perfidy

Well this is interesting...

The New York times is reporting that the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad is likely much, much, MUCH less severe than originally thought. The Times cites a number of twenty-nine items verifiably missing, down from 170,000. I’m going to be a nut here and suggest that the damage lies somewhere in the middle range, probably closer the high end. Nevertheless, this sucks slightly less than previously thought.

In other news, Orin Kerr suggests that, if librarians are in a purple rage over the Patriot Act's provisions pertaining to libraries, they should also be campaigning against about pre-existing statutes. Whereas the Patriot Act makes it possible for the FBI to obtain library and bookstore records secretly, that power has long existed for any enforcement agency who can get a subpoena for them. So there. I'm married to a librarian, and respect them very much. I just want to make sure they don't get off on some Quixotic campaign and ignore other possible dangers to the integrity of their profession and the privacy of patrons.

In a recent post (permalinks are hosed-- thanks, blogger!), Bad Thoughts took the Bush camp to task continuing to "rattle sabers" at North Korea. Daniel Drezner agrees this is a baaaad idea. For that matter, so do I. The Bush Administration's policy on North Korea has been oddly unfocussed, given Bush's general tendency to assert his will and [Patrick Stewart voice:ON] Make It So[OFF].

If any of our six readers don't already do so, go check out I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts. He pays attention to international news, and I don't. Great story up about the possible non-rescue of Jessica Lynch, another about North Korea and nukes, and a third about the EU, the UK, and the value of the $. He's a smart one and reads the things I don't read. 

[update] I am going to go out on a limb here. Bad Thoughts has a story up about how Britain will have to give up universal health care if it wants to fully join the EU, or risk breaking the EU's bank to pay for said care. I don't get it-- in the EU's charter, is there no provision for member states to allocate funds locally? I know that Europe has a mania for central control, but that is just bad policy if I understand correctly. Any input from people who actually know something about this?? 
 

I'm back. 

So, speaking of New England, Boston has now banned public smoking. New York City has already done so, and a movement is underway in Chicago that will most likely result in a public smoking ban here as well. Everyone is taking their cues from California on this one. 

So people in those cities, working in the food and drink service industry, will no longer be exposed to the risks of second-hand smoke. While that's certainly understandable as the impetus behind smoking bans, in the bigger picture, there are a couple of other motives behind it.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth century, reform movements sought to legislate their vision of morality and impose it on everyone else. In both cases, it was drinking that was evil. Now moderate drinking is good for you. While it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that the medical profession will ever outline the benefits of moderate smoking (because there are none), these smoking bans do have a certain amount of moral legislation behind them. While providing service employees with smoke-free work environments is fine, moral legislation is dodgy at best. So what's next in this new reform movement? 

My guess is that the new reform movement will center less on the legislation of morality, despite such legislation as a component of the smoking bans, and more on trying to protect people from their own stupidity and errors in judgement. A total ban on smoking has been on the minds of reformers since the early Nineties, and they're sort of accepting a compromise on the public smoking bans. But to protect us from ourselves, galvanized by public smoking ban victories, reformers will demand that smoking anywhere be legislated out of existence. Soon, in their zeal to protect us from our own dumb-assedness, helmets will be required for motorists as well as cyclists. We will have to wear helmets while driving, riding a bus, or crossing a busy city street. Those who do not wear helmets will be fined. 

Since most accidents occur in the home, we will have to wear helmets while preparing dinner. Adult-gates, a version of baby-gates, will be used to separate us from such hazards as bathtubs and pesky formica floors. When we have to shower or stand on kitchen formica, we will have to wear helmets. Activity will be monitored by cameras in the home. 

Red meat will be banned, along with anything that tastes good. We will become a society of non-smoking, non-red meat eating, non-barbecueing (causes cancer too), non-potato-eating (also a carcinogenic substance, apparently), moderate drinkers who must wear helmets while performing ordinary daily tasks. People who might be terrorists will have to sew a crescent onto their clothing, until they can be herded into camps, where they cannot hurt the helmet-clad peoples of America. 

Smoking will of course be permitted in the concentration camps. But just to be on the safe-side, SARS infected blankets will be issued. It's all to keep America safe and wearing their helmets.

