Things are starting to get hectic before the intercontinental relocation and I probably won't have time to blog until I get back and settled in again. You can be sure that I won't be sleeping past 9 (as I haven't done the whole week).

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight and will probably write something about the experience of seeing that in a Michael Moore loving country. I'll see some of you very soon and be saying goodbye to others. The world is still not quite small enough.

By the way, I passed the German language test from last week. I'm happy about that.

I'll be spending the next three days at the Baltic Sea for a mini vacation so I won't be blogging.

Holy news aggregator, Batman!!

I've been experimenting with my newly-downloaded Newz Crawler news aggregator. It's cool. It does automatically pretty much what I've been doing manually and with increasing dexterity for the last couple years. It checks for website updates at user determined intervals. I'm not completely convinced that it's worth forking over $25 for, but it has its benefits. If correctly configured, it can help to increase the range of websites covered, but there is only so much time in the day anyway.

For Bush and Kerry, Different Lessons From 9/11 Report

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > For Bush and Kerry, Different Lessons From 9/11 Report: "Mr. Bush congratulated them and strongly defended his actions since the Sept. 11 attacks, saying 'Because of these achievements, America and the world are safer.'

'If an attack should come,' he said, 'American will be prepared.'"

How prepared were we if an attack were to come? I would say insufficiently.

Calling evil by its name

Through Passion of the Present: Both the Senate and the House last night passed resolutions declaring the crisis in Darfur genocide. They passed them unanimously. Good. Next step is a declaration from the President. There is some debate as exeplified by this article about the appropriateness of calling this genocide before there is hard evidence of it. I would hope that the world would be more interested in stopping people from being killed rather than counting the bodies afterwards to see if something should have been done. It seems clear that enough people are dying that it requires outside intervention. Outside intervention to save people would be facilitated by a declaration of genocide. Ergo, declare genocide. Moreover, clear definition could defeat its purpose of saving lives by giving killers, whoever they may be, security to kill X number of people so long as they don't kill X+1 people.

Also, for some more background on the crisis take a look at this at P of the P which includes an excerpt from this article. And for more general info this article pointed out to me by someone at that site is a good summary and includes this:

An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people have been killed. USAID reports that over 300 villages have been destroyed. Infrastructure has been devastated to the degree that reconstruction may be impossible. Over 1 million people have been internally displaced and over 160,000 refugees have fled to eastern Chad.

In the surprises section for today:
Sudanese critical of genocide resolution

....."But what is equally obvious is that the American public thinks that it is genocide and therefore getting Congress to rule on this was a politically expedient way of mollifying public opinion while circumnavigating the legalities," he added.

I'm not exactly sure what he means by circumnavigating the legalities unless he means that since only the Congress is declaring it a genocide and not the White House that it's not really legally genocide. I do take issue with his contention that this was a way of mollifying public opinion. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Now that the Congress has called it genocide they will be under yet more pressure to act in a meaningful way to stop it. Having declared that it is genocide they have obligated themselves to do what they can to help. If not, they will be in the unenviable political position of having consciously allowed, by their own definition, genocide.

.....Yasir Abdullah, a journalist from northern Sudan, said the U.S. Congress and administration did not understand the roots of the Darfur conflict and were dealing with it very superficially.

"They are biased and have their own agenda. Sanctions will not harm the government, they will harm the people. Have they not learnt this yet?" he told Reuters.
.......
Ismail said the Sudanese authorities expected to send 6,000 policemen into Darfur and 3,000 of those were now ready to work.

But a rebel spokesman in Darfur said the new policemen were Janjaweed in disguise, issued with uniforms and new weapons.

What for? Darfur.

This blog seems to be the most comprehensive source on the net: Passion of the Present. It includes a link to satellite images of destroyed villages. PBS apparently did a story and the footage is available here (through the above blog). Here is a good point about the fact that disease collocates with refugee camps. The point to remember is that they don't have to shoot every person in the head or push them into a gas chamber in order for it to constitute genocide.

