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Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
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Domino Theory Latin-style
We are hearing that the President of Bolivia, Gonzalez Sanchez de Losada, will resign this evening, after weeks of violent protests by indigenous and leftist groups. Goni has been a staunch ally of the U.S.; in fact, he grew up in the U.S. and speaks Spanish with a distinctly American accent. When new elections are held he is likely to be replaced by Evo Morales, the champion of Bolivia's coca growers and, as such, no friend of the U.S.. So how did Morales, the vanquished in the election that brought Goni to power, and his indio hordes come to run the President out of La Paz? Chavez's Venezuela has provided both moral and, more importantly, material support to the Bolivian opposition. Having failed to help Venezuela's military dispose of Chavez when they had him cornered, the U.S. now faces the prospect of a left-populist, Castroite narcostate in the heart of South America. Nice work.
[10/17/03 17:15] |
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Classy
"I think this is a great town," said Wells. "It's unbelievable. It's fun. We're driving home last night to the hotel and every block, everybody is flipping us off. I wish I had a video camera. I've never seen anything like it."
Though it pains me to admit it, Sox fans in the main display even less class than Yankees fans. I did enjoy the "jailbird" chants for Jeff Nelson and Karim Garcia, however.
[10/15/03 10:38] |
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Sportswriter as Hobbyist
My short stint in TV journalism gave me (aside from heartburn and a desire never to work in TV journalism) an opportunity to observe the sports journalist in his natural habitat. The atmosphere of the WBZ newsroom was generally slightly more cheerful than that of a Roman slave galley. The sports office, on the other hand, was full of laughter and smiles. The root of the difference is obvious: no one goes to dedications of new elementary schools or clean-ups of house fires for fun, but a huge section of the population lives for sports. The WBZ sports reporters, if they weren't employed sitting around in the newsroom kibbitzing about sports during the day, would be sitting unemployed in a bar doing much the same thing. What sports nut wouldn't explode with joy at the prospect of watching and talking about sports for a living? On the other hand, that these journos have made a job out of their hobby does not encourage the same professionalism that one finds among those with unpleasant but important jobs. It takes a determined effort of will for these guys to make the mental distinction between watching a game as a pastime and watching the game as a reportorial act. Expect sloppiness.
As for the Clemens-Piazza W.S. showdown, I attended that game and had a pretty good view of the action (i was sitting behind the first-base line). I agree that a non-retarded human cannot easily mistake a bat for a ball. However, it likewise seemed quite clear to me that Clemens was just tossing the bat fragment out of the way and maybe erred a couple of degrees throw. The bat landed well wide of pretty-boy Piazza. Perhaps, though, it wasn't so clear from less direct angles, and given the history between these two spectators were primed to see confrontation.
[10/8/03 00:16] |
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The Sportswriter as Fabulist
I feel terrible following this wonderful series of posts with standard issue Red Sox gloating. Herewith a promissory note for a mini-essay connecting J.M Coetzee to Leo Strauss (really!). That said, I’ve spent the past week (at least that part not spent atoning for sins) in alternating ecstasies of horror and delight. Now I’m walking on sunshine. Thank you Derek Lowe!
Perhaps I can bootstrap my gushing into a more substantive post. While immersed in sports euphoria over the past week I've noticed something about sports journalism, namely, that it is terrible. And it made me wonder: everyone complains about media bias, but could it be that the problem derives not from intentional partisanship, but solely from the incompetence, laziness, and groupthink of journalists? For example, you might imagine that for sportwriters, the first rule of reporting on event X would be to ascertain whether event X in fact took place. Not so!
As evidence, consider two two mini-scandals spawned during the Sox-A’s series:
The Brawl Story line: A’s starter Tim Hudson (scratched after one inning in game four) injures himself in a Boston bar fight. This injury prevents him from pitching in game four. He thus shows himself to be selfish and stupid, and his bone-headedness directly hurt the fortunes of his team.
The Vulgar Gesture: Story line: Derek Lowe celebrates victory by flipping off the Oakland dugout. Lowe thus enrages the A's and sullies his gutty performance.
The problem with these stories is that in both cases the key event did not occur. No reputable source has confirmed the brawl, which has been denied both by Hudson and by the manager of the establishment. How hard would it be to find a Sox fan slugged by Tim Hudson? Not very.
Similarly, the whole nation watched Derek Lowe celebrate after icing chump-o-the-day Terrence Long. No one saw the crotch-grabbing extravaganza alleged by the A’s. I don’t care if a hysterical, crying Miguel Tejada had to be escorted away by Billy Beane (actually, I do care, in that reading of Tejada’s 5-star nutty transported me into an paradise of schaudenfreude), but oughtn't a reporter first try to ascertain if anything really happened by reviewing the game tape?
These aren’t rare or unusual errors; bungling the basic facts on the ground seems to be part of the sportswriter’s code. Some of you may recall the Clemens/Piazza confrontation in the 2000 World Series. To this day, one common version of events holds that Clemens tried to exculpate himself by claiming that, when tossing a shattered bat at Piazza, he thought he was throwing the ball.
How bogus is that? Who does Clemens think he’s fooling? As it happens, no one. Clemens may be as nasty as all get out, but he has never made that claim. Rather, he said that when the bat came at him, he thought it was the ball, that that once in his hand, he knew it was the bat and threw it away. But the other version has become lore, and is referred to by beat writers all the time.
I know that I’ve long since exhausted the patience of our regular readership (hi Mom!). But let me close with my personal favorite.
Here’s Jim Cable of ESPN on last night’s thrilling win:
[it was] a series so nerve-wracking and dramatic that Theo Epstein must feel like the oldest general manager in baseball when Lowe froze Long with a front door slider for strike three to preserve Boston's 4-3 victory.
