Bandarlog


	War of the Worlds The bandarlog rule, as we know, is accentuate the positive. So I’ll start with what went right. You know how so much movie CGI seems completely unreal, such that scenes allegedly freighted with dramatic import carry the resonance of watching your cousins play combat on the Atari 2600? Spielberg handles all that beautifully. The alien machines have a sense of presence and mass that Jackson’s orc armies lacked entirely. The technical trick, I think, is to have the CGI interact with normal objects – cars, boats, buildings – and by flinging them about acquire a degree of their reality (similarity: the arms of Doc Oc throwing sacks of coins in Spiderman 2). And yes, it’s harrowing: a powerless Tom Cruise flees pell-mell across the Eastern Seaboard, pursued by horrible mechanical tripods. What goes wrong? A number of things. I conceive myself as a lover of children and a friend to “family values.” Yet is there not something diseased about Spielberg’s insistence on making the most hysterical, terrified parenting instincts the very touchstone of human experience? We saw this in Minority Report: duck in the pool for 20 seconds, and a pervert nabs your kid! We saw this in AI: where the promise of 35th century technology is … a single night cuddled up with Mom! Maybe when I have kids this will all make sense, but for now Speilberg’s moral vision creeps me out. Obsessive parental love simply is not the keystone of all virtues, a fact of which Spielberg seems unaware. In WotW, Spielberg invokes the same diminished moral aesthetic, but here can deploy the preternaturally polished Dakota Fanning in its service. I can’t tell you how unpleasant it is to realize, midway through a movie, that one is positively rooting for the death of Dakota Fanning. She’s a lovely little girl. Yet while she lives there seems almost no hope that Cruise’s protagonist will act like an adult. Civilization is collapsing under an alien assault, but Cruise can’t be bothered to avert human extinction, as he’s helpless to stop his daughter from sassing back and wandering, Perils-of-Pauline fashion, into death-trap upon death-trap. There’s a time for boomer-style permissive parenting. Armageddon is not that time. Screaming kids must be silenced with a solid smack; the business of the day is loading the rifle and preventing apocalypse. In addition, the movie is a hell of a downer. I never imagined a Hollywood movie would dare equal, much less surpass the anti-heroic tone of H.G. Wells' vision. Where Wells at least had the Royal Navy putting up some kind of fight (and downing a tripod in the bargain), in Spielberg’s War human response alternates between the ineffectual, the pusillanimous, and the accidental. The less said about Tim Robbin’s deranged survivalist (and surely, anyone who considers effectual resistance must perforce be deranged), the better. We do learn, however, that resistance is futile, and that true wisdom counsels cringing and hiding. In the end, of course, the microbes do their work and the Spielberg take on beatific vision obtains: Baby is united with Mom in the ruins of a very posh South End neighborhood. This ending simply reinforces the subhuman scale of Spielberg’s moral imagination. Aliens have attacked, billions are dead, and yet we, the audience, are supposed to be comforted as Cruises ex-wife mouths “thank you” after the return of her precious poppet. Sorry, Steve, no sale. [Ben A.: 6/30/05 04:10]


	Vatican Rave! To quote Prince: You can be the President, I'd rather be Pope. You can be the side effect, I'd rather be the dope via eve tushnet [Ben A.: 6/29/05 16:50]


	Slam Both of my teams -- the hometown Sox and the team for which Clemens pitches -- got beat last night on grand slams allowed by the bullpen in the late innings. Irksome. Not as irksome as spending $65mm on a starting rotation full of stiffs, I grant you, but irksome nonetheless. [Ben A.: 6/29/05 14:53]


	Unocal I have said many times, on and off this blog, that the US has often before balanced its accumulated current account deficit by inflicting capital losses on foreign investors. This time around, I feared that doing so might entail greater collateral damage than in prior cases in view of the fact that the Chinese (among others) were using their dollars to buy Treasuries. Yet the siren song of speculative investment proves hard to resist, and even the Chinese government (in the shape of state-controlled CNOOC) seems bent on overpaying for US companies (granted, Unocal offers possibly useful natural resource reserves rather than the certainly useless prestige of trophy real estate the Japanese so coveted, but even so, the Chinese taste for overseas oil and gas has something of the obsessive about it). Unocal's major reserve assets lie in East Asia, so it would be hard for the US to claim that Chinese ownership constitutes a strategic threat. The bigger issue is, as Ben points out, technology; in Unocal's case, deepwater drilling technology. However, it appears that China will get this in any case from cooperative ventures with Petrobras. I say, let 'em overpay! Check out the market price of CNOOC if you want to "mark to market your intuition" about whether CNOOC is making a good choice! [Ben H.: 6/27/05 15:55]


	Unocal There is no spectable more pleasurable than watching foreign investors overpay for US assets, and the general principles behind the "who cares" position are sound. The issues that interest me are strategic. It is correct, I think, to view China as a 21st century Prussia: an expansionist regional power, testing its new strength, and likely to dangerously overestimate its own capabilities. The Unocal acquisition occurs in this context, and raises three questions: Does Unocal have access to any truly strategic technology (or assets)? Is it ever possible to prevent technology/asset transfer? Is Unocal one of those opportunities? Bewitched II Perish the thought. The bet came into effect only last week, but was the contract was made immediately after we first saw the preview (at least six weeks ago). [Ben A.: 6/27/05 13:03]


	Besmirched According to the Hollywood Stock Exchange, your bet is deeply in the money. You didn't check it in advance, would you? Only a career flow trader would rip his own wife's face off! [Ben H.: 6/27/05 10:36]


	Gambling I too dislike games which a) risk money, and b) are impossible to win. Better are casual bets and predictions that serve to mark my intuition to market. Last week, for example, I bet on the good taste of the American public: Deb gets a free dinner if "Bewitched" makes over $100mm US. [Ben A.: 6/27/05 09:15]


	The Other Vulgar Asian Stereotype ... is that they're highly superstitious. That's probably the main explanation for all this. [Doug: 6/26/05 14:37]