This has a list of different places to donate money if you find an organization to your taste. But in reading the tasks of the aid organizations which include providing water, food, clothing and so on to the refugees there is one task that is notably absent. There is no organization listed that is directly involved in trying to effect a solution to the problem that is displacing all of these people. These organizations are doing something that needs to be done to directly help the people that have been and are being terrorized, but something has to be done about the source of the problem, someone has to deal with the people doing the terrorizing as well.

Latest News:Blair draws up plans to send troops to Sudan
Sudan would pull troops out of Darfur if Britain sent forces: minister
US threatens sanctions against Sudan
Sudanese govt officials implicated in supporting Janjawid militias

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday it had obtained documents showing that Sudanese government officials had directed the recruitment, arming and support for Janjawid militias in the country's western region of Darfur.

The selective compassion of the West is a decent article from down under including this tidbit:

China and France, which both have oil investments in Sudan, have been resisting, as has Russia

On a possibly related note: Russia supplies Sudan with MiG aircraft ahead of schedule. Good to know they have enough money to buy fighter jets.

Do you like me? Circle one: Yes_____No

I was looking around on the White House before I decided that it was really not worth it because of the volume of mail they receive and I found this. White House Web Mail Click on the 'Continue' button and let the fun begin.

Other than the very funny "Do you like me?" bit it's also interesting to notice that when you are going to "write a supporting comment" you have the option to choose a more specific classification. For example you could do the following, (Step 1) Write supporting comment (Step 2)Environment and Energy [nice that no bones are made about the combination] (Step 3)Arctic Wildlife (Step 4)Personal information and actual message.

However, when you "write a differing comment" you never have the option in (Step 3) to be more specific in at least the following areas: Economy, Education, Environment (Foreign Policy doesn't fit this rule and I didn't check all of the rest). Mess around with it, it doesn't work very well. For a cynical knee-slapper try the following combination: (Step 1) Write general comment (Step 2) Foreign Policy (Step 3) Human Rights. Or (1) Differing (2) Legal/Judicial (3) Campaign Finance Reform. What the heck's going on here?

To be fair this is most likely just a technology problem, still it's suspicious that it works significantly and noticably better when one is writing a supportive message. The option to write a real letter or an email to president@whitehouse.gov also remains open.

Darfur

The situation in Darfur makes me irate. Powell was there a few weeks ago and I felt prouder of my country than I have in a long time. If he hadn't gone there who knows how much attention it would be getting now. Nevertheless, as the article I cited in the previous post reports, this shit is still going on. There's really no other word for it. It's disgusting. And something has to be done about it.

I know how pointless it is to write your representatives. I worked in the mailroom. Nevertheless:

US Senate
House of Reps

Writing a message is self explanatory once you get to the sites.

To the Canadian reader faction: just because I don't want to take the time to link to your government doesn't mean you're off the hook.

I'm going to try to find some more tangible ways of helping and I'll let all you good people know what I find out.

The Stakes in Darfur (washingtonpost.com)

The Stakes in Darfur (washingtonpost.com): "value the principle of sovereignty more highly than the human purpose that sovereignty is meant to serve: a stable international order that allows people to live in peace."

I agree. Sovereignty is a means to an end, not something that ought to be glorified in itself. I would like to think more about this idea and its limits especially relating to circumstances such as Iraq.

I was awake again today by about 10.

Manila seeks to appease allies over Iraq pullout - JULY 22, 2004

Manila seeks to appease allies over Iraq pullout - JULY 22, 2004: "'I can say that it was hard but I have nothing against them (the kidnappers) as they treated me very well,' he told AFP in a subsequent interview at the Philippine Embassy in Baghdad."

You have to be kidding me.

Restive? Oh, you mean not restful.

Hi kids. Have you ever wondered about the meaning of the word 'restive?' Boy, I know I have. It sure confuses the heck out of me.

How did 'restive' become an antonym of 'restful' when they more logically would be synonyms? Apparently 'restive' was originally used in the following ways:

(Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)
1.Inclined to rest or remain still; inactive, inert.
2.Persistent, obstinate, settled, or fixed, in an opinion or course of action.

