Month: December 2006

[Clive]

My earlier attempt at humour gets a mixed review from one reader:

Huh? Does your wife really think that joke is non-sexist? Or did she just say that hoping to encourage you to post it so that she could enjoy watching you get verbally pilloried? Oh, the joke is undeniably funny, but it is also extremely sexist. I for one would have left the husband store as soon as I discovered there wasn’t a floor offering smart and funny men. That is the reason I read Andrew’s blog every day and have been reading yours, Alex’s and Daniel’s posts all week. You’re all smart and funny. Oh, OK, Andrew also happens to be nice-looking but I would read his blog even if he looked like a mud fence.

I went downstairs and told the joke to my fifteen-year-old son and my husband and asked them to be honest and tell me if they would stop on the second floor of the wife store or keep going. My husband said that he would keep going because a potential wife should have "at least a shred of intelligence" and my son said that he would go to the next floor hoping to find one that offered Asian women.

But the joke is funny.

I’m not sure I get the bit about Asian women. I’ll have to consult my wife again (she’s Indian)…

[Clive]

I haven’t been following developments in that particular controversy, but Rod Dreher has:

Though I agree with Rep. Virgil Goode that it’s a smart idea to sharply reduce immigration from Islamic countries, at least at the present difficult time, I find appalling his behavior toward Muslim convert Keith Ellison’s intention to use the Koran at his swearing-in in Congress. Ellison, who’s right in this matter, has responded like a real gentleman in all this, much to his credit, and to his opponent’s embarrassment.

Rod is no soft touch on the subject of Islamic extremism, of course, so his words carry extra weight.

[Picture:  Ann Heisenfelt/AP]

[Clive]

Frank Portman (alias Dr Frank) leads an unusual double life. Rock aficonados may know him as the singer-guitarist with the Bay Area group, The Mr T Experience. He’s now also the author of "King Dork", a terrific novel for wordly-wise older teens (and adults too). It’s a hugely readable mix of high school angst and detective story. A film version is said to be in the works. I had a great evening with him not long before the book came out. Sloshing back beers in a grungy San Francisco bar, as a juke box played in the background, I actually started enjoying music I’d normally run miles from.

Here’s his choice:

I first saw Richard Allen’s "Punk Rock" in 1977 on a table in a strip mall bookshop.  I was thirteen, stranded in a hopeless suburb yet gathering clandestine data on punk rock wherever I could, so I tended to notice stuff like that.  I didn’t buy it at the time, but the cover copy impressed me:  "The Punks are on the march – and the Teds are out to nobble them."  A punk rock novel, I said.  One day I will read you.

Time passed.  Twenty years later, I stumbled on the book again in a used bookshop in Sheringham, Norfolk.  This time, the cover copy made me laugh.  I bought it though. It traveled with me back to California, but remained unread for ten more years, till now.

A reporter goes undercover to write an expos√© on "a day in the life of a punk star," plunges into the seamy world of New Wave rock, and bites off a bit more than he can chew. The punk rock material is simply plugged in to a standard trash-pulp framework, like Michael Avallone with spikes. Richard Allen, I understand, is a pseudonym of one David Moffatt, who churned out tons of the stuff in the seventies.  All in all, not a bad way to tie up a loose end in one’s life, though I doubt I’ll be reading another Moffatt title any time soon – unless I manage to find a copy of "Diary of a Female Wrestler", which he wrote under the name Trudi Maxwell. I very much doubt I could resist that.

[Clive]

Frederick Kagan reiterates his call for a "surge" :

Clearing and holding the critical mixed and Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad would require approximately nine American combat brigades, or about 45,000 soldiers. There are now five brigades operating in Baghdad, so America would have to add four more ‚Äî about 20,000 soldiers…

The increase in US troops cannot be short-term. Clearing and holding the critical areas of Baghdad will require all of 2007. Expanding the secured areas into Anbar, up the Diyala River valley, north to Mosul and beyond will take part of 2008. It is unlikely that the Iraqi army and police will be able to assume full responsibility for security for at least 18 to 24 months after the beginning of this operation.

This strategy will place a greater burden on the already overstrained American ground forces, but the risk is worth taking. Defeat will break the American army and marines more surely and more disastrously than extending combat tours. And the price of defeat for Iraq, the region and the world in any case is far too high to bear.

As for past mistakes, Kenneth Pollack – author of that influentual pro-invasion book, "The Threatening Storm" – trawls through a very long list. Is it too late to make up for all that lost time?

[Clive]

A reader’s thoughts on David Irving and his cohorts:

One of the things that’s usually not discussed in Holocaust denial debates is the role that arguments made in bad faith play. Deniers aren’t simply people who disagree, who are exploring other ideas, or even people who are a little unhinged, but who believe what they’re saying. They’re very often people who forge documents, create deliberately misleading transcripts, suppress evidence, and so on.

