Yglesias outlined in the first passage cited above, the substance of so much organizing, persuading, strategizing, and campaigning leading up to the 2008 elections.

Grassroots organizing in the context of electoral politics is the vehicle by which favorable politicians gain power, whereupon it is their duty to use that power to make the changes that animated all the organizing and persuading. If it is not that -- if it exists merely to set the stage for more grassroots organizing, let alone on the same controversial political questions, then it is a complete waste of time. In which case it is even less something of which to say, "now is the time."

After much organizing and persuading, our side won. Now is the time for congress and the president to repay the hard work of those who organized, fought, persuaded, and voted them into power.

They Complete Each Other

The Mentos ads alluded to here always did seem to lack something. I always assumed it was a reason to exist or a non-annoying characteristic, but no, this send-up makes clear that what they were missing was a blast of full facial Jesus.

Which is to say: having reached their optimum, having maxed out, having reached their natural zenith, the Mentos advertising can cease forevermore.

The same goes from the other side. Even in its sunniest presentations, Christianity had always seemed weighed down, anchored to an unnerving focus on death -- how to prepare for it, what comes after it, its inevitability, Jesus's particular experience of it, its failsafe program to elude it too often resolving to a preoccupation with it. And don't even get me started on the cannibalism.

No more! The flash of Mentos's (artificial) color and (chalky) flavor fills in all the gaps left by that unremitting bleakness. Here, a beaming Jesus is offering some brightly colored, sugared chalk, which is not much, but it's a considerable improvement over a chunk of his own flesh.

They each had a good run.

(via The ZehnKatzen Times)

Sterling-Cooper's Prescience on Global Warming

While it was not featured in any Mad Men episodes, I have to guess that this ad from 1962 was the product of Pete's uncanny ability to anticipate future developments combined with Peggy's efficient verbal craft.

I do wonder if Don signed off on it, however -- the exclamation mark at the end of the ad's headline doesn't strike me as a Don-friendly move. Maybe this ad was conceived and executed while Don was off jet-setting with the Eurotrash.

(via Grist)

John Yoo Too

Glennzilla quotes attorney general Eric Holder and then comments:

[Holder] Courts and commissions are both essential tools in our fight against terrorism . . . On the same day I sent these five defendants to federal court, I referred five others to be tried in military commissions. I am a prosecutor, and as a prosecutor, my top priority was simply to select the venue where the government will have the greatest opportunity to present the strongest case with the best law. . . . At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is a federal court.

[Greenwald] Does that remotely sound like a "justice system"? If you're accused of being a Terrorist, there's not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based on ensuring that it will win. Even worse, Holder repeatedly assured Senators that the administration would continue to imprison 9/11 defendants even in the very unlikely case that they were acquitted, citing what they previously suggested was their Orwellian authority of so-called "post-acquittal detention powers." Is there any better definition of a "show trial" than one in which the defendant has no chance of ever being released even if acquitted, because the Government will simply thereafter assert the power to hold him indefinitely without charges?

I would be delighted to be shown where Greenwald has erred in his assessment of the current administration's abuses. At best, I've encountered celebrations of the fact that Barack Obama is a constitutional law scholar -- Randi Rhodes likes to recite this factoid in her radio show -- but this intensifies rather than excuses the insult to what used to be American legal standards. Of all people, Barack Obama knows better than to do what he is doing, and yet he continues unraveling the rule of law with as much blithe indifference (or merriment, or cynicism, or whatever it is) as his worst predecessors.

John Yoo is also a constitutional scholar. Constitutional scholarship manifestly doesn't help.