But the following is the definition that is still in use:

3. (Orig. of a horse) refusing to go forward, stubbornly standing still, obstinately moving backwards or to the side; unmanageable, resisting control, intractable, refractory. Now also, restless, fidgety.

Lazy journalists who can't seem to find a more appropriate word have siezed exclusively on the 'unmanageable, resisting control, intractable' part of the definition and morphed it into the completely illogical 'restless.' I am against this. Now someone really can't use in its more logical usage as a more colorful synonym for 'stubborn' and that, my friends, is a loss to the language without a corresponding offsetting gain to make up for that loss.

Militants Intensify Abductions in Iraq With 6 New Hostages

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Militants Intensify Abductions in Iraq With 6 New Hostages Nothing motivates quite like success.

Hilarious

Brennan, check this out: Talking American

Talking Points

I highly recommend checking out this clip from The Daily Show: Conventional Wisdom. Funny stuff.

DSH (Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang)

Yesterday I took the third part of the German Language Exam for Entrance to Higher Education which compares to the Test of English as a Foreign Language except that, as it says, is expressly written to test preparedness for university study as opposed to the more general TOEFL and is pass/fail rather than on a scale. The administration is also completely different. The DSH can be taken at any university in Germany and any passing grade from any university fulfills the language requirement at any other university. However, the test itself is administered independently by every university. The professors at each university write the test for that university. There is no standard test or centralized administration. Because of this you have some tests that are easier than others. In Berlin, for example, the test at the Free University is the easiest, but the preparation courses at Humboldt U are the best. I have heard that the easiest test in Germany, if it can be called a test at all, is at Mannheim University in southwestern Germany. I don't have any idea how the one in Potsdam compares.

The DSH has four parts: three writing sections and one speaking. To pass you have to have 67% on each section. If you pass the three writing sections then you pass the exam as a whole and don't have to take the speaking test. If you don't get the required 67% on one or more of the writing sections, but still have more than 50%, then you have to take the speaking test. I find out whether or not I passed on the 29th of July and then if necessary, I'll take the speaking test on the 30th.

Yesterday I woke up at 6:50 am and today at 10:00 am.

No wake up time today. I didn't sleep last night which was particularly inconvenient because I had to take the first two parts of the German language university entrance exam today.

A moment in Civil Rights history

Democratic Debacle This is a really interesting article about how the Democratic party lost the South. It's at the same time a snapshot of the Civil Rights Movement, of political maneuvering, and of ambition.

Johnson’s close aide Walter Jenkins asked Cartha D. “Deke” DeLoach, assistant to the director of the FBI, to set up covert surveillance of the MFDP and Martin Luther King, Jr. For several days the FBI used wiretaps and bugs to record and relay reports of the MFDP’s strategy sessions to the President’s advisers. At the same time, agents posing as NBC reporters (and working with the network’s explicit approval) tricked MFDP strategists into revealing “off-the-record” information that ultimately proved useful to Johnson’s surrogates.

(Click on the picture for a readable sized version.)

Cartoon from WWI cartoonist Abian "Wally" Wallgren. I guess it would have been more appropriate seven months ago.

Today I rolled out of bed at 3 pm. This week I woke up twice at acceptable times. That's less than when I wasn't posting them to the blog. Next week I'm going to try to wake up at least four times at a decent time. Baby steps. The problem is simply that I need a job or other engagement that forces me to wake up in the morning. If having a good sleeping pattern is an end in itself, that is. If I just want a good sleeping pattern so I can do more things then a job doesn't help at all.

Proper English

This article, via AL Daily contains at least one good point. The underlying argument seems to be that English speakers make class judgments based on the degree to which a speaker or writer conforms to the norms of proper English and further, that this way of making judgments is deeply entrenched and not likely to change soon. Therefore, she argues the following. Telegraph | Opinion | You pour thing, if you don't see the point of spelling correctly : "A lot of nonsense is talked about 'proper' English being a means of endorsing the existing social status quo. My feeling is that the opposite is true. If you encourage people to write the way they talk, class divisions are ultimately reinforced, even exacerbated. I'm a working-class girl who read a lot of books and grew up to - well, to write this piece in The Telegraph anyway, so maybe I have an old-fashioned view of education as the instrument of social mobility. But it's pretty clear to anyone that, if children are taught that 'getting the gist' is sufficient, everyone stays where they are."

