perfidy

Buckethead and I have spent time before lamenting the US's policy of getting into bed with dictators during the Cold War. Saddam Hussein was one of those. Aziz Poonawalla has a killer post up to that effect which goes into some detail about the level of support the US lent Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. Hint: the words "anthrax" and "Rumsfeld" turn up. Not to get all tinfoil-hatty on the topic, but this has turned into a rather embarrassing, inconvenient, expensive, and generally lamentable situation thirty years down the line.

As one of Aziz' commenters says, "Catching evil dictators is a great thing, but it would be better if we did not have a policy of working with evil dictators when it seems in Washington's best interests." Right on. Although it's one thing to sit here in my swivel chair and condemn Reagan-era foreign policy for cozening up to known monsters and another to have to decide between backing the Shah and backing Hussein, I think the flaws in the US's policy of making allies of convenience are all too clear, and the long-term costs are far too high.

[wik] Please note that Michael Moore is quoted in the AP post linked. Guess what? He's an irritating f*ck, but so is Newt Gingrich and last week he said something totally on the money. So, again, can it with the America-hating stuff.

"Juan non-Volokh" at the Volokh Conspiracy writes:

On a Diet? Drink Guinness! Yes, it's true. The rich, thick, chocolate-brown mother's milk of beers has fewer carbs and calories than many lighter (and less tasty) beers. As a story noted in yesterday's print WSJ, 12 ounces of Guinness have only 125 calories and 10 grams of carbs -- less than Budweiser, Coors, or Corona. It might even be good for your heart. So, what are you waiting for? Drink up!

Hell, yes! Guinness is one of the most perfect inventions man has ever devised, right up there with the shovel, the wheel, the waterproof shoe, and US football on CBS.

Moreover, new studies suggest that people that eat fewer calories live longer. What's a long life without beer? Drink Guinness.....

(responsibly)

I'm going to invite a withering barrage of return fire now.

1) Now that Saddam Hussein has been captured (sweet!), can we please return to the war on terrorism? I've never quite understood what the value was of libervading Iraq instead of Syria or some such overt state sponsor of terrorism. To make a movie analogy, was going into Iraq like Han Solo walking into the Mos Eisley Cantina and shooting the dude nearest the door, just to scare the shit out of the other scum and villains?

Please understand. My saying this does NOT imply that I am an "idiotarian". It does NOT imply I am an America-hater. It does NOT imply I am pro-Saddam. It does NOT imply I am pro-totalitarian. 5) Its does NOT imply that Mullah Misha needs to issue a fatwa on my ass. I'm just asking that the Taliban be beaten soundly over the head, Iraq's infrastructure stabilized, Israel and Palestine made to sit quietly and work shit out (...yeah....), and the rest of the actual America-haters in the region dealt with. I think some of these goals have been neglected of late.

2) Let's not forget that Hussein's capture, sweet as it is, was never the reason for invading in the first place. Remember the imminent threat from Weapons of Mass Destruction? Where the hell are those things, anyway?

3) Did you know that the US's reserve of troops is now down to a few National Guardsmen? Jeeeeesus.

4) Why exclude Germany, France, Canada, etc. from bidding on contracts in Iraq and invite Rwanda to the table? And why do it on the same day that James "The Fixer" Baker is working to get Germany and France to forgive debts to Iraq. It's called synergy, George. It's a business buzzword. Or did you fall asleep during Org-Management class?

5) If the economy's so hot, why is Wal-Mart selling so many gift cards this holiday season, and so much less actual merchandise than expected? Is it because the full-time job market still sucks ass and because most people have burned their savings and run up credit card debt?

[wik] A commenter at Pandagon has framed the Bush's line on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction beautifully. Taking a cue from Bush's intimation that not having found wmd's yet is evidence of their existence, they are going to tell their daughter this Christmas that "wanting a pony is the same as having one." Zing!

A cabal of three critics (Sasha Frere-Jones, Keith Harris and Rob Sheffield) are doing an end-of-the-year music roundup on Slate (a wholly owned subsidiary of Globocorp). The general concensus is that this year was a bery, bery good year for American pop music in general, and indie rock, hip hop and microhouse in general. Since I no longer live in New York, and no longer go up in da club ever since I realized that "da club" is in general a shitty experience, I have no idea what microhouse is. Very short house songs? House music where the hook is deconstructed and turned inside out? I already know about Moodymann, and I've always felt that house tracks go on too long. But that bit of Manhattanite insularity aside, go read: 's fun!