Difficulties with this account:
1. Derek Lowe does not throw a slider. He throws a sinker and a curveball.
2. Anyone watching the game would recognize that the pitch to Long was a sinker. And it was so identified by the broadcasters.
3. Lowe and Varitek spoke extensively after the game about the decision to throw a sinker (what Lowe calls a “two seam lock-up” to Long. Here’s a quotation from the Boston Herald. “I threw all sinkers,'' Lowe said. ``You don't go with anything but your best.”
For crying out loud. If sportwriters can’t even get the pitches right, what can we expect from the poor scrub assigned to the health care economics beat. Why not just give up on news altogether and get information on the state of the world from the novels of Joseph Conrad?
[10/7/03 16:30] |
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France Top n Lists
I'm ambivalent about summing up my 2.6 years in France by means of top-10 lists. Well, not exactly ambivalent really. Or yes, I guess I am ambivalent. Anyway my main worry is that I might come off as advocating Epicureanism, or the idea that life's point is to compile lists of refined, exotic, piquant pleasures. Sampling and savoring have their place, but it shouldn't be a dominant one. As usual, I recommend Buddhism, and recommend that you sample pleasures like those listed below only in dharma-oriented moderation.
(Epicurus vs. The Buddha -- there you have the last two remaining contenders in the fight to define The Good Life for Man. Remind me to write an essay on this subject someday.)
Just to expiate my feelings of guilt, I'll start with ...
Top 1 Religion To Practice In France
1. Buddhism
I hope you're not offended that I left Judaism off this list ... but frankly France isn't the best place for it now. And speaking of Buddhism, there are the
Top 2 Buddhist Centers in France
1. Plum Village (H.Q. of Thich Nhat Hanh)
2. Lerab Ling (H.Q. of Sogyal Rinpoche and his Rigpa organization)
Now this is weird. Why would two of the best known Buddhist teachers worldwide -- perhaps second and third behind the Dalai Lama -- both choose to set up shop in Southwest France? Why not, say, California? It seems wrong on so many levels. The French are by and large anti-Buddhist in their outlook. Buddhism is selfless; the French tend toward egotism. Buddhism is spiritual; the French are anti-clerical and hyper-rational. Buddhism counsels vegetarianism; the French ... ha! And the Southwest of France, well, not only do they eat meat exclusively; they've invented rococo ways to torture animals into extra tastiness. Weird. We should get our friend Kristen to write an investigative piece on this.
I've been to Plum Village. Thich Nhat Hanh would be my choice for personal guru, were I to have one. You have never seen anyone so completely happy, so completely unpretentious, so uncorrupted by fame and money. I know of, and approve, the Orwell quote, "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent," but if you spend any time around this guy your suspicions will evaporate. I have no doubt that if he got himself a halfway pronounceable nickname he could be as popular as the Dalai Lama, and that if he hired a marketing team he could be as rich as Deepak Chopra. This makes it amazing to see the extent to which he keeps it real. I didn't know what to expect at Plum Village -- perhaps a zen-furnished welcome center decked out with glossy photographs and brochures ("zen" in French means "low, boxy, and unembroidered," and is used almosed exclusively to describe coordinated living room sets). Instead it looks like a cheery run-down commune straight out of the 1970's. I had some issues with this, notably the spiders (I mean okay, respect life and don't kill them, but at least shoo them out the window! Don't let them take over your compound like something out of a low-budget horror flick!). But in the end the unvarnished ambiance reinforces the sincerity with which the dharma is taught and practiced there. You should visit. Also check out the website, which is and always has been so low-tech and undesigned that it brings tears of joy to my eyes. And oh yeah, if you can't go there, they have retreats in the U.S. on both coasts; it was inevitable that they'd discover how Americans are receptive to Buddhism, while the French aren't. (You'll barely hear a word of French at Plum Village.)
What the French are more interested in is Tibetan Buddhism. Why? Because it's so wonderfully exotic! The dear departed Edward Said would be glad to know that Orientalism is alive and well here in France. (Side note: Does a glowing eulogy from contrarian Christopher Hitchens prove that you're a total bastard? Just asking.) All the gods with arms and the incense and the mantras, c'est vraiment depaysant, ça! This is why Sogyal Rinpoche and the Rigpa organization may have a comparative advantage here. I don't know much about Rigpa ... I dropped in once for a dharma lesson that was very serious and very thorough, part of a remarkably full curriculum actually, but (a) it was at the other end of Paris and (b) I have spine issues that keep me from sitting cross-legged, so I had to sit in this tiny uncomfortable chair, which gave me this terrible sore on my butt.
Rigpa's website is much more slick than Plum Village's. Which is good and bad.
Top 3 French Books I've Read Here
1. Le Pere Goriot by Balzac. Trust me -- it's worth slogging through the first 30 pages of dullish description.
2. Stupeur et Tremblements by Amelie Nothomb (available in English at Amazon). Hilarious, bilious, probably libelous account of a white girl's sojourn in Japan. I have nothing against the Japanese in particular but I occasionally like to see some race other than Arabs get humorously villified. P.S. the French have already made a movie out of this and apparently it sucked.
3. Rousseau's Confessions. My own confession is that I only read up to the part about how he was obsessed from an early age with being spanked by women, and at one point went around exposing his buttocks to women in the street. How come all we ever heard about was the General Will and the Social Contract? Booo-ring!