What she doesn't successfully argue is that there is something inherently better about proper English compared to other forms of English. She hints at an argument that the aesthetics of proper English are superior to non-standard English and that the expression enabled by proper English is uniquely capable of transcending communication into something artistic and expressive, but it's just a brief hint, not a good argument.

This woman wrote a punctuation guide which was recently published and a few weeks ago a read a couple of reviews of it. Scathing. Here are some of my favorite parts of the review out of the New Yorker:

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

Where you most expect punctuation, it may not show up at all: “You have to give initial capitals to the words Biro and Hoover otherwise you automatically get tedious letters from solicitors.”

We are informed that when a sentence ends with a quotation American usage always places the terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks, which is not so. (An American would not write “Who said ‘I cannot tell a lie?’”) ... And it is stated that The New Yorker, “that famously punctilious periodical,” renders “the nineteen-eighties” as the “1980’s,” which it does not. The New Yorker renders “the nineteen-eighties” as “the nineteen-eighties.”

Then, there is the translation problem. For some reason, the folks at Gotham Books elected not to make any changes for the American edition, a typesetting convenience that makes the book virtually useless for American readers.

The supreme peculiarity of this peculiar publishing phenomenon is that the British are less rigid about punctuation and related matters, such as footnote and bibliographic form, than Americans are. An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces.

"I am not a grammarian,” Truss says. No quarrel there.

Why would a person who is not just vague about the rules but disinclined to follow them bother to produce a guide to punctuation?

“Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is really a “decline of print culture” book disguised as a style manual (poorly disguised).

It's one of the best reviews I've ever read. It's quite long, but I recommend reading the whole thing. It includes a nice discussion about the philosophy of writing. For example,

The other reason that speech is a bad metaphor for writing is that writing, for ninety-nine per cent of people who do it, is the opposite of spontaneous.

Writers, by nature, tend to be people in whom l’esprit de l’escalier is a recurrent experience: they are always thinking of the perfect riposte after the moment for saying it has passed. So they take a few years longer and put it in print.

America, this is Germany. Germany, America.

I have been asked by one from the adoring hordes to describe some of the differences between studying in the North American educational system and the German. On Wednesday I had to un-register, to tell the university that I was in fact, as the exchange deal works, leaving after this semester. It was just a confirmation that I had in fact kept the same plans. Utterly useless bureaucracy. They could have accomplished the same thing by simply saying, "If you want to change your plans and stay, you'll have to let us know before this date."

But one does not register for classes, lectures at least. You just attend the lectures and toward the end of the semester you have to register for the test for the lecture. In the lectures I attended the only thing that counts toward one's grade is the test. There is no homework, no attendance is taken, and there are no accompanying smaller groups in which the lecture material is more closely explained as there usually is at the UI. For seminars, which are just smaller classes, whether you have to register for the class depends on the professor. If you do have to register you just write the professor an email saying you would like to attend his or her class whereas at home you have to register by X date over the internet or go through a process of adding it manually. Registration is completely centralized at Iowa and here it is left up to the professor.

One of the first things I noticed was that all of the buildings have numbers instead of names. That way all rooms have a number coordinates for maximum precision locatability. 1.8.1.71 is the room where I have German class and it is located on Campus 1, Building number 8, first floor (which means second in Germany [and the UK for that matter. Canada?]), room number 71.

Today I was out of bed by 8:10 am.

I woke up at 2 pm today. Even when I wake up relatively early as yesterday, I still can't fall asleep at night. I was really tired, but was still awake long after the sun came up.

