The Daily Cannibal |
- Ebola Czar?
- But Look At How Shiny It Is
- The Times, It Is A-Changin’
- Talk Cheap, Lives Dear
- Let’s March!
- Hot Water
- Raw Deal
- Dog Days
- Le savant? C’est moi!
- Big Men
- Noir Lucinda at the Portland Zoo
- The Physics of Learning
- Reached Bottom, Auguring In
- QED
- Borderline Inanity
| Posted: 17 Oct 2014 08:22 AM PDT  Now that the president has been compelled to cancel two fundraising trips to deal with this pesky ebola stuff, he's starting to take the situation seriously. He has solemnly assured us that the possibility of a "serious outbreak" in the US is "very, very small," but this comes on the heels of his earlier assurance that any outbreak at all was highly unlikely. For people as yet unmarked by the president's previous forays into health care, his confidence may be palliative, but for others – those who buy their own health insurance, and military veterans, for example – a sense of unease may be creeping in. And uncharitable skeptics who question his skills at crisis management during fast-moving events are getting skittish as well, because nothing – even "the economy, stupid" — stimulates panic as fast as an exponentially-rising mortality rate. But now we are advised that the president is thinking of appointing an "ebola czar." In the world of titles, this one is probably not the one we would covet. Nor have Obama's past efforts at czar-making proven particularly useful – the last (maybe only) czar we can recall was the "jobs czar," and we all know how that turned out. (Hint: more Americans are unemployed today than in any other time in the nation's history.) Presumably, this official will be given plenipotentiary powers to direct and coordinate national human and material resources in defense against an epidemic, which seems appropriate under current circumstances. So far, official responses to the ebola threat have been only loosely knit, with various agencies and officials (including some lunatic "judge" in Dallas) all playing different roles with conflicting criteria, unclear objectives and not a little bit of Keystone Kops fumbling about. But the ebola czar has another function, we suspect – one that is far more important to the president and all the other folks in DC who understand just how annoyed the people are likely to get if there is "a serious outbreak." In situations like this one, you need more than a capable administrator, a decisive manager, a quick thinker and a firm hand at the wheel. You need a fall guy. Look out, "czar." These guys you will be working for have more than a little of the Bolshevik in them, and you know how they felt about czars.  |
| Posted: 04 Oct 2014 05:09 PM PDT  Some time ago on this site we suggested that things had gotten pretty scary in the world. We should have known when we were well off. Since then, we’ve had an explosion in ebola, the rise of ISIS, Putin’s rearmament, and a series of events in the federal mechanism that suggest we may have crossed some indefinable line between bureaucratic ineptitude and outright incompetence. The Secret Service needs “to be more like Disney?” Who did she think she was guarding? Mickey? We are starting to feel like Yogi Berra with the first-year Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” The ebola problem raises so many questions we don’t even know where to start. The inspector general of the CDC recently declared that the agency was completely unprepared for any kind of pandemic, citing everything from expired and insufficient stocks of available medications to the general lassitude of the entire organization. I am sure, however, that it is on target for meeting objectives for diversity. The protocols for defending against diseases like ebola rely heavily on the hilarious concept that people fleeing a killer virus will be open and forthcoming about their situations. And — even when they are — hospitals seem ill-advised on red flags. Yes, you might be angry that the Texas patient did not say outright “Hey! A week or so ago I carried a woman who subsequently died of ebola in my arms, and I might be wearing the same clothes.” But please: didn’t anyone say “You know, this guy has a funny accent?” When you run a farm, you know certain things have to be done, or everything goes to hell. If you focus on washing down the tractors so they are all bright and shiny, maybe the fields don’t get plowed on time. This administration has been too focused on chrome and not at all on grit. It worries obsessively about how it looks, as opposed to how it works. It confuses noble intentions with effective programs. It’s been that way for almost six years now. No wonder things are coming apart at the seams. Time to get back to basics. Maybe it takes a pandemic to get that thought across. When millions die because someone thinks form is more important than function, people wise up quickly.  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:11 PM PDT  The New York Times is laying off about 7.5% of its newsroom staff in another round of cuts, but what interests us about this latest trim job is this:
