Sunday, July 31, 2005

Holding, With Links

I'm still a little lethargic after last week's heatwave, or at least that's my excuse for not producing quality posts.

So, instead, a wander across the web.

1. Steve Gilliard points to one former dot com entrepreneur who's now trying to market himself as a blogging impresario, a la Nick Denton of Gawker/Wonkette/Defamer, etc. Given the rich infrastructure of the blogging world--tracking devices, advertising, hierarchies, syndication software--and given the enormous buzz around the "power of the blogosphere" and all that, it would surprise me if there weren't snake-oil salesmen launching schemes.

2. The blogs are getting all fired up about the special congressional election in historically conservative Ohio district 2. The Republican candidate is a local politician, Jean Schmidt, and the Democratic candidate is the first veteran from this Iraq adventure to run for political office, Paul Hackett.

Hackett has won some love from left-leaning blogs for being willing to call Bush a chickenhawk--and then not to back down from the statement. From the clips I've seen, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, he seems like he's managed to find a judicious balance between direct Dean-like talk and policy-nuance; he's also working the returned-Marine bit like a champ.

Schmidt, on the other hand, is a menace: every word out of her mouth is a talking-point, most of which turn into slurs against "Liberals," which her opponent happens to embody. I get the feeling that she had expected her election to congress to be the natural stepping-stone in her fine career of service and that the stress of a contested and publicized election is getting to her. Ohioans deserve a congressional representative who can handle obstacles (and the English language) better than Schmidt does.

It would send a fine message to the Republican party if Hackett were to win.

And it gives me great pleasure to link to one of Billmon's commentors, responding to purist leftist critiques of Hackett's position that the US should work to repair Iraq. The unnamed commentor wrote:
Jesus Tapdancing Christ, this guy is a candidate for Congress, not the fucking Grail Quest.
That is a fabulous line.

3. In other tech-David against entrenched-Goliath news, Peter Ashdown, whose internet provider XMission must be making some serious money, has thrown down the gauntlet to Orrin Hatch. Ashdown's campaign, at this point, seems to be based on two points: 1) Orrin Hatch is a zombie who sold his soul a long time ago to corporate interests and the Republican party, and 2) the E.F.F. is absolutely right. I like him already. Here's a link to his campaign site. Curiously, in all of the media about Ashdown's campaign that I've read--and I'll admit that the number is more than five and less than fifteen--nobody mentions whether he's LDS or otherwise. Even the Deseret News published a full profile without answering this question. I'll take the silence as meaning not-LDS.

4. In order to watch one of those clips at Crooks and Liars, my system informed me that I would need to download updates to my RealPlayer. I haven't really kept current with my media players, but today, I figured: sure, why not get a nice new RealPlayer and stop using the Windows player? I downloaded the entire new version of Real, which took between 15-20 minutes with installation, and then clicked on the C'nL file I had wanted to view. Informed that Real needed some additional plug-ins to play that clip, then informed that Real couldn't detect the fact that I was online despite the six Firefox windows then running, I figured that there's no point in trying to be non-corporate and that all media players are evil. I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

5. MakingLight's sidebar links open up a whole new internet. This week, I've enjoyed the link to a list of ridiculous arrests and the link to a compendium of the most baroque extensions of Godwin's Law for online discussions. Both inspire reverence for the Law's ability to manifest itself in the smallest of details.

etc

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Holding Pattern

I've got a couple of posts in the works, things I'd like to think through a bit more before I post them, so don't go away, oh my five readers, for, erm, great things are on their way. Editing before publishing on the web for all and evermore = good idea. Not entirely compatible with the blogging medium, perhaps, I'll allow you--but I never claimed to be a good blogger, now, did I?

In the meantime, I've added a few more sites to my blogroll: 'Aqoul, Lance Mannion, Brian Leiter, Overheard in New York, all kinds of good stuff. Check 'em out!

etc

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Police Presence in NYC

I take the 1/9 from 125th almost every day. Since the London bombings, there have been at least three uniformed cops just hanging out by the turnstiles, as opposed to the occasional one or two patrolmen before. They're always there now; they look bored. I saw them talking down a crazy guy a couple of days ago. I haven't seen any bags searched.

This isn't a transfer station, and it isn't near any terrorist targets that I can imagine. (Maybe terrorists have an intense hatred for meat-packers, college students, and subsidized-housing dwellers, but still.) I haven't seen as many cops at other stops on the line.

So is this just a convergeance of the higher police presence in Harlem generally with the stepped-up police presence in NYC after 7-7? What are other NYC residents experiencing?

etc

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Codes of Politesse

Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata writes a reflective post about how Anglo-American and French customs of politeness vary. He suggests that one of the key reasons that Anglo-Americans feel that they are treated rudely in France might be because, according to French standards of politeness, Anglo-Americans begin conversations rudely. Brian writes:
Instead of saying "Bonjour Madame" to the lady selling patisserie, we pitch right in and tell her which patisserie we want, without any preliminary courtesies. Which, in France, is very rude. That is why madame is always, to us, so grumpy.
I lived for some time in France and internalized many French customs. When tourists who needed directions came up to me and without a "Bonjour," an "excuse me," or the merest recognition that they were demanding a favor, asked me to stop and help them, I got a little ticked off. The millions of visitors to Paris need to remember how small that city is and how disruptive tourist season to the lives of citizens can be. Yes, in the abstract, one knows that tourists' money keeps the city's economy going, but in the personal, that tourbus is polluting the biking lane and that tourist needing directions is another guy on the street who wants something.

Brian's post confirms my opinions, but one of his commentors suggests a more complex understanding of the unstated class snobbery that does indeed obtain beneath the egalitarian surface of French social interactions. Alice writes:
Getting identified (labelled) is also difficult in France, even among French "equals", so one never knows if one's reached the best possible terms with a French citizen as long as one hasn't made sure to be clearly labelled by the target-tribe (individual aesthetic and commonly readable aesthetics are also essential in France). Even French people need to tell what could be guessed from their vocabulary and clothes in most occidental countries. What is more, the best possible terms with French people might not be of any interest to you, most of them never socialise, don't speak any foreign language and would never believe in the benefits of networking if they ever heard that word. Any foreigner who fells discriminated in France has certainly been less discriminated against than a French native, because the French are far more indulgent to foreigners. Social relationships are so intricate in France, that the French often prefer to hire or rent their property to a non-occidental in order to be relieved from these numerous rules and judgments and feel superior for a while... until they face more material nuisances. I realise my explanations are too abstract, but I'm French. The consequences are practicle, dramatic and taboo. (The fact that French successful comical movies are “unexportable” doesn’t matter.)
Silence and violence are two alternatives to French socially acceptable discussions, and having one's blog sheltered in the States is safer.
I'm not entirely sure that Alice's categories of not-French and not-Occidental hold up under scrutiny. Obtaining a lease in France, as a white foreigner, was extremely onerous, and I've heard stories that convince me that obtaining a lease as a non-white foreigner would be even harder. I also don't entirely understand the idea that networking would not mean much to French people; the concept of "piston" (or influence) seems very alive to those French people I've known. "Piston" gets you everything from the nice cut of meat to the available vacancy in the local child-care center.

On the other hand, certain ideas she expresses make a lot of sense to me. As a not-French person, I was forgiven many ignorances and was held to a different standard of fashion, conduct, and cooking. As I internalized French ideas about class, I learned to discriminate the quality of fabrics and the cut of a jacket from thirty paces, under bad lighting. I learned that it was a given that the "unacceptable" (usually Maghrebin) young men should be called the "racaille," a word my academic training associated with the contempt of kings, basically translated as "rabble" or "riff-raff." Hipsters called the "racaille" the "caille-ra," using the inverse slang of the ghetto. The elite are marked: anyone with a Grande Ecole degree will use it as a lever for the rest of their lives. I've seen monographs where the author had no academic affiliation but their Grand Ecole diploma, but it was displayed prominently as a qualification. (Can you imagine a BA or even a Masters from an Ivy treated so?) I dated someone with a Grande Ecole background briefly. The career having proved onerous, this person had moved into tutoring. Work poured in, as the qualifications and status of a Grande Ecole degree were so alluring.

Okay, this much said, I feel I have a basis for saying that as much as I admire Pierre Bourdieu's Distinctions, I question the book's easy transferability to other cultures.


etc

Literary Prodigies

In reference to a TLS article that I can't locate online, one of my friends suggested that Rimbaud might be literature's only true prodigy.