Top 4 Ugliest Buildings In Paris
1. That building north of the shopping center at the Croix de Chavaux metro stop in Montreuil. Okay, it's not quite in Paris, but you have to see it. Look, I don't care if you're generally indifferent to architecture -- this is a building to make you drop to your knees, pound the pigeon-befouled pavement with your fists and scream "Why, God, why?". Let's see if I remember. The metro station is at an intersection, and there's a shopping center on the northwest corner, itself quite ugly. (It's at this shopping center that we once saw Playtime, a film by Jacques Tati, which is a semi-silent comedy about 1960's modern architecture. You follow these hapless humans around as they try (and fail comically) to move with machinelike smoothness through their newly machine-smoothed environment. That makes it sound dull, but in truth it's interesting; it's like Tati almost discovered an entirely new and satisfying way to make movies, the way the French makers of the Minitel almost discovered a revolutionary way to change human communication. Consider Playtime a proof of concept -- of a concept that hasn't been fully realized yet. (Filmmakers take note.) But with the French, of course, the concept is everything, so they've already canonized the film, subsumed it into the patrimoine, as if it were a bona-fide masterpiece, which it isn't.) Go north of this shopping center. See the building that looks like something the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred might have made if he'd been a theoretically inclined architect of the 1970s instead of the author of the Necronomicon? That's the one. I'd try to find an image of it but it would crash your browser.
2. The University Complex at Jussieu. After the student revolts of 1968, the French government hit on a radical idea of how to avoid trouble from its restless youth: drive them all to suicide. By means of this campus.
3. UNESCO Headquarters. Remember that this is the UN branch devoted to culture and the arts, among other things. Hideous.
4. Arche de la Defense. This reminds me of a rant Ben A. once went off on. We were in Cambridge, near the Stah Mahket up on Mass Ave, where we saw an Irish pub/restaurant. "Irish food?" Ben begins. "I can't believe this Irish vogue has gotten so out of hand. I mean the beer is great, sure. But isn't it asking a lot to force us to eat potatoes and boiled meat just to have a Guinness? It's like the French saying 'You may import our wines and cheeses, but only if you first adopt our military doctrines and civic architecture!'"
Top 5 Parks in Paris
1. Les Buttes Chaumont.
2. Jardin du Luxembourg. Adam Gopnik's book had a chapter on this park that I won't try to outdo here, but he did forget one important amenity: the free outdoor urinal near the petanque area. The park planners realized that if you're going to have petanque, you're going to have old men with short-term bladders, who, as self-respecting frenchmen rather than other-people-respecting tourists, will never pay money to use a urinal. So they built this nice stone outdoor urinal and hid it discretely with bushes. The problem is that the bushes are designed to hide old French men, not young Scots-Lithuanian hybrids; whenever I use the urinal, I tower over the bushes and look directly at all the strolling people maybe fifteen feet away. Like, "Hey, look at me, I'm taking a piss in public and I don't even care!" A useful exercise though, since if a man is to assimilate into French society, it is at least as important that he master blithe public urination as, say, the subjunctive.
3. Parc Monceau. This one also has a funny urination aspect: the bathrooms are in a small building called "Le Chalet de Nécessité." Ben H., I think I pointed it out to you once. One of the few surviving photos of me in my "Jordi" wraparound sunglasses is of you and me here. I can't believe I lost those sunglasses -- the only ones I've ever had that don't make me look like an even bigger dork.
4. Parc Montsouris. The poor man's Buttes Chaumont. During the summer of 1992, when I was staying across the street at the Cité Universitaire and had at most 1.3 friends in Paris, I spent much time sitting on a bench here, staring straight ahead, trying to visualize a chessboard. Nothing else. I couldn't figure out why I was so mediocre at chess. But I suspected it was mostly my inability to visualize the board in my head. Other people spoke of seeing moves in their heads, and could in fact play blindfolded (speaking of which, Ben H. -- have you heard news of Marcus recently?). I figured that people's brains couldn't be that different in such a fundamental respect, so I tried to work on my visual imagination. With absolutely no success. This failure was amazing to me: are there really people who can close their eyes and just see things? In addition to people like me, who have always taken instructions like "try to imagine/visualize a horse" metaphorically, and at most imagined the word horse and maybe put themselves in a vaguely equine mood? Yes, there are both kinds. The confirmation of this for me was Oliver Sacks' great article in the New Yorker (sometime this summer I think) about blind people and the different ways their brains handle vision. Worth tracking down if you missed it.
5. I don't know. Parc des Sceaux?
Top 6 European Countryside Spots We've Visited
1. Wengen, Switzerland
2. West coast of Corsica
3. The Loire Valley, especially Loir-et-Cher
4. The Luberon in Provence
5. Pyrenees/Pays Cathar
6. Brittany although I'll be damned if it didn't remind me of Pennsylvania.
Top 7 Wines We've Had in France
1. Chateau Victoria 1998 Haut-Medoc. Made up for all the other wines at our wedding (champagne excepted) which, despite all the time we put into choosing them, kind of sucked in the end.
2. Domaine Sainte Paule 1999, Corbieres. Our house wine which we used to pick up at the supermarket for about $3.50 a bottle. Better than any of the $10-$15 stuff we got in New York. I actually ordered it for our wedding, but the supermarket was out of stock.
3. That one bottle of white wine at La Cantine des Gourmets. About two years ago our friend A.'s parents came to town. (That reminds me that I really ought to call him.) A. is a totally down-to-earth guy from the South (Alabama or Georgia, by way of Arizona?), unpretentious to a fault; if I had had to draw up a top-10 list of people least likely to have parents who stay at the Ritz and take their kids' friends to Michelin-starred restaurants, he would have been near the top. And yet there they were. Like A., they're wonderful people. Only without A.'s tendency toward hyperactivity. Anyway, here we are at La Cantine des Gourmets; everyone orders fish, and A.'s father says to the waiter, well, you know what, to be honest, I don't really know that much about French white wine, so could you just bring us your best bottle of white wine? The waiter makes sure he's heard correctly, and then complies. The way A's father ordered it was remarkable: not a hint of either triumphalism or self-consciousness. Was the wine excellent? Yes. Can I make more educated comments about top-of-the-line French white wines like this one? No. But still.