The Times continues to cut muscle, but the fat seems to remain. Krugman, Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni et. al., who have long since lost any connection they may have had to anyone not on their Kool-Aid diet, remain, while the real strength of the paper, which actually can and does provide solid reporting on topics removed from the editorial agenda, ebbs away on a steady current of deletion. Meanwhile, the paper that some time ago decided that the best counteroffensive to the internet’s speed was to abandon reporting in favor of “thought leadership” suddenly learns that no one really gives a shit about its “opinions.” There is no more sports page in any real sense. Most of the content is either agenda-driven, focused on topics such as head injuries, football team names, naughty athletes and a bizarre addiction to the WNBA — or puff pieces of the sort that Sports Illustrated used to run in the 60s. The business page is fine, but no real news is broken there — that’s for Bloomberg, Reuters and other web-driven folks — and I’m sure the dining/home/arts etc. sections have their fans, but who buys a paper for that? The Times had some illusion that people would read their paper because they wanted to know what to think. It has run out new offensives on this premise, like “The Upshot,” a remarkably dull-witted and flimsy feature, and the just-cited web page. Someone must have thought this was a gamesaver for a failing paper in a paper-failing era. The Times assumed — and often clumsily and condescendingly stated outright — that today’s issues are far too complex for most folks, who would gladly and greedily welcome being spoon-fed their opinions by the wiser sachems of the Times. Doesn’t look like it from here.  |
| Posted: 30 Sep 2014 03:44 PM PDT  The first confirmed case of ebola in the US has been identified in Dallas today, which should trouble us more than a little bit, because that’s all it takes — one case. A very articulate CDC doctor with textbook diction has assured us in a press conference that the situation is under complete control — that the CDC has over a hundred (!) professionals already at work in Africa, and that the Defense Department has “boots on the ground” there. That magic phrase! Nothing to worry about; the neoprene soles of high-tech footwear are already at work, stomping out the dreaded virus in its lair (but it’s already here). And we are told that the “President is leaning forward on this,” whatever in this fresh hell that might mean; that the CDC is “acting proactively” (as opposed to “channeling an ostrich,” a prior strategy that clearly has now been abandoned). The CDC doctor spoke in wonderfully enunciated tones, with carefully measured stresses on all significant words. Each phrase was honed by expert copywriters to project just the right mixture of wariness and confidence necessary to prevent the entire nation from shitting its pants, which, all things considered, would not be an inappropriate reaction. Because it only takes one case. What we have not been told is how long this person has been here, how many other people here he has been in contact with, what steps have been taken or can be taken to quarantine them, and other data that surely will be relevant to any further discussion. Of course it’s easy to second guess, and say that things should have been done — but — no kidding — how much would it have cost to have a better plan for this than we seem to have now? Was it just too much trouble? In just the past few months, the number of projected victims has risen from a few thousand or so to a million or more. Terrorism is scary, immigration reform very noble, and ending “income inequality” endears our leader to his base, but plague trumps all of that. It kills — literally. And the last time we had one of this potential magnitude, it killed millions. At this point people may be wondering if it’s time to ask some obvious questions: 1, Did the president really think that he could leave the containment of this disease to African states and leaders whose managerial expertise, responsibility, reliability and general competence has not thus far been especially noteworthy? 2. Did he think that, like ISIS, this crisis would best be dealt with by ignoring it in hopes it would just fade away? People do get weary of controversy, and complex issues that just get more confusing the more they are discussed. They forget about the listless attitudes and the apathetic responses, the chaotic non-logic and the lengthy procrastinations — but they don’t forget the sight of someone puking their guts out as blood spurts from their eyes and ears minutes before they die. This is real, it’s here, and — Mr. President — this is one you can’t just talk your way out of. This situation may require some very hard decisions, but we know you can make those. It will also require some very good ones. Do you have any of them? Because, if you do, this would be a good time to put them on display. We await with some interest to find out. _______________________________________ Addenda:
Does anyone think we have a good grip on this situation?  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2014 12:48 PM PDT  Yesterday we had a Big March here in New York City, where Al Gore and Ban ki-Moon and Bill de Blasio joined many thousands of people in demanding that We Just Have To Do Something about climate change, which used to be called global warming until it stopped getting warmer. According to the New York Times, “Organizers…estimated that 311,000 people marched the route.” The organizers arrived at this figure “using data provided by 35 crowd spotters and analyzed by a mathematician from Carnegie Mellon University.” In the arena of climate science, this level of statistical rigor approaches the superlative, especially when vouchsafed by no less an eminence than a mathematician from a local college. Math is important to climate scientists, as long as they are free to jiggle the numbers as and when it suits their purpose, or to make them up altogether, as NASA was recently caught doing when it lowered the temperature for an entire year (1934) in order to make 2010 “the hottest year on record” (it isn’t). And even that figure — average global temperature — is highly suspect: as one statistician once noted, the concept of a global average temperature, often cited by climate change advocates as evidence of something or another, except when it isn’t, is about as meaningful as “adding up all the phone numbers in a telephone directory, dividing by the number of listings and claiming to have computed an ‘average telephone number.'” Then there’s the “raw data” itself. It’s perhaps a little more cooked than raw. Says website Hansen’s Climate Con:
