Accidental Blogger

Where is Dadahead? Or how do blogs die?

It's funny that Brian Leiter was wondering about Dadahead recently. I too thought of this blogger when I found myself lethargic and extremely reluctant to blog. (Unless I was traveling, I have never gone this long any time previously without posting fresh material.) Dadahead used to be on our blogroll and we exchanged links and lively comments with him from time to time. I loved the wicked humor Dada displayed in eviscerating hypocrites (conservative right wingers mostly) and given the popularity of his blog, fully expected him to stick around for some time. Then one day more than two years ago, after posting a somewhat enigmatic stream of consciousness piece he suddenly disappeared and hasn't been heard from since.  No goodbye and no explanation was forthcoming from Dada.

Among the millions of blogs jostling for attention in cyberspace surely the disappearance of blogs is routine.  I don't know if there is any data out there reflecting the average longevity of blogs. In the roughly three years since I first became acquainted with the blogging phenomenon, I have seen quite a few blogs become inoperative. Most bloggers give a clear signal or explanation before the demise of their sites. Others disappear without a warning, occasionally deleting pages and pages of outpourings spanning months or years. I am always curious to know why a blogger closes shop. Those who do stop to explain, almost always cite tedium or the time and attention taken away from other pursuits. Dissemination, the first blog I was associated with previously as an author, too ended within a few short months after its launch.  To this day, I am not entirely certain why. But I suspect that Ethan Leib, the principal author who had at that time also started a new blog with his academic colleagues, lost interest in Dissemination which he had created earlier with his friends.

Anyway, why am I talking about blogs dying? Only because lately my mind has strayed away from blogging.  I have not felt the urge to write or share ideas as enthusiastically as I normally do. When I noted that I couldn't even get myself fired up enough to belt out a suitable diatribe against the recently departed Jesse Helms, the former N. Carolina senator, for whom vicious race baiting was not just a means but an end, I realized that I was truly distracted. All this does not mean that this blog is about to be discontinued or deleted.  But as my co-authors too have not been posting much recently, I am afraid that A.B. is likely to remain idle for longer periods of time than has been customary until now.  Long time readers may find the lack of regular updates a bit disappointing. I will of course continue to post whenever I feel the urge. I am sure the other authors will too if they feel so inclined. I hope to again pick up pace after I return from vacation in August. Until then, please keep checking us out from time to time. Even if there is not much going on here, be assured that we are not retiring yet.

Hello Kitty!

My friend Nancy sent me the link to this amazing video.

More about Christian the Lion here.

Fireworks on the Fourth(Sujatha)

All over the city, stands and tents have sprouted up hawking Phantom Fireworks. I can't even go to my local grocery without seeing piles and piles of tempting displays of assorted sparklers, Roman candles and small rockets all packaged together and tempting me as I rush to grab a carton of milk. (Location, location is prime-in grocery aisles as in real estate. Why else would they position the firework display right near the most visited aisle in the store?)

The Post-Gazette Guru of the Gab , Reg Henry, has weighed in on the birthright of the American citizenry to burst crackers to celebrate their independence and freedom.

With patriotism at high ebb around the Fourth of July, and the Second Amendment with perfect timing having been confirmed as an individual right to own guns, I believe it is the hour when we the people must assert our ancient right to keep and bear fireworks.

It makes no sense to me that Americans can have all sorts of guns, which they can use to shoot unsuspecting deer and suspecting burglars, yet many of them cannot let off an honest Roman candle or eardrum-assaulting firecracker as a sign of their American exuberance.

Exuberance to celebrate independence- from what? Definitely not banks or high gas prices or FISA or airport security or health insurance juggernauts. Though we have the right to possess handguns (and gun powder in ammunition, by extension) , we cannot have fireworks.

