Chrononautic Log

March 28, 2003

Let me be absolutely clear. The Founding Fathers guaranteed this freedom because they knew no tyranny can ever arise among a people endowed with the right to keep and bear arms.

That's why you and your descendants need never fear fascism, state-run faith, refugee camps, brainwashing, ethnic cleansing, or especially, submission to the wanton will of criminals.

——Charlton Heston, President, National Rifle Association

We’re dealing with a country in which everybody has a weapon, and when they fire them all in the air at the same time, it’s tough.

——Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander, US Army V Corps

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March 27, 2003

Tacitus — the blogger Tacitus, I mean, not the Roman historian — is someone I haven’t run across before; I may start checking his stuff out more regularly. (I assume Tacitus is a he, because otherwise, I figure, Tacitus would be Tacita.)

At the moment he has an interesting post on the why, how, and what-if of establishing democracy in the Middle East; a short attempt to address questions like why democracy has been working in some places and not others, and what happens if democracy in a Middle Eastern state results in the election of an Islamist regime.

All the alternatives have already failed. A democratic Saudi Arabia electing Wahhabist firebrands to office would be a terrible sight and a menace to the rest of us. But we must ask: are we safe now? Do the Wahhabist firebrands not exist now? Time to be bold. Time to let the people of the Middle East learn their own lessons, as the people of Iran seem to be. Time to let them learn by making mistakes — with the novel recourse of an electoral corrective when they do.

His point about Iran is especially apt, and one lost on many people who haven’t paid attention to Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution — even people who should know better. Of course, in the last election progressive voters, depressed by Khatami’s lack of progress, stayed home in droves — but that’s a problem American democracy has, too, isn’t it? At least there were polls for them to not go to.

I don’t agree with everything Tacitus says (I’m quite tired, for instance, of the idea that the Protestant Reformation is the fundamental — pardon the pun — reason why democracy has been a success in the West), but I think his position is not a bad one.

Side note: As pointed out by Get Your War On, though — thanks, Patrick — if we’re going to go around imposing freedom on people, we can’t mess around. (Not that I expect the bomb France crowd to show that much integrity.)

But that means none of this “free as long as you don’t do anything we don’t like” bullshit.

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March 26, 2003

More reputable sources (than that Moroccan weekly newspaper, I mean; Rob is as reputable as you like) are reporting that the Navy has flown two mine-sweeping dolphins into Umm Qasr to look for mines there — presumably in the water.

The dolphins are taught to avoid touching the mines, which might cause them to explode, said Capt. Mike Tillotson, a Navy bomb disposal expert.

(Dept. of Pronoun Referents: I think I know what the writer means, but I couldn’t help read that as “...which might cause [the dolphins] to explode,” not the mines.)

He said there was little risk to animals doing this kind of work. The biggest hazard could come from other indigenous dolphins in the waters of Umm Qasr. Dolphins are territorial and there is a fear local dolphins might drive the interlopers out, causing them to go AWOL.

You’d think that U.S. Navy Special Forces dolphins would be tougher than that, but apparently not. Then again, they aren’t exactly volunteers. Anyway, I just hope the Moroccan monkeys are tough enough to deal with those indigenous Iraqi monkeys.

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March 25, 2003

Rob reports that, according to a Moroccan newspaper, Morocco has offered the US the use of 2000 mine-sweeping monkeys for service in Iraq.

This must be what General Renuart was talking about on the radio this morning when he said forces from “all our coalition partners” were undertaking “special operations” in Iraq.

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Some of you may have noticed the outage here a week or two back; the reconditioned Digital box (you know it’s old when the company that bought the company that made it doesn’t exist any more) that was running the site has been getting increasingly unreliable. The outage last night, then, was me finally breaking down and porting everything over to a new server, a Shuttle XPC. It’s about three times smaller than the old box, only about 8" × 8" × 12", and quieter, too. (Not like that matters to all of you out in webland, but it’s not your room it’s taking up space in.)

It’s a nice side effect of the stagnation (or should I say “maturation”) of the computer industry that manufacturers can finally start to compete on grounds other than speed and price — the premium for ‘mini’ was only about 10%, and well worth it. It’s not quite as cool as Lara’s G4 Cube, but for a PC, it’s not bad. And it’s cheap.

The new box should be more reliable. It’s also about ten times faster than the old box, which is probably three times faster than it really needs to be — but it was the slowest and cheapest I could get without spending four hours of my own time messing around with cables and screwdrivers, which really is not, in any way, as fun as it was when I was fourteen years old.

