Harry Potter & the War on Terrorism

The new Harry Potter book attempts to capture a wizarding world under seige. Vague fears, random acts of violence, and the search for understanding of the evil that is Voldemort create a world that is uncomfortably close to our current reality.

The only nit I have to pick is that the world seems disconnected with the world of book 5. We've gone from pre World War II appeasement of an evil Hitler figure to post World War II terrorist cells. The shift is too radical to be believable.

In real life, people have a hard time holding more than a few ideas in their head. Once a group of people has an idea of what "enemy" and "evil" means, they can't wheel around and radically change it in a year or so.

Another thought: evil in a state is much scarier than terrorist evil. Most terrorists who have any kind of long term success are connected to states or quasi-states and most terrorists have strong nationalistic tendencies. This is something that has been completely ignored in our current war on terror because GW does not want to name names.

What People are Wearing

I went shopping today....at a mall. I guess like most people, I tend to focus on what I'm wearing instead of what other people are wearing. Crowds at a mall are just so much background to my mental world.

But today I couldn't find anything to buy and everything I tried on didn't fit. I also realized that stores have wildly varying sizes and a lot of it depends on your income level. At the Gap I'm a medium. At Banana Republic I'm a Large. At WalMart, I'm probably a small.

I also realized that most people at the mall were walking around in clothes that were way too tight. I also stumbled into a shoe sale and Nordstrom and realized that most women wear uncomfortable shoes--all day--every day. I bought a pair of shoes that was super comfortable and saw a 70 year old woman wearing the same shoes as I walked out of the store.

A recent book I read by Thomas Frank pointed out that fashion and capitalism are made for each other. The art of being cool requires constant investment in things that become obsolete very quickly. It's a sucker's game played in lycra and four inch heels.

Things I saw at 24 Hour Fitness: Part II

* a woman with a tube of lysol handiwipes (with bleach). She wiped down an entire treadmill, created a horrible smell and then exercised for all of one minute before moving on to the bike which she did the same thing to. I'm a big fan of bleach, but my god.....

Dukes v. Walmart

I don't know if these folks are going to update their blog, but I'm planning to follow this case pretty closely.

http://employmentblawg.blogspot.com

The fun part is that the hearings will be in San Francisco. The other fun part is that it is the largest class action in history and the reason that it was able to be certified is that Walmart runs its operations in such a way that everything (including it culture of discrimination) is standardized.

Is blogging bullshit?

I was reading a review of a book about bullshit in the new Harper's and apparently the author of the bullshit book believes that blogging is in part responsible for the rise b.s. in modern society.

I do think that blogging gives you some mental habits--run on sentences (and thoughts), ignorance of research, authority without knowledge-- that aren't entirely healthy. I'm sure blogging will (like e-mail) do some dreadful things to grammar over time.

But blogging is just a tool. And by genuinely diffusing the opportunity to say something among many people, (including those who are not professional GW Bush ass kissers--aka the press corps) blogging has potential to be a really democratic art form.

Actually, I think that Journalists (like lawyers) need to realize that they are playing a new game. Since most reasonably intelligent people can now look things up for themselves, journalists need to learn how to dig deeper and add something to the discussion beyond a nifty intro paragraph or a pretty face on the television. If you have a full time job as a journalist, you have a chance to develop breadth and perspective.

Since journalists are now less respected than lawyers, it may be a tough sell.

War Trash by Ha Jin

I'm into this book, but the narrator is weirdly not very compelling. He misses his girlfriend. He feels torn about following the communists. I can never quite predict what he's going to do next. I guess that's why I keep reading it--I'm trying to find out if he's going to hang together as a character or not...

The Spiral Staircase--Nice, Very Nice

I never expected to like Karen Armstrong. I think it was for entirely stupid and snobbish reasons. She doesn't have a degree in it, but she writes books on the history of religion for a popular audience. Her autobiography "The Spiral Staircase" is compelling, sweet, and consistently interesting. She resolutely refuses to sensationalize or glamourize any of it--being a nun, a school teacher, a TV personality, a woman traveling in the middle east. There's something nice about the English can pull that understated thing off. . . . .

Freaknomics--Fun but Overwrought

I liked this book. The questions it asked were interesting and the answers were much more believable than the general run of answers provided by economists--in part because the economist author portrays himself as an iconoclast and I'm all for smashing the economic idols.

On the other hand, why do economists feel the need to tell you 10 times a second how brilliant they are? It makes me want to say--no you're not. (I had the same problem with the Harvard President--If he hadn't claimed that he was so wonderful, I could have had more sympathy with his stupidity)

If nobody has ever looked into the economics of cheating before or whether Roe v. Wade caused the drop in crime rates, I have to say that says more about the profession of economics than the brilliance of the author. I think it will probably take a non-economist to truly challenge the empty pretentiousness of most of what passes for economic analysis these days.

If Consciousness is a burden, some people are traveling light...

What is the correct attitude towards the not so bright? The conventional wisdom is that we should feel sorry for them, pity them, and promptly forget them. When large numbers of them turn out to vote for a stupid and evil administration, we briefly became more concerned. It is a problem for the rest of us that large portions of the American population are unable to connect the dots between things like SUVs and global warming or rising debt and the essential slavery of the American worker.