4. That One Glass of Italian Red I Had At Enoteca I Trulli On 27th Street Back In May. Okay, not in Paris, but it was damn good. Maybe I shouldn't bother mentioning it since I can't remember what it was. On the other hand it gives me a chance to mention that, while viewing the window sign from the inside, I noticed that "enoteca" backwards is "acetone." And now that I think of it, acetone was recently reflected back into my life at an Italian restaurant -- the eggplant on the pizza I ordered the other night literally tasted like nail polish remover. I sent it back. Avoid all restaurants on the Avenue des Gobelins between Place D'Italie and the Gobelins metro stop. The few semi-honorable exceptions aren't worth mentioning.
5. That One Monbazillac We Had At Our Brother-In-Law's Aunt And Uncle's Place.
6. That Wine From Jorge's Sister's Husband's Family Estate. That was good too. We should probably see her again before we leave.
7. That One Chateau Rothschild Something Or Other 2000 At Jorge's Friend Mary's Party The Other Night. It's very sad that we didn't actually get to try this bottle since it was empty when we arrived -- 2000 may not have triggered the apocalypse, but apparently for French wines it was the year to end all years. That party was so funny though. (Almost every interesting party we've attended here has been thanks to Jorge, I think.) There were all these sleek late-20's New-Yorky people. I had to laugh -- nostalgically, of course. The best one was this girl originally from the Philippines, a filmmaker, lives close to my old apartment on Sullivan St. We quickly established that we were part of the same cosmopolitan tribe, partly by mentioning our plan to move to Hanoi. When I added, "I've never been to Asia," the girl fairly screamed out of embarrassment for me. It was like I'd put ketchup on my carpaccio or something. She was too much. Look for her debut movie about growing up Philippine in Texas at a theater near you: "Yellow Rose" I think.
Top 8 Cheeses
1. St. Nectaire
2. Chaource
3. Comté or Gruyere
4. Etorki
5. Gouda au cumin although not really French
6. Roquefort
7. Reblochon
8. A really good Camembert can actually beat most of the above
Top 9 Restaurants
1. Au Rendez-Vous de la Marine up in the 19th by Dao's office. Friendly, classic, inexpensive neighborhood restaurant. I'd feel guilty about attracting too many Americans to this place were I not so sure that our weblog's readership is, er, very select.
2. Quan Cay Ot in the 13th, although there are any number of cheap excellent Vietnamese places in this neighborhood.
3. Au Vieux Cedre in the 5th. Unfailingly good hole-in-the-wall for Lebanese sandwiches.
4. Kaiseki Sushi. Kristen turned us on to this hole-in-the-wall place in the 15th, run -- with absolutely no assistance except his wife's -- by this crazy Japanese guy named Hissa. It's less a restaurant that a room, unmarked from the street, with one long table, and a counter behind which Hissa cuts up the fish. Although he does great classic sushi his main draw is this wacked-out deconstructed sushi with raspberries and groseilles and who knows what else. For a while we had an attitude towards Kaiseki Sushi that wouldn't have been out of place at the aforementioned party -- we're part of the cultural elite who know about the hidden sushi paradise of Paris. And Hissa doesn't let just anyone make reservations. One night we were the only customers (with Kristen and J.S.) and somebody calls up to see if he's open, and he says "No, no, I'm sorry, no more fish, no more fish," while holding an enormous slab of tuna or something. Made us feel very elite indeed. So I felt kind of bitter and frustrated when Kaiseki started showing up in magazines and newspaper going-out guides. Ugh! The riff-raff! The RER-and-peripherique crowd is ruining this place! We knew Hissa back when ... etc. etc.
5. Tie: Taillevent / Laurent These were pretty good too.
6. Les Ambassadeurs in the Hotel Crillon. Maybe it was just the summer, but given the clientele we saw, it could be renamed Les Ambassadeurs Japonais.
7. La Coupole Some will brand me a philistine for listing this: it belongs to the Flo restaurant chain Adam Gopnik battled in one of those later self-congratulatory chapters of his book. But it's always fun and the food is fine. The same can't be said for Bofinger and Au Pied du Cochon, which are in the same recreation-of-lost-era-of-Parisian-opulence category and maybe even in the same chain. Yes it is kitschy to recreate 1920's Paris in a restaurant. But in 1920s Paris was at least interesting. If you want to eat in a place that captures the full zeitgeist of contemporary Paris, I don't know where you'd go -- the employee cafeteria of the central post office, maybe.
8. Chez Paul The one in the Butte Aux Cailles.
9. Chez Omar in the 9th. Best couscous place we know.
Top 10 French Words
1. gland . Partly because of the pastry called the "gland", which is covered with a pale green membrane and thereby looks like a gland, partly because it's a swear word. Its bad meaning shares the etymology of the medical English "glans." And all of these uses go back to the Latin for "acorn", which is the main definition for "gland" in French. Also it just sounds hilarious in French.
2. cremaillère. Speaking of etymological links to parts of the male anatomy, this word shares a Greek root with "cremaster", whose meaning we all know now thanks to that charlatan Matthew Barney. Both mean something from which something else hangs. In the French use, it's pots -- a cremaillère is a sort of iron bar with notches that you affix inside your fireplace, to let you adjust the distance between your cooking pot and the fire. "To throw a house warming party" in French is "pendre la cremaillère", hang the cremaillère. Also, because of the long notched form of the cremaillère, the word now also means the kind of steep mountain railway with a ratchet-like rail that keeps the train from sliding down.