	Sino-Suckers Yesterday, my HK colleague and I took the ferry over to Macau. While we spent most of our time there seeing the Portugues colonial sights, we agreed that we ought not leave without at least paying a quick visit to the casinos. After all, the ferry over had something of the flavor of an Atlantic City bus and I had to wonder what exactly had drawn these Hong Kongers across the Pearl River. We first checked out the marquis property of the old Macau, Stanley Ho's earliest gambling property, the Hotel Lisboa. We then moved on to the flashiest new property, The Sands Macau. On the surface, they had little in common, the Hotel Lisboa being a garish, waterstained old hulk, a threadbare carpet covering its smoke-choked casino floor, cheek-by jowl gambling tables thronged by shabbily-dressed mainlanders out for a punt; the "VIP Rooms" are distinguished by sligthly less worn carpeting and a profusion of cheesy fake-gilt scrollery on the walls. The Sands boasts a gleaming new steel-and-glass building with a soaring atrium, a collection of expensive (I can't speak to the quality) restaurants, patronized by better dressed mainlanders likewise out for a punt. Where the casinos converged was in the game preferences of their patrons. The game of choice was, of all things, baccarat. In the west, baccarat has the reputation of the consummate "whale" (i.e. extreme high roller) game, beloved of gazillionaire betting maniacs like Kerry Packer, chosen by Ian Fleming as James Bond's game of choice, a game played by tuxedos men in exclusive VIP rooms. This is the game that represents the bread-and-butter of casinos catering to mainland Chinese day-trippers. Now, you guys know that as a professional speculator, I see little point to wagering money at a casino. Never does a gambler maintain an advantage against the house. Some games offer the prospect of nearly even odds to a punter who applies intense concentration to optimal play, though the fun of such an activity escapes me entirely. Given the vulgar stereotype of Asian mathematical prowess, it may surprise that the Chinese game of choice involves no skill whatsoever, and a language purist might even deny it the status of a "game." For the player merely chooses to bet on "banker" (the house), "player" (the sucker) or a tie. The game proceeds entirely deterministically: dealer gives player two cards, and the bank two cards. Based on the point value of those cards, the player must either stand or draw; likewise the banker. Based on the final point value, either the banker wins, the player wins, or a tie occurs. Perhaps to cover up the essentially passive nature of the game, a strange ritual seems to have grown up around it (maybe only in China, as I've never seen the game played in the West). The players painstakingly make minute folds in the edges of their cards while they remain face down, then toss them back at the dealer such that they land face-up. At first, I thought this might have some bearing on the result, but it turns out to have no effect whatsoever. The punter faces quite poor odds, so much so that whales like Packer typically negotiate a "rebate" on their losses. A walk around the casino floor revealed that most of the popular games shared baccarats game-theoretic structure: an initial, uninformed bet, followed by the generation of random values which determine the payoff of the bet. Different games have different bells and whistles, but these are nothing more than pointless elaborations. After watching for a few minutes a particularly confusing table, featuring at its center a casino employee taking repeated swipes at a pile of little, marked ivory beads, each swipe pulling out a row of four, we decided to ask a pit boss for explanation. Our status as possibly the only white faces in the house elicited from the Filipino put poss an admirable frankness. He explained the rules of the game (I've forgotten the name, alas). My colleague asked him, is it a good game? "It is a very, very good game... for the house!" he replied. I gave him an incredulous look. "Odds are not very good. It's not a game for you," he pointed out helpfully. "Old Cantonese men like it, though, so that's who plays it." As we walked away slightly shocked at our interlocutors forthrightness, it occured to us that in our wandering we had seen almost no customers win anything. Running a casinos catering to newly prosperous mainland Chinese, we decided, must be very close to a license to print money. Sadly, we realized we came to the realization late. The island is fairly sprouting new casinos, including supersized versions of a few Vegas mainstays. In fact, the Macau government has created out of landfill a huge new stretch of land between the two main islands, terrain that will be filled entirely with new casinos. I guess a population of 1.3 billion comes out to more than one sucker born every minute! [Ben H.: 6/26/05 10:53]


	Deja Vu In Iran, the conservative candidate wins the presidency, thanks to the slack-jawed troglodyte voters from the provinces, to whom he promised more theocracy and more "family values", and thanks to the party machine that thoroughly smeared his more moderate opponent in the media. Why does this sound so familiar? [Doug: 6/25/05 15:53]


	Only Three More Nights Tonight we're going to see an off-off-Broadway show called "Sweet Nothings for My Neurosurgeon: an aerial escapade with my brain tumor", co-starring a friend of ours who is a trapeze artist (as well as a librettist etc.). That cannot fail to be interesting. Also, Ben, that second link about Mexico ... that was supposed to be different from the first one, yes? [Doug: 6/24/05 09:56]


	Robert Byrd: Exalted Cyclops You couldn't wrestle under that title in Mexico. [Ben A.: 6/23/05 23:38]


	I Love Their Tiny Little Trees Hong Kong Haiku So hot and humid Where can I buy some O2? O2! Not duck's feet! [Ben H.: 6/22/05 00:39]


	Two Horse Town Had dinner at a excruciatingly hip restaurant in Philadelphia tonight, basically an "Asia De Cuba" knock off. As it's Philly, however, the bathrooms were entirely conventional: At no point was I confronted by one-way glass, counter-intuitive faucets, electric eyes, or intentionally broken air-dryers. Pitiful, I am sure you New Yorkers will agree. [Ben A.: 6/20/05 23:51]


	Happy Trails I'm heading off to Hong Kong this afternoon. You can be sure that I will report to you guys everything I discover about Asian culture, from dumplings, to civet cat stew. [Ben H.: 6/20/05 14:26]


	The Empire of Doug's Ideas PEOPLE OFTEN USE THE WORD "culture" as a synonym for "cuisine." When they claim to adore the "diverse and vibrant culture" of the city they live in, what they're actually trying to say, nine times out of ten, is that they like kung pao chicken. Those of us who grew up in Massachusetts often hear strangers extol our culture. But it is seldom our elegant accents or our well-earned sanctimony that so beguile them. They generally mean that they like fried clams. --Christopher Caldwell [Ben A.: 6/19/05 09:19]


	New York Magazine: The Pornography of Resentment From time to time I pick up New York Magazine, and I have more often than not found the subjects of their in-depth stories loathsome. At first I thought I felt this way because the authors of the pieces are all smug New Yorkers, whose value system revolves (as DOug might say) around restaurant reservations, formalist conoisseurship, and shallow bestism (if I may be permitted to use my own coinage). They celebrate their own kind and therefore produce articles the subjects of which inspire my loathing. But after a while I began to have doubts. Now, I am with Ben A. A subtle irony creeps into these profiles. The authors, in celebrating these uber-New Yorkers, distill all the obnoxious qualities of your typical yuppie Gothamist and under the color of eulogy offer them up as targets of resentment. What New York Magazine's editors have figured out is that their audience loves, in addition to all the same things the profile subjects strive after, resenting their fellows. Perhaps it is for these readers a way of projecting discomfort with the pretentious New York lifestyle. Looks at these people: they are very much like you, but just a little more so. That slight superabundance is what makes all the difference. Just a theory. In any case, whatever it is, the NYC ruling class eats it up and New York Magazine is happy to retail it. [Ben H.: 6/18/05 00:03]


	A Business Plan For Children Build scale and market acceptance first, and then move towards profitability in year three! Seriously, though, how much should we conclude from an article that imlpies so transparently that this woman is loathesome? I am reluctant to condemn. She sure seems loathesome. Supporting datum: The name of the child is Ryland (from the Old English "possessed of irritating parents") [Ben A.: 6/17/05 17:23]


	Generation of Vipers: The TV Channel "Do you know what I mean? They put more energy into it than my generation. Like what's the best stroller, the best nursery school, the best classes—all of it. It's not like everyone doesn’t want the best for their child, but to me, it seems people these days have a more professional attitude toward raising their children. A lot of it is very intellectually thought-out and very scheduled, almost like they have a business plan for their children." [Doug: 6/17/05 17:04]


	A Government of Spammers What has the advent of spam meant for people who have names that sound like fake spammer names? In Brazil, it means they get named to government posts. The new chief of staff of the Lula administration carries the appelation "Swedenbeger Barbosa." As a reader in London points out, if you see this name in the From field of an email, you expect the first line to read something like "GET PUMPED NOW!!!". [Ben H.: 6/17/05 08:11]


	Machine Blindness, Human Intelligence Spammer "from" names are instantly recognizable. And yet, I have a hard time articulating a rule that would properly distinguish them from legitimate names. Maybe it has something to do with ethnically incompatible first and last names? Yasuhiro O'Higgins, I doubt you really exist. That may account fo some of them, but others ring absolutely false though without any ethnic twist. That we ever get to see these names, in spite of expensive anti-spam software, demonstrates that others have encountered the same difficulty. [Ben H.: 6/16/05 21:03]


	Tell Charles Dickens to Stop Spamming Me Some of the names in my bandarlog email: Lorca Hickey Herschel Delatorre Alcaeus Woodson Jed Mooney Janek Heaton Pratima Hammonds Ratna Rodriguez Edsel Sapp Wenzel East Gertruida Jeffers Hasib Orozco Immaculata Vu Durward Bishop Lenox Plummer Torborg Webster Junior Isbell Zelig Cantrell Divina Barnes Festus Talberg [Ben A.: 6/16/05 10:04]