And the other 75%? These figures are “extrapolated,” which is derived from the Latin verb meaning “to make up.” The celebrity marchers had various messages, some more alarming than others. Gore waxed familiarly about the dire future that awaits the unbelievers (moderate yawns), Ban Ki-moon reiterated his demand that wealthy nations contribute $20 billion or so each to a UN fund that would help poorer nations adjust to the costs of the inevitable cataclysm (yes, that’s right — he said “Pay me.”), but de Blasio raised the fear levels of all right-minded people when, as the Times reports, he pledged that “he was committing the city to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.” Yikes. For those of us who were hoping we would have to tolerate this buffoon for four years at best, and a maximum of eight at worst, the notion that he would still be directing city policy in 2050 in any way whatever kicks in a gag reflex sufficient to propel a cantaloupe the length of Madison Avenue. Still, the marchers were undisturbed by the notion that climate change may have more to do with agendas than evidence. Their zeal was palpable. They carried banners and signs, some of them relating to the matter at hand; others were more far-ranging, touching on subjects as varied as income inequality and police brutality. But at one point all united, as the Times reports:
The whoops and cries of the marchers. It is not accidental that, at the end of the day, that’s what it all came down to. We were taught as schoolchildren that in ancient China, the peasants were told by the wise men that during an eclipse, the dragon that was eating the sun (or moon) should be frightened off by banging on drums, blaring on horns, setting off firecrackers and generally making as much of a din as they could possible muster. How we laughed. This is what passed for science in those primitive times. See how far we have come since then! Of course, the ancient Chinese did have one unarguable fact they could point to: the dragon inevitably capitulated. For the marchers, as evidence continues to mount that climate change is far more complex, far less clear-cut and very likely completely unpredictable in terms of outcomes — in short, that the wise men may be and very likely are all wet — the result may be less certain.  |
| Posted: 05 Sep 2014 04:26 PM PDT Twice a week, a gentleman named Paul Krugman writes a column for the New York Times Op-Ed page. This column almost invariably asserts that Europe must stimulate growth by printing vast amounts of money, and that the US should stimulate growth by printing vaster amounts of money than it already has. In fact, if Mr. Krugman has another topic, it is lost on me, but since I tired of reading the same column twice a week year-in and year-out, I may have missed one or two in dissimilar veins. I do, however, check in on Mr. Krugman from time to time, in much the same way that one might examine a long-dead tree for signs of new growth, and today I was happy to find that he remains steadfast in his course. Is Mr. Krugman correct? It had been generally acknowledged by economists that increasing the money supply to this degree would inevitably lead to inflation at a high level. But Mr. Krugman points out that we have been pumping money into the US economy at unprecedented levels historically, and that no inflation has occurred. Yet. Therefore the “inflation hawks” are wrong, and the Fed should immediately begin spewing dollars like an Icelandic volcano, which will create millions of new jobs, send domestic consumption soaring and usher in a new age of prosperity for all. Because no inflation. Yet: some years ago some learned folks produced computer models that warned us that the air was getting hotter, and that this was a Very Bad Thing. The models projected that by now the air would be much hotter, that Great Storms would occur with much greater frequency and of much greater ferocity, that Arctic sea ice would vanish completely, and that surging sea levels would threaten entire island nations. But, in fact, the air hasn’t gotten any hotter for nineteen years now, “extreme weather events” have been more infrequent and less extreme, the ice in the Arctic is growing at a rapid rate, and at last notice, and England and Vanuatu remained uninundated. In fact, virtually all of the model predictions have failed to materialize, and yet many, many people — including Professor Krugman — insist that climate change is Settled Science, and that the day of reckoning, if somehow inexplicably postponed, will certainly come. Actually, there have been some half-hearted attempts to explain the disappointing lack of heat, which generally involve the assertion that the missing heat has gone down deep in the ocean, and is hiding there. Maybe that’s what has happened to all those dollars the Fed has been printing. Because for all the hooting and hollering about our economic “recovery,” more Americans are out of work than at any other time in the nation’s history, real income growth is negative and poverty rates are rising. Mr. Krugman, do you see any problem with thinking that “no inflation yet” means it won’t happen, while “no warming for a long time now” means nothing? Might these positions be inconsistent? Finally, do you think those dollars, like our missing heat, are stashed someplace that is all wet? We ask you with the greatest respect for your authority on these topics, for when it comes to “hot air” and “all wet,” we readily concede that you have no peer.  |
| Posted: 04 Sep 2014 12:01 PM PDT  Yikes!