Anyway, while I was at it I also figured out how to hack MovableType’s database to make all the links on the site relative, which means that it’s no longer the case that the only place I can’t post from is home. So — not that this is necessarily a good thing — you may see updates a little more frequently in the future.

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March 22, 2003

On the question of how postwar Iraq should be governed and by whom, retired US Army general Wesley Clark has a nice editorial in the Washington Post. We shouldn’t get our hopes up that reconstructing Iraq will be as easy as reconstructing Japan.

Japan was not at odds with itself. It possessed the raw material for postwar reconstruction: an educated, industrious population; some surviving infrastructure; and modern industrial experience. Imperial Japan was also largely free of the problems of large, restive minorities... Defeat, when it came, was palpable, complete and unquestioned... Literacy was high, and the culture valued hard work and discipline... Almost none of those conditions will be present in post-Saddam Iraq.

This certainly dovetails with what I know of modern Japanese history. (And while I can’t claim to know the Mideast the way I know Japan, what I do know on that score certainly dovetails as well.)

Nor should we be looking for another MacArthur:

We have many highly capable, well-educated generals... but none of them alone can “do a MacArthur” and shouldn’t try. The search for such a figure is escapism, a desire to turn over responsibilities to someone, give him a title — and few resources — and hope the problems go away.

General Clark is a former c-in-c of US Southern Command and a former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, so he ought to know whereof he speaks. It’s years since I read William Manchester’s American Caesar. I should dig it out again.

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March 21, 2003

(We interrupt this bulletin to bring you your regular scheduled programming...)

My father just sent me this absolutely brilliant book, Schott’s Original Miscellany. (It’s not yet available in the US, but you can get it in the UK.) In this slim volume you will find everything from the Irish Code Duello, adopted in Clonmell in 1777 —

10. Any insult to a lady under a Gentleman’s care or protection to be considered as, by one degree, a greater offense than if given to the gentleman personally, and to be regulated accordingly.

16. The challenged has the right to choose his own weapon, unless the chalenger gives his honour he is no swordsman; after which, however, he cannot decline any second species of weapon proposed by the challenger.

— to a handly list of forty-odd phobias —

Clowns: coulrophobia
Being ridiculed: catagelophobia
Fall of satellites: keraunothnetophobia

— to my favorite, a series of illustrative sentences collecting English words borrowed from foreign languages —

Russian — The commisar orders a mammoth samovar of vodka to be dispatched to the balalaika player.

Hungarian — Get the sabre from the coach! The hussar has overdone the paprika and ruined my goulash.

Czech — Fetch the howitzer! Some fool’s armed the robot with a pistol.

— among many other useful and instructive items. The title of the book comes from the OED’s third, and presumably least common, definition of the word:

3: A volume of publication containing miscellaneous information of general interest on a variety of subjects.

Nor has any miscellany, I dare say, better fulfilled that description than Schott’s.

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After the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty was formulated proclaiming the right of the Soviet Union to invade satellite states in order to support pro-Moscow “socialist” regimes. Now a new Bush-Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty may become the basis of international law. The United States now claims a sovereign right to invade any other country to change a nasty regime, if the president and Congress agree to it. The U.N., France, Russia and other “veto holders” can go and get stuffed if they do not like this new emerging world order.

—— Pavel Felgenhauer, The Moscow Times

The point for real American conservatives to remember is that, in some sense, it doesn’t matter whether this is really what we intend; it is still how others are seeing us.

The point for neocons to remember is that it didn’t work for the USSR, and sooner or later it’s bound to stop working for us, too. Terrorism is as effective a way to force your enemy into breaking the bank as Star Wars ever was, and it’s much cheaper.

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March 19, 2003

A thousand or so soldiers of the 82nd Airborne have been engaged in “the largest US military operation in Afghanistan since Operation Anaconda just over a year ago.”

Likely, Rob’s brother Brendan is one of them.

Not so long ago, it seemed almost unbelievable that someone I’d met — someone who’d shaken his head at the antiquated music his brother and I were rocking out to at the Laserium show in Golden Gate Park — might shortly be shipping out to an honest-to-God combat zone.

This evening, with the radio nattering about cruise missiles and F-117s, and with 300,000 troops poised to invade Iraq, it almost seems tasteless to bring up the fact that Brendan’s quite possibly shooting and getting shot at — I mean, Afghanistan, that’s so last year. But the war in Afghanistan is no less real than the one in Iraq; maybe more real, as long as our worst fears are’t realized.