	And Speaking of Casual Racism Have you ever read the lyrics to "Brown Sugar"? Yikes! [Ben A.: 6/15/05 18:42]


	Free Katie! The Decline of Casual Racism You are on to something Ben H. As much as it is fashionable to mock diversity training -- and as a graduate of northeastern private schools, I can assure you that the reality often exceeds caricature -- it would be churlish not to grant the diversity scolds credit for a remarkable transformation in American society. Casual anti-black racism (by whites) has been banished from the mainstream. So much so, in fact, that licensed vending of racist stereotypes by blacks to whites has created the enormous industry of gangster rap. How good should we feel about this accomplishment, as a society? Compared to the example set by Putin and Fox, pretty good. A quick survey across cultures gives additional reasons for optimism about the American Experiment. A few months ago I picked up Richard Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights. What struck me most as a modern American? Well, call me PC, but it was the virulent and prolific anti-black racism! Check it out: One day his elder brother said to him: "I am going forth to hunt and course and to take my pleasure and pastime. Maybe this would lighten thy heart." Shah Zaman, however, refused, saying: "O my brother, my soul yearneth for naught of this sort, and I entreat thy favor to stiffer me tarry quietly in this place, being wholly taken up with my malady." So King Shah Zaman passed his night in the palace, and next morning when his brother had fared forth, he removed from his room and sat him down at one of the lattice windows overlooking the pleasure grounds. And there he abode thinking with saddest thought over his wife's betrayal, and burning sighs issued from his tortured breast. And as he continued in this case lo! a postern of the palace, which was carefully kept private, swung open, and out of it is came twenty slave girls surrounding his brother's wife, who was wondrous fair, a model of beauty and comeliness and symmetry and perfect loveliness, and who paced with the grace of a gazelle which panteth for the cooling stream. Thereupon Shah Zaman drew back from the window, but he kept the bevy in sight, espying them from a place whence he could not be espied. They walked under the very lattice and advanced a little way into the garden till they came to a jetting fountain a-middlemost a great basin of water. Then they stripped off their clothes, and behold, ten of them were women, concubines of the King, and the other ten were white slaves. Then they all paired off, each with each. But the Queen, who was left alone, presently cried out in a loud voice, "Here to me, O my lord Saeed!" And then sprang with a drop leap from one of the trees A big slobbering blackamoor with rolling eyes which showed the whites, a truly hideous sight. He walked boldly up to her and threw his arms round her neck while she embraced him as warmly. Then he bussed her and winding his legs round hers, as a button loop clasps a button, he threw her and enjoyed her. On like wise did the other slaves with the girls till all had satisfied their passions, and they ceased not from kissing and clipping, coupling and carousing, till day began to wane, when the Mamelukes rose from the damsels' bosoms and the blackamoor slave dismounted from the Queen's breast. The men resumed their disguises and all except the Negro, who swarmed up the tree, entered the palace and closed the postern door as before. And then in another story: Presently I heard the slave girl at my head say to her at my feet: "O Mas'udah, how miserable is our master and how wasted in his youth, and oh! the pity of his being so betrayed by our mistress, the accursed whore!" The other replied: "Yes indeed. Allah curse all faithless women and adulterous! But the like of our master, with his fair gifts, deserveth something better than this harlot who lieth abroad every night." Then quoth she who sat by my head, "Is our lord dumb or fit only for bubbling that he questioneth her not!" and quoth the other: "Fie on thee! Doth our lord know her ways, or doth she allow him his choice? Nay, more, doth she not drug every night the cup she giveth him to drink before sleeptime, and put bhang into it? ... Presently the daughter of my uncle [note, his wife. Interbreeding: the ticket to economic dynamism!] came from the baths, and they set the table for us and we ate and sat together a fair half-hour quaffing our wine, as was ever our wont. Then she called for the particular wine I used to drink before sleeping and reached me the cup, but, seeming to drink it according to my wont, I poured the contents into my bosom and, lying down, let her hear that I was asleep. Then, behold, she cried: "Sleep out the night, and never wake again! By Allah, I loathe thee and I loathe thy whole body, and my soul turneth in disgust from cohabiting with thee, and I see not the moment when Allah shall snatch away thy life!" Then she rose and donned her fairest dress and perfumed her person and slung my sword over her shoulder, and opening the gates of the palace, went her ill way. I rose and followed her as she left the palace and she threaded the streets until she came to the city gate, where she spoke words I understood not and the padlocks dropped of themselves as if broken and the gate leaves opened. She went forth (and I after her without her noticing aught) till she came at last to the outlying mounds and a reed fence built about a round-roofed hut of mud bricks. As she entered the door, I climbed upon the roof, which commanded a view of the interior, And lo! my fair cousin had gone in to a hideous Negro slave with his upper lip like the cover of a pot and his lower like an open pot, lips which might sweep up sand from the gravel floor of the cot. He was to boot a leper and a paralytic, lying upon a strew of sugar-cane trash and wrapped in an old blanket and the foulest rags and tatters. She kissed the earth before him, and he raised his head so as to see her and said: "Woe to thee! What call hadst thou to stay away all this time? Here have been with me sundry of the black brethren, who drank their wine and each had his young lady, and I was not content to drink because of thine absence." Then she: "O my lord, my heart's love and coolth of my eyes, knowest thou not that I am married to my cousin, whose very look I loathe, and hate myself when in his company? And did not I fear for thy sake, I would not let a single sun arise before making his city a ruined heap wherein raven should croak and howlet hoot, and jackal and wolf harbor and loot- nay, I had removed its very stones to the back side of Mount Kaf." Rejoined the slave: "Thou liest, damn thee! Now I swear an oath by the valor and honor of blackamoor men (and deem not our manliness to be the poor manliness of white men), from today forth if thou stay away till this hour, I will not keep company with thee nor will I glue my body with thy body. Dost play fast and loose with us, thou cracked pot, that we may satisfy thy dirty lusts, O vilest of the vile whites?" Insofar as I had been sold on the "Islam, universal solvent of racial prejudice" soap story, consider me disabused. [Ben A.: 6/15/05 18:28]


	*On Second Thought, Maybe All That Diversity Training Does* Make A Difference...** ... because I can't imagine any sentient American public figure making comments like Putin's offhand remarks about African cannibalism. After Vicente Fox's explanation of the importance of Mexican emigration to the U.S. -- that Mexicans are required to take the jobs that "not even blacks" will do -- it seems like some time should be set aside at the next U.N. General Assembly meeting for a diversity training seminar. Vlad, let me help you prepare. Summers' Law: Truth is not a defense. [Ben H.: 6/14/05 13:04]


	Just So Brilliant Lileks strikes again. What can I add? Nothing. The mock-Springsteen is a beautiful touch. [Ben H.: 6/14/05 12:26]


	The 2005 AL East: a Story of Pitching Volatility Baltimore: Run scored 325; Runs allowed 285 Boston: Run scored 333; Runs allowed 317 Toronto: Run scored 285; Runs allowed 270 NY Yankees: Runs scored 316, Runs allowed 313 A team can buy offense, but predicting pitching performance is so difficult that even a 2-1 spending advantage does not guarantee success. The Yankees and Red Sox, boasting the top two payrolls in baseball, have each given up over 300 hundred runs each. The only other franchises to perform as poorly are celler-dwelling paupers Kansas City, Oakland, and Tampa Bay. Amazing. [Ben A.: 6/13/05 00:41]