Now that this forum has covered such top-5 lists as "Best Presidents," "Worst Presidents, and "Most Unlikely Military Geniuses," I'm going to make a left turn out of the lofty and offer another very personal top-5 list, just for giggles. Here are my top five favorite things about New England that nobody in their right minds would ever enjoy, but for some reason go over big here:

Moxie
Sky Bars
fried whole-belly clams
The Dropkick Murphys
The Red Sox

I'm not a native New Englander, but damn if I don't like to watch a Sox game while sucking down a Moxie and some fried clams.

Being that I am someday going to warrant a multi-volume biography (if Franklin Pierce rates 620 pages, I'm gonna be good for at least a thousand), I really should retrieve all the tapes I yammered about below and set about preservating (preservating?) these vital records of the early 1980's. 
 

That reminds me. The truest test of where a person is truly from in the USA is what local jingles they know by heart. From time to time, I run across people from my general neck of the woods, and if they know how to finish the line "Ed Mullinax is" - then there is an instant brotherhood born that can never be torn asunder. More than anything else, that defines my homeland. 

Here in Boston there is an association of Kentucky Colonels who live in New England. Only real Kentucky Colonels need apply. Perhaps I should start a competing society, open to only those souls of briar-hopper and hillbilly lineage from Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The Friends Of The Burning Rivers, New England Chapter. We'd sit around watching old videotapes of Superhost from Cleveland, Ghoulardi and Son of Ghoul from Akron, Don Fedko's news reports from Pittsburgh, and listen to broadcasts by Myron Cope, Voice Of The Pittsburgh Stillers on KDKA. It'd be grand. 
 

Not that I have much to add, but Jacob Levy at the Volokh Conspiracy is blogging like a madman about X2. In my value system, that makes him cooler than John Lennon.

As for the movie itself, I'm waiting until the backwards-hat wearing tools have all seen it so I can enjoy my nerd-movie in peace and quiet.

Contest: If any man/woman jack among you can email me the correct origin story for Shadowcat, I'll send you a free CD. Responses to the johnny email at left. Extra bonus points for the title/issue it's in.

If James Lileks is going to spend the week blogging, I'm going to spend my week bleating. Ohhh, he might have the age, experience, and talent, but I have youth, obliviousness, and raw enthusiasm. And like they say, youth and enthusiasm trumps age and guile every darn time. 

When I was younger (so much younger than today) I used to tape songs off the radio and make mix tapes to trade. The content of these tapes were bad classic rock ("Double Vision," "The Final Countdown"), amateur comedy skits, and a huge avalanche of novelty songs from the local morning show, sub-Dr. Demento stuff that was hi-larious to a twelve year old but maybe isn't quite as compelling now that I have quality-control software installed. 

Nevertheless, there were some stone classics in with all the dreck. "Smoke That Cigarette," "Dead Puppies," and the entire Weird Al Yankovic oeuvre, from "My Bologna" to "Eat It" remain great stuff, soul food for my inner preteen. In fact, just mentioning "Smoke That Cigarette" puts it back in my head.

[camera pans slightly up and to the right as a thought balloon appears above J T-C's head. Cartoon animals gambol within as a barbershop quartet of monkeys link arms and sing "Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette/ Puff, puff, puff, until you smoke yourself to death/ And tell Saint Peter at the golden gate, that you hates to make him wait/ But you just gotta have another, cigarette."] 

Ok - I'm back, that was nice. Somewhere, Thomas Pynchon is having a fit. There was an actual, erm, point to this post, but it has been shoved into a corner by the cartoon animals so here's some stuff about clothing. 

Went shopping with Goodwife Two-Cents this weekend for a new summer wardrobe. It is an indication of just how much being married has changed me that I am now aware that there are summer clothes and winter clothes, the difference being more than just whether they keep you warm or cool. The big change was that I found myself agreeing to buy alien garments that a younger me would have kicked my ass for wearing. A lavender shirt. A baby blue shirt, in a really nice subtly two-tone fabric (the miracle of synthetic textiles!). Brown, backed clogs (clogs!?!) with excellent arch support that look totally boss with my unfashionably unfashionable brown suit. And the capper, a tie that in certain lights could be accurately be called, um, PINK. Pinkish, anyway. To wear with the same brown suit. I really should kick my own ass anyway, just out of duty, but I look so shaaarp, and I don’t want to wrinkle anything. Besides, I still wear black jeans and plain t-shirts on the weekend, just like the forty-year-old I will become eleven years hence. 