I haven't bought an album of new music this year since I picked up Erin McKeown's disappointing third album this past Spring, at least that I can remember. But I do listen to the radio a lot and watch MTV and VH-1 in the morning, when they play actual videos. So. Was it a good year for music? In general, sure it was. One of my personal favorite trends in hip-hop continued with artists boosting totally unlikely styles and making them work like a twenty-dollar lapdance. Li'l Joe's "Get Low" used schoolyard handclaps, Missy Elliott's "Pass The Dutch" used jumprope rhymes and Kelis' "Milkshake" used street percussion (you know, those dudes who play 5-gallon buckets and trashcan lids for money outside the subway). Coming on the heels of Truth Hurts' "Addictive" late last year, which featured a ridiculously great Indian taxi-driver music loop, I thank God every day we live in a global culture. It really is the shit.

Indie rock does seem to be on a bit of a run. The White Stripes have become more than critical darlings and are actually played on the radio some. Jet ripped off of the Strokes ripping off Sweet ripping off the Dolls with their excellent "Are You Gonna Be My Girl." The Strokes released a second album, I hear. I bet it's pretty good. But do a handful of great singles indicate a breakthrough for indie rock to mirror the "alternative" breakthrough of the early 90s? No. But it sure sounds good on the radio.

Disappointingly, Liz Phair and Jewel both released boring albums. We expected this from Jewel, who has all the talent of a roll of paper towels. But Liz... come on, Liz. "Volcano!" Remember "Volcano?" This glammy pop shit we can get from Madonna. Just about the only critic that disagrees with me on this is Sasha Frere-Jones writing at Slate. Her take:

We understand that Liz Phair is flipping the mainstream syntax something fierce, but others think she "committed an embarrassing form of career suicide" with her brilliant new album. Her new album has sold 245,284 copies in six months, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while her previous album whitechocolatespaceegg has had five years to sell 274,542. This is why we love record companies! Because, for all the wrong reasons, they can get it right sometimes.

Well, Sasha, I disagree with both your opinion and your reasoning. Her new album isn't brilliant to my ears, merely tired and calculated. And to compare her new record, which got both pop radio and MTV exposure, with whitechocolatespaceegg which got neither and was widely recieved as a fan-only record to boot, is fatuous. I'm thrilled that "wcse" sold a quarter million, and a little surprised. I'm only sad that Liz Phair's moment of greatest exposure came when she apparently has run out of interesting things to say.

My favorite album of the year: Speakerboxx/The Love Below by Outkast. It's like Prince driving the Mothership with Eric B. and Rakim riding shotgun. It really is that weird and it really is that good.

I don't have a least favorite album of the year. I don't buy albums I don't like.

Although it's probably in bad taste to do so, I get a great deal of pleasure from those sweet times when sanctimonious moralizers are brought low. Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, John Ashcroft, and so on, profess to be good Christians. I'm a Godless Heathen (or at best a Unitarian), and even I remember that thing about the mote in your eye and the splinter in your neighbor's. Or whatever.

John Ashcroft, come on down!

Exhibit A) The legality of medical marijuana use has been upheld in California. That's right, the G-d D-mn Liberals on the Ninth Circuit Court used the pro-Federalism Commerce Clause implications of two recent conservatively-decided SCOTUS cases to decide the Federal Government may not interfere with medical marijuana programs in California. W00t! Seems Federalism is a good idea that the G-d D-mn Liberals can use too.

Thanks to Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer, and kudos to him for being one of the lawers to argue the case in favor of pot before the 9th as well. If I ever see him around Boston, the beers are on me.

Exhibit B) Ashcroft has been rebuked for violating a court-imposed gag order regarding a terrorism trial.

A federal judge in Detroit rebuked Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday for violating a gag order in the nation's first terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said Ashcroft "exhibited a distressing lack of care" by issuing public statements during the nine-week trial that ended in June, despite a court order prohibiting them. Twice, Ashcroft publicly praised the government's lead witness in the case.

According to Ashcroft, his remarks were "inadvertant." Luckily for him, "inadvertancy" has been long established as a valid defense in American courts. Just try it next time you are caught speeding. "Geez maaan, I didn't mean to!"

Exhibit C) The FEC has slapped Ashcroft for illegally using $110,000 in his unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2000. The funds had originally been donated to a committee he had formed to explore running for President and as such could not be transferred. He should know that. He became the Attorney General not long afterwards.

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president. Additionally, Ashcroft was fined for lending an extensive donor list to one of his committees that had been paid for by the other [Hey! That's illegal!].

In documents released yesterday by the FEC, Garrett M. Lott, treasurer for the two Ashcroft committees, the Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, agreed to pay a $37,000 fine for at least four violations of federal campaign law. Lott agreed "not to contest" the charges.

It's probably clear I'm no great friend of Ashcroft's. And while I don't necessarily agree that he's an evil idiot hellbent on destroying the country, I do think he's a sanctimonious putz who's only slightly more qualified to be an Attorney General than an above-average dog would be. Therefore, neener, neener, neener!