For instance,the draconian laws in my township state:

F-2700.3 Permit applications: Application for permits shall be made in writing at least 15 days in advance of the date of the display or discharge of fireworks. The sale, possession, use and distribution of fireworks for such display shall be lawful under the terms and conditions approved with the permit and for that purpose only. A permit granted hereunder shall not be transferable, nor shall any such permit be extended beyond the dates set out therein.
F-2700.4 Definition: Fireworks shall mean and include any combustible or explosive composition, or any substance or combination of substances, or article prepared for the purpose of producing a visible or an audible effect by combustion, explosion, deflagration or detonation, and shall include blank cartridges, toy pistols, toy cannons, toy canes or toy guns in which explosives are used, the type of balloons which require fire underneath to propel the same, firecrackers, torpedoes, skyrockets, Roman candles, dago bombs, sparklers or other devices of like construction and any device containing any explosive or flammable compound, or any tablets or other devices containing any explosive substance, except that the term "fireworks" shall not include auto flares, paper caps containing not in excess of an average of.25 grain (I 6.2 mg) of explosive content per cap, and toy pistols, toy canes, toy guns or other devices for use of such caps, the sale and use of which shall be permitted at all times.

Oh great, so what to make of all those mushrooming firework sales stands? Are they lures for the unwary, designed to keep the police department on its toes rushing around to issue citations for breaking the law? We've already had a minor incident at Diwali time last year, so I wonder what it will be like this time.

Maybe it would be best to stay away from fireworks and instead acquire a few guns to fire exuberant and celebratory shots just as they do in the Middle East. Surely, the township cannot object to that, especially in the wake of the recent US Supreme Court ruling.

Ooogle for Fashion

I don't know how many A.B. readers are sari wearers. Sujatha and I are two among the authors here.  (Anna, do you own a sari?) I saw this very unusual sari on another blog.  Printed text on Indian textiles is not wholly uncommon. I used to own some pieces of clothing in my college days with text on them - not an entire outfit printed thus but usually the dupatta (scarf) of a shalwar kameez set or an edge of the sari.  Also, the texts were in Indian script and alluded to poems, religious hymns or mantras. Never before have I seen a sari printed with English characters that evoke a well known commercial logo. I think the sari is very pretty and an interesting conversational piece. Would I wear one?  Probably not. But I can see its appeal for the young and the adventurous.

(click for enlargement)

Jeevan, the Casteless

The headmaster asked the parents, who had come with their ward, to sit in the chairs before him, and began to fill the application form.

"What’s your name, son?"

"Jeevan"

"Good. Nice name. Father’s name?"

"Anvar Rashid."

"Mother’s name?"

"Lakshmi Devi."

The headmaster raised his head, looked at the parents and asked:

"Which religion should we write?"

"None. Write there is no religion."

"Caste?"

"The same."

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and asked a little gravely:

"What if he feels the need for a religion when he grows up?"

"Let him choose his religion when he feels so."

This is the passage that has been singled out by the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), the Church and Muslim organisations. They are demanding immediate withdrawal of the Class VII social studies book, being taught under the Kerala board, from which this passage has been taken.

The reason? Large portions of the book, they allege, is an an attempt to teach atheism to impressionable schoolchildren. They say that such lessons and others which illustrate caste cruelties will sow sectarian discontent.

The last week has seen pro-UDF "student activists" out on the streets, burning text-books, fighting pitched battles with the police and damaging public property.

... such lessons and others which illustrate caste cruelties will sow sectarian discontent. Aha!!! Children shouldn't be taught about caste cruelties (and other religious injustices) then? How very convenient for those who would like nothing better than to have a stranglehold over young minds - to sculpt them according to age old prejudices that perpetuate the discriminatory, exploitative and divisive religious status quo. 

Whenever a thought or deed is deemed "secular and atheist" and it simultaneously provokes the united ire of august bodies such as pander-prone government coalitions and Indian religious organizations, it usually means that it is a progressive and benefical idea. Kerala's Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has agreed to examine the text books. But despite the protests and violence, the state has refused to withdraw the "secular" content of the lessons. Kudos to the Kerala government and the state school board. I hope they can withstand the book burning and threats from bullies and let the "offending" passages stand. We'll have to wait and see how much courage they have in store.