3. bougre. Basically equivalent, etymologically and semantically, to the English "bugger", as in "that little bugger". But this too just sounds much funnier in French. Interesting etymology too. In America, "bugger" just means "jerk" or "pest", and might be linked subconsciously with the verb "to bug [someone]," whose etymology I can't find. But in Britain, "bugger" retains its older meaning "to sodomize." Now where did that meaning come from? From the Bogomils, a medieval Bulgarian sect whose marriage-precluding asceticism gave them a reputation for homosexuality.
4. à donf. The verlan form of "à fond", itself a rather colloquial expression for "totally" or "all the way". Sounds hilarious. "Je travaille à donf aujourd'hui" roughly means "I'm totally in the zone at work today."
5. septentrional. Means "northern"; it's my standard example of why students of French should generally avoid Le Monde. Le Monde loves this word; where any other paper would write "les pays du nord" (the northern countries), they write "les pays septentrionaux." It's totally hifalutin'; nobody ever says it; the etymology is from the seven oxen (? -- dictionary is packed) that the stars of the Big Dipper were taken to represent. BTW the opposite is "mé"ridional."
6. saugrenu. "Absurd, far-fetched." I include this largely to congratulate myself for having worked it into a conversation finally. (We were talking about Concrete Media's dot-com clients.)
7. franchouillard. Stereotypically, kitschily French, as in berets or Yves Montand. Essential word for anyone fighting off insinuations that only American culture has kitschy lowbrow aspects.
8. bougie . Candle. (The cognate "chandelle" usually being reserved for especially long tapered candles.) I include it as an example things named after the place where they were made -- here Bugaya, a North African town that produced a lot of wax in the Middle Ages. Cork, Liège, Salzburg, etc. etc. -- I also like place names that describe the stuff made/found there. Bonus cryptic: "Name for place where Tom corrals small horse (7)"
9. jouaient. [They] were playing. Common word with five vowels in a row: that's pretty good.
10. la foi. Faith. Often in French you can make a feminine noun by adding (a doubled consonant plus) an "e" to the end of a masculine noun. Chien/chienne, etc. But here it's the opposite: le foie = liver. Can you think of any other examples?
[10/7/03 06:50] |
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Mauled by a Tiger?!!
Check it out: we have an epidemic on our hands. Do we face some kind of shadowy tiger-liberation movement? Is Inconsiderate Cellphone Man involved? Or is it that tiger-maulings represent a silent killer of dozens of Americans every year, and it's taken the Roy attack to raise consciousness of this terrible scourge?
[10/5/03 13:46] |
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The Eerie Premonition of Inconsiderate Cellphone Man
I did not immediately think of The Simpsons when I read of that homophobic tiger's vicious hate crime. Instead, I realized that Inconsiderate Cellphone Man had made a startling prophecy. At movie theaters in New York, Cingular Wireless runs an advertisement before the previews, the ostensible purpose of which is to persuade people to shut off their ringers and refrain from using their phones in the theater (a slightly different version is available here). The premise is "Inconsiderate Cellphone Man," which shows a loudmouthed lout ejaculating bizarre phrases into his cellphone in various inappropriate situations, or rather in front of photo backdrops depicting those situations. One of these interjections has him in a board meeting, exclaming into his phone: "Mauled by a tiger?!!" The sentence was selected, I thought, like the others, for the fact that one could not imagine it ever being uttered in a genuine telephone call. And yet... across Las Vegas, tens of the various suppliers, friends, and hangers-on of Mr. Roy probably cried the very same words into their cellphones yesterday. For some reason, my colleague, Ben M. (yes, another Ben), and I find Inconsiderate Cellphone Man side-splitting, and for a week after we first saw it, annoyed the rest of the trading desk by yelling out his catchphrases ("I'm the dude in the suit, waving!", e.g.) whenever something made us angry, happy, or otherwise disposed to make noise.
I am really upset, therefore, that I won't be in the office Monday (I have some meetings in Hungary) to greet him as he walks in the door with a shout of "mauled by a tiger?!!"
[10/4/03 23:46] |
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Ig-Nobel
The same Nobel committee that has crowned Coetzee for his exposure of western "comsmetic morality" a few years back awarded its prize to V.S. Naipaul. Coetzee and Naipaul have both written acclaimed novels that have at their thematic center an appalling act of sexual violence perpetrated by a thuggish, dark-skinned local against an intellectual, light-skinned metropolitan (Coetzee's Disgrace and Naipaul's Guerillas). And in both cases, the author, for reasons of political bent, ascribes the greater share of the blame to the victim. Beyond that, their messages could not be more different. In Naipaul's book, Jane's rape is gruesome but savagely appropriate comeuppance for her smug, leftist romanticization of the primal, hyper-masculine violence of the Third World. For Coetzee, the rape is symbolic payback for apartheid, sort of post-colonial guilt made flesh. The point of the spectacularly violent culmination of Guerillas is to argue against precisely the sort of whiny criticism of the supposed meretriciousness of "cosmetic" western morality that Coetzee has turned into a stock-in-trade. Naipaul shows the unvarnished brutality of the worst of third-world morality and dares the reader to say that it's really just the same as western norms, only free of "cosmetics." Look at this, don't avert your eyes; I dare you to say that this is better than what the west has to offer and what you think so highly of yourself for cavilling about.