	Qiut Your Bellyaching! Oh, boo-hoo, some of the lustre is fading from those World Series rings? Call me up for sympathy when your team gets swept by the Royals! [Ben H.: 6/11/05 11:07]


	That's Just Super The Red Sox ace bullpen corps just allowed a home run to Greg Maddux. I am going home to watch replays of the ALCS. [Ben A.: 6/10/05 17:14]


	Adam Bellow very good [Ben A.: 6/10/05 14:27]


	Dao did suggest building a siphon-like apparatus for this purpose. But I think it would be simpler just to avoid eight-hour days at the office. [Doug: 6/10/05 11:22]


	"Not Simultaneously" So you say, Doug, so you say; I nonetheless find the image of you drinking red wine while dangling upside-down impossible to banish from my mind. [Ben A.: 6/9/05 20:59]


	Cryptic It's okay, you don't have to answer. I wrote that while slightly drunk: I've had to work full time on the computer at my desk for about a week, and it's killing my back; the only way to relieve the tension when I get home is to hang upside-down and drink lots of alcohol (not simultaneously). Last night I was looking at a package of stone-ground crackers after a few glasses of wine, and that clue occurred to me. [Doug: 6/9/05 08:58]


	Cryptic Are you trying to limit my political viability within the system? [Ben A.: 6/8/05 22:51]


	Cryptic Stone-ground contents, not a cracker? (5) [Doug: 6/8/05 19:39]


	Screw You, Jets! Though I've let it go for a couple of days, I had no intention of refraining from gloating over the defeat of the West Side stadium proposal. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whom I usually revile as a consummate NYC Democratic clubhouse hack, did us a mitzvah this time around, blocking the necessary state funding for Bloomberg's Folly. But Silver's obstruction not only spares us an enormous White Elephant on the West Side; without the stadium, NYC's Olympic Bid has almost no chance of success, so Silver has also saved us from useless volleyball arenas, velodromes, etc. Even better, he has in all likelihood saddled the French with these pieces of extravagantly otiose infrastructure, as the Paris bid seems all but unbeatable now. Much along the lines of a horror movie, It will take more than one devastating blow to dispatch for good and all the NYC 2012 bid. [Ben H.: 6/8/05 08:13]


	California Dreaming When I saw this post about the Huyendo La Migra sign on I-5, it brought back fond memories of trips down to La Jolla from Irvine. The only downside of those jaunts was the traffic on the return trip, which was often snarled because of the border patrol checkpoint on the highway just south (as I recall) of Camp Pendleton. Now, who was it that suggested, waggishly, that someone should paint a fluttering sombrero on that sign? [Ben H.: 6/8/05 07:07]


	On Not Stamp Collecting Ben, you're killing my resume! I've had "not stamp collecting" as an entry under the "hobbies" section of my C.V. for the last decade; it's right there after "avoiding ballroom dancing" and "ignoring television." Now I have to take it off, you say? Not that it is exactly on point, but your post reminded me of the doctrine of so-called "negative theology." In this tradition, the adherent talks about God by describing what he is not, rather than what he is. God is so totally beyond human ken that it is pointless to try to describe his characteristics. While I can't speak for the theological value of this approach, it seems quite apparent that it would make seminary a lot easier. [Ben H.: 6/5/05 09:45]


	Atheism as a Calling Via Arts and Letters daily, we find Salman Rushdie defending unsubtle atheists from a thrasing they well deserve. I am inclined to give Rushdie a pass on this. Perhaps were a medieval zealot put a bounty on my head, I also would imagine Richard Dawkins was engaged in a "vital and necessary" enterprise. As it is, I see Dawkins and his ilk as a bunch of goofballs. As I wrote elsewhere just as "not stamp collecting" does not constitute a hobby, so too, "not theism" is not a religion. So what -- in the absence of religious persecution -- explains the phenomenon of the proslytizing atheist? Doug and I were musing over this just a week ago. Is it the vain, desire to be wiser than one's fellows? A strong commitment to naturalized epistemology and epistemic warrant? The one thing it really can't be is mere weighing of consequences. Just today, I was at a highly Christian wedding. That's a rare event in Cambridge: one does not often hear a husband enjoined to love his wife as "one for whom Christ died" in the 02138 area code. You can't argue with the results, however. Bride and groom are both wonderful, selfless people, and do more positive good in a week than I do in a calendar year. I doubt the call to 'atoms and the void' has ever inspired equivalent benevolence. [Ben A.: 6/5/05 01:01]


	Larry's Lustration, Revisited Heather MacDonald takes her much-used but undulled rhetorical chainsaw to Harvard's $50mio diversity initiative. Thanks, Heather, for exintinguishing the last flickers of guilt in my heart over throwing my Harvard Fund sollicitation directly in the trash. [Ben H.: 6/4/05 18:24]


	Stability and Growth Pact The Stability and Growth Pact is the agreement that imposed the famous 3% GDP deficit limit. And like a bunch of obese carb addicts pledged to hold each other the Atkins diet, the EMU states have already quietly agreed to cheat. In March, the European council promulgated a policy guideline with the Orwellian title, "Improving the implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact." While the full technical details will not be worked out until later this summer, the communique outlines the changes. Most important among them, the range of permissible excuses for breaching the 3% deficit ceiling has been greatly expanded, the time to correct an excessive deficit has been lengthened, certain classes of expenditure (transition costs of moving to funded pension systems) have been excluded altogether, and medium-term fiscal objective for high-growth countries has been loosened. The penalties for violation remain the same: at first, the violating country must make a non-interest-bearing deposit with the European Commission (equal to 0.2% GDP + some fraction of the deficit, escalating as time goes on), which deposit is eventually forfeit if the country doesn't get its act together. I've never been a great fan of the S&GP. It seems to me that taxing and spending decisions ought to be political questions; that there are often good reasons to run deficits; that no simple rule defines optimal fiscal policy. To the extent the ECB enjoys a high degree of independence, it will take appropriate monetary policy steps to contain the inflationary impact of high deficits; and poor fiscal policy will be chastised by (as Doug alludes to) high credit spreads on certain countries' EUR-denominated bonds. The weird thing is, even with the relaxation of the S&GP, credit differentiation between EMU countries' bonds spreads remains very low. A shit country like Italy or Greece issues long bonds at high-teens over swaps, while a sterling credit like Austria, Netherlands, or Finland trades at 4-5bps over swaps. That's hardly enough of a difference to amount to a disincentive to fiscal indiscipline. I think the market will come around eventually, and if you ask me what i think the best macro trade is, I say: forget China, buy Finland, sell Greece as big as you can. Incidentally, France holds a place in the estimation of bond traders as one of the stronger EMU credits. When France recently issued an inaugural 50-year bond, it was heavily oversubcribed. So much for efficient markets! Tell me exactly how a 50-year OAT (that's what French treasuries are called) should trade any different from a basket of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria long bonds? As for the rejection of the EU Constitution, I would agree that substantively it doesn't mean that much. The EU can lurch along under the existing treaties, Rome through Nice, not elegantly, it's true, but effectively. I do think the referendums are very important -- symbolically. For the longest time, further integration has been unpopular with average voters and wholeheartedly supported by elites. Much like the immigration issue in the U.S., despite this popular opposition, the current integration policy has marched onward on the strength of a certain sense of inevitability. This rejection, resounding as it was, delivered as it was by core Europe countries (not Denmark or Ireland!!), has shattered that sense of inevitability. And this is already having an effect. The continued existence of the euro is another political question that was never asked; and this morning, a minister of the Italian government (albeit from the Northern League) suggested Italy should withdraw from EMU! The state of political entrepreneurship in Europe is not that much more robust than business entrepreneurship; but even so, I doubt very much that a few non-fringe european politicians won't try to make resistance to the EU their ticket to power. If europe's political elite no longer stands together monolithically in support of integration, the union will face a threat it never before had to confront... [Ben H.: 6/3/05 06:14]