Mr. President, Pardon Jack Johnson

Mr. President, Pardon Jack Johnson Good idea from Ken Burns, the guy who made the famous Civil War and Baseball documentaries and who is now making a movie about Jack Johnson.

In court, the federal prosecutors argued that Jackson committed a "crime against nature" for engaging in sexual intercourse with a white woman. The fact that he married the woman only a few months after he was arrested made no difference. He was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison.

After the verdict, the district attorney said that "it was [Johnson's] misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks."

I got up at 8:00 am today.

I got out of bed at 1:55 pm today.

What are you doing?

Philippines Announces Pullout to Save Iraq Hostage
This is a huge mistake if it actually works out that way. I hope it's some kind of ploy to find out who is doing this.

The skeleton of an argument against this:
Iraq needs help from other countries.
The Philippines pullout would put more political pressure from citizen protests on other countries to pull out their troops when their citizens are taken captive.
The Philippines just had an election in which the incumbent President Arroyo won a new mandate.
This puts the Philippines in a relatively strong political position.
Other countries will likely be in weaker political positions.
Some of the countries will break under the pressure and pull their troops out as well.
Success breeds success.
Iraq doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Success in Iraq cannot be confined to those borders.
There is not a causal relationship between the deployment of Philippines humanitarian forces and the violence the hostage takers/beheaders have been exercising in the last months.
Success breeds success.
These people will take even more hostages.
This one person may be saved, but a lot more people are going to die because of it.
I'm sorry for this guy, but pulling out is exactly the wrong response.

Edwards odds: Edwards v. Cheney 2-1; Edwards v. McCain 15-1

Dump Cheney?good article about the reasons the Republicans should replace Cheney with McCain. It would be tactically genius and probably mean that the R's would win. I don't think it will happen because whatever one says about Bush the guy is loyal to his friends and doesn't forget people who use "hostile political rhetoric" against him. I think that McCain probably used some that in Bush's mind would likely qualify as that in 2000. His habit of speaking his mind has also been inconvenient for and frowned upon by the Bush Admin during the last four years.

Good article for today

These Dogs Dont Hunt about personal histories of some people occupying oversight positions over Bush administratoin.

Can you hear me now?

I realized that, as Brennan nicely named them, the 'adoring hordes' (i.e. my [thousands of] readers) have been unable to leave comments without registering. Good news folks! You can now leave comments without registering. I'm sure now it won't seem like there are only two people reading my blog. Or maybe there are only two people reading my blog. Sometimes I think too much.

Today I got out of bed at 2:40 pm.

Despite Brennan's recommendation that I include the time I went to bed, I am resisting this for now as I am set on developing a sleeping pattern wherein I wake at a regular time. I don't really think I sleep longer than average in total, but just the fact that I sleep so irregularly makes it impossible for me to do some of the things that I need and want to accomplish during the day.

Cell Phone Design

I read this article in the NY Times a few days ago that talks about and presents an alternative to the dearth of real design in the cell phone industry. I suppose that's why yesterday my very own cell phone design idea wafted into my consciousness. The earpiece could be literally that: an earring. To pick up the wearer's voice one could have a necklace although I think that mic technology is far enough that the earring would suffice. The controls and whatnot, the numberpad and so on, could be made into a clip that clipped onto a belt or beltloop. Sweet, eh?

All material on this website is copyright Joseph Christensen 2004.

The only downside: it's going to get a lot more painful to have your phone stolen.

©2004 Joseph Christensen

Iraq war

While no other single public problem has occupied my thoughts as much in the last two years as the Iraq war and no single topic has been more talked about in my conversations, I have written almost nothing about it. The following are paragraphs that I would like to have written myself. You will likely have a hard time pinning down what exactly my view is. I plan to explain it within the next week. Careful, some chairs tip over when all of the weight of the occupier is on the edge.

Political Paradoxes

Whatever the outcome, however, it is likely to have paradoxical effects on American political sensibilities. For if the conservative-driven experiment in nation building in Iraq enjoys even modest success in the coming years, it will provide long-term nourishment for progressive ideas in America. And if it fails, as many progressive critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom think it is bound to,it will strengthen over the long haul conservative proclivities in America.