[10/3/03 11:06] |
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Comrade Amélie
I don't know if the film "Good Bye Lenin" is out in the U.S. yet. It's being pitched here in France as comedic DDR nostalgia. Saw it last night. Plot: idealistic communist mother in East Berlin goes into coma just before Wall comes down, awakes 8 months later; her 20-ish kids are told to avoid all emotional shocks in order to prevent another heart attack, so they build this elaborate sham world, (or at least sham bedroom) for the invalid mother, wherein everyone wears crappy east-bloc clothes and sings socialist songs, while outside Coca-Cola and Burger King are utterly remaking the city. Very funny premise, that. My inclination in making a Bandarlog post about it is to go straight for the political content, and say that it provides more evidence that Europe's cultural elite give too much credit to communists' good intentions. But that would be like saying that the movie provided yet more evidence that the sky is blue, and grass green. The truth is that it's pretty apolitical. It's a Three's Company script, set in the Alexanderplatz, directed and scored by the Amélie Poulain team, who give it polish and lightheartedness, but no depth. The actors are fine, but their characters are totally one-dimensional, propagating along the vector of increasingly farcical trickery until the game is revealed. (No, Mr. Furley, don't open that closet!) Just because a script can write itself, you shouldn't necessarily let it.
[10/3/03 06:13] |
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Decline And Fall: Highbrow Edition
I've never read Coetzee; I'm sure he's swell. He looks like a Serious Writer, anyway. No, what I want to decry is the pricks on the Nobel committee. Very first paragraph of their announcement:
J.M. Coetzee's novels are characterised by their well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance. But at the same time he is a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilisation. His intellectual honesty erodes all basis of consolation and distances itself from the tawdry drama of remorse and confession. Even when his own convictions emerge to view, as in his defence of the rights of animals, he elucidates the premises on which they are based rather than he argues for them.
"The ... cosmetic morality of western civilisation." Not a cosmetic morality in western civilisation, not a cosmetic aspect of western morality, but the cosmetic morality of western civilisation. If our morality is a sham, what is the point of handing out Peace and Literature awards? Maybe it's to encourage the reworking of our morality, which is now a sham, into a truly good morality. But then the committee tells us that Coetzee's "intellectual honesty" prevents him from arguing for his convictions; he can only "elucidate" them. Message: if you are honest, you must admit that all convictions are arbitrary. That's a hell of a message coming from these self-appointed priests of culture!
And what is their positive message then? That we should remove the layers of cosmetics from our morality and let its arbitrariness shine through? That we should adopt the morality of some non-western civilisation, perhaps the Hutus or the Tutsis, that somehow manages to be less cosmetic?
Perhaps it's that we should adopt the civilisation of those rights-bedecked animals they're so excited about. At least that would be fashionable nihilism. Lionizing non-western cultures is so 1980's. Get hip, man! Lionize the lions!
[10/3/03 03:57] |
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Neigh
Second Derrida passage is the genuine one, I think. But the exercise is indeed hilarious. Having spent time out at Irvine, I had the opportunity to attend a few of his lectures. He is, after all, still on Bernie's dissertation committee, and I figured that in the interest of fairness I shouldn't hew to my opinion that the guy is a total charlatan without giving him a chance to disprove it. I have accused him of spinning unfalsifiable rhetorical webs, so it wouldn't be right not to put my assertion to the test.
My god, it was way worse than I had imagined. That semester, he was giving the second part of a three-part course on "the concept of 'hospitality.'" That phrase has a concrete meaning, I'm sure; for example, at a Swiss school of hotel management, it probably gets a lot of attention. However, as you can imagine, the master was not entrancing his acolytes with talk about hospital corners and the importance of leaving a mint on the pillow. Rather, he went on these long multilingual folk-etymological rambles starting from the word 'hospitality' and ending up who-knows-where. Sometimes when I don't understand a lecture, I chalk it up to my own ignorance or inattention; sometimes I suspect the speaker isn't making any sense. Almost always, I have a certain amount of doubt about which case obtains. But in this case, I was as sure that it was the latter as I am sure about any fact.
After one of these lectures, one of the other attendees asked me what I, a layman and not an adept of the Derridean cult, thought of it. It was such gobbledygook that I could not venture an intelligent comment on the content, dispute a particular point, or offer any substantive criticism. To use our old short-hand (stolen from Carnap I think) it's like debating "this triangle is virtuous" or "Berlin horse blue."
So I said, I can only offer you what I think Jesse Jackson might have said about this lecture... and in my best Jesse rhymed, "Ontology through etymology is nothing but empty phraseology!" (I did not say, "it was another Selma," unfortunately).
Not that anything I could say could break the spell. To see an example of the depths to which those unfortunate souls in the grip of Derridamania can sink, check out the Derrida documentary, which probably makes My Dinner With Andre seem like a Peckinpah film by comparison. One second thought, I bet the film is a fascinating study of various styles of boot-licking and ingratiation.
[10/2/03 06:35] |
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French Has No Word For "Nerd"
I don't think I've mentioned yet on this weblog that we're moving to Hanoi. In 17 days, assuming the visas come through. Not for any particular reason. Change of scenery, change of pace, change of language, all that. But for neither Dao nor me does this move signal new priorities or changed outlooks. No, the only big life change I want to make is to meditate more; and frankly it would probably be easier to do this here in France than in a teeming Asian city.
I will say more about Vietnam later but for now I just needed to explain why two French 17-year-olds have moved in here to replace us as tenants. (We've moved downstairs in the interim.) I was talking with the guy last night. He's super friendly, poised, looks right at you when he talks ... the French are just so goddamn sociable. And here's the punchline: he's starting school in computer programming. He hasn't written a line of code in his life. I was totally taken aback when he said this. I hardly have any contact with French teenagers but they seem much more homogenized than Americans. They're all socialized the same way and somehow keep from splitting into subcultures. They have different hobbies and like different music but these differences are superficial. At bottom they're all compatible. They can all speak to each other. Like stem cells, they only differentiate into various functions late in the game. And even then, even when they take on the function of computer programmer or teacher or clerk or doctor, they still more or less look and act the same.