I think jealousy is the appropriate response towards people who live this way. They are happy at the expense of others and cannot even be held morally responsible because they are too dumb.

I had proposed this theory like 10 years ago and a friend of mine brought up the counter argument that people who are not very bright have a lot of experiences that they can't explain-- Things happen and they don't know why and that must be a scary and frustrating way to live. However, in my extensive observations of not-so-bright people, I've discovered that they are generally untroubled by things that they can't explain. They find the simplest possible explanation and move on. They also feel very little need to reconcile contradictory explanations. So, they can simultaneously believe irreconcilable things. (i.e. George W. Bush didn't tell the truth about Iraq/ GW is an ethical person unlike that lying Bill Clinton)

Among the many things that we don't discuss meaningfully in this country, I think some attention needs to be paid to the problem of the not-so-bright among us. As a democracy, we will not be able to survive too many of them. I think many of the not-so-bright could be turned into reasonably-bright people if they are caught early enough and educated. Today's packs of feral teenagers are tommorow's feral suburban parents. Scary thought.

Free Market Fantasy---brought to you by the Cato Institute

I got a snazzy little pamphlet in the mail from the Cato Institute today. It "goes beyond the 'green eyeshades' debate" to help me understand what's really at stake.

Apparently I too can live the life of the blonde haired blue eyed family of wealthy people on the cover. I'm comforted to discover that "there has never been a 20-year period in U.S. history during which you would have lost money in the stock market."

I also got a soft-sell pitch from my 401K plan advisor today at our company meeting. He stated that "If you get personal accounts as part of social security, you'll be able to invest money in Target retirement funds like Fidelity's."

It's a comfortable sort of vision. Wall Street doesn't want to take money from suckers, it wants to help us afford velvet sofas in our golden years. Wall Street will just skim a little money off the top--it won't hurt one bit. Stocks are safe. Totally safe. The SEC is just a little fussy about companies saying that there is no risk. Bunch of bullshit legislation passed after the Great Depression. But they're safe. Totally safe. Don't you want some?

One interesting phrase is the ownership society. If stocks turn into worthless pieces of paper, we're still owners. And if your home is in hock for more than it's worth, you're still an owner.

On Friendship

I wrote my senior thesis on this topic, so I have a lot to say on the subject. I've recently joined an existentialist reading group and I found it interesting that Sartre thought that friendships were important too. Somehow it doesn't seem to fit with the radical choosing things. Because friends influence choices in a big way.

But I think Sartre is hearkening back to Montaigne who saw friendship as a rare and essentially philosophical relationship. He thought you were lucky if you had one true friend in your life and that friendship was the most important relationship that anyone could aspire to. Montaigne also saw a friendship as defining and an essentially non-manipulative relationship (in contrast to romantic relationships). We've inherited that idea, but I don't think it's accurate. Friendships can be very manipulative and romantic relationships can be a defining relationship (in the sense of the central relationship in a person's life that allows them to define who they are as an individual).

So, if you want to do radical choosing you need to do it by yourself or with the help of a thoughtful non-manipulative philosophical friend. Ironically, Sartre was apparently personal very manipulative. Poor Simone.

I think my existentialist reading group will involve a lot of me trying to determine why I don't stay on the boat with the existentialists and where I get off. We'll see.

Workers Compensation was a really broken form of income redistribution....

And now, after Arnold blew up the box, the face of our economy may change. I forgot the exact figures, but in California the workers' compensation industry was a measurable portion of the economy. Billions of dollars transferred every year from companies to insurance companies to injured (and not so injured) workers. Workers' Compensation was generally very good at paying the doctors and the lawyers and not so good at paying the injured workers. And it encouraged people to become professional victims.

We don't have a truly progressive tax structure. We don't have a true social safety net. The court system in this country replaces more rational structures that other countries enjoy. Unless you're a lawyer, the court system is not a reliable way to redistribute income because people will pay or get paid according to luck or fault rather than need. But, it does redistribute and it is one of the few institutions in our society that effectuates that.

Connections

So, just like I was on economics jag a few months ago, now I'm on an architecture/suburbia jag. Books in this series include: The Geography of Nowhere--my current read and very excellent Consumer's Republic--repetitive and probably only of interest to someone on a jag of reading about cities and the consumerism. The City in Mind--Another Kunstler book, but not as good as the Geography of Nowhere Home- Wytold Rybczynski City Life--Also by Wytold Rybczynski, my second favorite to Geography of Nowhere in this genre
The Devil in the White City--Sensationalistic and lame--I was skipping by the end
The Power Broker--Caro biography of Robert Moses. I really liked this one too. It was incredibly rich in detail and Moses was a compelling character.

I'm going to try to quit while I'm ahead with Geography of Nowhere.

Since I've been an adult and freely able to choose where I live, I've chosen to live near where I work--within walking distance preferably. I probably wouldn't be so fascinated by the suburbs if I had to live in them. Just like I probably wouldn't be so fascinated by economic distress if I were struggling to make ends meet.

