Simulacrum

If you like paragraphs like this one

Baudrillard's concept of simulation is the creation of the real through conceptual or "mythological" models which have no connection or origin in reality. The model becomes the determinant of our perception of reality --- the real. Homes, relationships, fashion, art, music, all become dictated by their ideal models presented through the media. Thus the boundary between the image, or simulation, and reality implodes (breaks down). This creates a world of hyperreality where the distinctions between real and unreal are blurred.

then you'll be appropriately spooked and fascinated by this photograph.

Stem cells

Another demonstration of our president and public being terrifyingly scientifically illiterate is the blocking of stem cell research. When people finally catch on to what this is about, our policy will change and we will embark on some very aggressive funding. Stem cells are the #@*!! Holy Grail of new medical technologies --- the applications we can think of now are like science fiction, and there's good cause to think that a decade or two of new research and development will make those ideas look like asprin and band-aids in comparison.

Here's a recent taste:

The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth --- for example, a molar or an incisor --- the bud will form.

Using a local anaesthetic, the tooth bud is inserted through a small incision into the gum. Within months, the cells will have matured into a fully-formed tooth, fused to the jawbone. As the tooth grows, it releases chemicals that encourage nerves and blood vessels to link up with it.

Tests have shown the technique to work in mice, where new teeth took weeks to grow. "There's no reason why it shouldn't work in humans, the principles are the same," said Prof Sharpe.

The Guardian 3 May 2004

Today's quote

On Wolfgang Petersen's film Troy:

Homer's estate should sue.

Roger Ebert

What now?

Matthew Yglasias has collected an interesting list of pundits' proposals for what we should do about Iraq. Get out? Hand over power to whom?

Don't hope for a miracle. He doesn't have any good answers. We're screwed.

For myself, I think that we broke it, we bought it. The US needs to be prepared to shoulder the costs of whatever solution we come to. And we have to displace GWB as President, as anything done on his watch cannot hope to have any legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis or the world.

newWitch

So some time ago, I read this

SPECULATOR TIP:

The first person to create and launch a mass market glossy magic magazine for young women will become as rich in the first decade of 21c. as the creators of Loaded magazine became in the last decade of 20c.

Grant Morrison, 15 November 2000

and wished I had the money and know-how to do it. Too late now.

Today's quote

One also must remember --- and this is very important --- that it is simultaneously the case that states with high mean incomes support Democrats while people with high incomes support Republicans.

Matthew Yglesias

So profound that I'm not sure what it means. There are facile explanations that come to mind, but I suspect that there's a whole subtle world of stuff going on supporting this phenomenon.

Cuteness, and punk rock

By way of Amygdala, I bring you this very thoughtful article about the unstoppable wave of cuteness rushing out of Japan.

It is characteristic of subcultural style that it should resist the interpretations of outsiders. The signs emblazoned across the bodies of these Japanese teenagers speak in code to those who inhabit the same world of meaning; that, in one sense, is the point. But more than this, the broader ‘meaning’ of style is not something that can be read off its surface. If cute means anything, it isn't going to be what it seems to mean. It isn't, for example, necessarily juvenile to dress like a child. Nor does dressing up at the weekend necessarily betray a desire to be ‘someone else’. Most important, the deliberate dumbness ... doesn't necessarily mean they have nothing to say, or that they are saying nothing by acting dumb.

Cute culture has thrown Richie and other writers off track because it doesn't conform to what the baby boomer generation expects of youth culture. Cute is not rebellious — at least not in any obvious way. It isn't cool. It doesn't seem to be about sex. It doesn't want to overthrow capitalism — cute is hooked on brand-names. It is cosy, not angry.

I love that first sentence. It's a subject I've alluded to before.

Another example: My soul sister Alysse tells a story about taking her mother to a punk show, as a way of educating her mother about what it was that her sister was getting into. Mom was, at first, horrified by the mosh pit: all those kids crashing into each other, seemingly trying to knock each other down.

