A Badge of Honor

Politics, Twenty Minutes into the Future

In the Max Headroom movies & shows (one each, on each side of the Atlantic) almost exactly twenty years ago, a number of prescient futuristic predictions, one by one, have proven accurate to the point of making them seem like hindsight.

On this primary season one more fulfilled prediction that might have flown under TV viewers' radars was realized when people who watched the debate via the Web instead of the broadcast/cable channels were treated (if so they chose) to superimposed graphics of real-time feedback from focus groups (delivered via dimmer switches, where each of the 100-odd individuals expressed their approval as a matter of degree by rotating the wheel, or somesuch device, in their hand) as they themselves watched the debate. (post link goes to web page with many atomic examples of this).

This is the same opinion/emotion gathering technique used by marketers and TV programming experts (and political strategists, which is the same as the previous two groups) for decades to save them the trouble of actually having to know anything in order to do their job.

What I'm keen on is that, through the Web, the political process now saves EVERYBODY the trouble of having to know anything. It neatly closes the feedback loop circuit of people basing what they think on what other people think.



(I admit I happened to find out about this Monday night out of necessity because the Demo debate was shown on CNN and I don't have cable, not because I watch the debates on the Web just so I don't have to get up from my desk chair, which is somehow less shameful to me; guess which one I'll be using from now on?)

Why did Meadow cross the road?

There appears to be some frustration with the truncated manner in which The Sopranos ended a couple of days ago (link goes to final scene off YouTube).

I was going to write something philosophical along the lines of "You don't get to cross the road, capisce?" in the sense that, from the very beginning, The Sopranos has maintained a high standard of "life, take it or leave it" naturality (even within the unnatural context of organized crime etc) and that the most honest way to end the show was, in a sense, in between heartbeats.... would Meadow make it across the street? She has always been shown to be awkward at a practical level -- to the end, even, making a botched attempt to park her car... would she make it hurriedly across a road pitched about by furious SUVs in the dark of the night..... (*)

(*) I found it surprising that other commenters online chose to focus on the "larger" issues of the show; Would Tony go to jail? Would Tony be offed? Some, obsessed with this last possibility, went as far as to notice the presence and body language of the other patrons in the diner shown in the last few seconds of the episode.... I got NONE of that the first time around (I don't often do social feedback loops so the pre-broadcast hype was not part of my appreciation to that degree). And yet the massively perceived metaphor was the same....

.... then my husband, in a rare fit of acoustic acumen, pointed out that you can hear the ding of the diner's door bell just before Tony looks up for the show's finals shot; one is forced to imagine that it must be her coming in through the door that he has looked up to see.

I didn't need the ding, David.

(although the onion-rings-as-sacrificial-hosts were a nice touch)

-J

Gimme a word.. a bouncy word....

The Germans have Schadenfreude (indeed, with a capital 'S' as is their style). The Spanish have "me alegro". I'm sure the Italians have something pithy that involves a fraction of a syllable and some sort of hand-flapping gesture.

Americans need to invent a single word (something better than your typical "sniglet" pls) that expresses the unbounded yet specific joy at seeing somebody who could not be saved from the comeupance demanded of their catastrophically bad behavior by their fortune and the connections and favors thus purchased. Think Martha Stewart, Bernie Ebbers, Enron's Lay and Skilling... These are the American royalty who did not dodge the Bullet of Justice (if I may gag you and me both with a bad metaphor).

Perpwalk was fantastic; however it is not specific to serving time but rather the event of being arrested / arraigned in a public manner. How about, to put it in dermatological terms in honor of Paris Hilton's unnaturally smooth skin (which will surely begin to fall off as a result of multiple chemical peels in the next 5-to-10) . . . Karmapimple?

Hogzilla as Rorschach test of national zeitgeist

It looks like an 11-year-old shot and killed ("hunted") a freak (wonder) of nature.

It looks like his father set up a web site and , somewhat self-consciously, created two segregated content silos putting into each the positive and negative comments that people had to give in response.

Comment 1:		Comment 2:
[sarcastically] "Where do I get me one of them terrorist pigs so I can teach my son how to kill too?"		[kudos to the father for taking the time to teach the son how to hunt]. "That's alot [sic] of what's wrong with people now...they have no one who shows that they REALLY care."

It looks like the assumption on the left is that only a mindless jingo could ever think of hunting for pleasure or sport or a hobby.

It looks like the assumption on the right is that people who don't see the point of hunting are lacking because of an un-nurtured childhood.