[wik] n.b. Extensively edited and cleaned up to follow a better version that appeared on blogcritics.

Those words are, to paraphrase,

"How about you lay off the bitching about who invaded who and whether it was right, and instead why not lend a goddamn hand, already?"

Via Spoons:

>Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people Courts.

Just go look at the University of Pennsylvania's page for "Reporting Hate."

MINILUV awaits your report.

Long-time readers of this website, as well as those certain friends unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of my endless beery grad-school screeds against the perils and pitfalls of academic jargon run amok, will know that I have it in for theory.

That is, I have it in for academics who use theory for its own sake without a hope or thought of applying their lovingly modelled ontological meanderings to actual evidence drawn from the world as lived by actual people. For me, the moment of apostasy came in a discussion of George Chauncy's book, "Gay New York," which used boatloads of primary evidence to describe how the idea of "gayness" as in homosexuality became defined in the early 20th century. It's a giant of modern cultural history, and a thought-provoking book for graduate students.

The ensuing discussion, which ranged far and wide, featured several theory-mad members of the class postulating at length about the political motivations of the titular gay New Yorkers who, in the bars and bathhouses of the city gave rise to gay culture and indeed, the very idea of gay as a separate thing from straight. "Oh, they were asserting their otherness." "Oh, they were subverting gender norms." "No, they were subverting sex norms." "No, they were finding alternative avenues to power in a world that systematically denied them voices."

All fine, all possible. But the the theorists never once suggested that men who went to bathhouses in New York in 1910 may just have been horny and maybe a little lonely sometimes too. Is it even possible to talk about why people have sex, without discussing desire? You bet, in crazy theory-land!

I bring this up to talk about the often-assumed connection between bad writing and bad thinking. Theorists are often totally impenetrable, with some offenders famously so (Judith Butler, Stanley Fish). Their critics assert that their tortured language suggests an unclarity of the underlying ideas.
Well, that's often true enough. The above example is a shining exemplar, and anybody who peer-reviews papers will come across howlingly bad writing that clearly is the product of a person who should probably give it up.

Many weblogs (Butterflies and Wheels, Critical Mass) spend time drawing out and justly ridiculing the densest examples of academic writing. Recently, Crooked Timber has joined in, and it's been fun. Bad writing sucks! But "Daniel" at CT has weighed in with a counterargument that I agree with entirely. I've always felt that theory and jargon are necessary (evils?), and all disciplines have to hash things out at that level, among themselves, before translating the results into English for lay people to see.

Daniel, who's an economy geek by training, writes:

typically, the formal language of a discipline (its jargon) has, among its other functions, the function of making it more difficult to make the characteristic mistakes of that discipline.

In economics, it’s politically convenient adding-up errors. In literary criticism …. well, I don’t know enough about criticism to be sure, but if I know properly the little bit I do know, one of the things that at least some of them are all about is careful analysis of the implicit assumptions of common language. And it strikes me as not on the face of it unreasonable to suggest that the most common mistake in this kind of analysis would be to make arguments which unconsciously rely on an unanalysed implicit assumption, and that one way to avoid this common mistake would be to adopt a formal use of language which made it more difficult to rely on the common meanings of words. So the defence of Bad Writing on the grounds that “some subjects can only be written about in unclear terms” actually encapsulates an important truth about the subject; it’s probably possible to write about the implicit assumptions of everyday terms without falling into exactly the same kind of mistake yourself, but it might take a hell of a guy to do it. Just as it is possible to write in a sensible and apolitical way about economic matters, but it takes a hell of a guy to do it.

Furthermore, it’s much more difficult to write economics in a manner comprehensible to laymen (and check by hand that you’re not making the mistakes) than to write in the mathematical style (when the maths basically does half of your checking for you). So the progress of the subject at anything like its current rate depends on the ability of professionals to use the formal language when talking to each other, and to only use Good Writing when expressing ideas to a non-specialist audience which have already been judged as worthy of the extra effort.

Read the whole thing-- it's worth it. Seen in this light, bad writing is not so automatically an indicator of cottonheaded thinking. Instead, it's a tool like many others that can often be put to bad ends. Moreover, when you drag the pale pointy-heads in the back room blinking into the sunlight, they're bound to come off badly. Out of context, academic writing has all the appeal of a wet towel on a cold day. But judgements have to be made in context, because, as they say in history, context is everything.

Check this out-- I stole the picture from Occam's Toothbrush (original pointer from the vodkapundit). The Israelis have a gun, a working, shooting gun, that shoots around corners. Note the tiny video display sighting mechanism.

The future is now. Where's my jet pack? I was promised a jet pack.

[wik] GeekLethal helpfully suggested the above headline. I think it's much better than my original nod to "Get Smart," which is all funny and stuff, but who the hell wants a shoe phone? Not me!