	P-P-P-Powerbook I know I am ~3 years late to the party, but it remains hilarious. [Ben A.: 6/2/05 23:41]


	Yeah, I'm not sure that the demise of the (or at least of this) EU constitution is such a big deal. Most of the French people I've talked to aren't very worked up about it, although the political and journalistic classes clearly are. Here's a remarkable Le Monde article that basically admits that France is a failed state. There's just no political will to do anything positive in that country. My current joke is this: If forbidding people to work more than thirty-five hours a week didn't help the unemployment problem, the solution must be to go to the twenty-five hour week. But seriously, I expect that the government's actual approach will be to spend its way to fuller employment. The only thing that's been stopping them is the EU deficit limit. They've already been going over the limit, yes, but not massively. I think the Chirac/Sarkozy party may take the constitution vote as political cover for giving the EU the finger and borrowing their way to a better economy by 2007, the next presidential election. I'm just not sure what sanction mechanisms the EU has to punish France for doing this. (Nor am I sure who France would sell its bonds to.) [Doug: 6/2/05 23:03]


	I Do Care! About sweetheart stadium deals, at least. Indeed the only thing in the wide world of sports that evokes more loathing is the Olympics themselves. So this is a two-fer. More attention should be paid to the venality and corruption riddling the Games. This, my friends, is the face of "the international community": Juan Antonio Samaranch. [Ben A.: 6/2/05 22:58]


	Something Else Ben A. Will Have a Hard Time Caring About A judge of the New York State Supreme Court today opined that the MTA's selection of the New York Jet's proposal for the redevelopment of the authority's West Side rail yards should stand. In order to countermand the MTA's decision -- a decision the authority made under heavy pressure from our monomaniacally pro-stadium Mayor Bloomberg -- the judge would have had to have found it "arbitrary and capricious." Even I don't see the decision to hand over one of the last large tracts of Manhattan space to the Jets for a knockdown price as either arbitary or capricious. No, it was a well-though-out and deliberate scheme to help make Bloomberg's Olympic ambitions come true! Luckily, the Supreme Court is (paradoxically) not the highest court in New York State, so there is still some hope of blocking the sweetheart deal... [Ben H.: 6/2/05 13:52]


	No Matter How Hard I Try... I just can't care about the EU. Lester Thorow gave a talk at my high school graduation about how the EU was double-dog more important, and was taking over the world, and would require a burst of American productivity as a response. Even in those heady days, the EU was boring. My main concern no is the pound coin. It's such a great shape: thick, squat, and medieval. It feels like the right currency to buy barding for your warhorse. Losing that for the Euro tram-tokens would depress me. Also depressing: I found myself in a business meeting uttering -- well, not exactly a lie, but a fairly misleading statement. There was no pressing need to do this, it didn't really help my cause. It was just lilly-gilding. What the hell is wrong with me? [Ben A.: 6/1/05 18:38]


	The NYT Is Retarded, Part 1,345 A Masa reservation is a sought-after status symbol? Um, my hosts got our reservation the day of our dinner. We sat their all night and the place was never more than half-full. So typical of the Times: never let facts confuse the story's easy conventional wisdom. Better not to actually call Masa or show up there, if you discover something other than your lazy assumptions, it could complicate matters. Fucking retards. [Ben H.: 6/1/05 15:29]


	**Non and Now Nee** Exit polls in the Dutch referendum on the EU Constitution showing a resounding victory for nee camp. The Dutch rejected the draft constitution even more more strongly than the French: 63% No in the Netherlands vs 55% No in France. The eurocrats will not be able to be able to rely on their usual response to popular opposition, a revote after a short wait. You have to hand it to Giscard. It is not small feat of high-handedness to write a constitution that several peoples object to, each for completely different, and sometimes contradictory reasons. To the French, it smacked of unbridled neo-liberalism. The Brits, on the other hand, were expected to reject it because of its centralizing and dirigiste tendencies. The Dutch objected to it based on anxieties about its consequences for immigration policy. A master politician crafts proposals that appeal to the interests of various groups and thereby builds coalitions in support of those proposals. What do you call someone who manages to come up with a proposition that arouses the revulsion of many constituencies, each for its own reason? By the looks of it, you call him an enarque. What ought we take away from the fact that the French loath the constitution for being too Anglo-Saxon while the Brits feel the same way because to them it reeks of continental leftism? Maybe that decision-making about policy should be devolved from Brussels to the French and the British. Oh, wait, that's the way it works now, in the twilight of the nation-state... [Ben H.: 6/1/05 15:23]


	This Will Carmelize That Sure, I'm around -- maybe we can have an artisanally crafted dining experience together. Here's some data, by the way. The management consulting company I work for has handed out a flier about the interns/employees joining on this summer. Of the nine people asked "What are you looking forward to experiencing in NYC", the following number mentioned ... Museums: 2 Plays/Music: 1 Restaurants/Cuisine: 4 Anyway, the obvious place for us to go is Masa, lest we fall too far behind Ben H in social class (the New York Times, in its recent multi-part ode to its own fatuity, called a Masa reservation "one of the most sought-after status symbols in New York"). Mesa has falled off somewhat since its celebrity owner lost on "Iron Chef", but it would be easier to get a reservation. Mezze is a well-reviewed Greek restaurant. Perhaps by the time you get down here someone will open a restaurant called "Massa'", where for $350 prix fixe you can be treated to the epicurean delights of an antebellum plantation. [Doug: 5/31/05 17:08]


	My inhuman ambitions will be bringing me to NYC this Friday. Are either of you around? [Ben A.: 5/31/05 15:38]


	In Human Terms, There Is No Reason To Live In New York Allow me to share a Great Achievement in MTA History. Just now, returning from chez Doug to my house took 65 minutes. A distance, according to Mapquest's circuitous route, of 3.7 miles. The good news is that the subway is still slightly faster than riding a glacier. [Ben H.: 5/27/05 23:35]


	AWOL Doug and I were just talking about that Trow quote when I was down in NYC last week. That passage, like one asserting the need to literally beat the woman advertising dream whip, conveys a great truth. I have nothing but context here: the past month has seen me buy a condo and wreck my car (no one harmed). So accept that by way of an excuse for blogging AWOL status. Doug notes that Star Wars 6 is a trailer for a video game. True enough, but what a great game! [Ben A.: 5/27/05 18:22]


	Ground Zero Apartments: Primary Source The article Doug refers to is now available online. [Ben H.: 5/27/05 16:15]


	Ground-Zero Apartments Doug, I could give you the financial answer to your question, and perhaps I will. But for the moment, you will have to content yourself with the George Trow answer. In his book Within The Context of No Context, Trow adduces an activist who reminisced of, "walking around with other organizers and fantasizing about what we would do after the revolution with all the buildings, what human uses they could be put to. What marvelous daycare centers and hospices they would become." Trow explains the pointlessness of the exercise: This woman was talking about New York City. Her idea had been that the revolution would bring better parks to New York, and beautiful places to live, and day-care centers, and hospices. Her idea was that New York should be human. Now, this is simply a mistake. New York is an inhuman machine put together to serve the most ambitious interests of a certain part of American secular society. It has human aspects, because human needs must be met before ambitions can proceed toward realization, but the fulfillmen of those human needs is an uninteresting precondition of the life of the ambitions. In human terms, there is no reason to live in New York, and if New York were to become a city in which day-care centers and hospices were the dominant institutions it would soon be depopulated. You want ample space with modern amenities, move to Red America. From Ground Zero will once again rise cold, hard struts of the inhuman machine. The ambition of Larry Silverstein, Daniel Liebeskind, George Pataki, et al will not be denied. The office blocks' value will not suffer but rather increase by virtue of their making housing that much more unaffordable, commutes that much more arduous. [Ben H.: 5/27/05 15:54]