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As for Iraq, I guess there’s nothing to do but get it over with as quickly as possible so that we can hand the place over to the fine people at Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root.

It’s after the [1960] election, and the Democrats win. Kennedy and Johnson are sittin’ in the Oval Office the first day, and the phone rings. It’s the Pope of Rome (Texans used to specify “of Rome,” lest you should confuse him with some other pope) on the phone. He says, “John, my boy, the Vatican roof is leaking something fierce, we were hopin’ y’all might fix it for us.”

“Of course, Mr. Pope, sir. Just let me check with my vice president. Lyndon, the Pope’s on the phone and wants to know if we can fix the Vatican roof for him.”

“That’s fine with me,” says Johnson. “Just make sure Brown & Root gets the contract.”

—— Texas traditional, as told by Molly Ivins

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According to my web server stats, rdu163-56-153.nc.rr.com accounts for about twice as many hits on this site as the rest of the Internet put together. My guess is it’s some sort of robot, maybe a screen-scraper looking for email addresses to add to a spam database or something. Or it’s some poor worm-infested ISS host looking for a vector; I get a lot of those, but I thought I was filtering them out of the stats. Or maybe it’s the Mailman from Vernor Vinge’s “True Names”.

So, rdu163-56-153.nc.rr.com, here’s your chance: identify yourself, or face the consequences. If you’re human, I’m sure you’re reading this — possibly several times a day. If not, then — sorry, Hal old buddy, I’m going to have to pull the plug.

Mystery Solved

It’s J-Walker. (Thanks for letting me know, Scott.)

What would be interesting is to figure out what causes my log stats software to identify a request as coming from a search engine robot, and then see if we can get it to also treat J-Walker that way — since that’s basically what it is.

I suspect my sort of confusion will become more common as more web traffic starts to be programs talking to programs, rather than people reading files.

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My mother once told me that her father, a retired career naval officer and a moderate Republican (tighter immigration controls, but also single-payer health care), would be very pleased if one of his grandchildren were to join the ‘establishment’ by becoming a Foreign Service officer.

At various times I’ve seriously considered it. I’m interested in politics, history, and economics; I have a talent for languages; I’m good at standardized tests, so the exam should be no trouble. Travel, glamour, excitement — what’s not to like? What’s stopped me?

What’s stopped me, is the knowledge — given what I know of American history — that sooner or later I’d find myself writing a letter like John Brady Kiesling’s.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

Salon has an interview with him up right now. I recommend it.

Q: What exactly do you mean when you say “the traditional internationalist foreign policy community?” Would that be considered — I hate to put simple tags on it — to have a mainstream political bent? Would it be liberal?

A: They’re mainstream foreign policy people, the ones who believe the United States is locked in a web of international interests and must protect those interests by a combination of unilateral force, but more importantly, by a set of institutions and relationships that we can control. There are very hard-nosed people in this community. But they were convinced that these institutions we set up served United States interests and their perspective has always been based on United States national interests.

It’s a good read; not just on the subject of the current unpleasantness, but on the conflicts between duty and conscience, and between organizational loyalty and professionalism, that are the lot of any honest man who tries to serve a country or a cause governed, in the end, by fallible human beings.

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March 18, 2003

For those of you wondering how I could be so monumentally wrongheaded as to oppose the current administration’s foreign policy, this Newsweek article (courtesy of Electrolite, again) about sums it up.

America’s special role in the world — its ability to buck history — is based not simply on its great strength, but on a global faith that this power is legitimate. If America squanders that, the loss will outweigh any gains in domestic security. And this next American century could prove to be lonely, brutish and short.

I like this planet. I’d prefer not to have to spend my life within the 6% of its total land area that flies the Stars and Stripes. Sewing Canadian flags all over my luggage is not an option.

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I’m spending way too much bandwidth on politics.

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I like the Guardian’s editorial slant. I’m ambivalent about the quality of their reporting. But I absolutely adore their sports coverage.

There are a couple of big cracks in the pitch which may open up later in the day. Get the runs on the board first, says former Aussie wicketkeeper Ian Healy, and who am I to argue with him? In fact, I’m just going to listen to what he says on Sky Sports and parrot it on here.

I don’t have a “sport” icon; maybe I should do something about that. (The Harlem Globetrotters post I filed under “economics”.) I guess I’ll file this one under “art”. Because that’s what this is.

