Month: October 2009

Here's the latest ad from the Christianist right opposing Washington state's domestic partnership law. It's a useful reminder that it doesn't matter what equality is called – civil unions, domestic partnerships, civil partnerships, or civil marriage – the GOP believes in no rights for gay couples whatsoever. And in this ad, the argument is explicitly religious and has no secular case to make whatever. It also implies that gays are child-molesters.

A reader writes:

Andrew, that truly was a low blow to go after Bill Kristol in that way. I normally admire your writing as thoughtful and nuanced, even though–like many of your readers, I would wager–I have my fair share of policy disagreements with you. I also have my issues with Kristol. But to imply (not so subtly) that Kristol's and the theocons' admittedly backwards approach to gay rights in the liberal West translates to them "celebrating" the torture and murder of gay Iraqis by Islamists is absurd on its face, and frankly vile. Cheap shots against your political opponents should never play a role in what I believe is your genuine quest for truth and fairness in things political. I'm disappointed in you, and I hope you'll retract that piece of self-serving invective.

My sympathies are with the murdered gay Iraqis, not poor Bill Kristol. If he wanted to speak out about this, or any other varieties of violence and cruelty against the homosexual minority here or abroad, he could. He hasn't. To the best of my knowledge he has never spoken a single word in public in defense of gay people, unless forced to. If I have missed something, let me know and I will post it. And when a war he helped foment ends in this kind of massacre and he says nothing, it's eloquent enough for me.

Christianism just gets weirder and nastier.

The Palin circus continues …

The latest poetic offering from a reader on the question of dogs and death. It's by A.E. Stallings (whose Archaic Smile can be bought here):

The Dogdom of the Dead

There is no dog so loyal as the Dead,
Always with you, trotting along at your heels,
Or snoring lightly and taking up most of the bed,
Their paw pads twitching and their tails a-wag.

For even in your slumber, they still tag,
Dawdling behind and charging ahead,
Sniffing a memory out like a fleeting rabbit,
But always losing the scent when it crosses the Styx.

They are creatures of habit and cannot learn new tricks.
But what you would throw away, they fetch back for you,
A game they never tire of, and what you would keep,
They bury in the ground, a hoard of bones. 

If you try to sneak off without them, they sound such moans —
Wind skinning itself in the trees, the boo-hoo of trains —
And then come bounding behind you, faithful as shadows.
You will come to prefer them, dumb and dogged, forgiving,
For the Living, like cats, insinuate into your arms,
And when they’ve licked everything clean, dictated their terms,
They stray back into the moonlight and other kitchens,
Ungrateful creatures with their own lives.

A YouTuber finds a remarkable film:

Shot and hand-colored – frame by frame – at the end of the 19th Century.  Still captivating today, but just imagine what it must have been like to watch an image move and transform like this in 1899!  A beautiful example of the earliest cinematic ART. One of my three favorite Lumière films which I've uploaded.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

A reader writes:

The Taliban did not "rout" the US. Taliban forces were repelled with NATO losses, including 8 US, and Afghan police captured. To say that forces were routed would be to say that the position was overrun, or abandoned in a disorganized, catastrophic manner. 

Do not be "appalled" at a senior officer's willingness to resign. If an officer believes he cannot carry out the civilian leadership's vision, then he has a moral and professional obligation to share his opinion with Congress and resign so that officers with a different opinion can attempt to carry out the civilian leadership's intent. This is should never be characterized as a threat, because it is an implied constant in his duty. If a voluntary resignation alters the debate or has a political consequence, so be it.

If more officers were faithful to this duty in the run-up to OIF then perhaps the mistakes and misjudgments made by President Bush and SecDef Rumsfeld  might have been mitigated; or the war avoided altogether.  We saw such backbone — to put duty before career — from Gen Eric Shinsecki and you rightly acknowledged it.

As a longtime reader and Iraq veteran I am surprised and disappointed at these two recent blog posts.

Elizabeth Pennisi marvels at the social cooperation of ant, termites, bees and wasps:

Termites mate for life, with a single queen and “king” producing generations of siblings, all equally related to one another. Once in their lifetime, wasps, bees, and ants leave the nest on a mating frenzy, with the queens returning with enough sperm to last the rest of their reproductive years. The consequence of having just one mate for life is that the many generations of offspring are all siblings that on average share half their genes. That number of genes in common is the same as they would have in common with their own offspring should they try to reproduce. Thus, if there is even a small survival advantage to group living, that advantage would be a strong enough selective force to encourage the evolution of sterile castes and true eusociality, Boomsma argues. “When a parent refrains from mating with any additional mates, their offspring are free to stop mating at all,” he explains. However, strict monogamy is rare, particularly over evolutionary time scales, and thus, so is eusociality.

A reader writes:

You have quite clearly mischaracterized Morozo's argument.  Morozo's point is that technology does not INHERENTLY lead to democracy.  It may well be that technology helps enabled people with reformist and democratic ideals to organize and communicate.  That is not the same thing as what many people presume, that technology will free people.

Morozo's presentation actually missed the most devastating argument available to him, which is the juncture of two of his other arguments.  Repressive regimes may have a favored lever of control, but they certainly have no compunction about using any and every tool available to them.  The most devious thing that a regime like china can do is to *both* cultivate blog networks and subcultures which agree with the regime, *and* use the networking property of the internet to identify and shut down networks which are critical.

In doing so, they can claim that there is a legitimate and independent community which they had no hand in creating (literally true), and the predominance of those voices will eventually develop a self-sustaining critical mass, if they are the only voice available to hear.  This is about incubating your own virulent crazies by protecting them from counter-arguments.  

This is a modus operandi that should look familiar.  It's about controlling the means of distribution, and you can still do it in the age of the internet.

In fact, that is exactly what the USA is trying to do to combat Islamic extremism.  They are trying to identify and target extremist networks online, and, in the middle east, prop up and promote organizations and politicians who purport to have ideals concordant with our own.

Technology is just a tool.  We, the users, provide its values.  There are many aphorisms that are appropriate to this situation.  First, that the strongest cage is the one which you build for yourself.  Second that Technology may change the terrain upon which we do battle, but the real war is waged within the hearts and minds of men.

An Indonesian rescue worker looks on as a team remove debris in an attempt to free dead bodies from rubble on October 3, 2009 in Padang, Indonesia. An earthquake of magnitude 7.6 struck at 5.16pm local time 85km under the sea north-west of Padang on September 30. According to reports officials have reported a death toll of 700 in the port city of Padang. However, that is expected to rise to over 1,000. By Daniel Berehulak/Getty.