A schoolteacher is whisked away by the authorities and held incommunicado because he has written a sci-fi novel about a mass school shooting? His home is searched for weapons and bombs; he is “placed on leave” by the school board, and the police will not disclose his whereabouts, he is “not able to travel anywhere,” although he is not under arrest? Yikes again! What is the country coming to? Jack-booted thugs swooping down on a poor novelist and middle school teacher based on some book he wrote when he was 19? Yep! Sounds like a clear case of hysterical overreaction, and a gross violation of the teacher’s civil rights — to wit, freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure, habeas corpus and possibly, since he is black, there is more than a hint of racism. At least, so we are advised by “Raw Story,” a general news blog covering everything from trendy diets to the latest outrages of the NYPD, whence came the quoted section above. According to the LA Times:
We shoulda known better. It now appears that Mr. McLaw has sadly encountered some difficulties that are at this point his own business, that he is receiving medical care, and that the police are behaving properly in respecting his right to privacy. Of course, these days, given almost daily reports in the media about law enforcement overreach and overreaction, not to mention the scant regard sometimes shown for the rights of citizens (and non-citizens), it’s easy to assume the worst. In this case, however, we had some suspicion at the outset that all was not as Raw Story claimed. Raw Story, after all, is now edited by one Tony Ortega, whose history is studded like a diamond tiara with nuggets like this one. In the past, Tony’s inventions have ranged from fake stories to fake people, from outre claims to impossibilities, and this load of buffalo chips is only the latest in his long and inglorious trail of #heylookatme journalism. He didn’t write the article himself; he generally doesn’t, preferring to hang a subordinate reporter with the blowback when the facts come out and these contrivances inevitably boomerang. But he gets what he wants — lots of clicks on the web, and hang the consequences. Tony specialized in this kind of effluvia as editor of the Village Voice, where he admirably and eloquently defended his employers’ online child prostitution website backpage.com by remarking that “the kids don’t have to hand out on the streets or in back alleys.” After getting the elbow at VV when he had outlived his usefulness, he landed at Raw Story, where he has now left his indelible imprint. His tenure at Raw Story thus far has hardly been distinguished. There Ortega specializes in clickbait headlines about non-stories, most recently about two women in Florida who were caught red-handed trying to steal someone’s beach tent:
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| Posted: 25 Aug 2014 04:03 PM PDT Summer recedes, and with it, so does our President. Crisis these days has as many heads as the Hydra. We thought we had our hands full with Ukrainian civil war, ISIS, Ebola, Central American nations sending battalions of “children” like shock troops to our southern borders and demanding ransoms to stop the insanity (and these only the most recent calamities — we still have Syria, Obamacare, IRS skullduggery, Iraq in tatters, Afghanistan tottering, a fraudulent “recovery,” and so on.) Now we have Ferguson, which, whatever else is said, cannot have a good outcome, because it won’t matter what the facts are: when people start comparing the looting in Missouri with the Boston Tea Party (“We deserve this stuff!”), then you can pretty much assume that hysteria has driven reason from the building. Add to this a swelling (and strangely sudden) discontent in the media with our disengaged President, and a tinge of despair sets in. People mention the waning days of the Carter administration, but Carter never seemed to exhibit a withdrawal like Obama’s. He has wearied of the tumult of state, and retreated into the company of his friends and close confidants, in settings of restaurants and vacation homes, with a weird clashing of opulence. Like Melville’s reluctant scrivener (“Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness”), he would now “prefer not to” do much at all. The Versailles-like cocoon he has woven about himself carries with it a wearied petulance. The message: “I tried to help, but you all wouldn’t listen.” Ah, yes — the Republicans: so intransigent. Why will they not allow the president to lead? Is it not their task, as loyal citizens, to follow? They clearly think their duty lies elsewhere. Perhaps the pundits of enlightenment are correct, and this truculence owes itself to an innate inhumanity, a cruel insensitivity to suffering, and a pigheaded resolve to frustrate Obama at every turn. Maybe so. But we suspect it is also driven by an endless series of tawdry tricks (remember the budget bargain with Boehner, when Obama yanked the rug out from under him after telling him he had a deal?), and Obama’s my-way-or-the-highway approach to leadership. But Obama, if nothing else, is skilled at trumpeting lofty ambitions — and then following up by what