The mall trip reminded me of one of the very best novelty songs of my youth, which neatly combined my incredibly nerdly Star Trek fixation with the base humor I still love. If you have ever been a fan of Dr. Demento, you have heard it and probably even know all the words. It is Leonard Nimoy's immortal 1967 classic, "Highly Illogical." The pertinent stanzas run thusly: 

From far beyond the galaxies I've journeyed to this place

To study the behavior patterns of the human race

And I find them highly illogical 

[cue cute two-step pop music] 

Girl meets boy they fall in love 

She says he's everything she's dreamed of 

But when they get married before he's aware 

She changes his habits the way he combs his hair 

She changes him to someone he's never been 

And then complains he's not like other men 

Now really I find this most illogical

Not that Goodwife Two-Cents has changed me at all. I have simply learned that some things I used to do are wrong, and that there are better ways. Her guiding hand has merely eased my path to enlightenment. 

Ahoy! The point!! 

It occurs to me that Doctor Demento is a perfect example of how niche genres of music thrive in a non-commercial setting. Somewhere in a drawer, on a little homestead in the brown hills of northeastern Ohio, lies a shoebox filled with those mix tapes, the truest documents of my childhood. Of the hundreds of pieces of copyrighted material within, not a bit of it was licensed in any way. And you know what? Even as the RIAA is planning to burn down the house to kill the mice within, my record collection contains many, many legitimately bought records by everyone from Weird Al, Spike Jonez, and The Frantics (authors of the greatest novelty song of them all, "Ti Kwan Leep/Boot To The Head"), to Europe ("The Final Countdown," a legacy of my poodle-metal days back in Ohio). All these purchases were made possible by my illegal taping and distribution of those songs when I was very young. I know these songs because I came to love them for free. Not necessarily over the radio, mind you, but because my little community shared the songs within itself. The RIAA can crack down all they want—it just proves that, after fifty years of peddling rock and roll and twenty years of focus-groups and statistical analysis, they have no idea why people buy what they buy, and why they choose to download it for free instead. 

[update]: Umm... heh, heh... I would never, ever, EVER wear the pink(ISH) tie with the lavender shirt. Just for the record.

They're idiots. They're idiots. They're my former colleagues. From the New York Times (free req req'd):

Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives. . . .

. . . [Another] program, dubbed "freeze," locks up a computer system for a certain duration — minutes or possibly even hours — risking the loss of data that was unsaved if the computer is restarted. It also displays a warning about downloading pirated music. Another program under development, called "silence," scans a computer's hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them. One of the executives briefed on the silence program said that it did not work properly and was being reworked because it was deleting legitimate music files, too.
Other approaches that are being tested include launching an attack on personal Internet connections, often called "interdiction," to prevent a person from using a network while attempting to download pirated music or offer it to others.

Ohhh, that's REAL SMART, cheeto. The industry only survives based on the goodwill and laziness of music fans. The major labels have been living on the edge for years, trying to balance their pit-bull business tactics with their need to not actually infuriate the average music listener.

Well, if they wanted to find the single, best, way to piss off every single music consumer in the United States, they've done it. I hope they go through with it. The same day that Jimmy and Timmy and Tammy and Mr. Lawyer's computers freeze up because their legitimately ripped copy of Purple Rain set off some massive knee-jerk retaliation is the day the record labels confront suicide face to face. I hope that day is tomorrow.

Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has a much more reasoned and thoughtful post up, describing the many ways in which this plan is illegal. I suggest you read it. Orin Kerr is very smart where I am merely loquacious and vituperative.

Buckethead is now a daddy, in the filial rather than the pimp sense. Sir John Christian The As Yet Unborn But Imminently Expected is no longer Sir John Christian The As Yet Unborn But Imminently Expected, but rather is now Sir John Christian The Child Who Has No Idea What He Is In For Now That He's Here.