	I May Have Found My Calling Thanks to Gerry R. for this link. [Doug: 5/27/05 14:50]


	Ground Zero, Apartment 14D, NYC NY Interesting article in recent New Yorker (not online) suggests that most of the old WTC site should be used for housing. I buy it, for the same reason that I buy analogous arguments about the west side railyards. The place is already nearly contiguous with the south end of the tony part of Tribeca, e.g. Washington Market Park, where you can always find parents with nine-hundred-dollar sport-utility strollers carrying little Dakota and Montana (when will "Jerzy" catch on as an American name?). Order of magnitude, you could get two thousand units in there; attach an architect's name to them and they'd fetch three million apiece; that's six billion right there. My question is, assuming the New Yorker article is right and a new office space there would obviously fail to get tenants, why is that Silverstein guy so set on it? It seems to be against his own interests. Ben H, surely you can explain this, no? [Doug: 5/27/05 14:45]


	Star Wars I don't have any original comments about the new Star Wars flick, which we saw last night, only the meta-comment that 90% of its meaning and import (a higher figure than some might think or assume) is contained in one commonly-made comment: it is the trailer for a video game. All the other stuff, the critiques of the acting and writing and plot and so on, just gets you the last 10% of the way to a full assessment. [Doug: 5/27/05 10:07]


	Separation of Powers Meets Shared DNA Polish voters will head to the polls in September and October to elect both a new parliament (and hence PM) and a new president. The Law and Justice Party (Pis) is, depending on which poll you look at, running either first or second. A fellow by the name of Jaroslaw Kaczynski heads up the party and would likely serve as PM if his party manages to come in first place and form a winning coalition. In the presidential race, one of the leading contenders also bears the name Kaczynski: Lech Kaczynski, the mayor of Warsaw and Jaroslaw's brother. His twin brother. Identical twin brother. Think of the hijinks that could ensue! I sense a movie opportunity: The Parent Trap meets Dave. [Ben H.: 5/25/05 17:55]


	Law and Order: Dhimmitude Our friendly fellow monotheists in Italy have succeeding in getting a judge to charge Oriana Fallaci with the "crime" of defaming Islam in her recent book The Force of Reason. Perhaps the Italian budget deficit will once and for all be plugged through levying the jizyah. Of course, such a turn of events can't happen here. Sadly, not on account of our robust tradition of protecting free speech, but rather because the book has not found a publisher here. I guess American publishers have so well internalized political correctness that they don't need a judge to admonish them to respect Islam. Some people say Islam means "peace"; others, "submission." I am coming to suspect that it really means "I can dish it out, but I can't take it." Despite what it sounds like, it has even less to do with hard-core pornography than Marv Albert's "delivers the FACIAL!" [Ben H.: 5/25/05 15:37]


	This Will Macerate That Via ALDaily.com, an LA Times article on the decline of professional critics: But it's less common, critics say, for one of their kind to make a reputation, draw an audience's attention to an overlooked work or uncover dark cultural truths. Some arts critics, such as Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker, Charles Rosen of the New York Review of Books and former Time critic Robert Hughes, retain their followings, but the country's most powerful critic may be Robert Parker, whose Wine Advocate has rocked the world's wine markets and made him controversial from Sonoma to Chianti. [Doug: 5/24/05 11:16]


	Wow David L. finally got me to go to this "ba gua zhang" class -- a variant of tai chi. I don't think I mentioned the girl at my gym who gabbed on her cell phone for twenty minutes while barely treadmilling, but this ba gua workout was to my normal gym workout what my normal gym workout is to that girl's. I was drenched in sweat at the end and could barely move my arms. But oddly, I felt totally energized. Whether all those theories of "qi" and oriental metaphysics are valid is irrelevant: the practice of ba gua zhang (or tai chi or yoga) makes you feel much more alive. Depending how sore I am tomorrow, I can see doing this regularly. [Doug: 5/24/05 00:01]


	Bush almost captured in old Iraqi city, northwest along the Tigris (7) Starts with "u". (Answer) [Doug: 5/22/05 09:54]


	Theory of Everything Update My effort to explain the universe has kind of been monopolizing my free time and keeping me from things like blogging. I apologize. (But at least I'm providing you anglophones with things like that silly link below; my French blog shut down entirely and I'm not sure if/when I will resurrect it.) As I was telling Ben A the other day when he came down to NYC -- great to see you, by the way -- the theory of everything seems to be at a critical juncture. Recall that the basic idea is to identify every spacetime point with a different totality of mathematical possibilities (technically, "models of ZFC"). If I can get the numbers to crunch, so to speak, I'll explain to you why one might entertain this basic idea, but the problem right now is that I've become aware of a big difference between spacetime, on the one hand, and collections of ZFC-models, on the other. I want to understand "x is in y's absolute past", with x and y understood as spacetime points, as "x is a subclass of y", with x and y understood as ZFC-models (totalities of sets). The problem occurs if you make the simplifying assumption that any possible ZFC model should be a spacetime point. If you do this, then you can take any pair of models, x and y, and there will be a smallest model that contains both of them. I had figured this to be consistent with spacetime: for any two spacetime points, there should be a least (earliest) point that is later than both of them. Imagine two points one meter apart at time t (in your reference frame) that suddenly emit light in all directions. At times later than t, each point will be at the center of a sphere of the light beams it emitted, and there may seem to be an unambiguous first spacetime point at which these two spheres touch. In a spacetime with only one spatial dimension, this would be true, but it turns out to be false in higher-dimension spacetimes like ours. The set of spacetime points in the intersection of the two light-cones does not depend on any observer's reference frame, but the question of which point in this set is earliest does. The upshot for my scheme is that it will have to deny -- somehow -- that certain ZFC-models qualify as spacetime points; namely, those ZFC models that are the "join" of two smaller models, neither of which includes the other. And I'm kind of afraid that the only grounds for doing this will be question-begging, ad hoc. However, I did go back to my initial intuitions for this whole project today, and may have come up with a rationale for the exclusion. We'll have to wait and see how it works out (I don't have the energy to start in on the math this evening). On the plus side, I'm pretty confident that a "judicious" choice of ZFC-models would give you a four-dimensional spacetime structure of the sort I'm looking for. I have worked through all but the nittiest and grittiest of the details of a proof of this. The problem is that other choices of ZFC-models can probably give you two-, nine- or infinite-dimensional spacetimes. What I need is a non-arbitrary rationale for the "right" choice. Stay tuned. [Doug: 5/21/05 19:17]


	Accent Elimination For The Upper Midwesterner At Homestarrunner.com. [Doug: 5/21/05 00:03]


	Kleptocrat Konstruction I've rattled on quite a bit about the UN's renovation plans, but other than in the New York Sun, I haven't read too much about it. The Weekly Standard just published a short item analyzing the suspiciously high quoted cost of the project. Graft in construction? Shocking! Extra graft when the construction manager is the UN bureaucracy? Double-shocking!! [Ben H.: 5/17/05 07:53]