Such an assertion begs debate. Debate that would begin with a clearer definition of the idea of "prodigy," which combines ideas of omens, miraculousness, precocious genius, and technical mastery. Some disciplines seem fertile for prodigies: math, chess, physics, and music. In the first three, judging the prodigy as prodigious seems easier: the prodigy solves a problem or wins the game. In the fourth, the prodigy's prodigiousness is more difficult to gauge: the prodigy can play with mastery, but I would have to defer to people more knowledgeable in music to be able to differentiate between a human-playback machine and a true genius.

In literature, the field I know much better, we decided that the prodigy's work as a youth would have to be of such quality that it demanded comparision to the productions of serious writers of all ages. This definition would rule out Byron's Hours of Idleness (produced at 18), or Pope's later assertion that he "lisped in rhyme": no matter how much potential was shown, the output doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.

Keats, despite his sudden brilliance and youth, was 23 or 24 during the "golden year." Chatterton's poetry, written before his 20th birthday, is largely forgotten today--the deception that was his downfall also covers up his voice. Gerard de Nerval was heralded as a prodigy, for translating with great sensitivity Goethe's Faust--does that count? (And in another, perhaps related discipline, Hume has got to be one of the few philosophy prodigies; his Treatise was conceived before 21 and written before 25. Maybe that's beyond the cut-off date.)

I don't think it's an accident that when looking for literary prodigies, I'm first looking for poets. The lyric would seem to be the easiest mode to write in without wide and deep experience of life. You'll see a lyrical novel here and there--Alfred de Musset's Confessions d'un enfant du siecle at age 26 might qualify him as a prodigy, as might his poetry collection at twenty, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie.

So many of my examples are drawn from the early 19th century, an era that glorified youth (and that presented fewer obstacles to publication), so where are the later literary prodigies, or contestants thereunto?

Ideas?

etc

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Irresponsible Translations 5: Metaphors of Threat

This edition of Irresponsible Translations is dedicated to Charles Bird, whose emphatic and unapologetic use of metaphor at times approaches Chateaubriand's standard. Charles's most recent post is a fairly straight summary of Saturday morning's bombing in Egypt; it's the title, though, that told me that a revisting of Chateaubriand would not be amiss.* After all! Chateaubriand is a great conservative prose stylist, like Edmund Burke; neither were afraid to go there in the exposition of their views.

So, in the following excerpt, Chateaubriand throws everything but the kitchen sink at the cholera epidemic of 1832 in order to extract meaning out of it. It is taken from the Memoires d'Outre-Tombe, Vol. 4 (Livres de Poche, 1973), 310-12. The irresponsible translation itself is below the fold.


*Charles's recent post's title wouldn't be quite as funny if one didn't know CB's track-record; he also famously coined the unfortunate term "democratsunami," or something like it: it's been a little difficult getting the relevant month's pages to load. The translation and analysis that follows reflects more on Chateaubriand than on Charles, and not just because one is dead and the other quite alive. Chateaubriand is, after all, the apotheosis of pigheadedness, rather, ideological consistancy.

[Post edited for clarity]
Chateaubriand on the 1832 cholera epidemic--the first time the disease had come to the West.

Cholera, which left the delta of the Ganges in 1817, propogated itself over a distance of two thousand, two hundred miles, from North to South, and three thousand, five hundred from West to East; it desolated fourteen hundred cities, cut down forty million individuals.We have a map of this conquerer’s march. It took cholera fifteen years to come from India to Paris--the speed of Bonaparte: he took about the same number of years to go from Cádiz to Moscow, and he only killed two or three million men.

What is cholera? Is it a deadly wind? Is it those insects that we swallow and that devour us? What is this great black death armed with its scythe that, having crossed the mountains and the seas, has come like one of those terrible pagodas adored on the banks of the Ganges, to crush us here on the plains of the Seine under the wheels of its chariot? If this scourge had fallen upon us during a religious era, it would have been aggrandized in moral poetry and popular beliefs; it would have left a striking picture.

Imagine a burial cloth, floating not unlike a flag above the towers of Notre-Dame, a cannon sounding intermittantly, its solitary shots to warn the imprudent traveller to stay away: a blockade of troops surrounding the city et letting nobody leave or enter, churches filled with a trembling crowd, priests psalming prayers, day and night, in a perpetual agony, last rites carried from house to house with candles and bells, church bells incessantly ringing the funereal beat, monks, crucifix in hand, calling people at the crossroads to penitence, preaching the wrath and judgment of God, manifested upon the corpses already blackened by the fire of hell.
[...]

But none of that: cholera has come to us in an era of philanthropy, incredulity, newspapers, material administration. This unimaginative scourge met neither old cloisters, nuns, sepuculres, nor gothic tombs: like the terror of 1793, it walked with a mocking air in the bright day, in an entirely new world, accompanied by its bulletin, which tells of the remedies one has employed against it, the number of victims it has had, where it was at, the hope that on had to see it over, the precautions that one should take, what one should eat, how one should dress.And everyone continued to pay attention to their business, and the theaters were full.

Chateaubriand in his grandiloquence throws himself out there as an admitted reactionary. His medieval fantasy of priests and public pietry he himself recognizes as a Romantic projection. The Orientalizing language with which he denounces the disease is in some twisted sense a recognition that his Catholic worldview can no longer explain his present's reality. It doesn't do any favors to the "Orient," of course--instead of Satan, I'll use some Eastern gods, yeah, that's it. It recognizes that its feudal-Catholic worldview has disappeared beneath the modern newspaper-bureaucracy, and all of its meaning-making symbolism seems to be so much nostaglia. Yet still, he goes there: he uses the present catastrophe to mourn a vision of the past.

I've researched this period, and specifically with regard to the cholera epidemic: Chateaubriand's comments are the most eloquent and yet have the least impact on public life at this point. He's an extraordinary stylist, taking chances with the grandest of mixed metaphors, and in large part I'd argue that he's willing to go out on these stylistic limbs because his ideological certainty (or contrariness?) buoys him up.

After all: Chateaubriand, by Vol. 4, was a supporter of the Bourbons after the revolution of 1830, which meant that he had to champion the eight year-old Henri (V?) against a perfectly competent Louis-Phillipe, a royal cousin who happened to be convenient to the mercentilist class arranging compromises with the democrats. Chateaubriand knows very well that his version of history is losing: modernity, the "era of philanthropy, incredulity, newspapers, material administration," will win out. He has committed himself to a reactionary, monarchical position, which he continuously describes in glowing, idealized terms. Ah, the response to incomprehensible terror should bring us trembling to the church! O! we should remember the examples of our martyrs at such times!

I retain a great deal of respect for Chateaubriand, however: he is an extraordinary stylist, and he defended, against even his own reason, an ideal that he knew to be bypassed by history. History, by the way, was a rather new concept in the early nineteenth century. People were still putting their heads around the idea that a revolution meant something new rather than something recovered or recoverable.

We're in a similar state now. We are passing from one stage of history to another, and we are trying to find markers by which to understand this transformation. We are trying to come up with language to describe our new world: one defined by decentralized networks, or, as John Robb would put it, "open source terrorism," without regard for the precarious statist peace we've drawn up over the past sixty years.

What my more public-health version of cholera and John's computer metaphors have in common is a conscious de-dramatization of a threat. It will be persistant, responsible policy that will harden our vulnerability: only a clear understanding of what we're facing can protect us. Even after the
great 19th-century sanitary measures in Western cities, even after John Snow identified the plague-source, people died--and in some parts of the world, continue to die--of this entirely preventable disease. We weep, we make better plans, we bully our officials into responsibility, and we hope for the best.

I for one embrace our materialist overlords.

etc

News Aggregator

Perhaps in response to Ezster's CT post about web-savviness marking the new elite, I'm finally going to install a news aggregator. There's also that additional factor of needing to stop spending so much damned time surfing around. It's about time.

Wikipedia's list of available feed readers is quite daunting. Since I'm very happily running Firefox, I was thinking about going with the mozdev community feeder, Habari Xenu. Then again, I still don't know enough about running a feed to make much of an informed decision.

So. Any advice? Do you use an aggregator? If so, which? Which should I avoid?

etc

Friday, July 22, 2005

Our Dichotomy Opens The Combat

Matthew in Beirut reproduces stills from the by-now somewhat famous Chinese bootleg copy of The Revenge of the Sith.

Why is it famous? Because in the English subtitles from the Chinese, to start with, the title of the film is The Backstroke of the West.

The translations run from the totally puzzling ("Giving first aid the already disheveled hair projection") to the absurd ("Smelly boy!"). There are also a number of, um, sight gags involving robots and fucking.

Perhaps the best line is Anakin's statement to Obi Wan: "I was just made by the Presbyterian Church," which refers, obliquely enough, to the Jedi Council. Josh in comments explains how the translation could have happened:
thus, the jedi (elders) council (path) becomes the presbyterian (elders') church (path). maybe.
I hope Presbyterians take pride in it.