Congratulations to Buckethead, Mrs. Buckethead, and John Christian Buckethead. He's a lucky boy.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

This message from the Minister of Minor Perfidy: Thank you for your cooperation

An Orthodox Marxist would not necessarily have to hate the United States, but probably would, as the United States is a capitalist nation with a class structure. An Orthodox Marxist would have to advocate the overthrow not just of the United States government and economy, but all governments and capitalist economies throughout the entire world. As I've said before, it's about global class war and revolution. The Vanguard of the Proletariat in America would be responsible for the overthrow of the U.S., but if they're serious about their aims they would have to immediately encourage and coordinate revolutions elsewhere to fulfill the prophecy, and a la the efforts of the Comintern under Leon Trotsky.

Clayton Cramer is blogging a good series on how to manage your personal finances, based on his experiences. Now, I'm no financial wizard. My net worth right now is equivalent to a Zagnut and a cup of diner coffee. But, since I now am also responsible for Goodwife Two-Cents, and hope someday to be responsible for Increase Two-Cents, Mercy Two-Cents, and Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith Two-Cents, I need to get my Little Commonweal in order. As far as I can see, Cramer's series is full of practical advice and simple explanations of concepts that might help me do that. Good for me, as I have the internet attention span of a five-year-old.

The series parts are here, here, here, and in four more places that are linked from part III, so I shan't belabor the point. Besides, it's Friday afternoon and I need to get home so I can go to Target in our shitheap Pontiac. There's a section in the Cramer guide called "Cars: The Monkey On Your Budget Back." It really spoke to me, like the Beatles spoke to Charles Manson. Except not as murdery.

This was originally posted by Buckethead back in March, and I thought I'd toss it on the front page again. We need your entries like zombies need fresh brains. To live. Original post follows.... nnnnnnnnnow: 

Design your own constitutional amendment, and win the undying admiration of the ruling troika of this webpage. The entry picked as winner will recieve good karma in vast quantities, and a Chinese fortune cookie (only half eaten, fortune still included.) The rules: 

1. It can't be an amendment that is already in the Constitution.
2. Your amendment cannot change the laws of physics.
3. Try to solve a real problem with your amendment, and not guarantee plentiful dogfood for every canine in America, or annex Norway or something.
4. Write your amendment like you thought it might actually go in the Constitution with all the other clearly and beautifully written amendments. 

After entries are received, we will post interesting ones, and declare a winner. Tell your friends! Send your submissions to johnnytwocents at yahoo dot com or bookethead at yahoo dot com. Either one. Excelsior!
 

I've seen several sources hailing a new report by the State Department that indicates a marked decline in terror attacks in 2002.

Good news, right?

Well, would be. Except, as Calpundit observes, the worldwide decline is actually due to a huge decline in the number of Colombian oil pipeline bombings, nothing else. Seriously. There's a graph, you can check it out yourself. In fact, Middle-East-based terror attacks stayed steady, and Asian attacks rose.

So what does this mean? Hell if I know, but I can be sure of two things: this report tells us exactly nothing about how safe we are relative to one year ago; and the President will be making early campaign hay with this out the wazoo.

Side note: our President looked good on the aircraft carrier. As campaign appearances go, it can't be beat. Nevertheless, pretty don't make me agree with his policies. I hope he gets stomped like a narc at a biker rally in '04, unless Kerry is the candidate. Then I hope they both get stomped. A paradox!

Did you know that May 1 is Loyalty Day? It was decreed so yesterday by our President. Huh. Thanks to Matthew Yglesias and "Stentor Danielson" for the pointer and a little perspective on the matter. 

From what I can find, "Loyalty Day" started in the thirties as an anti-Communist counterpoint to Mayday, hence the positioning of both on May 1. Occasionally, the holiday has been exhumed by Presidents (Clinton, Kennedy, Truman) hoping to inspire an upwelling of patriotic fervor in the breasts of the teeming masses. 

Even though I am a spineless jellyfish of a centrist, I have some pretty clear and solid ideas about what America means. "Loyalty Day" is just about as American a concept as "Worship The Giant Stone Tiki Day" would be, if a day of Tiki-worship were foisted upon us by the government. 

Warning: hifalutin pompousness follows. Ridicule at will. Bill Whittle is better at this sort of thing. 