See the full report in Outlook India.  (link via 3QD)

Sculpting the Mind (Sujatha)

From an earlier discussion on memory, a chance wrong link sent me on the search for information on neuroscientist Ian H. Robertson. While I couldn't dig up the much quoted research article regarding the inability of younger people to remember phone numbers as well as the older generation(primarily on blogs, which ought to have thrown up a relevant hyperlink or two), I did come across a  bevy of  articles penned by Dr.Robertson as a columnist for the British Medical Journal, which whetted my appetite for more.

It was her outfit!

Maria Sharapova, the winner of three Grand Slam singles titles in tennis and the # 3 seed at this year's Wimbledon, was upset in the second round by a 6-2, 6-4 loss to Alla Kudryavtseva who is ranked # 154 in the world. Among the things that motivated Ms Kudryavtseva to beat the fashionable 2004 Wimbledon champ was the tuxedo style tennis outfit that Sharapova wore. 

Kudryavtseva was asked if she was glad to have beaten Sharapova, and said, "Yes", following it with a long pause, after which she explained smilingly that this was because "I don't like her outfit".

Hmm. I wonder if Kudryavtseva will take similar offense with the Williams sisters in case she faces one or both of them during the course of the tournament. Sisters Venus and Serena are well known for their flashy sartorial style on the court. They are also known for their fierce playing style.

Japanese "Bottom Line" on Energy Conservation

In one of my previous posts on Japan, I had mentioned the Japanese zeal for cleanliness, conservation and recycling. In the same post I also made a passing reference to Japanese toilets. Yes, bathrooms in Japan are well appointed. In most hotels where I have stayed the toilets featured warmed seats and water jets designed for washing.  Some even had separate jets aimed at male and female anatomy for accurate and thorough ablution. I had also described toilets outfitted with background "natural" sounds and music that automatically come on when the bathroom is occupied. I know all this from my experience in Japanese hotels. What I did not know is that more and more homes in Japan also boast such precision guided, ultra-comfy, multifunctional, energy guzzling and musical (Ave Maria is a favorite) toilets.

TOKYO -- When it comes to saving energy, the Japanese have much to teach the United States and other rich countries, whose leaders descend on Japan next month for a Group of Eight summit.

Energy consumption per person here is about half that in the United States, and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slower than anywhere in the industrialized world.

There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging. And nothing embodies the surge quite like the toilet -- a plumbing fixture that has been reengineered here as an ultracomfy energy hog.

Japanese toilets can warm and wash one's bottom, whisk away odors with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds. They play relaxation music, too. "Ave Maria" is a favorite....

At the G-8 meeting next month, Japan will be pushing the United States and other member countries to accept mandatory limits on emissions of the gases, which cause global warming.

Since the oil shock of 1973, no industrialized country has been more effective in squeezing more affluence out of less imported energy than Japan, experts say. Relative to its economy, Japan consumes only a third as much oil as it did 35 years ago.....

No such shotgun marriage, however, has taken place in the Japanese home, where energy consumption has jumped by 213 percent since the 1973 oil shock. Government figures have shown that household power use has risen at almost exactly the same rate as personal spending. (Despite the rise, per capita residential emissions of greenhouse gases in Japan are only 41 percent of those in the United States.)

"Consumers won't sacrifice comfort for the sake of energy conservation," said Yasuhiro Tanaka, chief of the energy efficiency division at the agency for natural resources and energy. "Consumers won't follow that path because we are richer."

Since the government cannot stop affluent consumers from buying flat-screen televisions and super toilets, it has chosen to squeeze manufacturers, requiring them to meet increasingly strict energy targets.

George Carlin: Comedian, Thinking Man

We are a bit late here in reporting George Carlin's death at age 71. Some of us are fans of the comic but no one felt up to posting anything personal or substantive about Carlin's life or his philosophy that has not already been widely reported in the media.  Rather than try to explain why his sharp mind and social commentary impressed me, here are some links to videos where Carlin took aim at religion, football and America's love of war.