(h/t to Katherine.)

etc

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Demotic Wisdom From Craigslist

Some anonymous individual wrote a brilliant satire of the New York City "hipster" culture and posted it to the Craigslist "Missed Connections" board, where, predictably, it has unleashed a flurry of supporting and counter posts. It nails this season's signifiers of hipness: Coney Island, big beaded necklaces, rock bands I've never heard of. The underlying pretense--the disavowal of one's own passions--has probably been around for much, much longer.

Since Craigslist postings get deleted after a little while, I'll reproduce the post below the fold.

Date: 2005-07-19, 11:19AM EDT

Hey, I've never posted one of these things before. Don't judge me.

I saw you at siren fest on saturday and I decided I had to contact you. The only time I've ever used craigslist in the past was to get Killers tickets (before the sold out, both literally and metaphorically) and to buy some some Guided by Voices limited edition vinyl LPs, so I'm not sure exactly how this works. I guess I just write about you, you read it, and then you contact me. Whatever. I'm already sooooooooo over it.

So as I was saying, I was at siren on saturday. I originally wasn't going to go because the lineup was soooooo passe but my friends talked me into it. I mean, who hasn't seen Ambulance like a MILLION times? Who hasn't seen Brendan Benson at Pianos? Who hasn't been listening to Morningwood on their iPod for like MONTHS? I mean, get with it. The Village Voice makes me ill.

But anyway, I was at siren on saturday. We got there at 3 to see The Dears (snore), but I opted to walk the boardwalk instead. After taking some artsy voyeuristic photographs of unknowing minority children playing on the beach, I made my way back into the crowd of poseurs-- um, I mean "hipsters"-- to see Q and Not U. I'm so over them too, but since it's like one of their last shows I thought I might as well check them out. Whatever. They were cool I guess.

So anyway. After that my loser friends wanted to ride the Cyclone. Please. Like I was going to wait on that line? I rode that shit back in 2001 before siren got all COMMERCIAL and shit. Pssh. Anyway, while they were waiting on line I headed over to Nathans to grab a hot dog. And that's when I saw you.

I should probably describe what you look like, right? I mean, there were thousands of chicks out that day, so it would probably help if I described you accurately to narrow it down. Okay. You: Brown hair. It was up. You had bangs. You were wearing a vintage band T-shirt (not sure which one), a skirt with torn fishnets underneath, and you had wristbands on. Oh yeah, and you had long dangly earrings. And you were smoking cigarettes. And you had a funny looking purse with iPod headphones coming out of it. And you were wearing big sunglasses. And you had a gigantic beaded necklace. And you were wearing flip flops. And you were wearing a lot of eye makeup. And you were drinking Sparks. And you looked disinterested. And your friend standing next to you had her hair dyed red. And your bra strap was showing. Oh, and you were white.

Does that narrow it down enough?

Anyway, I'm sure like hundreds of other guys noticed you, so I should probably describe myself too. Right? I guess. I mean, how does one describe oneself? It's ridiculous. Whatever. Okay. I'm kind of tall. Like roughly 5'10." I don't know my exact height because I haven't been to a doctor or a gym since high school. I'm skinny. Like very skinny. Like, I don't eat. Like, don't let that Nathans hot dog fool you, I was only holding it to be ironic. So yeah, I'm tallish, skinny, and I have a beautiful dark brown eye. Singular. I mean, I have two eyes, but you can only see one because my jet black bangs always cover up the other one. So I have a brown eye. Oh, and I was wearing a black shirt (b/c I wear black on the outside because that's how I feel on the inside.) You know how it is.

You can check me out on myspace if you want. Whatever.

But anyway, I think you're totally cool and we should hang out sometime. Maybe go somewhere nobody ever goes to and listen to some music that nobody's ever heard of. What do you say? I mean, whatever. Either way. Whatever. Like I care. I'm already over it.

Fuck George Bush.

Later.




  • this is in or around mad-hattan



etc

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Where's The Sportsbook in Literature?

Over at Tradesports, I see that they have current bets on the date of Osama's and Zarquawi's capture, sports of all kinds, metereological events, financial statistics, and the date of Karl Rove's resignation. The "exchange site"--not a betting book, of course not a bookie--also offered odds on Supreme Court and Papal candidates.

However!

There is no handicapping of candidates for Nobel Prizes. Maybe Tradesports will open a book on the 2005 Peace prize, which is often a finely tuned political message, but a search of the site's database for "nobel" yielded no results.

What I would like to see more betting about is the Nobel prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy is currently in its summer session, which means that there already exists a short list of maybe five candidates for the prize in literature. Who could those candidates be? Who will emerge in October as the "best"? Is there a method or a politics to the selection history? Who should be considered or should win?


So, while past performance does not determine final results, and all that...below the fold I'll try to, erm, run the numbers as best an English major can.

Stats.
Here's a link to the Nobel's website list of past winners. So far, I can say one thing about the list of past winners: women haven't yet won two years running. Here's another list with a breakdown of winners' country affiliation, which can be slightly misleading. But from that data, I'm saying that the Nobel awarders seem to have discovered non-European literature around 1966. According to the country-affiliation data on this second list, a comparatively long European/US-affiliated series of winners was broken in 2003 with Coetzee's nomination. (However, Gao Xingjian's award is counted as French and Naipaul's as British; take that as you understand it.) I would guess that the odds of a European or US writer are slightly better for this year.

Trends to look for.
1. original language of publication (the awards seem biassed in favor of the big four: English, French, German, and Spanish.)

2. correlatability of award-winning work or country of origin to current events

3. poetry vs. prose (And what's with that weird period in the early 1950s when the Academy awarded Russell and Churchill the prize?)

4. thematic vs. formal importance of work


Current English-Language Favorites.
Myself, I think that Rushdie will be put on hold for another year or so. He writes in English on post-colonial issues, so Coetzee's 2003 award will have the Academy looking elsewhere for awhile. We haven't had a poet since 1996, or thereabouts, so we might be due. In English-language poetry, I would love to see Paul Muldoon up for it, but Ashberry would be more likely.

Resources.
The best online guide I've found to international authors is the Complete Review and its attendant blog, the Literary Saloon. These people are serious about their literature--and furious when provincialism or bad translations prevent good stuff from getting an audience. They're probably much too serious to handicap a Nobel race, but their site would certainly provide valuable resources for those who would.

etc

Online Security

The people hanging around at Making Light know about semi-publicity: they've published in print, they've done fanzines, they know from conferences, they remember their usenet. And it's interesting to note that as condemnatory they are against Helaine Olen, they tend to remind readers about how vulnerable they are to searches. James MacDonald reminds people of his basic online aphorisms:

1. There are no secrets.

2. Don't say anything to anyone anywhere that you don't want to hear Dan Rather read on the Six O'Clock News.

By which, he later clarifies, he means nothing you'd not be willing to defend and stand for--no matter how unpopular--under scrutiny.

More elucidating are Kathryn Cramer's remarks about tracing IP addresses. (I happened to witness in real-time K. C. being swarmed by LGF trolls and thought that she dealt with them with impressive professionalism, given the largely apolitical nature of her blog.) What Kathryn points out is that every time one leaves a comment on a blog, one usually also leaves one's IP address. This address can usually be cross-referenced against an online blog or email address. Once an IP address has been definitely linked to an online handle, the online community can ostracize you or, under various and so-far nefarious proceedings, can out you under your real name. Every time you register a comment from your home computer or a log-in network, no matter how pseudonymous your online persona, you are leaving a trace that could be followed, should someone choose to do so.

Again, should someone choose to do so. Most of us are safe--statistics, after all, are on our side. But we should not get complacent; the nature of privacy is changing, and many of us are making our private lives public before we really understand what havok publicity can make of us. A little old-fashioned paranoia would not do the blogosphere any harm at this point.


etc

Monday, July 18, 2005

Irresponsible Translations 4

I think we're at four; it's been awhile. I was reading W.H.Auden this afternoon, a poet whose work, I believe, is still under copyright. So under fair use, I'll simply cite the last stanza of his extraordinary "September 1, 1939":

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.
Since so many of my feelings tonight are captured by Auden's copyright-protected poem, I'll instead share my translation of a similarly astrological-themed poeme en prose, Baudelaire's #37, "The Good Deeds Of The Moon."

Below the fold, as becomes my native modesty. Oh, and if you have come across this post in your scholastic research, as I see some people have of my earlier translations, I urge you to remember that my site is googleable, that my translations are "irresponsible," and that my Creative Commons licence permits credited reproductions.