It looks like what everybody in column A has to say about everybody in column B, everybody in column B also has to say about everybody in column A.

It looks a lot like two crowds, separated by a police riot line, yelling at each other and not hearing each other at all.

It looks to me like a wonderful pig, dead or alive.

The Lion Roared

(or: Why is Al Sharpton following me?)

Christopher Hitchens debates the thesis of his new book, “God is Not Great” with Al Sharpton at the New York City Public Library

Last night I went to the New York City Public Library to see one of my favorite geopolitical writers present the arguments behind his brilliant new book, God is Not Great, or as we programmers like to call it: (Allah’u != ackbar). Among many other things for which I admire him there is his having played the role of Devil’s Advocate during the beatification hearings for Mother Theresa (or as he preferred to describe the task, serving “to represent the devil pro bono”).

Some personal back-story: I had actually purchased the entrance ticket back in February before I had even heard of the book, which was published this month. I thought it was just a refreshing change of pace for him to speak about a more ready-made “general-interest” topic than Jefferson, Orwell, or Cyprus and was curious how his laser-focused mind would handle it. Furthermore, at the time it was not billed as a debate, but merely implied a lecture/Q&A format, and certainly not a debate with Al Sharpton specifically (click for a photo truly horrific in every sense imaginable). I had reviewed the event web page a couple of days before the date in order to send it out to friends and encourage them to join me and discovered that the format had changed (or so it seemed to me; I tend to miss the obvious with ease). “Uh oh” was the best reaction I could come up with. (Wasn’t John Shelby Spong available?)

While I can’t be sure through what perverse talent-search process we ended up with Mr. Sharpton, I can certainly say that he came unprepared in the worst of ways and that his main strategy was to dishonestly re-frame Hitchens’ thesis in a way that was convenient to him in order to “win”; so much for unshakeable faith.

The thesis of the book can probably be summed up as follows: The instigation of belief in an all-powerful, all-castigating, all-judging supernatural being is, in itself, prejudicial to the good of mankind. We can say “in itself” because, in addition to what little practical or emotional good might come of it (and which could be gotten through other means) it is, as a result of human nature (which is, to uninvitedly paraphrase Hobbes, cruel, brutish, yet long on the manipulative arts), always guaranteed to be used as a means of controlling people and to justify behavior that they would otherwise find reprehensible. Hitchens gives several examples of this in the book, taken both from current events (e.g., suicide bombers, the cruel existence of Israel, the indulgence of child-molesting priests, the prohibition of simple prophylactics which prevent disease and the conception of unwanted-children and thus, ironically, reduce the need for abortions etc etc) and long-standing “cultural” traditions that are permitted and more often encouraged explicitly by scriptures of all major religions (e.g., both male and female circumcision, slavery, segregation, and everywhere, at all times, war).

Mr. Sharpton takes this clear-headed premise and insisted that “we are not here to debate scriptures; we are here to address the title of your book, ‘God is Not Great’. You are saying that people who misuse religion will do evil things; that is clear to me also, but it does not address the central issue of whether God does or does not exist, or whether he is or is not great.” (I have a bad habit of quoting such things from memory but in the interest of not waiting until the transcripts come out I have done my best to do Mr. Sharpton’s point justice; I will update with explicit corrections once we do have transcripts).

Hitchens, in an argument that either went completely over Mr. Sharpton’s head or was deliberately ignored (not once, but four times) explained that if one is to describe “God” as omniscient and omnipresent then unless one is God one can never know God; that God is outside the realm of what is knowable, thus (given the lack of evidence that is useful in ways other than presumptive in the putting-the-cart-before-the-horse sense) the question of God’s existence is not a tractable one and outside the scope of any intellectually honest conversation. But of course, this is the only argument to be found in Hitchens’ book which, as he admits himself, cannot be proven or disproven, by himself or anybody else, thus Shaprton chose to interpret the nature of the debate circumscribed within that area exclusively and smugly challenged Hitchens, over and over, to prove something that cannot be, and thus does not need to be, prove. *Yawn*.

Still, it was a satisfying evening with more than its share of interesting moments (quite a few actually illuminative regardless of opinion). Probably the one that will stick out in my memory of this was of the first person to the mic during the Q&A session. It was a short, roundish, middle-aged woman (which the Pythons might have described as an updated American version of their “pepperpot” character) whose haltingly, deliberately delivered (and clearly overly-rehearsed) contribution went something very much like this:

“Mr. Hitchens, what makes you think that average, normal Americans like myself are interested in the ramblings of a secular, superficial foreigner who goes out of his way to demonstrate how his knowledge of religion is shorter than his penis?”

