It takes a while, sometimes, for news to reach me from Kampala, Uganda. But a correspondent alerts me, this morning, to the result of the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court, declared on Saturday, 12th June, 2010. It is big news indeed: signatories have agreed to make starting a war into a grave international criminal offence. Henceforth, anyone who starts one goes straight to The Hague, to be disciplined for his improper behaviour. This means he could face years of hearings. Surely, knowing that will stop aggressors dead in their tracks.
How relieved one feels, to know there will be no more wars.
As my correspondent mentions, this may seem a small thing in the labour of ages. But it is a first step, a “baby step,” decisively in the right direction.
I entirely agree, and look forward to further efforts by the United Nations, on behalf of the ICC. For I think they should also have laws against earthquakes, floods, and tornadoes.
David Warren, “Nuremberg revised”, DavidWarrenOnline.com, 2014-12-05.
December 28, 2015
QotD: Nuremburg revised
December 27, 2015
QotD: Ten more selected Terry Pratchett quotes
31 Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
32 The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.
33 It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.
34 There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.
35 The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
36 Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.
37 If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
38 Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.
39 Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out.
40 I’m not writing ‘The A-Team’ – if there’s a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal.
Selected by Martin Chilton for The Telegraph, 2015-08-27.
December 24, 2015
Repost – Hey Kids! Did you get your paperwork in on time?
If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!
December 23, 2015
Repost – ‘Tis the season to hate the senders of boastful holiday letters
Gregg Easterbrook receives the perfect, perfect holiday letter:
Don’t you hate boastful holidays letters about other people’s fascinating lives and perfect children? Below is one Nan and I received last week.
Dear Friends,
What a lucky break the CEO sent his personal jet to pick me up from Istanbul; there’s plenty of room, since I have the entire aircraft to myself, to take out the laptop and write our annual holiday letter. Just let me ask the attendant for a better vintage of champagne, and I’ll begin.
It’s been another utterly hectic year for Chad and I and our remarkable children, yet nurturing and horizon-expanding. It’s hard to know where the time goes. Well, a lot of it is spent in the car.
Rachel is in her senior year at Pinnacle-Upon-Hilltop Academy, and it seems just yesterday she was being pushed around in the stroller by our British nanny. Rachel placed first this fall in the state operatic arias competition. Chad was skeptical when I proposed hiring a live-in voice tutor on leave from the Lyric Opera, but it sure paid off! Rachel’s girls’ volleyball team lost in the semifinals owing to totally unfair officiating, but as I have told her, she must learn to overcome incredible hardship in life.
Now the Big Decision looms — whether to take the early admission offer from Harvard or spend a year at Julliard. Plus the whole back of her Mercedes is full of dance-company brochures as she tries to decide about the summer.
Nicholas is his same old self, juggling the karate lessons plus basketball, soccer, French horn, debate club, archeology field trips, poetry-writing classes and his volunteer work. He just got the Yondan belt, which usually requires nine years of training after the Shodan belt, but prodigies can do it faster, especially if (not that I really believe this!) they are reincarnated deities.
Modeling for Gap cuts into Nick’s schoolwork, but how could I deprive others of the chance to see him? His summer with Outward Bound in the Andes was a big thrill, especially when all the expert guides became disoriented and he had to lead the party out. But you probably read about that in the newspapers.
What can I say regarding our Emily? She’s just been reclassified as EVVSUG&T — “Extremely Very Very Super Ultra Gifted and Talented.” The preschool retained a full-time teacher solely for her, to keep her challenged. Educational institutions are not allowed to discriminate against the gifted anymore, not like when I was young.
Yesterday Rachel sold her first still-life. It was shown at one of the leading galleries without the age of the artist disclosed. The buyers were thrilled when they learned!
Then there was the arrival of our purebred owczarek nizinny puppy. He’s the little furry guy in the enclosed family holiday portrait by Annie Leibovitz. Because our family mission statement lists cultural diversity as a core value, we named him Mandela.
Chad continues to prosper and blossom. He works a few hours a day and spends the rest of the time supervising restoration of the house — National Trust for Historic Preservation rules are quite strict. Corporate denial consulting is a perfect career niche for Chad. Fortune 500 companies call him all the time. There’s a lot to deny, and Chad is good at it.
Me? Oh, I do this and that. I feel myself growing and flowering as a change agent. I yearn to empower the stakeholders. This year I was promoted to COO and invited to the White House twice, but honestly, beading in the evening means just as much to me. I was sorry I had to let Carmen go on the same day I brought home my $14.6 million bonus, but she had broken a Flora Danica platter and I caught her making a personal call.