XXXVII

The Good Deeds of the Moon

The Moon, who is capriciousness itself, looked through the window as you were sleeping in your cradle and said, “This child pleases me.”

And she smoothly descended her ladder of clouds and passed through the window without noise. Then she laid herself onto you with the tenderness of a mother, and she left her colors on your face. Your irises have stayed green from it, and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. It’s from contemplating this visitor that your eyes have so strangely widened, and she caught you by the throat so tenderly that you have since always wanted to cry.

However, in this expansion of her joy, the Moon filled the entire bedroom with a phospheric atmosphere, like a luminous poison; and all this living light thought and said, “You will feel the influence of my kiss eternally. You will be beautiful in my manner. You will love what I love and what loves me; water, clouds, silence and night; the immense green ocean; uniform and multiform water; the place where you are not; the lover whom you do not know; monstrous flowers; perfumes that make you delirious; cats which spasm on pianos and which mewl like women in soft, hoarse voices.

“And you will be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtisans. You will be the queen of green-eyed men, whose throats I have also caught during my nocturnal caresses; those who love the ocean, the immense, tumultous, green ocean, unformed and multiformed water, the place where they are not, the woman they do not know, sinister flowers that resemble censers of an unknown religion, perfumes that disturb the will, and savage and voluptous animals that are the emblems of their madness.”

And that is why, dear and damned brat, I am now prostrate at your feet, searching all over your body for a glint of the terrible Divinity, the fateful godmother, poisonous nurse of all lunatics.


etc

Betting Pool

Billmon's Whiskey Bar is pretty much the site that dragged me into this godawful mess known colloquially as the blogosphere, and despite the impressive implosion that the site suffered, I'm still addicted.

Well, Billmon has done the unthinkable. After a year of silence and a year of half-hearted pontification, he has opened up a comment thread for your bets and mine on the outcome of the Plame grand jury investigation. It was opened at twenty to four this afternoon; by 11:45, it had reached 311 comments.

Everyone (other than the A-listers) are placing their bets. The prize is, of course, laughable. It's all about prestige: being right about the indictments might edge out the prestige factor of being early on Billmon's only commentary post, but we'll see.

I suspect that many of the commentors are betting there simply to encourage Billmon to open up more threads, but the sheer quantity of commentors will probably have the opposite effect; in the long run, I suspect Billmon doesn't really have the temperament to manage a community, so perhaps the top-down approach will work better for him. Intervening here and then on the spin-off sites should protect his private time while maintaining his authority. I don't begrudge him any of that self-protection. I just want, selfishly, to keep reading his stuff.

etc

Hooray for Juries!

A couple of weeks ago, I received a questionnaire from the NY state federal court. They wanted to expedite my inevitable juror-selection process, and so they had a few questions for me. I'm expecting a summons any day now.

I served about two years ago in civil court as an alternate. It was a strange case--though I imagine that at trial, most cases seem strange to a layperson--involving an ugly fight at a well-known gay bar in the Village. Serving jury duty was a pain in the ass--a boring, confusing combination of waiting around and concentrating--but everyone in that jurors' room took their responsibility seriously: hell, I came out with more respect for my fellow jurors than for either of the parties in court. I realized, in a couple of very quick, illicit, and late-in-the-trial conversations with fellow jurors, that they didn't have the same take on the evidence that I had thought self-evident.

I was only an alternate and never did hear how the case turned out, but the 12 smart and diverse New Yorkers left to decide the verdict seemed more than capable of delivering justice. I had gone into the process chaffing a bit at the legal direction that jurors are supposed to obey but gained a great deal of respect for the system at the end--the inspiring instance of jury nullification in the case of John Peter Zenger notwithstanding.

So, among the many threads of l'Affaire Plame that are now circulating in the Blogosphere, I would like to highlight and celebrate Time reporter Matthew Cooper's description of the grand jurors:
Grand juries are in the business of handing out indictments, and their docility is infamous. A grand jury, the old maxim goes, will indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it of them. But I didn't get that sense from this group of grand jurors. They somewhat reflected the demographics of the District of Columbia. The majority were African American and were disproportionately women. Most sat in black vinyl chairs with little desks in rows that were slightly elevated, as if it were a shabby classroom at a rundown college. A kindly African-American forewoman swore me in, and when I had to leave the room to consult with my attorneys, I asked her permission to be excused, not the prosecutor's, as is the custom. These grand jurors did not seem the types to passively indict a ham sandwich. I would say one-third of my 2 1/2 hours of testimony was spent answering their questions, not the prosecutor's, although he posed them on their behalf.
These jurors will serve the court until whatever indictments can be obtained will be: the current story is that maybe they'll be free in October at some point. They are basically captive members of the court, being paid shit wages while the rest of their lives are on hold. They are at the center of and being asked to judge an extraordinarily complex unravelling of official secrets and lies. Who knows what they're thinking about ham sandwiches? At this point, I feel sympathy for them and admiration for the evident seriousness with which they accept their duty.

Very few judicial systems require as much citizen-service as the American one does. Most of continental Europe relies on prosecuting judges, while Canadia and England have scaled jury trials back to six persons, and then only in very serious cases. L'Affaire Plame is clearly serious, and the presence of a jury at least protects the judiciary in this country, in this political climate, from accusations of judicial activism.

Later on, perhaps, if things go wrong for Rove, we'll hear more about the demographics of this jury. From what I understand of Cooper's testimony, the jury pool seems to contain more than a few black women. Not what one would call, erm, an obviously Republican profile, but most likely one that represents fairly the eligible jury pool in the District of Columbia, a town which has good reason to be skeptical of the machinations of national-level politicians.

Good citizens of DC, I can't wait to hear your verdict, and I thank you for your service.

etc

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Meta-Blogging 19: The Nanny Diary [Updated]

When a well-heeled New Yorker admits, essentially, to firing her nanny over her blogging, the blogosphere's reaction is a little predictable.

Helaine Olen writes a seamy little story for the NY Times Style section about how she became an obsessional reader of her nanny's blog and "discovered" things about her nanny's private life that made her uncomfortable. Her nanny has sex, for one thing, thought of her job as work, and sometimes goes out with friends to bars. Oren's piece goes through a fair amount of torturous liberal self-justification for finally firing the nanny--the husband, by the way, does the deed, explaining away the termination on other grounds.

The blogging nanny, naturally, blogs her response to this NYT drive-by. Her name is Tessy, she is currently a grad student working on Victorian novels, and she has a good employment situation now. The post is pretty impressivs. In it, Tessy refutes the charges, defends her character and right to blog, and amazingly, doesn't get vindictive. (She does call the household "careless and inappropriate," however.)

Bitch PhD, who blogrolled Tessy from back in the day, discovers the post and summarizes the Olen's perspective thus: "because she wrote well enough to engage her reader, Tessa was a bad nanny."

Amanda Marcotte, blogging at Pandagon, jumps on Olen's use of the word "promiscuous"--a charge which Tessy emphatically refutes--and gets angry at the sensationalism and hypocrisy involved in the article.

And since Atrios has picked the story up this morning, Tessy's response to her ex-employer's smear will have a gigantic circulation.

One of the more curious elements of this story is that Tessy gave her employer her blog url sometimes near the beginning of the gig. She clearly thought that what she wrote about there wouldn't be controversial. (In this earlier post from when she first found out about the NYT article, she explains some of her motivations for starting up her blog.) The content of Tessy's blog is personal, perhaps too much so to share with an employer. A determined employer could probably find an employee's online writings, but it is naive, as Tessy writes, not to protect oneself, at least a little.

After reading the blogospheric reactions, I then reread Olen's piece. As Professor B. points out, the piece is less about Tessy than it is about Olen. And Olen feels tremendously guilty about the whole episode: she felt guilty reading the blog, she felt guilty knowing about Tessy's private life, she felt guilty pretending that her interest in the blog was innocent, and she felt guilty that her relationship to Tessy's blogging made her husband want to fire Tessy (projection?). I suspect that she probably feels guilty about the article, as well she should. Olen knows that she's the bad guy in her own story, and this comes through in the article, despite the vague, slanderous charges against Tessy's character.

So what did the NYT editors see in this article to justify its publication? I suspect it has something to do with the exposition of one person's over-reaction to private details, which are increasingly made accessible, if not public. (There's also the trendy nexus of a blogging story and a bad-nanny story, very marketable.) It's an ironic morality tale; its moral turns against its writer. Like the pseudonymous Ivan Tribble, Helaine Olen reveals that she is deeply uncomfortable with new cultural forms, and that she is in a position to punish (and profit).

Be careful, folks.