“Watch what happens when one of them falls,” says Alysse.

This takes a while to spot — the energy in a good pit is powerful, but much more controlled than it appears to the unfamiliar eye. But in time some skinny punk takes a spill ... and almost before he hits the ground there are half a dozen strangers' hands helping him up. And mom Gets It.

Brotherhood. You're not supposed to be able to see it from the outside. Subcultures are like that.

Pens to Afghanistan

I know, I know: yet another plea for charity. For obvious reasons, though, I find this one is too poetic to resist.

When I first mentioned on my blog that I was going to be deployed, a large number of you asked how you could help me, what I would need for Afghanistan. The truth is, there's not much. However, I just went on my first mission with a civil affairs group and found a way you might be able to help me out.

It seems that the children of Afghanistan want nothing more than they want a pen.

It was explained to me that the villages through which I traveled (near Kandahar, where I'm based) are so poor that a pen is like a scholarship to these children. They desperately want to learn but, without a pen, they simply won't. It's a long story. I won't bore you with it. Trust me, though, when I say that it would be a big deal if even a few of you could put up the call for pens for me ...

---

Oh, goody! Atrios picked up this story.

Sanctimonious fraud

If you hate Joe Lieberman the way I do, you'll enjoy this recent screed from Michael Bérubé.

Lieberman, for his part, has always struck me as a member of the religious right dressed up as a ''New Democrat.'' He's very concerned about ''moral'' issues like violence in video games, and he's sad that discussions of God and spirituality have been banished from the public sphere (to which I always reply, exactly what public sphere do you inhabit? As Richard Rorty once put it, an atheist can't get elected to any office higher than that of dogcatcher in this country). And let's not forget his important partnership with Lynne Cheney as co-director of the right-wing Association of College Trustees and Alumni and his consistent pattern of alignment with wingnut conservatives in the culture wars.

But now here comes a profound moral crisis ...

Saddle up

One more post about the Recent Unpleasantness.

Ken MacLeod has a poetic call-to-arms for lefty boomers that you should read.

Something within you has become harder and colder this week. You've glimpsed the bestiality and the decadence, in the system's nerves like a venereal disease. It's sick, and there is something sexual in its sickness, something warped beyond therapy. The oiled skin of a gladiator, the lusty roar of the arena. A line from Cornford, whom you haven't read for years, slides beneath the surface of your mind. ''The painted boy in the praetorian's bed.'' Camphor and pincers, piss and blood. You're in this rotting system, you're part of it. You pay the soldiers. Civis Romanus sum.

Laws

In the spirit of Newton, Kepler, and Murphy, Edge asked a bunch of smart people for Laws, and got a bunch of cool responses. Here's a taste:

Miller's First Law of Offspring Ingratitude
People who don't understand genetics attribute their personal failings to the inane role models offered by their parents.

Miller's Second Law of Offspring Ingratitude
People who do understand genetics attribute their personal failings to the inane mate-choice decisions made by their parents.

Hut's First Law
Any attempt to define what is science is doomed to failure

Brand's Law
Information wants to be free.

The rest of Brand's Law
Information also wants to be expensive.

Ogilvy's Law
Many well defined manifolds lack unifying centers that define or control them.

• Just because some things are genuinely sacred does not mean that there is a god.
• Just because a corporation or a country seems to be hierarchically structured does not mean that any single leader is really in charge.
• Just because some behavior is conscious and intentional does not entail a "ghost in the machine," a homunculus, or a central intender.
• Just because evolution appears to be directional, from less order and complexity toward greater order and complexity, that does not presuppose either an alpha-designer or an omega-telos.

Bunnell's Second Law of Retrievability
Everything is stored somewhere. The secret to retrieving things is simply finding out where they are stored.

Skoyles' Law of Literacy
A society develops democracy to the degree that it writes social, legal and religious ideas using the syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation of everyday speech, rather than that of a professional, literary or dead language.

Myers Law of Writing
Anything that can be misunderstood will be.