Certain events in the recent past have changed how Americans approach freedom, liberty, and the rest of the world. Despite some people's fears, we do not yet live in a police state where dissent is met with brutality (that only happens in Leftist paradises like Cuba and China, and also some theocracies and dictatorships, but not here). Yet, in response to the threats we now know we face, concepts have arisen that don't belong in our national lexicon. Two such are the terms "Homeland" and "Loyalty". Both are fabulously alien to the American experience (in that they imply things the United States was founded as an alternative to), both are used too much these days, and neither should ever be common coin around Washington. I'd go so far as to call them un-American. ”

"Homeland" doesn't make much sense applied to the United States as a whole - it smacks of a European sense of place and obligation. If your family can trace its lineage in the Black Forest back to the time of Charlemagne, and it's fairly certain that someone in your bloodline repelled Roman legions and fought at Verdun, then you have a homeland. Hell, for that matter, if your family settled Saco, Maine in 1640 and stayed on through Algonquin raids, witch hysterians, and the various wars and famines, then Maine, if that's where you live, is your homeland. To a certain degree, northeastern Ohio is my homeland, in that it's where I was born, grew up, and learned about the world. I feel a kinship to the place and its people. Jim Traficant, sorry to say, is one of mine. 

In short, the word "homeland" implies the residency in and identity with a specific place, accompanied by a specific way of seeing the world, something akin to the French concept of terroir. The United States is too young, too big, and too diverse to warrant such a sweeping term. Furthermore, United States is a collection of people, whereas "homeland" places the emphasis on the place itself. Similarly, "Loyalty" implies an authority that flows the opposite way of that on which the United States is founded. "Allegiance" is more apt. Allegiance implies that you have considered your citizenship, weighed its benefits against the alternatives (such as living in France or a compound in upper Montana), and voluntarily chosen to participate in the ongoing project of the USA. Of course, nobody actually thinks about these things when taking the pledge, but that is nevertheless the underlying idea. Where "Allegiance" implies a pact freely entered, "Loyalty" suggests something demanded of a person by a superior. In cases such as swearing-in of new citizens, this language is appropriate (as is so for members of the Armed Forces). Such new Americans are taking an oath to cast off other ties they may have in order to affirm the solidity of their commitment to the United States. 

But oaths of loyalty are not required by the United States of its citizens. The word "union" appears ten times in the Constitution, "loyal*"” none. And, of course, the preamble has all that crap about "we the people" and "more perfect union." Everything is voluntary, open, and based upon the will of the people to bring themselves together. 

Ideas like an "Office of Homeland Security" and the revival of "Loyalty Day," though they might seem like good fixes to immediate crises, are in the long view not part of the American ideology at all. Problems like this happens from time to time in American history, and they are often far, far worse than those I'm discussing. A huge number of Native Americans are dead. Slavery wasn't addressed seriously until 1860. Lynchings happened all the way into the era of color photography. But we don't kill Indians any more (partly because there aren't many left, yes), nobody keeps slaves today like they did in 1820, and lynchings are now front-page horrors when they happen, not a dirty secret. Although far from perfect, at its best, America is a self-correcting system that finds its bedrock principles no matter what temporary diversions it encounters. I just hope that the current fetishes for "homeland" this and "secret courts" that are temporary, and over time the inertia, collective idealism, and ingrained teachings of the American people will make these things as curious in the future as debates over the Gold Standard are today. 

A final note. May is also "Masturbation Month." "Loyalty Day" or "Masturbation Month": the choice is yours. (Thanks, Matthew!)

From the NYT via talkleft:

The Alabama House voted against a bill Tuesday that would have removed a ban on sexual devices, such as vibrators, from the state's obscenity law. .... A federal district judge in Birmingham has twice ruled that the ban is unconstitutional. The first ruling was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the second ruling has been appealed to the appeals court.

....The sponsor of the bill, Rep. John Rogers, D-Birmingham, said because of the court ruling, the obscenity law is unenforceable as long as it contains the ban on sex toys....With little serious discussion, the House voted 37-28 to leave the sex toys ban in state law, leaving Rogers standing at the microphone shaking his head.
"What you just did is make our obscenity law illegal. You voted for obscenity,'' Rogers shouted at lawmakers.

G'hyuk!

[update] Eugene Volokh thinks I and others are being to hard on the Alabama Legislature, pointing out that the Federal court decision only invalidated the sex toy section of the law, explicitly leaving the rest alone. Though Mr. Volokh may be correct, as usual, I stand by my derisive g'hyuk! analysis as the Alabama legislature has nevertheless voted to ban sex toys. How silly, I say!