While right wing hypocrisy was most frequently the target of Carlin's withering satire, he was hardly easy on self righteous smugness on the other side of the political divide. Watch Carlin take on ardent  environmentalists.

What Were They Thinking?

I haven't read the book - only seen a couple of reviews. As Sam Anderson says in the New York Books article, Intercourse, a collection of 50 stories by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, is a well written gimmick.  But a fine gimmick no doubt, because public interest in the sex lives of others is insatiable. The author tries to capture in his imagination the solitary thoughts of famous couples while they were ... well, copulating. The stories are not so much an account of physical intercourse or historic pillow talk, as "mental monologues" of the participants during sexual interludes. Given our knowledge of history and current affairs, the idea is at once funny and salacious. To cite a railroad analogy, the author attempts to map the life journeys of well known partners-in-passion through their individual streams of consciousness running on monorail tracks while their bodies coupled at required and prescribed physical junctions.

Robert Olen Butler’s new story collection, Intercourse, is, as its title suggests, totally about doing it. It imagines the thoughts of 50 iconic couples as they knock the proverbial boots, beginning with Adam and Eve copulating on “a patch of earth cleared of thorns and thistles, a little east of Eden,” and ending with Santa Claus blowing off postholiday steam in January 2008 by doing the nasty with an 826-year-old elf in the back room of his workshop. But, as the clinical tone of Butler’s title also suggests, Intercourse is very much not a work of erotica. It tends to ignore messy fluids and crotch-logistics in favor of wordplay and psychological nuance. The book proceeds through twinned vignettes—complementary stream-of-consciousness prose-poems paired across facing pages, with the primal physical act implied in the margins between. (When you close the book, each of the couples gets pressed together.)

Besides Adam and Eve, the storied couples into whose heads Butler tries to take his readers are as disparate as Leda & Zeus of Greek mythology, Mary Magdalene (with a Roman centurion) of Biblical lore, Cleopatra & Mark Anthony of ancient history as well as modern day star crossed couples like Prince Charles & Princess Diana and Robert Kennedy & Marilyn Monroe. Among political couples currently in the news whose bedroom ruminations the author imagines are George W. and Laura Bush. Predictably the former thinks belligerent and ungrammatical thoughts while the latter safely dwells on bland home decorating notions. Yes, yes, Bill and Hillary are there too - circa 1971. While Bill may have heard Coltrane in his head while contemplating the young woman who would be his bride, Hillary, according to Butler was hearing a completely different musical refrain. 

The ballsiest vignette, the “oh, snap” moment that will make you hunch over protectively on the subway and possibly Google the basic legal definition of slander, is Butler’s depiction of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham as striving twentysomething law students: “this had to be done eventually,” Hillary thinks, and goes on to fantasize about sex on the floor of the Oval Office—“I don’t care if that’s the next time we do this, to be honest with myself, but I choose this time and I will choose some others in between because one day we’ll be fucking on the eagle and there’s a soft knock at the door and the secretary knows not to barge in and she says Madame President, the Soviet premier is on the phone.” Although it’s predictable— perhaps even because it’s predictable—the episode feels convincing, and even, in the dusk of our overheated never-ending primary, poignant. Hillary’s dispassionate scheming is right out of central casting, and recalls all the book’s other political lovers, from Eve to Cleopatra to Henry VIII. Butler seems to be telling us that repetition, above all, is the essence of humankind’s perpetual bump and grind. And, in a world in which all the secrets are out, perhaps the greatest art lies in making us blush anew at what we already know.