Kelly's First Law
Power, understanding, control. Pick any two.

Rushkoff's Law of Media
True communication can only occur between people with equal access to the medium in which the communication is taking place.

Simonyi's Law of Guaranteed Evolution
Anything that can be done, could be done ''meta.''

Today's quote

With the possible exception of Bill Gates, Dick Cheney is the smartest man I've ever met.

John Perry Barlow

Via a fascinating old post from Calpundit.

Geek test

Okay, see if you laugh at this item from Wired News which I found via Low Grade Panic.

If you take a close look at the form Google filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the exact value of its planned offering is $2,718,281,828 dollars ...

Did you laugh? If not, this may help.

... which some would immediately recognize as the mathematical constant e.

Didn't laugh? Congratulations, you're a human being!

How to write dialogue

On the 10th Anniversary DVD for Resevoir Dogs, Quentin provides a meandering rapid-fire interview (well, monologue) in which he tries to explain where his style of dialogue comes from.

Have them sound like real people --- like me, and my friends, and just other people --- and make references that other people make, that movie characters don't necessarily make. And talk about shit other than The Plot, alright? Most of us don't talk about The Plot in our lives. We talk all around things, and we talk about bullshit, and we talk about things that interest us.

Gangsters don't just talk about ''gangster plot'' related stuff, and just polish their bullets, and talk about this murder or that murder. They talk about songs on the radio. They talk about the chicken dinner they had last night (or that they're having this moment) and this girl, and they ... well, sometimes in gangster movies they talk about a girl. But that's about it. They don't talk about just stuff.

Quentin Tarantino

More homework

For those with strong stomachs, first take a look at the photograph here, then read this comment about it, then see what Rush Limbaugh had to say about it.

Then you're ready for David Neiwert's long, distressing essay Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism. It's long, but it's a good read. I've been meaning to encourage y'all to read it for a while, now. Today, having seen the quotes from the wingnut press about the Iraqi prisoners (and there's seemingly an infinite supply of irresponsible rhetoric on the right) it seems essential.

Do it now

Brad DeLong keeps the best weblog there is, hands down. Links to the best writing in the blogosphere. Intelligent left-leaning politics. Funny stories about his kids. Lucid explanations of esoteric economic theory. Witty Socratic dialogues. It's all there.

I know I keep plugging his blog, but particularly right now his blog is on fire with links to smart stuff all over the blogosphere, mostly about the crisis over US soldiers torturing Iraqis, and the Iraq situation. This is ''run, do not walk'' level stuff. Read everything he's posted in the last two days, especially Timothy Burke's primal scream.

Ratings

With a tip of the the hat to Mr. Conner, I say, ''Do not put a picture of a parrot on your flag! (This goes for you too, Guatamala!)''

And if you liked that, you may need Lore's Book of Ratings

Bad CEO

The political meme-du-jour in the blogosphere is Kevin Drum's ''Bad CEO'' essay.

Bush styles himself a "CEO president," but the world is full to bursting with CEOs who have goals they would dearly love to attain but who lack either the skill or the fortitude to make them happen. They assign tasks to subordinates without making sure the subordinates are capable of doing them --- but then consider the job done anyway because they've "delegated" it. They insist they want a realistic plan, but they're unwilling to do the hard work of creating one --- all those market research reports are just a bunch of ivory tower nonsense anyway. They work hard --- but only on subjects in their comfort zone. If they like dealing with people they can't bring themselves to read all those tedious analyst's reports, and if they like numbers they can't bring themselves to spend time chattering with distributors about their latest prospect.

And most important of all, weak CEOs are unwilling to recognize bad news and perform unpleasant tasks to fix it --- tasks like like confronting poorly performing subordinates or firing people. Good CEOs suck in their guts and do it anyway.

The Decembrist has an excellent follow-up on this subject, which captures --- in spite of his protestations that he knows little about business culture --- the character of weak CEOs I've known and takes Drum's comparison to the Bush administration a step further.