the Economist tersely referred to as “lazy legislation.” Witness Obamacare, whose fundamental principle of affordable universal healthcare is theoretically as admirable as its implementation was lamentable. Good intentions, meet the road to Hell. But this leaves us all a little bit despondent. What the heck has happened to us? Are all these problems just unsolvable? Is there no action we can take to right the ship of state? Is Cornel West right — that the US is now a decaying society in its justly-deserved death throes? When the president of the United States refers to Al Sharpton as “someone we can do business with,” but can’t seem to get along with Angela Merkel, something is certainly awry, but can it really be all this bad? No. Obama’s time will end, and someone else will seize the reins of government. Wary of the old country and western nostrum about how it always looks darkest right before it turns black, we concede that the abyss yawns, and may indeed engulf us. I’m betting against it. People are showing some signs of waking from the narcotic daze they have stumbled through for the last six years of this feckless administration. Even Bill DeBlasio has paid more lip service than rent to his “politics of aspiration;” when New York City Democrats start showing signs of reason, all is not yet lost. Of course, my hope may be dashed, my faith in the fundamental strength of the nation may be foolish, and my instinct to proceed on the assumption that not everything is in vain may be Pollyannish. But to quote a past master of despondency, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”  |
| Posted: 18 Aug 2014 01:56 PM PDT  Aspiring elitist alert: forget about the one percent. If you think you qualify, or hope someday to qualify, or think that membership in this crowd certifies you as part of the elect, you are wrong. Now it’s the 0.5%. Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager, is concerned with spreading awareness here in the homeland about critical issues like climate change. Freed from penury and the mundane obligations that enchamper most of humanity, Mr. Steyer broods on the weightiest matters, and spends much of time now funding political candidates who embrace his vision. And he is mightily chuffed by the level of enlightenment amongst the Olympians he encounters: "I think if you were to go around to most of the — what I would think of as super-sophisticated people who think about politics and policy more than five minutes a month — we are doing really well." But he worries about the rest of us — people who just don’t have the time, vision or brainpower to embrace the big picture. He seeks to engage the common folk — or, as he puts it: “the 99.5 percent of the people whose lives are very busy and complicated and pressing and they don't have a lot of time to think about the things that don't immediately impact themselves and their family.” Mr. Steyer, take heart. As bizarre this notion may seem, even among the 99.5% of the sub-super-sophisticated, there are many who can still steal a moment or two from their daily drudgery and self-centered musings to contemplate what Wordsworth called “elevated thought.” Yes, we may fret about college tuitions and vehicle maintenance, but these concerns do not distract us to the extent you seem to fear. And it may amuse some of these folks more than you would care to know how you define “super-sophisticated,” as your concept would seem to embrace contributors to Gawker, talk radio addicts and a very large number of college sophomores. Many years ago, Henry Ford threw a lavish banquet, to which he had invited those he considered the titans of the current day: bankers, industrialists, Edison, and so on. He presented each of these worthies with a laurel wreath (!), which he insisted they don as they feasted, and advised them that they were the pinnacle of intellectual achievement in the land. But the guests felt foolish, and the event was not a success. Mr. Steyer, your wreath is ready.  |
| Posted: 18 Aug 2014 12:11 PM PDT A friend of ours who spent some time several years ago as a guest of the federal government (read: inmate at a minimum security prison “camp”) emerged from the experience with a lot of entertaining stories and some useful observations about human behavior and development. One of them was: “Big men tend to be stupid.” This was a bit of an overgeneralized conclusion, as the “big men” he referred to also “tended” to be twenty-something high school dropouts and career felons, but his reasoning was interesting: “You see this big dude swaggering around with a “get the f**k out of my way” attitude. People are afraid of him, because his reaction to any type of opposition is physical, or the threat of getting physical. Usually the threat is enough, but if it isn’t…. “So he never learns anything. No one can tell him he’s wrong, or that what he’s doing may be a bad idea, because everyone is afraid to say “Uh, hey….” So now we are told about a young man who “was on his way to college,” who happened to be walking down the middle of the street when a cop told him to get to the sidewalk. What happened next is unclear still, but now the young man is dead, shot