	Larry Summers' Modern Lustration When a big wheel commits a gaffe these days, he often detects that a mere apology will not quiet his critics. In order to restore himself to the peaceful enjoyment of the perks of his office, he knows he will have to make a lustration of some kind. Larry Summers found himself in just such a position after his controversial remarks on women in science. Despite his abject disavowals of his comments and his utterly abject self-abasement, the baying of his detractors continued to discomfit him and rob him of the pleasures of the Presidency. Thus, Summers' grand lustration: $50mio bucks for "women in science at Harvard." What's very modern about this lustration is that it buys peace for the sinner at the expense of somebody else. That $50mio bucks is money that could have used to reduce tuition or improve student services. What's particularly "Harvard" about it is that the first identified use of the money is to hire another administrator with an august title (Senior Vice-Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development) and nebulous responsibilities. Nothing shows greater sincerity of concern about an issue than the appointment of an overpaid hack with a title containing containing a word or phrase linking the position with the controversy in question. Should we expect some passive-aggressive bitchiness about territory from the Dean of Co-Education and the Dean for Affirmative Action? [Ben H.: 5/16/05 20:48]


	Lodging the Kleptocrats At the same time the UN casts about for fresh office space, the Mayor's office professes to be at a loss as to what to do with Governor's Island. My brother sees a connection and proposes that the UN build new office space on and move to the derelict former Coast Guard base in New York harbor. It's a great idea. This way, we can send a gunboat to shell the UN without exposing any productive part of New York to collateral damage. At present, to do so would put the FDR drive at risk. [Ben H.: 5/16/05 11:21]


	Down with Dargis! She is a pretentious shit, one whose intellectual reach rountinely exceeds her grasp. But then that gaseous mediocrity Elvis Mitchell parlayed his inky masturbation into a lectureship at Harvard. Dargis probably fancies herself practically on the tenure track and thefore licensed (not by any actual licensing body, just ontologically!) to throw around big words unrelated to cinema. [Ben H.: 5/16/05 11:15]


	May I Suggest A New Front In Our New-York-Times-Bashing? I mean the movie reviews. Leave A. O. Scott for another day and look at Manohla Dargis's eager approval of the latest Frenchier-than-thou mopefest at Cannes: Mr. Haneke offers no palliatives in "Caché," which earns its power not only through its subject, but also through its pervasive ambiguity. Hours after the first press screening, critics continued to argue over its enigmatic last image, which may offer a clue as to who sent the videotapes. (My guess is that the videotapes were not shot or sent by anyone; rather, they simply exist, ontologically, as evidence.) Whoa there, honey, that's a mighty big word! Why doncha stick to things that exist non-ontologically till you get the hang of it? I don't think I've cringed that badly since, a few weeks ago, she suggested that someone take a short walk off a long pier. [Doug: 5/16/05 08:37]


	Le(monad)e [Ben H.: 5/14/05 20:08]


	Confederate general embraces Leibnizian being -- it's important to be hospitable down south (8) [Doug: 5/14/05 15:23]


	European Court of Human Rights ECHR today ruled that Turkey's trial of notorious PKK terrorist kingpin Abdullah Ocalan was "unfair" and recommended a new trial for him. Ocalan's PKK has over the past 30 years killed something like 25,000 Turkish citizens (many of them like Ocalan Kurds). After his capture a few years back, a Turkish court tried him, found him guilty and sentenced him to death. In order to comply with the EU Copehagen Criteria, a requirement for Turkey to proceed toward EU accession, the Turks abolished the death penalty and commuted Ocalan's sentence. But apparently, that act -- understandly controversial within Turkey, what with a few tens of thousands of dead to avenge -- was not sufficient for the tender consciences of the Eurocrat elite, whose sensitivities are selectively aroused by politically convenient human rights abuses. In this case, Turkey's unforgiveable transgressions consisted of sharing Ocalan's case file with him only with a delay, restricting his communication with his lawyer, and judging him before a State Security Court, which, in the eyes of the EHCR judges, was not sufficiently "impartial and independent." All this amounted to, "inhumane treatment." Not that there can be any doubt as to Ocalan's guilt for monstrous crimes. The decision will doubtless inflame Turkish nationalists and make reform more difficult. Of course, this will not prove uncongenial to many European leaders, who though they profess enthusiasm for Turkish accession would truly prefer that it never come to pass. They are too cowardly to say so openly and so instead look for ways to snare Turkey and to seize upon its stumbles as a pretext to scotching its EU bid. I find the Turkish public's continuing support for the EU bid a little puzzling. If the process proceeds smoothly, Turkey will only join in, say, 2020. By that time, the Turks will excitedly pour into Europe, only to find the place entirely populated by Moroccans, Tunisians and Algerians. Turkey shouldn't have any desire for "convergence" with North Africa! [Ben H.: 5/12/05 08:35]


	Now I Really Have To Move Several sources today have revived the vague rumor from a few weeks back that the UN Secreteriat might consider moving temporarily to Brooklyn while its decrepit building on the East Side undergoes renovation. While I would appreciate the scotching of mooted plans for the US government to fund (via loan guarantees) the construction of a building alongside the current campus to serve as swing space, I wish that the alternative were a move entirely out of New York and not right next to where I live! [Ben H.: 5/11/05 15:48]


	South Korean Kloud Kukoo Land We've had the same discussion on the desk here, trading as we do South Korean assets. If one thinks about the Nork situation as though it were a quandary from a game of Risk, the answer is obvious: pre-emptive strike. However, once you think about it in the real world, it seems completely lunatic to expect that the U.S. would actually pursue this strategy, in spite of its optimality. In our experience, war comes as the climax to a long crescendo of confrontation or in response to a specific aggression. We don't strike abruptly as though we suddenly realize the answer to a chess problem. As to the question of actual sanctions vs threatened sanctions, let me try to make my point more clearly. Let's say China actually cuts the power to North Korea. And North Korea says, come on in, inspect us, just so long as you turn the lights back on. The Norks have been so succesful at hiding their programs that not even unfettered inspections could reasonably assure us that they aren't doing prohibited work. North Korea is too big and too filled with nutty Kim-acolytes to effectively monitor, even with ostensible cooperation. To me, this was the significance of the Nork's revelation that they had a parellel uranium-enrichment program. They had succeeded so well at deception that, ironically, they lost the ability to bargain. The Norks cannot bind themselves over time. [Ben H.: 5/11/05 13:29]


	Sanctions vs. Threatened Sanctions I think the key to your disagreement is your last line: "it is not simply a question of stern talk and threatened sanctions." When you say "threatened sanctions" I hear "implausibly threatened sanctions"; you seem to be saying that the Norks/Mullahs would continue with arms-making because they would call the presumed bluff on the Chinese/European sanctions. And really, this would be rational -- I think Friedman would agree -- because the history of Chinese indifference and European gutlessness makes it so likely that any threat would be a bluff. This is a complication in Friedman's idea: how do you (China or Europe) both really mean your threat, and get the Norks/Mullahs to realize that you really mean your threat? There may not be any way short of actually implementing sanctions. I suspect the Norks would assent to absolutely free and unfettered inspections (like Saddam did on the eve of war) if China really did close down its border with them. Not that the Chinese are remotely likely to do this, but then, Friedman doesn't say that they are. I've been wondering if pre-emptive war on the Norks, even at this late date, is such a bad idea. The usual argument against it is that Seoul would be destroyed. Maybe, but would all its citizens necessarily die? I understand that London was largely evacuated during the Blitz. Maybe we could try that for Seoul, making it inconspicuous by doing it on a weekend when most people head out to the Korean equivalent of the Hamptons anyway. The problem with that plan is, of course, that it is always and everywhere politically impossible for modern democracies to make sacrificies to avert non-clear or non-present dangers. The South Koreans are in la-la land when it comes to thinking about their northern cousins, just as surely as we are in la-la land when it comes to oil consumption. [Doug: 5/11/05 12:01]