...I’LL BE VERY SURPRISED IF ANY OF MY BOSSES WILL READ ANY OF THIS LET’S BE HONEST THEY WON’T ALTHOUGH ON THE OTHER HAND THAT’S PROBABLY JUST AS WELL HEY I WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH TYPING THINGS LIKE THIS KIqL!UYS ^%$DFLI ZSDSAFC SFE4O92 )(^(*^o"$ bBLKU E875O3 96*&^% o*"$ogb...

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Courtesy of Jed Hartman, a short demonstration from the Christian Science Monitor illustrating just how far replacing French toast with freedom toast falls short of solving the problem:

It is time for English-speaking peoples folk to throw off this cultural imperialism lording-it-over-others and declare say our linguistic freedom. It is time to purify clean the English language tongue.

Shades of Poul Anderson’s “Uncleftish Beholding”. I think I could do better, but a valiant effort nonetheless. Down with English; up with Modern Anglo-Saxon!

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One of the besetting sins of American progressives is a tendency to wish for a more European politics, rather than buckling down to deal with the country we’ve got.

—— Patrick Nielsen Hayden

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March 13, 2003

A nice comment posted over at Electrolite by one Lydia Nickerson:

One of the most pernicious lies ever told is that “things have to get worse before they get better.” Nader specifically argued that. Several other people have done so, as well. This is a calculus that I think is far less principled than voting for a candidate you don’t like.

Ms. Nickerson’s comment was in response to the left-wing argument that — excuse me while I exaggerate and mischaracterize — the horrors of a conservative Republican presidency will galvanize the masses to revolt, and that electing such a president is therefore a more direct path to left-wing goals than electing a moderate Democrat.

What occurs to me is that Ms. Nickerson’s comment applies equally well, I think, to the right-wing argument (currently being caricaturized in Doonesbury, but also currently being put into practice in Washington) that massive deficits and spiralling debt are a more direct path to reining in government spending than making the case against popular programs to the American people.

Rob has very nice post about the gap between the historical, intellectual foundations of rational American conservatism and what currently seems to be going on in this country. There are a lot of things about the 1920s that we’re immeasurably better off without, but it’s a shame we’ve lost Herbert Hoover’s brand of conservative.

Personally, I blame the Dixiecrats.

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March 4, 2003

Nice to see someone do the math:

In the more potentially disastrous category of “What happens when we win?” the numbers are not good. Of the 20 regime changes forced by U.S. military action in the last century, only five produced democracies; and of the five unilateral actions, only one produced a democracy — Panama. Afghanistan, the closest proximate case, is not looking good beyond Kabul.

—— Molly Ivins

Y’know, just like Paul Wolfowitz, I’d love to be using the immense military, economic and political power of the world’s only superpower to spread democracy and human rights.

Unfortunately, I’ve studied history, so I know it ain’t gonna happen.

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From Philippe de Croy, via Rob, with regard to the recent Ninth Circuit decision that (government-mandated) recitation of the McCarthy-era “under God” clause of the Pledge of Allegiance by teachers and students violates students’ freedom of religion, an irony:

if nobody cared about it, the Ninth Circuit’s decision would look worse, because that indifference would suggest that as a matter of public meaning the “under God” phrase is genuinely insignificant and doing no harm (or good). Conversely, though, the angrier that people get about the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, the better the ruling tends to look.

Me, I’m unhappy about pledging allegiance to the flag, period. I’d find it much easier to get behind something like the congressional oath of office:

I do solemly [swear or] affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge

— okay, not “the duties of the office on which I am about to enter”; let’s say

my duties as a citizen of the United States.

(Optional: “So help me God.”)

Now, the oath I had to sign in college in order to work for the UC, to support and defend the Constitution of California — is there somewhere I can publicly repudiate that? ‘Cause nobody should have to defend something that badly written.

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Correction: When I originally posted this I was under the impression that the Newdow case involved whether students could be forced to recite the pledge; that has been considered unconstitutional since 1943 and W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnette. The decision in Newdow holds, rather:

that (1) the 1954 Act [of Congress] adding the words “under God” to the Pledge and, (2) [the Elk Grove Unified School District]’s policy and practice of teacher-led recitation of the Pledge, with the added words included, violate the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment].

Whether or not you recite it yourself.

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Rob also has a scary post about Kosovo.

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Rob has a nice post about the propriety of blogging about one’s meat-space friends and family, not to mention the perennial problem of trying not to blog about one’s day job.