This is not, in itself, a compelling argument for the Holocaust denial laws, and I would never support such laws here in America. But I think it’s an important bit of context for the discussion. The debate is usually framed as being about people who sincerely hold a goofy view for some reason. But I don’t think they believe a lot of it themselves — I don’t think it’s possible to design and implement a fraud without really understanding that it is a fraud.

Libel laws are restrictions on free speech that we live with because they only apply to lies. The Holocaust denial laws don’t specifically restrict themselves to people who are lying, but in practice, that’s the way they’re usually applied.

[Clive]

One piece of music that always makes me go weak at the knees: the quartet "Mir ist so wunderbar" from Beethoven’s "Fidelio". The camerawork is slightly static, the singing is anything but.

PS: Sorry – I’d forgotten that the names of the performers only appear when you go directly to YouTube itself. They are Lucia Popp, Gundula Janowitz, Manfred Jungwirth and Adolf Dallapozza. Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic.

[Clive]

I’d better remember some of these rules… The Economist ponders advice on the art of conversation, from Cicero to the latest guides catering to those of us who are much happier talking to a computer screen than a human being. (I mean, would you believe that Alex and I have never actually met, and I’ve only ever had one face-to-face conversation with Danny?)

Sound words from one guru:

Ms Shepherd offers seven quick ways to tell if you are boring your listeners, which include "Never speak uninterrupted for more than four minutes at a time" and "If you are the only person who still has a plate full of food, stop talking." Her checklist of things best not said to the parent of a newborn baby should be memorised for future use. It comprises: "What’s wrong with his nose?" "Should he be that colour?" "Isn’t he awfully small?" "Shouldn’t you be breast-feeding?" "Did you want a boy?" "Is he a good baby?" "He looks like Churchill…."

[Alex]

Tom Bissell has a fun piece in the New Republic (suscription  – which is cheap! – may be required) on the Estonian revolution. There’s the usual references to the hi-tech, online lifestyle in Tallin, the super-gorgeous women ("or whom the phrase "out of my league" had been invented,") and the rest of it.

But Bissell also notes that Estonia’s homogeneity and a widespread political consensus has been crucial to its success. The same might be said of Ireland, who’s own economic miracle was in large part based upon a remarkable degree of political unity in Dublin (in Scotland, by contrast, the Scottish "consensus" conspires to hold the country back. More of that later however…)

Welath and success will bring challenges to estonia just as it has to Ireland. But Bissell is happily confident:

Beyond the velvet ropes of its exclusive nightclubs, Estonia might not be the most exuberant place on earth, and its winters may be the atmospheric equivalent of a Bergman film, but it is blessed in many more important areas. Estonia’s greatest blessing might well turn out to be the degree to which its hard-won liberty has heightened the awareness of what its people can now freely achieve in this world. In the decidedly unmessianic Estonian air is something I have not sensed in my own country in a long time. It feels, in a word, sane.

[Clive]

Some interesting responses to the post on crime in my locality:

I live in Pattaya Becah, Thailand, and about half of my social circle here is British, and half American.  The subject of crime is covered quite often, and we Americans are always stunned at the amount of property crime that exists in England as compared to the United States. 

The simple fact is that people don’t break into houses in America because there is a very real risk that they could be shot by the owner.  It’s really that simple.  Remove that possibility, and property crimes sky-rocket.

Additionally, Americans are always shocked at the amount of assault that goes on in England compared to America.  The reason why America has so few assaults compared to England is because America has so many murders.  Simply starting a fight in America… like breaking into a house… can have consequences that go beyond a slap on the wrist from the local magistrate.

Well… As I always tell my British friends:  In England your house may be burgled, you may be beaten senseless on the high street, and your car may go missing, but at least you’ll never be killed by gunfire.

Another important difference between the US and the UK is that here in Britain – which is obviously a much smaller place – neighbourhoods are much more mixed in terms of income and race. The New Jersey friend whom I mentioned before agrees with me on this. In fact, he misses the livelier social interaction that you get on this side of the water. On the other hand, as I said before, he feels safer where he is. 

A New Jersey e-mailer chips in:

Yes, our neighborhoods and towns are actually quite segregated in terms of class and race.  In fact, I suspect the police here would be wary of anyone who looked "different," meaning not white and prosperous.  Not such a melting pot, are we? As a very fair blonde person,  I wouldn’t dare drive too far to my east as I’d be in towns where I was the exception to the rule.  Not safe for me there at all.

One last point. I also think that – contrary to the view from Hollywood – there’s less basic civility in Britain than in America. (Have you seen the House of Commons lately!?)