A writer followed the CEO of Avon Products around for several days ... [and] revealed, inadvertently ... that it is perfectly easy to sit at the top of a large organization, make dozens of ''decisions'' a day, and yet never really grapple with the issues the company faced. The Avon CEO's day consisted of meetings at which teams from various parts of the company essentially pitched him for authorization to spend more money or take more time on some project.
...
Neither the CEO nor the author seemed to show any recognition that ''the company was a dog,'' since the business of selling cosmetics door-to-door didn't have much future. For all the decisions, the CEO was as helpless to change his company as the worst-paid, part-time salesperson.

It was ... a revelation to me that someone could reach the top of an organization and yet be so completely passive and imprisoned within the assumptions of that organization's culture. There's all the bluster of leadership, all the ''I'm the one who has to make the tough calls,'' all obsession with the stock price as if it's an impeccable barometer of success, but underlying it all, just drift, not mastery.

Now as I pointed out a while ago, Teresa Neilsen Hayden actually made this point over a year ago.

I recognize that behavior. Lord help me, I’ve seen it done. It’s one of the tactics you can use if you’re in an executive-level job that’s beyond your abilities, you have to have meetings with underlings who know more than you do, and your only concern is to save face while making sure they’re giving you what you want.

---

Update: D-Squared Digest offers us more on the theme with his One Minute MBA.

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance
... if stock options really were a fantastic tool which unleashed the creative power in every employee, everyone would want to expense as many of them as possible, the better to boast about how innovative, empowered and fantastic they were. Since the tech companies' point of view appeared to be that if they were ever forced to account honestly for their option grants, they would quickly stop making them, this offered decent prima facie evidence that they weren't, really, all that fantastic ...

Fibbers' forecasts are worthless
... Not only that people who want a project will tend to make innacurate projections about the possible outcomes of that project, but about the futility of attempts to "shade" downward a fundamentally dishonest set of predictions. If you have doubts about the integrity of a forecaster, you can't use their forecasts at all. Not even as a "starting point" ...

The Vital Importance of Audit
... companies which do not audit completed projects in order to see how accurate the original projections were, tend to get exactly the forecasts and projects that they deserve. Companies which have a culture where there are no consequences for making dishonest forecasts, get the projects they deserve. Companies which allocate blank cheques to management teams with a proven record of failure and mendacity, get what they deserve.

I hope I don't have to spell out the implications of this one for Iraq ...

Senate

Long after I wrote this post, it inspired a better, even weirder idea. Here’s the original thought.

---

I have this little fantasy about restructuring the United States Senate. There are articles in both the latest Harper’s and in Slate a little while ago (and later, in the New York Times) arguing that we should just abolish the Senate altogether, because it defies the “one man, one vote” principle of equal representation. I agree with the critique, but I have a better idea for the Senate than abolition.

One of the problems with representative democracy as practiced now is that the representatives all speak for blocs of population determined geographically. When people hack the geographic representation system to give representation to minorities, it’s called “gerrymandering” and derided as an abuse of the system. It is an abuse … of the spirit of geographic representation. But it is not necessarily an abuse of the spirit of representative democracy.

Indeed, the American left has worked hard in the last few decades to redistrict government at various levels to create districts that give local majorities to racial minorities, bringing more color to the faces seen in the halls of government. Much lefty ink has been spilled asserting how this is essential to a truly representative political process. Here in San Francisco, this kind of redistricting of the electoral process for the city Board of Supervisors is widely regarded as a great progressive victory.

Geographic divisions are a logical way to group people for representation, for a number of reasons, but need not be the only way. Contemporary communications and transportation technology mean that there are are a number of significant populations with coherent interests who are thinly distributed across the entire country: not just ethnic minorities but also religious minorities, cultural minorities, political minorities. These populations deserve representation.

For instance, there are seven million motorcyclists in the US. Proportionately, that means ten Bikers in the House of Representatives. I don’t necessarily mean ten congresspeople who are bikers, I mean ten who represent the interests of a hypothetical Biker Party. A whimsical example, sure, but I’m not entirely sure that bikers have politics any less coherent than Democrats.