Chad and I got away for a week for a celebration of my promotion. We rented this quaint five-star villa on the Corsican coast. Just to ourselves — we bought out all 40 rooms so it would be quiet and contemplative and we could ponder rising above materialism.
Our family looks to the New Year for rejuvenation and enrichment. Chad and I will be taking the children to Steamboat Springs over spring break, then in June I take the girls to Paris, Rome and Seville while Chad and Nicholas accompany Richard Gere to Tibet.
Then the kids are off to camps in Maine, and before we know it, we will be packing two cars to drive Rachel’s things to college. And of course I don’t count Davos or Sundance or all the routine excursions.
I hope your year has been as interesting as ours.
Love,
Jennifer, Chad, Rachel, Nicholas & Emily(The above is inspired by a satirical Christmas letter I did for The New Republic a decade ago. I figure it’s OK to recycle a joke once every 10 years.)
QotD: The gamekeeper
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley’s Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller’s Practical Gamekeeping.
Ed Zern, Field and Stream, 1959-11. (via BookTryst)
December 20, 2015
QotD: More selected Terry Pratchett quotes
21 It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done.
22 Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom.
23 Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.
24 Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
25 Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: ‘Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?’
26 The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues. — from Moving Pictures.
27 It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.
28 People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
29 I’d rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.
30 If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life.
Selected by Martin Chilton for The Telegraph, 2015-08-27.
December 19, 2015
“STAR WARS: A Bad Lip Reading”
Published on 16 Dec 2015
Vader keeps texting Leia, while Ben continues his quest for the Pickaxe of Cortez. Jack Black, Maya Rudolph, and Bill Hader guest.
December 13, 2015
QotD: A few more selected Terry Pratchett quotes
11 Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
12 I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.
13 I didn’t go to university. Didn’t even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.
14 It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.
15 Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
16 The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
17 Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
18 Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.
19 The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.
20 Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people .
Selected by Martin Chilton for The Telegraph, 2015-08-27.
December 12, 2015
This is a case where the satire is just too close to the reality
Duffelblog usually comes up with wild and wacky variations on real military topics that are so way-out-there that even Second Lieutenants (and a few Captains) can often tell that they’re satire. This, on the other hand, is one where it’s hard to determine if there’s any satirical content at all:
“His mistake was announcing facts,” Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper (Ret.) said. “When faced with facts contrary to what the military and Congress wants, the facts must be changed. It’s standard procedure.”
Van Riper was speaking from experience. In 2002 he was the opposing general in the 2002 Millennium Challenge, where he led an inferior foe to victory against American forces. The exercise was started over with rule changes to ensure Van Riper could not win again.
“Politicians want wars to be won with progressive politics and technology made by contractors who donate to their campaigns,” Van Riper said. “Contractors were pitching technology to stop IEDs but war games showed more recon flights searching for people planting IEDs were a better solution. We destroyed those results so we might get some cool laser cannons or something.”
Not all negative results are suppressed. A study found that despite an Army Optimism Program, 52 percent of soldiers had low morale. The Army took quick action to solve this problem by lowering the threshold of what it considered an unhappy soldier. Now only 9 percent of soldiers have low morale.
Pretending a problem doesn’t exist has become the DoD standard, according to senior defense officials. In fact, according to data released by the Secretary of Defense’s office, dozens of commendations have been awarded to commanders in recent years for redefining success. The award, called the “Silver Lining Star” is generally given to leaders who have “made lemonade when life gives you lemons.”
The cargo cult of modern art
Richard Bledsoe on the similarities between the cargo cults of Pacific Islanders during and after the Second World War and the modern art scene:
Much of establishment contemporary art has become an inverted cargo cult.
The phenomenon of the cargo cult originally was observed when the primitive tribal societies of the South Pacific encountered the advanced cultures of the West. It reached a pitch of religious fervor after World War II.
The industrial manufactured items of the newcomers amazed the remote villagers of islands like New Guinea and Tanna. The strangers from over the sea brought with them riches in the form of machines and goods — airplanes, tools, medicines, canned food, radios and the like — made from materials incomprehensible to what were practically Stone Age people. The tribes decided surely such wonderful items must be made by the gods.
As battles raged in the Pacific, the indigenous populations observed the soldiers at work: marching around in uniforms, clearing runways, talking on radios. In response the planes arrived, seemingly from heaven, bringing to the islands the massive quantities of materials needed for the war effort. To the natives who got to share some of the magical items, this treasure — the technological output of developed nations — came to be referred to collectively by the pidgin word cargo.
But when the war ended, the soldiers left. The flow of magic cargo ceased. The tribesmen had lost access to the gifts from the gods.