Zoos as old age homes

As the companion of a geriatric cat, I am acutely conscious of the changes in nutritional, psychological and medical care that must be afforded to aging animals.  With advancements in veterinary science and safer environments, just as domestic pets in affluent nations are experiencing unprecedented increase in their longevity, so are the inmates of modern, better designed zoos.  As a result, zoo animals sometimes survive much longer than they might in their natural habitats. Older animals in zoos  offer up new challenges to their care takers who must learn to adapt to the changing and sometimes unexpected needs of their aging wards.

Even as a youngster, Rollie looked older and wiser than his years. His white mustache sprouted longer by the month, until it flamed from his cheeks like a German kaiser's. In the past few years, though, the tribulations of age — not just the appearance of it — have begun catching up with Rollie. His keepers are reminded each time they get a look past the Emperor Tamarin's flowing whiskers and into his jaws. The monkey, used to crunching on raw sweet potato, has surrendered all but six of his 32 teeth to the toll of time. At 17, Rollie — a resident of Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo — is a senior citizen of his species. In the Amazon he almost certainly would never have made it this long. In captivity, he's got plenty of company.

The golden years have arrived at the nation's zoos and aquariums, taking veterinarians and keepers, along with their animals, into a zone of unknowns. 

Do female gorillas, living in to their 40s and 50s, experience menopause?

Can an aging lemur suffer from dementia?

How do you weigh the most difficult choice — between prolonging pain and ending life — when the patient is a venerable jaguar who feels like a member of the family?

All those questions hang on a larger one that, until recent years, has been left to educated guesswork.

"How old do animals really live?" says Sharon Dewar, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Park Zoo, whose keepers adjusted to Rollie's toothlessness by serving him soft-cooked veggies. "That's the million-dollar question."

Zeroing in on the answer takes years of tracking births, deaths and the age of animal populations. But zoos, which have pooled information since the 1970s, are drawing conclusions. For example, records show that the median age of Siberian tigers in zoos has reached 15 years old, up from just over 11 in the two decades ending in 1990.

Russ Williams, the executive director of the North Carolina Zoo Society ponders the same questions on his blog.

Cuss-O-Meter

Found this useful internet tool - it measures the cussing level on blogs by comparing the number of pages containing cuss words to the total number of pages published on the website. The average rate of cussing on blogs is 10%.  A.B. rates low at 3.2% - registering around the "Darn It" region.  (We cuss that much?)  Measure your favorite blogs for foul mouthedness using the handy Cuss-O-Meter.

Pamphlet Literature

A very interesting article by George Orwell from 1943 in which Orwell weighed in on the art and value of pamphleteering.  [link: 3Quarks Daily]

The interesting fact, not easily explicable, is that pamphleteering has revived upon an enormous scale since about 1935, and has done so without producing anything of real value. My own collection, made during the past six years, runs into several hundreds, but probably does not represent anywhere near 10 per cent of the total output. Some of these pamphlets have had huge sales, especially the religio-patriotic ones, such as those of Mr. Ferris, B.A., and the scurrilous ones, such as Hitler’s Last Will and Testament, which is said to have sold several millions. Directly political pamphlets sometimes sell in big numbers, but the circulation of any pamphlet which is “party line” (any party) is likely to be spurious. Looking through my collection, I find that it is practically all trash, interesting only to bibliophiles. Though I have classified current pamphlets under nine headings they could be finally reduced to two main schools, roughly describable as Party Line and Astrology. There is totalitarian rubbish and paranoiac rubbish, but in each case it is rubbish. Even the well-informed Fabian pamphlets are hopelessly dull, considered as reading matter. The liveliest pamphlets are almost always non- party, a good example being Bless 'em All, which should be regarded as a pamphlet, though it costs one and sixpence.

The reason why the badness of contemporary pamphlets is somewhat surprising is that the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own. We live in a time when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organised lying exists on a scale never before known. For plugging the holes in history the pamphlet is the ideal form. Yet lively pamphlets are very few, and the only explanation I can offer - a rather lame one - is that the publishing trade and the literary papers have never made the reading public pamphlet-conscious. One difficulty of collecting pamphlets is they are not issued in any regular manner, cannot always be procured even in the libraries of museums, and are seldom advertised and still more seldom reviewed.