How different it is in America! Back there, computer programming is a calling, if not a genetic condition. We even have words for the condition -- nerddom, geekhood. (The best equivalent the French can come up with is "un accro d'ordinateur", a computer addict.) You -- or, more correctly, I -- start programming because you have an analytic bent, even at the age of 10 or 12, and you don't know how to interact with people, like this charming guileless French kid does. And the more you program, the more your social skills and sports skills atrophy, and the more unsuited you become for anything else. All your friends at school are in the same parallel world of computer games and inside Star Trek jokes and poor hygiene. You're almost a different species. Put in a room with a jock, or even a goth, you would literally have nothing to say. It's quite unhealthy socially ... but on the other hand, you get some damn good programmers this way! How can this affable French kid compete with the hunched race of American computer trolls for whom English is a second language and C++ the first? He's already seventeen! To quote Thor, who helped bail us out on the aforementioned server disaster, your best coding years are behind you at nineteen!!
[9/29/03 10:59] |
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Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle Doesn't Come Cheap
A $40K price tag for a year at Harvard might induce sticker-shock. As an education, it is grossly overpriced. Most of that cash goes to supporting legions of deans, assistants, and gnomish grad students, none of whom contribute to the intellectual formation of the hapless undergrads.
Yet, as a financial investment, I venture that it is grossly underpriced. Consider my own case. Had I not gone to Harvard, I would not have met Joel; and it was only because of my relationship with Joel that I wound up at my present employer, and really only at his insistence that I even applied. I learned literally nothing at Harvard that has proven of the slightest use to my present occupation, but, much as I disdain the place, I can't deny that it did a wonderful job of putting me in the right place and the right time to reap a financial windfall.
The other point to note (and you guys have undoubtedly heard me make it before), $40K represents a full list price that virtually nobody pays. Why stop at $40k? Harvard really ought to price tuition at $100K: a certain percentage of the class can afford it and would pay it, and everyone else could just get a large offsetting increase in aid.
[9/25/03 10:24] |
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Memory Lame
Two academia flashbacks.
(1) Harvard college admissions brochure arrived the other day (Dao does interviewing for them). Total yearly cost including estimated personal expenses: $40,450. The number of a cappella singing groups seems to have stabilized at about 12. One interesting new ethnic group to report: the Half Asian Persons Association. Shall we place bets on the year when the CJAPBD (Children of Jewish and Asian Parents, Both Doctors) is founded?
(2) A friend, S.S., has just started graduate school in linguistics. She is thrilled overall, but her report on a particularly dull class brought back lots of memories. I've plagiarized it below.
"Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics":
a poem in four haiku stanzas
Syntax professor,
instead of listening, I
wonder: why the tie?
Person next to me,
please stop chewing on your pen
because it's metal.
Student in the back,
I prefer the lecture to
your lame-ass comments.
If you use the word
'dialectic' once more, I
might have to vomit.
[9/24/03 16:03] |
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Too Much Civilization
I'm starting to see Rousseau's point about the heights of the French art de vivre being, in reality, insalubrious depths.
I'm sitting at my computer next to a bowl of Hollandaise sauce, the fifth batch or so that I've made in recent days, and -- this is saying lamentably little -- the best. Carl was kind enough to send a complete list of pointers, many of which I followed. I'm sitting here watching it, tasting it, seeing how it degrades over time, at what point it separates. I fear I've become obsessed with the stuff. And also stuffed with my obsession: constantly sampling it, straight, with a tablespoon, does not make for a healthy diet.
I think ultimately my problem may have been my whisk stroke: too slow. Not getting enough air into the mixture to make it fluffy.
Also, strangely, I'm noticing that it's becoming thicker, more solid, as it cools here. Odd. But encouraging.
One more urgent request ... anyone have simple recipes using egg whites??
[9/23/03 09:10] |
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Ben A posed the question: Does adopting a knowing and ironic stance towards one's vices justify those vices? He correctly answered "no", giving as evidence this site, which is good evidence, and David Eggers, who, I think, gets a pass. I thought his book was so full of manic energy that it transcended the crippling-ironic-self-awareness genre. Most books in that genre are echo chambers -- the author may have an interesting idea or two but they just bounce around inside his/her head, losing momentum, unable to borrow energy from sources beyond the skull, until they just stop. Whereas in the "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" the particles of ironic self-awareness attained a critical mass, with each doubt and self-criticism setting more and more into motion. The result was actually rather exhilarating.
Your overall point is well-taken though. It reminds me of the Fundamental Theorem of Art Films, which I don't think I've yet stated for the record:
The Fundamental Theorem of Art Films: When a director (or his stand-in) comes on-screen in his own art film to be chided for its pretentiousness, this makes the film more pretentious, not less.
The canonical proof is of course Fellini's "8 1/2." I've seen simpler, more elegant proofs, but they escape me at the moment.
[9/22/03 05:48] |
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Comparatively Minor Disaster
The "oeuf mollet" at Laurent reminded me of Hollandaise sauce so I tried to make some last night. My record with this sauce is short and mixed: a successful first attempt at home and an utter failure while staying with Carl and Que. After last night I am one for three. I believe my two failed batches failed at the same point, namely the beginning: when you first whisk the egg yolks, they are supposed to expand in volume roughly threefold, but this just wouldn't happen. I beg all cooks who might be reading to give me advice. (e.g. Ben A's mother and Ben H's girlfriend.) Could the bowl (fixed above the simmering water) have been too hot? Not hot enough? Would too much residual eggwhite in the yolks keep them from expanding? Could my whisk stroke be wrong? Failing any insight from readers, I'm going to buy a crate of eggs and methodically vary every parameter until it works ...
Mars Photo
You probably know that Mars is closer to the earth than ever in the last 60,000 years. It's very bright in the sky, and you can see its details with a decent telescope now, or so I hear.