... the dumbstruck silence was deafening as she, without waiting for a response, calmly walked back to her chair. Then the next person, without missing a beat, simply stepped up and asked the first actual question of the evening. I’m glad she was not even given the satisfaction of shock.

A few minutes and questions later, a man stood at the mic and said:

“Mr. Hitchens, I want to start by letting you know that I am also an atheist, but that I’m in the process of writing the opposite book you wrote. I am writing a book that, from the atheist’s perspective, seeks to defend and justify religion. Having said that, and with the fair assumption that 95% of people are religious and find value in it, and 5% of people are atheistic and find no such value, can you explain the rationale of engaging a point of view which would satisfy 5% of people and make 95% of people unhappy?”

Hitchens’ initial response was appropriately pithy, directed at no-one in particular: “...what an astonishingly stupid question..!”, for which he later on bothered to apologize (I imagine due to concern at being accused of impolite name-calling; he is, after all, British, even if of the more interestingly hot-headed sort). I myself went further than that in my own mind’s response to the question: “Because it happens to be true, you inexplicably literate pinhead!”

After the Q&A, there was the obligatory book-signing and queue-based kvetching with the author that goes along with it. I took the liberty of writing on the inside cover what is perhaps the most true and undeniable statement made on stage all evening, which happened to be spoken by Mr. Sharpton, and asked Hitchens if he would mind signing my copy of the book alongside that quote. He put on his glasses, saw what I had written, paused, and smiled at himself. “I like irony”, I said. “My pleasure”, was his response as he began to write.


...or, rather, scrawl; it wasn’t until the next day I had the time to look up his addition to Mr. Sharpton’s line and realized that “Ecrasez Ii’njam” [sic; see link ahead] was not the name of some obscure Albanian freethinker but rather a quote from Voltaire, which now happily graces my book. My thanks to him for directing me to it.




In closing, I found it satisfying that the event took place in the lower-level auditorium (the very belly, if you will) of the New York City Public Library, a treasury of knowledge that flies in the face of superstition, harmless or otherwise. Paul Holdengräber (yes, really), the director of public programs of this lecture/debate/etc series (enticingly named “Live From the NYPL”), introduced the evening by declaring that his job description was “to make the lions roar”, referring to the pair of leonine statues, nicknamed “Patience” and “Fortitude”, which flank the grand stairs in front of the building. Indeed, last night one of the two took a much-deserved vacation and allowed the other to roar mightily.

(the water glass out of which he drank
during the debate; it has been known
to cure lumbago in those who touch it)

How Curious...

While there is nothing sadder that somebody trying to sing bubblegum dance pop with a thick, uncooperative Castillian tongue, it is however worthy of note that this is probably the first instance of an unabashedly sexual, 100%-equal-time bisexual music video. I know this because a friend of mine told me the chick has "awesome, perfect tits" and I believe her.

Feel free to provide links in order to correct me on the "firstness" of this all day long if that's what it takes. (Link & image go to full video & screencaps).

I was born in the year 1973

(updated 4/8)

I've always wondered what it was like to live in the mid-70s and not soil myself every 2 hours. My only thought ever about Gerald Ford has been that it was a bit of a disconnect awarding him the presidency for having invented the automobile. Also, (speaking as somebody who hates to dance) obviating any consideration to disco music, I'm keenly aware that 70's music kicks the 60's ass.
				With all this in mind, I am very gratified to note a growing trend in today's zeitgeist: The 70s are back (um... again).
Here are the top five (admittedly anecdotal) signs that it is 1973 again:
5. America Ferrera's outfits in Ugly Betty
				4. The U.S. military state of readiness is starting to resemble a certain painting by Bosch
3. While remakes of eye-gougingly-bad 70s movies and other TV fodder is being thrust upon the unwashed.....
				2. ...it is also true (as in the 70s) that crotch-grabbingly good, character / dialogue / script- driven indy movies are coming out every day. You just have to know where to look (hint: not blockbuster or most movie theaters).
and finally...
1. Next year's headlines.

ps there is also the small matter of what i have been wearing to work recently

FELANK, Inc.

Listen to the 11:30 -> 17:40 segment.

I tried to do this in the late 90s with "gear", as in "The Beatles are gear" but it didn't take off.