Geography of Nowhere

What an awesome book. I haven't had this much fun reading something in ages. I'll give a full book report when I'm finished.

The Downing Street Memo

I'm not sure if this is the smoking gun that people think it is, but it brings up the absolutely cynical nature of the Democrats votes on the Iraq War.

It seems to me that anyone with half a brain could see that we were going to war with Iraq for reasons unrelated to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction or any of the other nonsense that the Bush administration was pushing at the time. The reasons offered were simply not good reasons. Had the Democrats had anything remotely resembling a backbone, they would have voted against the war.

As far as Bush is concerned, either he is so stupid as to believe his own lies and therefore shouldn't be President on intelligence grounds or he knowingly lied to the American people and shouldn't be President on moral, ethical, and legal grounds.

But this has all been obvious for a long time. So, what will a smoking gun do for us anyways?

My current thought on this whole situation is that it is a little bit like Enron. The Bush administration got away with it because of greed--not just their own, but the others who were supposed to act as checks on their power. If the Democrats hadn't been so craven, they would have risked their political careers to voice true opposition to the war in Iraq. If the media hadn't been so afraid of losing access, they would have reported more honestly. If the Supreme Court hadn't acted as the judicial arm of the Republican party, the man wouldn't be President in the first place.

It'll be interesting to watch when it all turns (if it turns). We'll be treated to the spectacle of all of the people who should have stopped this mad ride condemning the Bush administration as if Bush and his cronies were the only ones who did anything wrong. "We didn't know! We had no smoking gun! We could only speculate...."

And so it goes....

Things I Saw at 24 Hour Fitness Last Night

1. A man working out for like 45 minutes with a towel in his mouth the whole time.

2. The world's loudest French girls--I could hear them over the punk rock on my ipod.

3. A man who picked up a piece of dirty paper off the floor, spit on it, and then wiped down a machine with it.

4. A girl with "Bling Bling" written on the rear end of her sweat pants

Japan and Nukes

So, my excerpting of Robert's blog wasn't entirely fair in the context of us dropping the bomb on Japan. I actually took that quote out from some parentheses.

The real issue is how do we as a culture think about our past actions and how do we attempt to make it so that we have better sets of choices in the future. And the bomb is not something we've come to terms with. We don't like other people having it but we like having it. We like to act all ethical about nuclear weapons but we aren't about to apply the ethical standards to ourselves (It just wouldn't be realistic).

On the question of whether or not we should have dropped the bomb. I don't know. If we and the rest of the world learned from it and if some lives were saved, maybe it was the right decision. It's hard to imagine a non-nuclear world anymore, so it's not a question that can really be answered.

Robert's blog

http://blogs.salon.com/0001517/


I think Robert's blog is probably the funniest blog I've ever read and although sometimes it's over the top, some times it is right on..... I love that he's an angry smart funny lefty instead of a wimpy dumb toe-the-party line lefty.

The other thing is that I get actually upset when I read his blog. Maybe it's the pictures? I think it has something to do with the combination of humor and truly shocking and appalling things that he is being humorous about. I dunno. But the way things are presented sometimes in the mainstream media (beheadings, gitmo, soldiers dying in Iraq) it's so sanitized that you don't realize that you're supposed to feel something about these things.

Robert's blog is not for the faint at heart and his humor is definately gallows humor but that's the kind of humor that makes some sense right now. And if humor about these things is what it takes to shock people, then so be it.

I haven't asked Robert's permission for this (cause I'm attributing properly and he's a nice guy) but here are some funnies from recent entries:

Get a life, get a blog, get something...

So is this what the civil rights movement has come to? Al Sharpton is like a superhero -- maybe we can call him Blackman -- who, when he sees in the night sky the signal of possible racism in progress -- maybe the signal can be the pointy-headed silouette of a KKK member -- he rushes to the scene to set everything right again?

*****

And if you aren't a conservative white male, you'd better fucking think and act like one if you want to play in any Republican reindeer games.

*****

And the irony of us Americans saying how important it is that other nations don't get nukes and "throw [their] weight around" when we remain the only nation in the history of the planet to have thrown its weight around by nuking another nation keeps me in fucking stitches. When we Americans do something, God is on our side and it's for freedom and democracy and love and butterflies, blah, blah, blah; when someone else does the same exact thing, they're evil.

http://blogs.salon.com/0001517/

Imagination

It's funny how parents are big into developing imagination in their children. A powerful imagination is actually about half way to delusional and not a very good thing. So, why do so many parents think its cute and essential to growing up?

On pictures

I was watching the girl next to me on the bus flip through a photo album and I got to thinking about why people take pictures. Interestingly, there's a girl at work has decorated her cubicle entirely with glamour shots of herself. She's an underwriter, but clearly there's something in her that wants to be model.

Photos of people seem to be a young person's game. Most semi-intellectual guys go through a phase where they take pictures of everything. Most semi-pretty girls want to be photographed. Old people take a lot of scenery shots unless grandchildren are involved. A lot of family photo albums seem to be mercifully blank when it comes to photographs of 13-15 year olds.

I guess it's something I want to think about some more.