Granted, strong parlimentary representation of minorities can be a bit of a scary proposition. One of the characteristics — a virtue, though also a weakness — of our winner-take-all existing system is that it favours centrist representatives, which makes it easier to get work done. At 435 members, building effective voting coalitions in a House of Representatives teeming with Greens and Libertarians and other fringe players would be a headache.

But then consider the Senate, with only a hundred senators and strong traditions as a deliberative body. A hundred people can get to know each other and talk things through in a way that an organization of four hundred plus cannot.

I propose that we should fix the number of senators at 100, but allow them to be chosen in a nationwide election with completely open write-in ballots. The hundred candidates who get the most votes comprise the Senate. That opens the door to anyone who could scrape together three million votes. Think about that. I’m not sure who would end up in our Senate, but I think they would be a more interesting crowd than we have now.

Sure, one could argue, that means that Pat Robertson is sure to be in the club, and I admit that I don’t want that. He already weilds a hefty measure of political power, though, so I'm not sure that this is a new problem. A few nutty Green, Libertarian, evangelical, socialist, and who-knows-what-else senators asking pointed questions would be good for the political discourse. Or at least a lot more fun.

Update

There’s an added wrinkle which I’ve long thought about but didn’t include when I first wrote this up, as it seemed like a confusing complication, but as I grow ever more concerned about the un-democratic quality of the Senate the more important I think this becomes: under this scheme Senators should not have equal votes, but rather should hold voting power proportionate to the number of votes they received in the election. Thus the most popular senators would have stronger votes, matching their greater popular support.

That raises the possibility that more frequent elections for the Senate would be a good idea; senators would tend not to lose their seats but would see their strength wax and wane over time. Perhaps the Senate in this scheme should stand for election every four years, off-cycle from the President. If we kept elections for the House of Representatives biannual, those elections could be off-cycle as well, so that you could have a national election every year:

• 2012: President
• 2013: House of Representatives
• 2014: Senate
• 2015: House
• 2016: President

That might make the problem of it always being campaign season in America even worse, but that’s a problem that needs a different set of solutions having to do with media and money.

The New York Times has a great infographic showing the problem.

Stupidity vortex

Jim Henley reminds us that our legislators are dangerously technologically illiterate.

Stop Thinking! It's for the children! Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act of 2003 makes peer-to-peer file trading illegal:

(a) ACTS PROHIBITED- It is unlawful for any person to distribute peer-to-peer file trading software, or to authorize or cause peer-to-peer file trading software to be distributed by another person, in interstate commerce in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under subsection (b)(2).

Still in committee, from what I can tell.

I propose the Protecting Children from Bleeding to Death Act of 2004:

(a) ACTS PROHIBITED- It is unlawful for any person to distribute knives or other tools with sharp edges, or to authorize or cause tools with sharp edges to be distributed by another person, in interstate commerce in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under subsection (b)(2).

Blimp

From a funny yet tragic tale of of the conflict betwixt man and blimp:

The blimp which was up until this moment a fun toy here embarked on a career of evil.

Via uber-blogger Brad DeLong.

Sadr

More information you won't get on television: the Christian Science Monitor has a fascinating long article about the story of militant Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr.

It turns out that Sadr's opposition movement dates back all of the way to his father's opposition to the Ba'ath regime under Saddam, so his political credentials and determination are unshakeable. And he is an Islamist, whose ultimate goal is a cleric-led government like in Iran.