[UPDATE 1: Majikthise has an excellent summary of the story and a followup, in which she points out:
Olen wasn't really interested in friendship. She didn't want to be the stodgy boss, but she didn't want to be a real confidante either. What she really wanted was a pseudo-relationship that was all about her. When her manipulative pose got her into uncomfortable emotional territory, she eliminated the source of her discomfort without a second thought. Then she wrote a "reflective" essay about the situation in which she congratulates herself for recognizing her own motives, while taking for granted that her self-centered manipulative behavior was acceptable.]


[UPDATE 2: Atrios has delivered his promised analysis of the case, and I mostly agree with him. I agree that blaming Tessy for her blogging is unhelpful. Atrios: "the fact that something opens you up to asshole treatment by assholes doesn't excuse the asshole behavior anymore than having a few drinks at a meat market bar late at night excuses the behavior of a rapist." Atrios focuses his indignation at the NYT:
It's that the Times took a private individual and made her life public, over her protestations, for its readers without any justifiable news angle. It's that it's somehow acceptable for an employer to talk shit about an employee in a national newspaper but not okay for an employee to briefly mention her personal employment on her weblog.
This is the point at which I simply sigh. While Atrios is right to say that "Most people have a reasonable expectation that they won't suddenly find their personal details splashed across a national newspaper's pages," almost nobody can be guaranteed that their personal details will remain private. Newspapers do this sort of thing all the time: they take quotes out of context, publish skewed perspectives, put distorted magnifying glasses on all kinds of public, semi-public, and private individuals. The decision to go ahead with the story, despite Tessy's pleading emails, was cruel but shouldn't be seen as unusual.]

etc

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Harry Potter Gets Old [Updated]

This recent installment makes it pretty clear that the series is getting tired of itself and ready to finish itself off in a final showdown. The traditional opening sequence--the Dudleys at home--is truncated, and the schoolroom minutiae lack intensive treatment. Sadly, there are few new world-building details to make up for this trunctated treatment: no International Quidditch match, little administrative details about the Ministry of Magic, no new secret organizations, no new hidey-holes in Hogwart's. Instead, we get a couple of remember-whens and a whole lotta expository set-up for Harry Potter Seven.

Scroll down for more specific but non-spoiler statements.









The book opens with an invocation of the terrorized Muggle and Wizard communities. The first episode is narrated from the perspective of the Muggle PM, who is despondant at being blamed for a number of horrific accidents and murders. When the (ex) Minister of Magic Fudge shows up to blame Voldemort for the tragedies, we learn how the governments have communicated over the years. In true Rowling-fashion, this is presented as no cause for alarm. We then learn that the new Minister of Magic is issuing security notices that offer no real help and serve only to alarm the public. Throughout the book, Harry declines to get involved with the Ministry's efforts because he thinks of them as politically motivated and overly harsh.

It's almost impossible to read these sections without thinking of the American and English positions on the War on Terror, and I wouldn't be surprised if the top-secret committee on Harry Potter hadn't rethought--at least for a moment or two--releasing the book on schedule, given the recent attacks on London. Given the book's somewhat platitudinous take on political responses to terrorism, however, and given the represented PM's decency (and implied ineffectualness), the top-secret committee on Harry Potter made the right call. I'll still be curious to read the reviewers' spin on the rather lightweight political stuff.

As far as plot goes, this installment is the classic instance of a long, slow set-up. We learn a great deal about the early history of Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort), we learn a bit about what will be necessary to defeat him once and for all, and Harry defines the purposes of his adulthood, in classic English fashion, by acquiring the Harry Potter-world equivalents of land, a bride, and a revenge-quest.

[UPDATE 1: NYT reviewer Michiko Kakutani is of a different opinion.
the sixth volume of the series, the darkest and most unsettling installment yet. [...] There are a host of other unsettling developments in this novel [...] The early and middle sections of this novel meld the ordinary and the fantastic in the playful fashion Ms. Rowling has patented in her previous books, capturing adolescent angst about boy-girl and student-teacher relations with perfect pitch. [...] As the story proceeds, however, it grows progressively more somber, eventually becoming positively Miltonian in its darkness.

Still, I suspect most of this review of being colored by the emotions expressed in an earlier sentence:
And the terrible things that Ms. Rowling describes as being abroad in the green and pleasant land of England read like a grim echo of events in our own post-9/11, post-7/7 world and an uncanny reminder that the Hogwarts Express, which Harry and his friends all take to school, leaves from King's Cross station - the very station where the suspected London bombers gathered minutes before the explosions that rocked the city nine days ago.
And I also sense that Kakatani is giving belated praise to a series that has come to define an era's readership. But it reminds me that I mustn't be too harsh on a single volume in a series that has given me great pleasure.]

Spoilers below the fold.

Sirius Black, killed at the end of the last book, has left his estate to godson Harry, but as Harry is not a Pureblood, the house won't let him in. This bit of news is communicated entirely in exposition, so we don't get a single scene at the old Black estate. The Black house-elf Kreacher, however, now serves Harry, making for an entirely unreasonable tag-team with the freed-elf Dobby. They serve to plug a minor plot-hole. Very minor.

No, almost all of this book takes place inside Hogwart's. Outside, everyone is terrified; inside, everyone is studying for their NEWTS and falling in love.

There are a few exceptions to the falling-in-love rule, but the under-fifty set, the rag-tag Aurors that seemed "interesting" from the Order of the Phoenix, also end up falling in love. Hagrid's previous romance with a fellow half-giant, Madame something-or-other, is left unmentioned. (I for one would like to see a romance for one of my favorite characters, Professor McGonagall, if we're going to be doling out romances right and left all of a sudden.)

The adolescent romances are almost painful to read. There are a few true-enough moments: avoiding or being unnecessarily mean to the desired person, petty vengeances, inability to speak honestly, etc., but since the characters involved are so beloved, Rowling can't really make them behave badly. The psychology remains on a surface-level--but, Lord, it goes on forever. More than anything, this volume falls into the courtship novel genre, and I can't say it's an enjoyable example of the species. It becomes clear 1/3 of the way through who is attracted to whom, and since the feelings seem already mutual, the impediments are contrived.

And, I'm sorry, but Ron is just lame. Conceived as a foil to Harry, he has just never managed to develop an attractive personality of his own. He is not as flamboyant as his twin brothers, not as heroic and interesting as Harry, not as smart as Hermione. He is a mass of quotidian neuroses in a magical world. He shouldn't be a love-object for Hermione, even if she is devolving over the course of the series into a reference library indexed by an overdeveloped super-ego.

The ostensible plot surrounds the following relationships:
--between Harry and Dumbledore: Dumbledore gradually takes Harry into his confidence, finally asking Harry to watch his back during a raid on one of Voldemort's soul-containers. This relationship escalates way too rapidly from mentoring to partnering. Maybe too much was going on to write in an additional episode for Harry's special Jedi training. As Obi-Wan before him, of course, Dumbledore must die.

--between Dumbledore and Tom Riddle: In a episodic series of flashbacks enabled by the now cliched Pensieve device, we learn that Dumbledore had had reason to be suspicious of the young Tom but had hoped to rehabilitate him. We see Dumbledore biding his time as Tom bamboozles Hogwarts with his smarts and good looks. (Oh, and we get a useful foil in the person of Horace Slughorn, former and now current Professor of Potions, specializing in academic favoritism, so that we can understand how networking can promote vicious characters with profitable futures ahead of them.)

--between Harry and "the Half-Blood Prince": this latter is the annotator of a textbook that enables Harry to finally cheat his way into success at Potions. Gradually, as the plot sees fit, Harry discovers Dark spells among the helpful Potions hints, giving Hermione more justification to think that Harry ought not use cheat-sheets. As usual in the Rowling universe, condemnation of cheating remains qualified: Hermione is a self-righteous genius willing to work twice as hard as the slacker-heroes whom she is unaccountably willing to save from their laziness. Everyone at Hogwart's besides her cheats; it must be that old public school spirit.

--between Harry and Snape, redux. Once again, Harry has reason to be convinced that Snape is in league with the Death-Eaters. A little narrative-perspective cheating gives this particular suspicion--after all of the damned times Potter has been suspicious and proved to have been an arrogant git--a little more credence. After all, Snape has finally been given the coveted position teaching Defense against the Dark Arts: something had to give. Still, Harry is running around trying to convince people that Snape is a traitor, to which they all answer, Dumbledore believes in him, so shut up.