The abandoned natives developed a plan to get back into divine favor. Having no frame of reference for the ways of the modern world, they interpreted the activities of construction and communications the visitors performed as forms of ritual. The tribesmen would reenact the rites they had seen the foreigners perform, recreate their ceremonial objects. This would please the gods, who would start delivering the cargo again — but this time, to the natives.
The islanders designed outfits based on military uniforms. They drilled in cadence, carrying rifles of bamboo. They built wooden aerials, constructed mock radios, clearing landing strips in the jungle, placed decoy planes of straw on them. And waited.
[…]
To our rational minds this is preposterous. We understand the uselessness of evoking the facade of a machine without the necessary functionalities being incorporated into it. What matters is the inner workings, not the appearance.
And yet, a form of this magical thinking has infected contemporary art. The subservience of art to political issues derails the purpose of the artist. The prevalent dogma interferes with the discovery of a personal artistic vision. So contemporary artists attempt to imitate their way into a valid artistic experience.
In a stunning reversal, in our advanced technological society, artists uncomprehendingly recreate inferior approximations, parodying the objects and gestures of the past and the primitive, trying in vain to summon the sense of awe and wholeness present in the art of bygone ages. By mimicking and mocking the outer forms of the originators, the artists hope the gods will arrive bearing their eternal gifts — that these snotty knock offs will also rise to the level of art.
December 11, 2015
“It’s fun to read a real scientific paper than says ‘bulls***’ 200 times”
Doug Bolton reports on a recent Canadian university study:
A new scientific study has found that those who are receptive to pseudo-profound, intellectual-sounding ‘bulls***’ are less intelligent, less reflective, and more likely to be believe in conspiracy theories, the paranormal and alternative medicine.
PhD candidate Gordon Pennycook and a team of researchers from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, tested hundreds of participants to make the link, detailing their findings in a paper entitled ‘On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bulls***’, which mentions the word ‘bulls***’ exactly 200 times (surely some sort of record).
Defining bulls*** is a tricky task, but Pennycook and his team tried their best in the paper.
As an example, they gave the following ‘pseudo-profound’ statement: “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.”
The paper says: “Although this statement may seem to convey some sort of potentially profound meaning, it is merely a collection of buzzwords put together randomly in a sentence that retains syntactic structure.”
[…]
Almost 300 test subjects were asked to rate the profundity of these sentences on a scale of one to five.
The mean profoundness rating was 2.6, indicating the quotes were generally seen as between ‘somewhat profound’ and ‘fairly profound’. Around 27 per cent of participants gave an average score of three or more, however, suggesting they thought the sentences were profound or very profound.
In the second test, the team confronted the participants with real-life examples of bulls***, asking them to read tweets posted by Deepak Chopra, a writer known for his New Age views on spirituality and medicine, as well as using the computer-generated statements from the first test.
The results in this test were very similar, indicating many participants were unable to spot the bulls***.
Mark Steyn on the “decorum” of the US Senate
Mark Steyn writes about his appearance before the Senate sub-committee on Space, Science and Competitiveness:
On the morning of the event, Senator Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat and Ranking Member, sent a message, warning me that I was obligated to “respect the decorum of the Senate”. I’ve been invited to Buckingham Palace, the White House and parliaments around the world, and nobody has ever felt it necessary to pre-issue such a warning. In the event, the US Senate has no “decorum” worthy of respect, as we’ll get to in a moment.
[…]
I said above that the Senate had no “decorum” to disrespect. By that I mean that, when my pal Ezra Levant and I gave evidence (as we say in the Westminster tradition) in the Canadian Parliament, members from all parties turned up and asked thoughtful and engaged questions. When we run into each other in Montreal, the representatives of the Bloc Québécois and I do not even agree on what country we’re in. But that afternoon we had a pleasant and civilized exchange, and one that had some rewardingly non-partisan after-glow in the months that followed.
In the US Senate, at least on Tuesday, senators wander in and out constantly. Their five-minute “question” sessions are generally four-minute prepared statements of generalized blather followed by a perfunctory softball to “their” witness, after which they leave the room without waiting to hear the answer – and then come back in when it’s their time to speak again at which point the staffer feeds them the four-minute blather they’re supposed to be sloughing off this time round. The video doesn’t capture the fakery of the event because under Senate rules the camera is generally just on whoever’s speaking. Whether this meets the “decorum” of the Senate, it certainly doesn’t meet the decorum of life; it’s a breach of the normal courtesies – and, frankly, Americans are the chumps of the planet for putting up with it. Since the 17th Amendment, senators have been citizen-legislators like any other, and so their contempt for the citizenry who have graciously consented, at their own time and expense to appear before them, demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the relationship.