For his supporters, the stand-off with the Americans is evidence that he's on the right path. ''The tyrants always fear the ones who are most just, must good,'' says Ali Yassawi, sitting in the movement's main office in Sadr City, the sprawling Baghdad public housing quarter that is a hot-bed of Saddriyun, or Sadr supporters. ''At first I wasn't sure about Moqtada, but just like the father, our enemies are fighting against him. This proves he's on the right path.''
...
While the family fought Hussein, and now stands against the US, their oppositionist position has always had one objective: To bring the rule of wilayat al faqih, or the rule of the jurisprudent, to Iraq, patterned after Iran's theocracy. ''In difficult situations like the ones we faced under the regime of Saddam Hussein, people will always look for leaders who stand up for their rights,'' says Imam Hazim al-Araji, a cleric close to Moqtada. ''The Sadr line showed themselves to be the ones willing to stand up to [the] regime, and suffered for it. The people really respect this.''

Spring

3Jake has an aching description of what a guidance counselor sees at your local high school, come Spring.

Right around late May, things settle back down and everyone waits for the year to end. The mating rituals have mellowed and people have paired up or pared down. They are focused on final exams and end of the year parties. But Spring is rough. Really rough.

And my advice about talking to the brokenhearted boys, 3Jake? Tell 'em the truth. Yes, they will love again, and as impossible as it seems it will be every bit as strong, and they will even be happy again. But it won't be the same, it can never be the same again. And they can be sure that they will never, ever forget.

It probably won't help. Still, they deserve to know the truth.

Ewok apocalypse

Admit it. You hate 'em.

This document does not advocate or condone the extinction or betrayal of Ewoks, it merely reports upon a physical situation and the acts involved.

The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the Ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.

The page has more information than you could imagine, detailing the specifics of the horrid little teddy bears' deaths.

Today's headline

Holy doublethink, Batman! Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act, in the Washington Post.

The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed yesterday that it filed a lawsuit three weeks ago challenging the FBI's methods of obtaining many business records, but the group was barred from revealing even the existence of the case until now.

The lawsuit was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, but the case was kept under seal to avoid violating secrecy rules contained in the USA Patriot Act, the ACLU said. The group was allowed to release a redacted version of the lawsuit after weeks of negotiations with the government.

''It is remarkable that a gag provision in the Patriot Act kept the public in the dark about the mere fact that a constitutional challenge had been filed in court,'' Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, said in a statement. ''President Bush can talk about extending the life of the Patriot Act, but the ACLU is still gagged from discussing details of our challenge to it.''

If you think about the direction in which our courts are headed, we are in very hot water here.

Fallingwater

Teller, of ''Penn and Teller,'' turns out to be a pretty good writer. The man should have a blog. I was particularly pleasantly surprised to discover that he had done a terrific little essay about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

I've xeroxed pictures out of architecture books. I've read the philosophy of floorplans. I've even drawn my own. But I know little about materials, nothing about construction. So here I am, trying to be Jefferson, the gentleman architect, emulating Palladio; but deep down, I doubt I'll come up with Monticello. To get workmanship like that you need slaves.

Nevertheless, when I realized that my show would be playing in Pennsylvania near Fallingwater, the legendary home Frank Lloyd Wright built for the Pittsburgh department store tycoon around 1938, I decided I'd have to see it. Not that I could afford to build a single room of it. Nor that I would even have the slightest notion what was holding it up.

If you're a fan of the duo, or have an interest in magic, I also particularly recommend his acceptance speech for the Magician of the Year award, in which he tells the Secret Origin of Penn and Teller.

Condemned to repeat

The Agonist has a fascinating long post talking about the crystalization of Iraqi resistence to US occupation in which he starts by talking about the very early stages of the Vietnam war.

We had promised to back reunification of Vietnam, and instead, Dulles backed a strong man by the name of Diem. Much like Chalabi of our own day, he had connections, they thought they could do business with him. Instead of allowing elections we backed his rule in Vietnam, which handed out concessions to his close friends. It sparked a guerilla insurgency that Diem dubbed ''the Vietcong.''

He then starts to produce some very disturbing figures to unpack the nature and capacities of the current Iraqi resistence in Fallujah.

Fallujah, clearly, is connected with the old al-Tikriti network of supplies, and has found means of recruiting former military personnel --- both Saddamist and former resistence --- to their cause, they have military cadres from Syria and other Islamic countries. Sadr's military consists of green recruits, has no foreign military cadres. In the last two months however, the increasing use of SAM-7, that is to say, shoulder fired Surface to Air Missiles --- shows they have gained a connection to outside supply.