The main plot resolves into the identity of the ominous "Half-Blood Prince" and Snape, who turns out to be, what do you know, a traitor and a murderer. The treatment of Snape is perhaps the most ambiguous moral message I've ever seen delivered in children's literature. Redemption is possible--or not. When people are mean to you doesn't mean they're evil--or not. You may not like someone, but you should try to be nice to them--or not. Snape's betrayal is particularly weird coming on the coattails of the last Potter book, which made a deliberate, psychological attempt to rehabilitate him into a character who could resent Harry, our Hero, for good reasons while not being evil. Maybe HP and the Order of the Phoenix departed from the outline, maybe the outline was flawed from the get-go, or maybe I like Alan Rickman.

Kieran Healy suggests that the last installment was driven almost entirely by Harry's stubbornness. The charge is rather more fairly levelled against this book than against the latter, which did spend rather more time--perhaps too much--in explaining characters' motives. Harry sees no reason to bring "The Half-Blood Prince" textbook to Dumbledore's attention, despite the moral of all the previous books and the added opportunity of regular private lessons with the headmaster. No, Harry prefers to cheat, and the book can never really bring itself to punish him properly for this preference because the plot-line depends on it.

So, the upshot is that our three heroes--and maybe the besotted Ginny, although I suspect she's about to become a prize instead of a character--are off to seek and destroy the Horcruxes that will enable them to kill Voldemort. Dumbledore is dead, Snape is after all a traitor, everyone is partnered off, our heroes have made a pact not to return to Hogwart's (after the Wesley-twins' departure, I'm astonished that anyone returned), and the Bildung is ready for a quest.

If there's only one volume left, this quest will be truncated indeed. I know that Rowling contracted with Scholastic for a seven-volume series, but there are four Horcruxes extant, one of which is in Voldemort's current body. Maybe that's one more volume. We'll see.

[UPDATE 2: As the always perspicuous yet generous reader Jenny D points out in comments, the jury could still be out on Snape's moral character and Dumbledore's judgment. A very knowledgeable set of commentors at Alas, A Blog predict the moral showdown of volume seven, tending to substantiate Jenny's interpretation of Snape as perhaps the most important secondary character in the series. The commentors also take, as Kakutani does, the long view of the series, which is perhaps more fair than my above comments do. Let's just put it this way: when all the books of the series are published, I doubt that volume six will be the one I compulsively reread.]

etc

Friday, July 15, 2005

Free Khalid!

Khalid, Raed in the Middle's brother, was arrested two days ago; today the family heard the "happy news" that he was at least in a mokhabarat (secret police) jail. No charges have been filed, and Raed suspects it might have something to do with the family's blogging. Let's hope that Khalid is charged or released very, very soon--and professionally.

This could be a public relations disaster for the new Iraqi government...

etc

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Book Bubble

Jonathan Goodwin at The Valve might value books--the physical instantiations of books, I mean--a little too much. He writes:
Students (or professors) who write, highlight, and/or underline library books should have the words they so defaced scorched into their tissues with the aforementioned microwave device. As I understand it, no lasting harm will come from this, but the immense pain should serve as a deterrent.

Furthermore, you should not write in your own books. You will, at some point, die, and then what will happen to your books? Family may take them; they may end up at a Friends of the Library sale. Others will read them. And you have to realize that people studying your marginalia is, in most cases, unlikely. Just as you wish to preserve the environment for future generations, so should you preserve your books.

I'm with him, mostly, on the library books, but on personal copies? This isn't the early modern era; unmarked copies of my books are available, if my underlining annoys some future garage-sale shopper.

Jonathan gets off his best line in the comments: "Books use humans to reproduce, much in the manner of oaks and squirrels." This is witty, if somewhat misleading. Information uses humans in this way, but humans produce the physical containers of information, or books. And in the case of most books, human can always produce some more of them.

I generally frown on waste, so I get where Jonathan is coming from. If a reader writes all over a copy of a book, that a copy that might be less useful to the next reader. By this logic, that's a copy taken out of circulation that will have to be replaced, thus consuming resources just because one reader wanted to leave his or her mark. I get it.

I also get that Jonathan's post is not a little tongue in cheek and that I might look silly responding seriously to it. But I've worked in and studied books for most of my life, and I've heard variations on this argument long enough to know that non-notetakers--no matter how laughingly they put it--really can suspect marginalia-writers of o'erweening egotism.

So, two anecdotes about the positive value of marginalia, below the fold. [UPDATE: okay, not beneath the fold; Blogger is being a pain in the arse.]

1. This idea that in one's personal copy of a book there could be little value in note-taking is very strange. What about the personal value of marginalia?

When I was eight years old, I got baptized, and to celebrate my entrance into the world of culpability, my grandparents gave me a Bible. It's a rather nice edition of the KJT translation--leather-bound, with my full name embossed on it--published by Deseret Industries. It has a very, very handy index and glossary--and maps!--so I use it all the time, despite owning like four other editions/translations.

When I was 12, like a good Mormon, I decided it was high time I went through and read the whole thing. I did so with a green pen. Then, when I was 18 and was starting to have some theological doubts, I took a number of college classes in biblical scholarship and the Bible-as-literature. My marginalia from this period tends to be in blue. These days, almost all of my marginalia, in any book, is in black.

The point is that when I reach for my desk Bible, I have an extraordinary record of my reactions over time to the text. I encounter myself as a young, believing Mormon, and I encounter myself as a passionately skeptical undergrad. There's an immediacy to these notes that reincarnate periods of my life that I simply can't access in other ways. When I'm dead, maybe another reader would find this edition too "personalized" to be readable. By then, I'll have gotten so much value out of the palimpset of my marginalia that the cost of producing another Bible seems slight.

2. When family inherits a library from a dead reader, the marginalia might be worth more to them than it would to some anonymous used book buyer. If I had kids, maybe they'd be amused enough by my Bible to hang onto it--although they'd probably get another edition for their own reading.

My grandfather, the one who was in on giving me the bible, died rather suddenly when I was still young. I knew him well as a child relating to a grandfather but didn't get to know him as an adult relating to another. I'm not about to suggest that I got to know him by reading scads of marginalia, but there is one book that he annotated that has become something of a fond family legend. His copy of Moby-Dick has written at the beginning of every chapter either "yes" or "no" (or "skip it" or something like). "On The Whiteness Of The Whale"? Sure enough: "No!" Sisters, cousins, parents, aunts, we all know about Grandpa's copy of the book, and we all laugh about it and remember Grandpa's generosity with his own opinion. On a more abstract level, it places my grandfather in the camp of readers who think that Moby-Dick is an enthralling sea-yarn that Melville screwed up by shoving an encyclopedia in it. I disagree with this judgment but enjoy meeting my dead grandfather in the text in this way.

I have at least two copies of Moby-Dick--annotated, thank you very much--but I would love to have my Grandpa's as well. I would have a fair bit of competition for it, though.


etc

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

A Heartbreaking Post

From Scott Martens, one of the smartest bloggers out there, about a tragic end to a much-wanted pregnancy. I've put the rest below the fold because I'm a bit ambivalent about linking to this post in the first place, and I may be compounding/justifying my error in judgment in commenting more fully.

The reason I've linked to Scott's post, which is in some respects intensely private, is that in the midst of his grief he has articulated something very wise:
Historical progress, events that virtually everyone agrees were progressive, have given men power over events that once had power over them. A bad harvest need no longer mean starvation. Diseases that once killed masses completely arbitrarily are now easily controlled and treated. But no primitive man, subject to the whims of the elements, ever found himself powerless in the face of an economic recession, or concerned about the outbreak of a rare disease on the other side of the world, or afraid of terrorists flying airplanes into buildings.

Progress is eternally incomplete and eternally insufficient. A progressive poltical project is, by its very nature, non-utopian. It is these things because progress always creates new events beyond the power of men.

But the dialectics of progress go still further. The power of men over events does not exclude the prospect that the very same events may have power over the very same men. At the same time as they are most potent, men can equally be just as powerless.
In this case, progress gave Scott and Kiera the power to know that their child had a chromosomal defect (Trisomy 18) that would mean their child's early death, but progress didn't mean that they could solve the problem in any way that would give them a life with that child. Scott again:
We had no power to make this a healthy pregnancy. We only had the power to know, and the power to end it. And the knowlege that not knowing and not terminating would only have been worse is cold, cold comfort indeed. The dialectic of men and events is not a simple matter of one having power over the other, and no revoltution, no new technology, no amount of progress will ever change that.
This gray area of limited control, limited knowledge, is indeed what "progressives" try to understand--and, I would hope, one of the goals of progressive politics is to comfort, or at the very least, not to condemn, people who find themselves limited by such circumstances.

Scott is also smart enough to know that by blogging about this decision to abort the fetus, he might be subject to anti-abortionist attacks:
There are people who think that what we did was murder. That God wanted us to have a terrible miscarriage, or a severely deformed and handicapped child. That somehow it was righter to let her suffer. Fuck them. They don't understand. They couldn't. What we did was the greatest demonstration of our love that we could offer our wanted, sought after, beloved daughter.