Here's what I would do if I had such a telescope and a camera attachment. I'd wait until Mars was low in the sky, hanging just above a ridge several miles away. I'd get someone to stand very still on that ridge, so that from the telescope's emplacement his or her head appeared right next to Mars. The trick is to be far enough away so that Mars is the same size as the person's head in the picture, with its canals and ice-cap visible. My back-of-the-envelope calculation puts this distance at about 1.5 kilometers. Then you take the picture. Not to geek out or anything, but that would be so awesome to have a picture of yourself next to a big looming Mars. It's a pity that the existence of Photoshop would make the picture somewhat banal, not to say suspect.
[9/21/03 05:11] |
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A Wee Bit More Tax Policy
Yes, Doug, you make a fair point that decile shares of overall tax revenue does not directly and flawlessly indicate the degree of progressivity of a tax system. However, if you look at the statistics, the average tax rate on top decile earners has gone up and is approaching its pre-Reagan peak. However, there are several factors that make a 1980 vs 2000 comparison of this number misleading, if we are talking about marginal tax burden on labor income. Capital gains tax rates have dropped much more sharply than other income tax. Magnifying this effect, the turnover of people in the top decile has increase as well, largely due to the fact that people recognize capital gains accumulated over long periods in one shot, pushing them into a higher percentile for one period. That means that for the top decile in any given year now, a higher percentage of income will fall under lower capital gains rates. If you back that effect out, I think you would see a dramatically higher average rate (not to mention marginal rate) levied on the top decile.
"Tax havens" have become a huge issue in the EU. Luxembourg and Switzerland (not in the EU, but in EFTA) have taken a beating from France and Germany over this issue. Cyprus, another notorious "tax haven" had to change its fiscal rules in order to get an invitation to join the EU.
I would dispute, though, the idea that capital is not taxed heavily enough in the U.S. U.S. companies typically face average tax rates in the mid 30%. That's a tax on capital. When profits get distributed as a dividend to individual shareholders (or a capital gain is created by a share buyback), the holder faces yet another tax liability. Finally, both the company and the shareholder are taxed on nominal gains, which, in the presence of inflation, means even higher tax rates on real gains (sometimes exceeding 100%).
In the end, wage earners gain from capital accumulation, in the form of higher marginal productivity (and wages). The more you tax capital, the higher agents' preference for spending instead of saving, and the lower capital accumulation. Perhaps the way to reconcile this with your concerns is low capital gains taxes and high inheritance taxes. I think, though, you need to be precise about why you find lower taxes on capital than labor objectionable. I suspect it is from a moral standpoint or out of a notional of fairness, because on pure first-instance efficiency grounds it is hard to justify your discomfort.
You may feel that labor is somehow worthier of remuneration than the commitment of capital. Fair enough, except that most capital arises out of remuneration for labor that the laborer at some point decided to save rather than spend. In a sense it is "stored labor." In a corrupt economy, where people have acquired their property mostly through nefarious means, that's not the case, but I don't think the U.S. (or France) falls under that rubric.
You may have the intuition that only the wealthy rely heavily on capital gains / interest income, and those who derive most of their income from labor are poorer and ought to be spared shouldering a heavy tax burden. Consider, though, retired people, who may derive all their income from capital, simply because they have gotten too old to work. For the contrary case, consider me a couple of years ago. I moved back to New York with very little money, but suddenly made a lot more than I had expected from wage earnings.
But if I read you correctly, what you worry about is the accumulation of vast intergenerational fortunes, hoards that threaten to recreate aristocracy (in the bad sense of the word) on a financial basis. I agree that we should abhor such an outcome -- though I see little evidence that it risks coming to pass, given how small a portion of our wealthiest Americans were born that way. If the scions of today's Buffetts and Gateses really turn out to form an otiose class, the problem may well take care of itself, with little Gateses and Buffetts dissipating their fortunes on trivial pursuits. Think of the aristocrats of yore, most of whom only escaped bankruptcy by periodically running their lenders out of the realm at swordpoint. Assuming this small, wealthy class can't re-establish a monopoly of force, they won't enjoy that option. In any case, if caste formation is what you are worried about, best to attack it directly. Treat all unrequited transfers as wage income. Receive a bequest-- it's income; receive a gift -- income.
[9/18/03 11:18] |
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Disaster
I would have posted more this week were it not for a work disaster. I spent much of this summer programming a custom extension to the Internet survey system I started building for my client some four years ago. This extension -- a peer-review survey for the executives of a major financial company -- was to have gone into production Monday. But when I sent the invitation e-mail to the seven hundred or so participants, our server started choking. At first I thought it was having trouble with all the SSL requests (everything on the survey is encrypted for security), but frantic investigation revealed that the server was not overtaxed. It was simply locked up, as though totally disconnected from the Internet, for 56-second intervals, every few minutes. Insane. Now we don't even know if the server itself was at fault (none of its many error logs records the least hint of a problem) rather than a router or firewall at the hosting facility. The idea has been floated that the firewall, getting so many requests from one IP address range, may have thought it was under attack and blocked all network traffic.
But we really don't know or care at this point. All our effort -- and many of my NYC colleagues hardly slept during the forty-hour crisis -- has gone into setting up a new server. We should start relaunching today.
Frankly I feel like shit for not stressing a risk that, in the worst case (the case we're in now) would leave my friends panicked and sleepless and out of a big client's good graces. It's not that server load-testing is my direct responsibility, it's that it wasn't anybody's direct responsibility, and I, as a fairly seasoned internet guy by now, should have pointed out that it was bad that no one was directly responsible.
There are essentially two states in which a commercial website can exist, big and small. It can exist as a creation of one, two, or three people who know it well, and who keep all the site's aspects that are beyond their expertise very simple. This site has been in this state for almost all of its short life. It was my | |