	Friedman is Still An Idiot All China has to do is tell Kim Jong Il is "stop or we'll hit the lights"? All Europe has to do is tell Iran "quit it or we impose a total boycott"? Is he kidding? Or is it just that, restricted to 17 column-inches, there is a limit to how far he can elaborate his strategic thinking? Let's think this through. How exactly would China verify that the Norks have stopped working on bombs? The main importance of the discovery that the Norks had a uranium-enrichment program in addition to the known (and monitored) Yongbyon reactor is that it revealed IAEA-style monitoring as inadequare to guarantee compliance. Likewise we are now hearing that Iran has a second, heretofor unknown, uranium enrichment program. These countries have become so good at hiding their proliferation activities that even if they were honestly to want to give them up, they would have no practical way warrant it to the rest of the world. That's why curbing proliferation in Iran and North Korea becomes an existential question for the regimes in question. The only reliable indicator of complete abandonment of nuclear ambitions is regime change. Now, to be fair to Friedman (he's not really an idiot, I just like slandering NYT employees whenever possible), it is true that Europe and China do not care enough about proliferation to take action. However, even if they were motivated, it is not simply a question of stern talk and threatened sanctions. [Ben H.: 5/11/05 11:07]


	Today's Column Bolsters My Friedman-Not-an-Idiot Thesis [Doug: 5/11/05 10:11]


	Different From What Any One Supposed, And Luckier It's gotten to the point where I start laughing when I read the headlines in the morning. Did anyone consider this scenario: the Iraqis simply wipe themselves out completely with car bombs? The only people left will be the Americans in their bunkers; from a strictly parochial U.S. perspective, this doesn't seem half bad as an outcome. [Doug: 5/11/05 10:00]


	The Real Monster Raving Loony Party The official Monster Raving Loony Party never managed to get into Parliament, but George Galloway's, ex-Labourite founder of the raving loony "Respect" party, managed to ride back into Westminster at the head of a Muslim fifth column. Hey, let's keep that Muslim immigration coming! Diversity only makes Britain stronger! [Ben H.: 5/10/05 08:02]


	I might as well just say that the following clue's answer is "countermand", since it involves cultural details that nobody can be expected to know. Still I think it's funny enough to share: Overrule order for unter-mensch to be stuffed in German New Year's dish (11) [Doug: 5/8/05 13:52]


	Aesthetization of Food... And Its Evacuation Doug first broached the topic of restaurant bathrooms a while back. The New York Times has waddled to the scene only a year or so later. Frank Bruni draws a line in the porcelain demarcating the boundary between interesting and incomprehensible. I got a peak at the far side of that line last night at English is Italian. The men's and women's bathrooms share a large steel washbasin, separated by a mirror hanging from the ceiling; said mirror does not extend all the way to the bottom of the basin nor all the way from wall to wall. One can see scrabbling hands of the opposite sex lathering and rinsing. I did not notice this feature on entering and as a result suffered an unpleasant sphincter-tightening moment when I heard women's voices so loud that I thought I had wandered into the wrong bathroom. [Ben H.: 5/6/05 20:57]


	Let's not forget the ur-anti-numismatic novel, Coin's Financial School, which is neither luminous, nor numinous, and does not deal with loss, memory, and the nature of writing. Oh wait, I guess it has something to do with loss... [Ben H.: 5/6/05 20:43]


	My novel "Buffalo Nickels Are Illuminated" is destined for greatness. [Ben A.: 5/6/05 15:06]


	Living Well Is the Best Revenge Jerry Buss: "I don't regret trading Shaquille O'Neal" O'Neal: "And I donâ€™t regret him losing money and his not making the playoffs." [Ben A.: 5/6/05 14:49]


	Memorable Mottos "You Ring, We Bring" is hard to improve. It reminds me of one of the impediments to my study of Buddhism. The Noble Eightfold Path consists of Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. What confuses me when I try to remember them all is Meineke Discount Mufflers' motto, "Right Service, Right Price." Maybe we should just add them to the list and be done with it. [Doug: 5/6/05 13:19]


	NY Times: Earth Has Become Brighter, but No One Is Sure Why ... My guess is that it's all the luminous novels. [Addendum: The real way to avert global warming may be to starting churning out nubilous novels to counteract them.] [2nd addendum: Google gives only one hit for "numinous novel" -- this is clearly a growth field. The pioneering book in question is apparently unique in another way, containing "the funniest account of carbon monoxide poisoning in American literature."] [Doug: 5/6/05 13:10]


	It is happening here too, Doug. And that I, a person so skinflint as to still order from Pizza Ring, should notice this speaks to the empery that gourmet-i-fication has established over all the blue lands. Just to cite one example: whereas ten years ago you would have found it difficult in Cambridge to order a single malt other than Glenlivet, now bars in my neighborhood offer arrays of boutique tequilas. I suppose I should despise the trend to gourmet everything as a manifestation of what Walker Percy called the Aesthetics of Damnation, but I donâ€™t. The food craze has given us museums of produce like Whole Foods, has enhanced the graphic design of labels tremendously, and occasionally has actually made people enjoy life more. Few of Americaâ€™s loathsome displays of conspicuous consumption have done as much. Incidentally, the owners of the worldâ€™s best motto: You Ring, We Bring. Also: Good pointer to that that Epstein piece. It is excellent. [Ben A.: 5/4/05 19:11]


	Ben A, I'd be especially interested to see if your impression of the zeitgeist agrees with my "this will eat that" thesis. Sometimes it's hard for me to say what's representative of the Blue State upper middle classes, and what's peculiar to Manhattan. Has there been a noticible spike in gourmet-ness in Boston in the last five years? [Doug: 5/3/05 21:51]


	A good musing article on novels of academia, by Joseph Epstein of the Weekly Standard. Link via ALDaily. [Doug: 5/3/05 11:53]


	This Will Eat That In that "Hunchback" book, Victor Hugo has a chapter called "Ceci tuera cela", "this will kill that", where he explains how movable type gave birth to an era of artistic/poetic impulses manifested in words, but also killed the era when these impulses resulted in beautiful cathedrals. My pet theory is, of course, that cuisine is now playing the role that Hugo assigned to writing, and wiping out the already moribund vestiges of other cultural forms (at least in the Blue States). Visual art has petered out into the yarn and scrap metal of Dia:Beacon. Music is strictly a commodity. Literary literature is lost in its own luminosity. Movies do get discussed, but their weight in our culture has been fairly constant. What's ascendent -- in our discussions, our thinking, our free time -- is fine dining. Or maybe I should say what's rampant. Another sign of the times, from the people who brought you $2 bottles of water, Slate's evaluation of gourmet salt. I don't think NYT puts its ads online, or I'd link to the full-pager from Sunday's first section, where some Vegas casino trumpets its new star -- not a singer or a lion-tamer, but a three-star French chef. One way this trend manifests itself in New York is in the meaning of "going out". Twenty or thirty years ago, say, I gather that there was a high probability that this would entail seeing a play or going to a concert. Dinner would be squeezed into a one-hour pre-theater deal. Today dinner is the destination; playgoers are a subculture. I bet you could quantify this by tracking total theater attendance, and also somehow measure how many people are actually New Yorkers and how many are out-of-towners seeing "Planet of the Apes: The Musical" because it's high on the approved checklist of Things To Do In New York. And on the other hand track the number of dinners served per night that exceed the cost of a can of soup by a factor of at least twenty-five. If I had time I'd write a short book explaining what this says about us. [Doug: 5/3/05 11:09]