There isn't the slightest, the tiniest hesitation in my mind that we did the right thing.
What an awful decision to face, and what minimal consolation scientific understanding must be. I would write that I agree with Scott's decision, but, when I think about it, it doesn't matter and it wouldn't console any bit of Scott's grief to tack on what I think. Coralia June Martens was loved, anticipated, and wanted; her parents made a decision in what they judged to be her best interests, even as it broke their hearts.

etc

Disambiguation of Rove and Plame

Since the only people to pay attention to the Plame-leak story before about a month age were leftist bloggers, I thought I knew the basic contours of this story. That was before the story started to break and before the Rove spin-machine got ahold of it. It's starting to sound like a sprawling, complicated network of hazy allegations--Los Angeles freeways under a smoggy sky. Many people just becoming aware of this story probably take one look and walk away: it's murky and ugly, so let's go back to the clarity of the plains. I've found myself tempted to throw up my hands, stop paying attention, and wait until October for the end of the grand jury.

There is a coherent story--although we'll only find out who will be proven guilty of what, exactly, later--and Digby in a longish post puts it all together for the non-politically obsessed. If you read one Rove and Plame related blogpost, it should be this one.

etc

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Pirate Reading List

This list is assuredly ripped off from somewhere, since my personal bibliographies have much better data than I will be able to offer here. Alas, my records are incomplete. Let this be a lesson to ye swabbie academic-bloggers: keep ye records clean!

More seriously, if anyone can identify where I got this piratical hoard, I'll gladly post a link. Any further measures would go against the Code, I'm sure.

It's an absurdly long list, so I'll put it below the fold.

BTW, although they don't appear so in my browser, titles are in fact linked to Amazon entries.

Corsairs

Corsairs and Flattops : Marine Carrier Air Warfare, 1944-1945
- John Pomeroy Condon

Corsairs and Navies, 1660-1760
- J.S. Bromley

Pirate Utopias : Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes
- Peter L. Wilson

The Story of the Barbary Corsairs
- Elieen Poole

Algiers in the Age of the Corsairs
- William. Spencer

A Mediterranean Feast : Celebrated Cuisines from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs
- Clifford A. Wright (Editor)

Corsairs of Malta and Barbary
- Peter Earle

Corsairs of the Great Sea (Al-Qadim Campaign Accessory & Adventure)
- Nicky Rea

Cruisers, corsairs & slavers : an account of the suppression of the picaroon, pirate & slaver by the Royal Navy during the 19th century
- Basil Lubbock

English Corsairs on the Barbary Coast
- Christopher Lloyd

The French corsairs
- Edward Frederick Langley Russell Russell of Liverpool

Gunfire in Barbary : Admiral Lord Exmouth's battle with the Corsairs of Algiers in 1816 : the story of the suppression of white Christian slavery
- Roger Perkins

A nest of Corsairs : the fighting Karamanlis of Tripoli
- Seton Dearden

Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs
- Allen Gw

Adventures

The Treasure of Pirate Island : Great Adventures by Fisher-Price Lift-the-Flap PlayBooks
- Matt Mitter, et al

Uncle Pete the Pirate (Usborne Young Puzzle Adventures)
- Susannah Leigh, Brenda Haw (Illustrator)

Uncle Pete's Pirate Adventure (Young Puzzle Adventures Series)
- Susannah Leigh, Brenda Haw (Illustrator)

Uncle Pete's Pirate Adventure (Young Puzzle Adventures Series)
- Susannah Leigh, Brenda Haw (Illustrator)

Beware the Pirate Ghost (Disney Adventures Casebusters , No 7)
- Joan Lowery Nixon, Jon Ellis (Illustrator)

The Desperate Escape (Adventures in Pirate Cove , No 3)
- Martyn Godfrey

The Life and Adventures of Capt. John Avery. the Successful Pirate (Publication (Augustan Reprint Society), No. 203-204.)
- Charles Successful Pirate Johnson(Editor)

Uncle Pete the Pirate (Usborne Young Puzzle Adventures)
- Susannah Leigh

Addie McCormick and the Computer Pirate (Addie McCormick Adventures, Book 6)
- Leanne Lucas

At the Pirate Academy : Adventures With Language in the Library Media Center (School Library Media Programs. Focus on Trends and Issues)
- Gary Zingher

The Desperate Escape (Adventures in Pirate Cove, No 3)
- Martyn Godfrey

Master Pirate (Buck Rogers Xxvc Novel : The Adventures of Black Barney, Book 1)
- C.M. Brennan

The Mystery of Hole's Castle (Adventures in Pirate Cove)
- Martyn Godfrey

The Mystery of Hole's Castle (Adventures in Pirate Cove, No 1)
- Martyn Godfrey

Pirate Isle and the Speaking Stone : Doc Savage Two Complete Adventures in One Volume
- Kenneth Robeson

Pirate of the Plains: Adventures With Prairie Falcons on the High Desert
- Bruce Haak

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Tales

Pirate the Seal (Animal Tales Series)
- Brenda Jobling, John Bennett (Illustrator)

The Best of Pirate Writings : Tales of Fantasy, Mystery & Science Fiction
- Edward J. III McFadden(Editor), et al

Pirate the Seal (Animal Tales)
- Brenda Jobling, John Bennett (Illustrator)

Laffite the Pirate
- Ariane Dewey

The Pirate Wind : Tales of the Sea-Robbers of Malaya
- Owen Rutter

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History

Blackbeard the Pirate : A Reappraisal of His Life and Times
- Robert Earl Lee

Buried Treasures of Texas : Legends of Outlaw Loot, Pirate Hoards, Buried Mines, Ingots in Lakes, and Santa Anna's Pack-Train Gold
- W. C. Jameson

Expedition Whydah : The Story of the World's First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her
- Barry Clifford, Paul Perry (Contributor)

Expedition Whydah [ABRIDGED]
- Barry Clifford(Reader), Paul Perry (Contributor)

Granuaile : Chieftain Pirate Trader (O'Brien Junior Biography Library)
- Mary Moriarty, Catherine Sweeney

Lafitte the Pirate
- Lyle Saxon, E.H. Suydam (Illustrator)

Mystery History of a Pirate Galleon (Mystery History Series)
- Fred Finney, et al

Mystery History of a Pirate Galleon (Mystery History)
- Fred Finney, et al

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans
- Robert Tallant, et al

The Pirate Queen
- Emily Arnold McCully

The Pirate Queen
- Emily Arnold McCully

A Pirate's Life for Me! : A Day Aboard a Pirate Ship
- Julie Thompson, et al

A Pirate's Life for Me! : A Day Aboard a Pirate Ship
- Julie Thompson, et al

Saga of Hugh Glass : Pirate, Pawnee and Mountain Man
- John Myers Myers

Sir Francis Drake : The Queen's Pirate
- Harry Kelsey

Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition : English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean
- Barry Richard Burg

The World of the Pirate (The World of Series)
- Val Garwood, et al

The Book of Pirate Treasures : Being a True History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, Etc., Which Are Sought for Tothis Day
- Ralph Paine

Buried Treasures of the Atlantic Coast : Legends of Sunken Pirate Treasures, Mysterious Caches, and Jinxed Ships-From Maine to Florida (Buried treasur
- W. C. Jameson

Pirate (Eyewitness Activity Files)
- Paperback

Pirate Novels : Fictions of Nation-Building in Spanish America
- Nina Gerassi-Navarro

Pirate Novels : Fictions of Nation-Building in Spanish America
- Nina Gerassi-Navarro

The Pirate Queen
- Emily Arnold McCully

Pirate Utopias : Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes
- Peter L. Wilson

A Pirate's Life for Me! : A Day Aboard a Pirate Ship
- Julie Thompson, et al

Selling the Sixties
- Hardcover

Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition : English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean
- Barry R. Burg

Tin-Pots and Pirate Ships : Canadian Naval Forces and German Sea Raiders 1880-1918
- Michael L. Hadley, Roger Sarty

Captain Gustavus Conyngham, U.S.N. : Pirate or Privateer, 1747-1819
- Eleanor S. Coleman

Captain Gustavus Conyngham, U.S.N. : Pirate or Privateer, 1747-1819
- Eleanor S. Coleman

Cruisers, corsairs & slavers : an account of the suppression of the picaroon, pirate & slaver by the Royal Navy during the 19th century
- Basil Lubbock

Desert isles & pirate islands : the island theme in nineteenth-century English juvenile fiction : a survey and bibliography
- Kevin Carpenter