If the experienced commanders and fighters from Fallujah are allowed to train and cross pollinate Sadr's access to recruits, then within a year we will see the same transformation in Iraqi resistence that occured in the Vietcong in the 1959-1962 period.

Need I add that this is exactly the kind of thing that has been totally invisible to me this last week when I was dependent upon television to follow events in Iraq? I cannot describe the despair this inspires, thinking about how our political system is predicated on elections held among citizens informed by this worse-than-useless medium.

I'm not saying that all American citizens should agree with this argument. I'm not sure that I agree with this argument. But I am saying they should be hearing arguments of this complexity. And it's difficult to believe that most folks dependant on television are even aware that arguments of this complexity even exist.

Here's the Agonist's punchline:

The inevitable conclusion is that current policy is creating the conditions by which reactionary elements from the old regime can be being rehabilitated, and that their natural course of alliance is with the newly energized and violent groups that are springing up in the wake of US occupation. That this combination could easily lead to a military coup later in the cycle, one which will then impose a government of similar characteristics to Saddam's, though without the expansionist tendencies. Since oil is necessary, the US and others will be forced to do business with this regime.

West

The presumptive winner of the 2004 Jonathan Korman Award for Title Cleverness is Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma's essay ''Occidentalism.'' (For those who don't get the joke, the title plays off of Edward Said's smart and important book Orientalism, which talked about the Western myth of the East.)

The rest of the essay is as stupefyingly clever as you would hope.

The East does not begin at the river Elbe, as Konrad Adenauer believed, nor does the West start in Prague, as Milan Kundera once suggested. East and West are not necessarily geographical territories. Rather, Occidentalism, which played such a large part in the attacks of September 11, is a cluster of images and ideas of the West in the minds of its haters. Four features of Occidentalism can be seen in most versions of it; we can call them the City, the Bourgeois, Reason, and Feminism. Each contains a set of attributes, such as arrogance, feebleness, greed, depravity, and decadence, which are invoked as typically Western, or even American, characteristics.

Google divination

I just did a web search on ''tangled up in blue,'' for no really good reason, and got this New York Observer article, ''That Wild Mercury Sound,'' dated today.*

I think the title question is important. It has to do with something I think Mr. Dylan said to me in the course of that 1978 interview: I think he told me that he got the title of the song from a lost weekend he spent listening to Joni Mitchell’s classic Blue album, which predated Blood on the Tracks by three years. In effect, Mr. Dylan had been tangled up in Blue before writing ''Tangled Up in Blue.''
...
And then there’s the question of whether, even if he said it, he meant it. I don’t know, it makes sense to me: There’s a new kind of Dylan songwriting on Blood on the Tracks, one that he’s described as a shift from the kind of ''unconscious'' songwriting of the Blonde on Blonde period to the more conscious artistry of ''Tangled Up in Blue,'' which plays with time schemes and rhyme schemes in a way Joni Mitchell does quite artfully when she doesn’t tip over into self-parody. I’m not a big fan of "Blue," the Joni Mitchell song (my all-time Joni Mitchell fave is "Amelia"). Nonetheless, I could see Mr. Dylan getting rapt or wrapped up in Blue.

I interpert this peculiar little synchronicity as a sign that I need to tell you about the article. So there it is: it's pretty good.

---

* Looking again, I see that the Observer tricked me --- the article isn't really dated today. But still, it's really good.

Pirkinning

Imagine a group of fans deciding to do a Star Trek / Babylon 5 parody in which a Federation starship goes back in time to the present day and the crew uses their superior technology to conquer the world. No, wait, you don't have to imagine it. It seems that we're not far away from seeing the first feature-length fan parody with special effects better than the shows it imitates.

Oh, and get this --- it's made in Finland, so the dialogue is all in Finnish! How good is that?