In some ways, that is a frustrating limit on my ability to write; not surprisingly, frustration with ongoing work makes up a sizeable portion of what I would want to talk about during the day, while i'm actively working. But in another way, it seems to me that this limitation is a feature; it ensures that this log will not be a series of frustrated, poorly-written rants about whatever mishap happened at work today, or tomorrow, or any other day; it forces the content placed here to be directed at other things. By blocking obsessive discussion of my day job, the fear of inadvertant disclosure of corporate secrets forces me to discuss the other, more intellectually interesting, parts of my life.

Something I should bear in mind, particularly as the news that I have a blog is starting to get around at work. (Dale, if you’re reading this, play nice, y’hear?)

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March 3, 2003

So the postage wasn’t wasted; the gentlemen at Fortress of Words have kindly accepted “Long Past Midnight” for their ‘zine Say... what time is it?

They’ll be launching it at WisCon. What with TorCon, and the World Kendo Championships (rooting, not competing), and having promised three different sets of relatives I’d be out to see them this year, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, but the rest of you, keep an eye out.

I can’t speak for my own work, but as for the rest of the ‘zine, having enjoyed previous efforts Is this a cat? and Say... was that a kiss? I expect good things. I mean, Greg’s gonna have a story in there; what else do you want?

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March 1, 2003

When it comes to professional sports, I can’t even really claim to be a fair-weather fan. I followed the Niners off and on through the Steve Young years (regularly watching them lose the NFC championships to Dallas and, when Dallas ran out of steam, Green Bay), but when I left San Francisco I lost interest.

I watched a reasonable number of Sharks games in those days, too, but the NHL just doesn’t grab me the way it did in the early 90s, when the vets from Red Army and Dynamo Moscow first turned up in North America to remind fans there could be more to hockey than the fights.

As for baseball, I’ve always found the mythology of baseball more compelling than the modern-day reality of robber-baron owners and mercenary players and TV advertising revenues. I wouldn’t mind retiring to a small town with a scrappy A-ball club I could take my hypothetical kids to see on a summer afternoon, but as for the majors, I only make it to a game or so a year despite living in a town with one of the league’s more likeable teams, and that’s mostly for the hot dogs.

And basketball — well, I’ve never been able to get interested in basketball.

Which is funny, considering that my grandfather was a high school star — Bob “Spook” Imig, Seward High class of, oh, ‘45 or so (a couple of years before the Bluejays won back-to-back state championships, but they can’t have been that bad) — and my dad can still make baskets.

I blame the Clippers and the Warriors, personally. (And — for different reasons, obviously — the Dream Team.)

But it looks like by missing out on basketball I’ve missed out on some good stories. For instance, though it seems dead obvious in hindsight, till I read this story in the Washington Post it never occurred to me that the Harlem Globetrotters had started out as a team of hotshot black barnstormers, in the days of an all-white NBA.

The unspoken point of this tale is that if white crowds were going to pay to see the Globetrotters and not get angry when hometown squads lost, they would have to be distracted by displays of bright smiles, dim wits and other features of an archetype that was a fixture of vaudeville and early cinema. “We have to remember that Saperstein’s Trotters played and were hired in a world where the lynching of Black males for ‘reckless eyeballing’ of white women was still commonplace,” Nelson George wrote in Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball.

Even as they became famous entertainers, the Globetrotters became a bastion of black athletic excellence. In 1940, at the World Tournament in Chicago, they defeated the New York Rens, who had survived the ‘30s without resorting to clowning. A decade later, after the Globetrotters had twice defeated the NBA's Minneapolis Lakers, led by dominant center George Mikan, the Globetrotters’ Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton joined the New York Knicks, becoming the first black player to sign an NBA contract and breaking Saperstein's monopoly on African American talent. Even so, NBA teams limited the number of black players to keep from alienating their white fan base, which saw behind-the-back passes, dunks and other flamboyant plays as undisciplined and unsportsmanlike. For many black players, the Globetrotters remained their best chance at a real paycheck; Wilt Chamberlain and Connie Hawkins passed through on their way to the big leagues.

That doesn’t excuse the Scooby-Doo guest appearances — actually, it kind of exacerbates them — but it gives me a new respect for the men who’ve worn the Globetrotters uniform in real life.

The team’s current owner, former Globetrotter Mannie Jackson, wants to make them one of the world’s ten best basketball teams again. I hope he finds a way to pull it off.

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