by the selfsame cop. It emerges that a few hours earlier, this young man walked into a bodega, grabbed a handful of cigars and started to walk out with them without paying. Confronted by the shopkeeper, he shoved him out of the way, knocking him down, and left. The scuffle seemed almost comical, as the young man was 6’4″ and weighed 290 pounds, and the shopkeeper looked to be about half that size. But the big man took what he wanted, because he could. No, that’s no reason to shoot him, but it’s the reason why he’s dead. He’s not dead because white cops hate black people (and some do). He’s not dead because America is still a racist society (and it is). He’s not dead because there are only three black cops on a police force of 50 (and there are). He’s not dead because there’s no justice (any lawyer can tell you there isn’t). He’s not dead because he was black (and he was). He’s dead because he was stupid.  |
| Noir Lucinda at the Portland Zoo Posted: 16 Aug 2014 12:00 AM PDT  It’s sunset and elephants are strolling around a pen by the stage. The Big fat Lucinda, old and used, comes out, smiles at nobody, picks up It’s a while before you notice the sideman on the guitar may have What does she sound like when she talks in the kitchen? Does she ever You’ll take the chef job as long as she keeps the guy with the guitar When she says “Thank you,” after “Drunken Angel” she means “I don’t She has only 3 guys on stage with her. The bassist has spiked hair, Suddenly she’s on “Are You Down”, her rejection hymn to one of “Nothing will make me take you back,” the voicelight beams. “Are you Get out of the kitchen mother-fucker. I’m coming through with “Take care of each other,” she says at the end of the concert. What? Fuck that. I just want her to eat my Turnberry eggs.  |
| Posted: 12 Aug 2014 12:23 PM PDT Truth resides in the majority. It is not a scientific thing at the bottom of a well where only the knowing can come to drink. Down there, where the aqua vitae reposes, there are still politics. Take any science you like and start reading to find its truth. You will soon get to where you can’t follow it anymore because there are too many concepts to relate to each other. Definitions will pile up like Carlisle Indians on top of a Michigan fumble. When you realize you are not within 1,000 sentences of getting your science’s truth, you are ready to take someone’s word for it in a summary. But whose word? Which one of the experts knows the truth? Your science has prepared for this question. They have held conventions and elected concepts to verity. You can read in the newspaper who knows your science. You won’t have to spend years getting a Phd to verify these precious drops of truth yourself. Here is where a couple of things go wrong. Who at the newspaper is choosing between the factions within the science to represent the truth? Nobody with a Ph.d. No, it is somebody who interviewed one of the experts years ago and liked the gray flecks in his black hair. But suppose the ridiculous happened and there was an intelligent news reporter who had a Ph.d. All he’s done is choose a favorite among people smarter than he. Oftimes the thinker with to best thoughts isn’t even on his list. So when the newspaper chooses an authority and relays his vision of the science, it is a hopelessly political act. Where is truth when such politics rule its arbitration? It’s out there somewhere, I guess. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is as inscrutable as politics itself. Now when we see truth so purified by politics, what value do we assign it? You will recall that the major business of politics is to show that one person knows better than another. How knowable is that? It is nearly equivalent to whether electrons are best described by matrix multiplication or wave mechanics, except more difficult. The beams and waves of human actions take every bit as many lifetimes to study and fail to understand.  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2014 03:56 PM PDT We looked in recently on Tony Ortega, late editor of the Village Voice, at his new assignment as “Executive Editor” at Raw Story, and couldn’t find much. Far from the sensationalist claptrap that typified his Voice rantings, his articles, which are few and far between, focus almost exclusively on Scientology and “gun violence.” In other words, Tony has chosen his villains well this time: one is an identifiable fraud, and the other appeals to a wide enough cut of hysterical monomaniacs as to guarantee him an enthusiastic audience, however mawkish and shrill his “I feel your pain” arpeggios may get. The site itself is a kind of Gawker for grownups — but only in the sense that there is little in the way of commentary on the undergarments of teen idols, or the indiscretions of rap stars. Otherwise, it’s almost identical in terms of depth of content versus wattage of emotional “look at me, aren’t I wonderful” paeans to right-thinking and vengeful dismissals of “not us/ergo not cool” wrong-thinking. Still, it’s an improvement over Ortega’s last gig, which was noted chiefly for his willing stooge role for kiddie pimps Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey of backpage.com infamy, and his enthusiasm for running stories of the “Billionaire Marries His Own Daughter In Westminster Abbey” mode, with a wonderful indifference to fact or probability. But then, by the time Ortega left the Voice, there wasn’t much to leave. Most recently the rag announced further layoffs, and narrowly averted a strike by employees fed up with salary cuts and terrible coffee. There wasn’t really anywhere left to go but up. But Raw Story doesn’t exactly stun the reader with its insights or opinions. If there is a hell for serious journalists, Gawker is probably it, but Raw Story isn’t far behind, and some could make a convincing case that Gawker occasionally runs lengthy pieces of admirable thoroughness and admirable investigatory complexity. No trace of this evidences itself at Raw Story. As for Ortega, he continues to write his book about Scientology, now in the works for quite some time, and whose eventual release will be sure to dazzle those as yet unacquainted with the cult’s demonic avarice. Who these folks might be I cannot say, but Tony, they’re out there. They may be living in caves, clueless as wombats, but they’re your audience, and you deserve each other.  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2014 11:05 AM PDT At a televised news conference connected to the recent US-Africa confab in DC, Michelle Obama offered some thoughts on being First Lady: "We can't waste this spotlight, it is temporary and life is short and change is needed and women are smarter than men." There’s a lot of meat on this bone, but I’m just going to nibble on that last bit. And in the spirit of economy, I’ll refute the notion that women are smarter than men with just one quote, also recent: "What would we do if Moses had not been accepted by the pharaoh’s family? We wouldn't have the Ten Commandments for starters." That was Nancy Pelosi a few days ago. ‘Nuff said. (Hint: They don’t call that dude “omnipotent” for nothing.)  |
| Posted: 04 Aug 2014 03:01 PM PDT  The President of Honduras dropped in on Washington a week or so ago to share his thoughts with US lawmakers on the recent tsunami of teens arriving at our southern border from his country. His remarks were enlightening, and eerily familiar. First, he allowed as to how our “ambiguous” immigration policies, and some carelessness on the part of our President in his comments regarding “undocumented” visitors, were largely seen by his citizens as an open invitation to walk right in and and sit themselves down. We have heard this before from many, many observers, and were unsurprised that he made mention of it. Second, and equally expected, he noted that drug and gang violence had turned most of the non-rural regions of Honduras into a hellish landscape, providing citizens with a strong incentive to relocate, preferably to a place where there were good hospitals, free housing and some modicum of civil peace. Third, and by now almost inevitably, he sadly pointed out that the people at fault for this development were not indigenous druglords or gangbangers, but rather the American consumer, whose otherworldly lust for illegal intoxicants had clearly fostered this environment. (He exempted by omission European consumption of meth, coke and left-handed cigarettes, presumably because Spain shares no common borders with Mexico.) We had heard all these things before, actually, some months ago when President Obama attended a symposium on drug crime in Venezuela. The most noteworthy outcome of this colloquium was a scandal involving US Secret Service agents passing out in hotel hallways and stiffing the local hookers after — well — stiffing the local hookers. In fact, so familiar is this catechism that we knew precisely what conclusion the President of Honduras would arrive at long before he actually divulged his solution. Because, as Chris Rock once pointed out, “that train is never late!” Said the President: “Pay me.” Yes. The President suggested that the investment of a mere $2 billion, distributed among Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador might still the waves of youngsters currently waltzing across our borders. Interestingly, this was precisely the amount mentioned by a plenum of Latin American leaders after the Venezuelan caucus, where we were assured by these worthies, many of them with straight faces, that these funds would be spent on drug interdiction, education and the building of hospitals. Were we a more cynical nation, we might detect a more cynical dynamic behind these migrations. Some may even wonder how tens of thousands of kids could make it through the 1100 mile journey from Honduras to the Mexico/Texas border by themselves — with no quiet assistance and support from governments eager to persuade their northern neighbor to come up with the boodle. It certainly does make one wonder how this exodus gathered such momentum so quickly, and its curious confluence with the slashing of US aid to these countries. We say, “No.” That couldn’t be. No government could be so callous and so cruel as to use its children as pawns in a blackmail scheme. And shame on anyone who thinks so.  |
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