Take this guy Brian Schatz, the Senator from Hawaii. He did his shtick, lobbed a softball at his witness, Rear Admiral Titley, and stood up to leave. I said I’d like to respond, and he demurred on the grounds that he was outta there, he had to get back to washing his hair or whatever. I said I’d still like to respond to what he said, and so I did – to an empty chair. A pseudo-parliament is a fine place in which to debate pseudo-science, but “decorum” has nothing to do with it.
There is another kind of basic rudeness, which I have never experienced in a real parliament. If you’re moderating a panel discussion on C-SPAN with five panelists, it’s generally considered polite to distribute the questions broadly. In this case, the Democrats asked no questions of anyone other than their guy – Rear Admiral Titley. For example, there was some extensive discussion of the satellite record: They have the scientist who created and developed the satellite temperature record sitting at one end of the table: John Christy. This is a remarkable scientific accomplishment. Yet they directed all their questions on the subject to the bloke down the other end – Rear Admiral Titley, who knows no more about the satellite record than I do. This is like inviting Sir Isaac Newton to a hearing on gravity and then only asking questions of Mr Timeserver sitting next to him. It may represent the “decorum” of the Senate but in any other area of life it would be regarded as insufferably ill-mannered.
December 10, 2015
Why Weren’t The Germans Allowed to Pass Through Belgium in 1914? I Out Of The Trenches
Published on 5 Dec 2015
Indy sits in the chair of wisdom again to answer your questions and this time we are telling the story of German New Guinea and talk about Germans passing through Belgium in 1914.
December 9, 2015
Libertarian Star Wars Parody
Published on 4 Dec 2015
Just in time for the holidays, The Star Wars Libertarian Special features Senate filibusters, border patrol stops, eminent domain, a guest appearance by Edward Snowden, and rarely seen footage from Chewbacca’s galaxy-trotting documentary series about free-market economics.
About 3 minutes.
Written by Austin Bragg, Meredith Bragg, and Andrew Heaton. Featuring Andrew Heaton and Austin Bragg. Produced by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg. Edited by Austin Bragg.
This parody is not affiliated with the Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), though you should watch it if you haven’t already.
December 6, 2015
Cleveland – the “Factory of Sadness”
Matt Waldman tries to get to the root of the problem … the problem of being a Cleveland Browns fan:
The Seahawks’ exploits have been a thrill, but I’ve never hung on every play with the same passion I did when I watched Steve McNair and company in Tennessee. You see, Titans and Seahawks fans got a taste of Han in those games, but by the time that happened I had already been marinated in it in Cleveland:
Han or Haan[1] is a concept in Korean culture attributed as a unique Korean cultural trait which has resulted from Korea’s frequent exposure to invasions by overwhelming foreign powers. Han denotes a collective feeling of oppression and isolation in the face of insurmountable odds (the overcoming of which is beyond the nation’s capabilities on its own). It connotes aspects of lament and unavenged injustice.
The minjung theologian Suh Nam-dong describes han as a “feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one’s guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong — all these combined.”[2]
In some occasions, anthropologists have recognized han as a culture-specific medical condition whose symptoms include dyspnea, heart palpitation, and dizziness. (Wikipedia)
Whether they know it or not, the Browns are the unofficial NFL team of Korea. Cleveland embodies Han more than any team – and possibly, city (Detroit gets props) – in American sport.
It’s what happens when your team is this close to it all coming together and its spirit gets kidnapped to Baltimore.
Baltimore Colts great Art Donovan got it right when he said that he had mixed feelings about the Ravens’ arrival in Charm City. He was happy for the fans to get a team, but not at the cost of another great fan base losing theirs.
The Ravens still have the soul and guts of the real Cleveland Browns. They’re Mickey Rourke’s detective Harry Angel from Angel Heart. a war veteran kidnapped by crooner Johnny Favorite, who, to avoid paying up his side of the deal he made with the devil, performs a gruesome ritual on Angel to inhabit the detective’s body and hide from Lucifer – and himself.
[…]
I wish I could say Angel Heart only applies to Art Modell performing his satanic ritual on Cleveland and hiding in the Ravens purple and black. Then it could make DeNiro’s Lucifer the collective embodiment of vengeful Browns fans everywhere.
But I experienced my own personal horror of discovering who I was in the wake of the Browns 42nd last-minute loss since 1999: Despite 20 years of trying not deny it, I’m still a Browns fan. I’ll always be a Browns fan.
It’s not a choice. It’s part of who I am.
I had this epiphany last night while watching defeat snatched from the foot of victory against the team that made off with our mojo. Watching my shitty team lose a game to its mortal enemy that’s so deeply wounded that it’s starting an ATM for interceptions, pissed me off more than the Titans and Seahawks’ one-yard debacles in the Super Bowl.