The Great Western Land Pirate : John A. Murrell in Legend and History
- James L. Penick

The history of Virgil A. Stewart and his adventure in capturing and exposing the great "western land pirate" and his gang, in connection with the evidence : also of the trials, confessions, and execution of a number of Murrell's associates in the State of Mississippi during the summer of 1835, and the execution of five professional gamblers by the citizens of Vicksburg, on the 6th July, 1835
- H. R. Howard

Lafitte, the pirate of the Gulf
- J. H. Ingraham

Lambert Wickes, pirate or patriot?
- Norman H. Plummer

Last of the pirates : a saga of everyday life on board Radio Caroline
- Bob Noakes

The pirate hero of New Orleans
- Carl Lamson Carmer

The Pirate Hero of New Orleans
- Carl Lamson Carmer

The Pirate of Tobruk : A Sailor's Life on the Seven Seas, 1916-1948
- Alfred B. Palmer, Mary E. Curtis

The pirate queen : a thrilling teenage adventure
- Colin Vard

Pirate slave
- Parker Rossman

Pirate Slave
- Parker Rossman

The Pirate Wind : Tales of the Sea-Robbers of Malaya
- Owen Rutter

Rebel Radio : The Full Story of British Pirate Radio
- John Hind, Steve Mosco

Sack of Veracruz the Great Pirate Riat of 1683 : The Great Pirate Raid of 1683
- David Marley

Selling the Sixties : The Pirates and Pop Music Radio
- Robert Chapman

Selling the sixties : the pirates and pop music radio
- Robert Chapman

Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition
- B.R. Burg

Two Florida boys and the red-haired pirate
- Carolyn Mathews

Mystery

Mystery History of a Pirate Galleon (Mystery History Series)
- Fred Finney, et al

Mystery History of a Pirate Galleon (Mystery History)
- Fred Finney, et al

The Mystery of the Pirate Ghost (Step into Reading, a Step 3 Book)
- Geoffrey Hayes(Illustrator)

Pirate Trade
- Rick Boyer

The Best of Pirate Writings : Tales of Fantasy, Mystery & Science Fiction
- Edward J. III McFadden(Editor), et al

Beware the Pirate Ghost (Casebusters, No 7)
- Joan Lowery Nixon

Beware the Pirate Ghost (Disney Adventures Casebusters , No 7)
- Joan Lowery Nixon, Jon Ellis (Illustrator)

The Desperate Escape (Adventures in Pirate Cove , No 3)
- Martyn Godfrey

Dream Pirate (Prepack 10)
- Jack Durish

Maggie and the Pirate
- Paperback

Misterio Del Pirata Purpura/the Mystery of the Purple Pirate
- William Arden

The Mystery of the Pirate Ghost
- Geoffrey Hayes

The Mystery of the Pirate Ghost
- Paperback

The Mystery of the Purple Pirate
- Paperback

Addie McCormick and the Computer Pirate (Addie McCormick Adventures, Book 6)
- Leanne Lucas

Beloved Pirate (Second Chance at Love, No. 15)
- Margie Michaels

The Desperate Escape (Adventures in Pirate Cove, No 3)
- Martyn Godfrey

Mystery in the Pirate Oak;
- Helen Fuller, Orton

The Mystery of Hole's Castle (Adventures in Pirate Cove)
- Martyn Godfrey

The Mystery of Hole's Castle (Adventures in Pirate Cove, No 1)
- Martyn Godfrey

The Mystery of the Purple Pirate (3 Investigators Ser #33)
- William Arden

The Mystery of the Purple Pirate (The Three Investigators)
- William Arden

Pirate Island Adventure
- Peggy Parish

Pirate Island Adventure
- Peggy Parish

Pirate Jenny
- April Bernard

The Saint Overboard/(Variant Title = the Pirate Saint)
- Leslie Charteris

Secrets of the Pirate Inn
- St. John Wf

The Threat of the Pirate Ship : Diana Winthrop No. 6
- Kate Chambers

Miscellaneous

A Pirate Looks at Fifty
- Jimmy Buffett

A Pirate Looks At Fifty
- Jimmy Buffett (Epilogue)

Grace the Pirate (Hyperion Chapters)
- Kathryn Lasky, Karen Lee Schmidt (Illustrator)

Alvin the Pirate
- Ulf Lofgren

Avast, Ye Slobs : Kentucky Pirate Trivia
- Carole Marsh

Avast, Ye Slobs!: Pirate Silly Trivia
- Carole Marsh

The Ballad of the Pirate Queens
- Jane Yolen, David Shannon (Illustrator)

The Ballad of the Pirate Queens
- Jane Yolen, David Shannon (Illustrator)

Blackbeard the Pirate : A Reappraisal of His Life and Times
- Robert Earl Lee

Buried Treasures of Texas : Legends of Outlaw Loot, Pirate Hoards, Buried Mines, Ingots in Lakes, and Santa Anna's Pack-Train Gold
- W. C. Jameson

Captain Abdul's Pirate School
- Colin McNaughton

Captain Abdul's Pirate School
- Colin McNaughton

Create Your Own Pirate Adventure Sticker Picture : With 25 Reusable Peel-And-Apply Stickers
- Steven James Petruccio

Dark Pirate [LARGE PRINT]
- Angela Devine

Expedition Whydah : The Story of the World's First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her
- Barry Clifford, Paul Perry (Contributor)

Free Radio : Electronic Civil Disobedience (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries)
- Lawrence Soley

The Ghost Pirate
- Julianna Bethlen, Brian Lee (Illustrator)

Grace the Pirate (Hyperion Chapters)
- Kathryn Lasky, Karen Lee Schmidt (Illustrator)

Grace the Pirate (Hyperion Chapters)
- Kathryn Lasky, Karen Lee Schmidt (Illustrator)

Granuaile : Chieftain Pirate Trader (O'Brien Junior Biography Library)
- Mary Moriarty, Catherine Sweeney

The Great Pirate Activity Book
- Deri Robins, George Buchanan (Illustrator)

Happy and Max the Pirate Treasure (Kids Interactive)
- Kris Jamsa, Art Vandeleigh (Illustrator)

Hornpipe's Hunt for Pirate Gold (The Candlewick Puzzle Storybook Series)
- Marjorie Newman, Ben Cort (Illustrator)

I Wish I Were... : A Pirate (I Wish I Were)
- Ivan Bulloch(Illustrator), et al
-

If I Were a Pirate...
- Deborah Bennett D'Andrea, Michael B. Ayers (Illustrator)

Lafitte the Pirate
- Lyle Saxon, E.H. Suydam (Illustrator)

The Little Pirate Ship (Cuddle Cottage Books)
- Mallory Loehr, et al

Microradio and Democracy (Low) Power to the People
- Greg Ruggiero, Barbara Olshansky

Mystery History of a Pirate Galleon (Mystery History Series)
- Fred Finney, et al

Mystery History of a Pirate Galleon (Mystery History)
- Fred Finney, et al

The Mystery of the Pirate Ghost (Step into Reading, a Step 3 Book)
- Geoffrey Hayes(Illustrator)

Ned Feldman, Space Pirate
- Daniel Pinkwater

The Old Pirate of Central Park
- Robert Priest(Illustrator)

Pirate

Pirate (Eyewitness Books)

Pirate (Eyewitness Books)

A Pirate (I Wish I Were)
- Ivan Bulloch(Illustrator), Diane James

Pirate and the Pagan
- Virginia Henley

A Pirate Looks At Fifty
- Jimmy Buffett(Epilogue)

A Pirate Looks at Fifty
- Jimmy Buffett

A Pirate Looks At Fifty (Random House Large Print) [LARGE PRINT]
- Jimmy Buffett

The Pirate Lord
- Sabrina Jeffries

Pirate McGrew and His Nautical Crew (Rhyming Stories Series)
- Philip Hawthorn, et al

A Pirate of Her Own
- Kinley MacGregor

Pirate of My Heart
- Donna Valentino

Pirate Plunder's Treasure Hunt : A Pop-Up Whodunit
- Iain Smyth (Illustrator), Jacqueline Crawford (Illustrator)

The Pirate Prince
- Gaelen Foley

The Pirate Queen
- Emily Arnold McCully

The Pirate Queen
- Emily Arnold McCully

Pirate School (All Aboard Reading, Level 2 (Ages 6-8))
- Cathy East Dubowski, Mark Dubowski (Illustrator)

Pirate Soup (Mercer Mayer's Creepy Critters Pictureback Shape Books)
- Mercer Mayer (Illustrator), et al

Pirate the Seal (Animal Tales Series)
- Brenda Jobling, John Bennett (Illustrator)

Pirate Treasure Mazes
- Dave Phillips


etc