An Interview with Adam Michnik

This is not to say that Bush is always right. Of course not. But you must see the hierarchy of threats, of dangers. I asked my French and German friends, Are you afraid that tomorrow Bush will bomb Paris? And can you really be sure that terrorists and fundamentalists will not attack the Louvre? So which side are you on?

Bait and Switch

During the run-up to the war, it would have been inspiring to have heard from anyone of any political stripe who wanted to support an invasion whose aims were presented honestly, but who refused his or her support because of the deceptive rationale. Was there anyone who ascribed greater import to the damage to public discourse caused by the trumped up casus belli than to the alleged benefits of destroying Saddam Hussein? I may have missed something, but I cannot recall any such principled pronouncements.

No one seems be counting the costs that slippage imposes on our public life. Americans are growing inured to the premise that, by the time a policy has run its course, no one will any longer remember, or care about, its original rationale. The result threatens transformation of political debate into a sort of postmodern theater-or, more, a high-stakes liars' contest. Until severe consequences are imposed on those playing this game, bait and switch will continue to degrade our public life.

I got out of bed at 4:15 pm today. I hope this works.

Disci-pline? Yoo-hoo, oh--- Disci-pline, where are-- you?

In an effort to establish some routine in my life I will be writing the time I wake up every day on my blog. I hope to embarass myself into waking up at a reasonable hour. At the same time I will have to make at least one blog entry every day: more discipline. But of course in order for it to work really well, I need to get grief and guilt from all of my [thousands of] readers every time I wake up at, say 5 in the afternoon. Guilt and embarassment are such useful tools.

Today I woke up at 11:00 am. Come on, it's Saturday. Give me a break.

More Moral Progress

I implied in the last sentence of my previous post that thousands of years ago moral philosophy had reached some kind of asymptotic limit approaching the actual limit of pure morality leading to thousands of years of regurgitation rather than progress. In general I still think this though I'm less sure that it's truly approaching the limit of pure morality, but I should qualify that by admitting my lack of authority in philosophical history.

If pure morality is limited as I argued it was then this could be understood to imply that perfect understanding of pure morality and perfect practical morality would be possible. Perfect practical morality would require perfect understanding of pure morality; the person who acted perfectly morally would have to be a philosopher. Without an understanding of the pure morality being practiced, even actions that exactly corresponded to the correct moral actions would not be morally praiseworthy because they would be shallow. It's not enough to do the right thing. One has to know that one is doing the right thing for it to be morally praiseworthy. Without understanding the person who acted would be a robot.

But a perfect understanding of morality is likewise impossible. (I'm still thinking through my argument about this.)

So far I've argued that perfection is impossible, but progress is possible in practical morality. Individuals or collections of individuals can improve (or degenerate in) their moral position. Now I'd like to think about the progress promoting factors. I'll move back to talking about the US as the collective moral actor.

There are a number of factors that seem to have instigated improvements in the moral position of the US. The most obvious that occur to me are critics, technology, and institutions.

If there is a problem with the collective moral action of a country then obviously one way to fix that problem is for someone to identify, expose, communicate, and fight for the eradication of that problem. This is the job of the social critic. To this group I would place people who have fought from below for what was right like Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as people who have fought from the top such as Lincoln. I choose these examples because they don't seem controversial to me and right now I'm not ready to delineate the exact moral content which I said was an assumption of this argument.

Technology is another way to improve the moral position. As an example let's just say that the government has a moral obligation to make available information regarding government decisions made (I'm not 100% sure about this and there would certainly have to be some caveats allowing for national security and so on). Without certain kinds of technology this is impossible (printing press).

Institutions are also important for the moral position. You could have a lot of individually good people who are in certain ways impeded from doing the right thing because of the institutions in place. Taking the same example as before one could imagine a government where information about the governments actions was by law not disbursed.

It goes without saying that the door swings both ways. That is, the negative of these three factors can induce degeneration as easily as the positive improvement.