A good writer with something he passionately wanted to say - and the essence of pamphleteering is to have something you want to say now, to as many people as possible - would hesitate to cast it in pamphlet form, because he would hardly know how to set about getting it published, and would be doubtful whether the people he wanted to reach would ever read it. Probably he would water his idea down into a newspaper article or pad it out into a book. As a result most pamphlets are either written by lonely lunatics, or belong to the subworld of the crank religions, or are issued by political parties. The normal way of publishing a pamphlet is through a political party, and the party will see to it that any "deviation" - and hence any literary value - is kept out.

So what about modern day pamphleteering? Do blogs qualify?  I think so. When before in our history have the disparate, emphatic, unfiltered and urgent voices of so many been heard in the public sphere? I think Orwell would have approved of the ubiquitous and cacophonous "machine", the literary merit of most blogs notwithstanding. I had once alluded to the blogging phenomenon as the equivalent of old time pamphleteering. I think Sinclair Lewis too would have approved of the modern day self appointed town criers - especially during the times of Bush-Cheney, when as Orwell noted, "organised lying exists on a scale never before known."

Sunday Selections

The weather is hot, blog traffic is down and I am out of ideas. So it's links time again. The stories here range from extra terrestrial thrills to earthly narrow mindedness, with a bit of not so well known history thrown in the mix. Enjoy!

Phoenix Mars Lander unearths (un-Martiates?) Martian polar ice. 

LOS ANGELES — The apparent discovery of ice near Mars' north pole has scientists asking: Did the frozen water melt at some point in the planet's long history to create an environment friendly for life?

The Phoenix spacecraft exposed bright white crumbs at the bottom of a trench while digging near Mars' north pole earlier this week. The bits disappeared in new photos sent back on Thursday, convincing scientists that the magic act was evidence of ice that vaporized after being exposed to the sun.

"The fact that there's ice there doesn't tell you anything about whether it's habitable," chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona said Friday during a teleconference from Tucson.

To judge whether the Martian polar environment could be hospitable, scientists are using the spacecraft's instruments to study minerals in the soil and ice for hints of carbonates and sulfates, which are formed by the action of liquid water.

Water is a prerequisite for life, but it's just one piece of the equation. Scientists generally agree that organic carbon and an energy source like the sun are also considered necessary ingredients.

Mars today is arid and dusty, constantly bombarded by radiation and with no apparent trace of water on its surface. But carvings of channels and gullies on the Martian surface suggest a wetter past. Some scientists speculate that water may have evaporated into the atmosphere and the rest trapped beneath the surface in the form of ice.

"The holy grail is to find water near the surface of Mars," said astrobiologist Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Mass., who is not part of the mission.

Hurt feelings in Houston: Two groups are expressing umbrage over a couple of public events - one a movie ...

The Love Guru tells the story of Maurice Pitka, played by Myers, an American orphan left at the gates of an Indian ashram. He returns to the United States to try and make it in the world of self-help and spirituality.

The film is "rife with stereotyping," Chronicle film critic Amy Biancolli says in her review. "But the target is less Hinduism (the word never pops up) than the saffron-colored accouterments of the faith and its watered-down transference to the self-help industry."

Girish Naik, president of the Hindus of Greater Houston, found the film's depiction of yoga poses vulgar. Vijay Pallod, a Houston Hindu activist, plans to go and see it this weekend – even though he hasn't liked what he has seen in the movie trailers. He wants to have solid examples of portrayals or scenes he feels are disrespectful to his faith.

Some Hindu members in attendance at Thursday's screening worried that audiences might think the movie is targeted at a particular spiritual leader.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, popularly known as Hare Krishnas, released a statement Friday rejecting calls to protest the movie. "We find it to be a typical satire that does not intend to hurt religious sentiments," the statement said, encouraging other Hindus "to view the film in its context as a comedy, and to draw on the tolerance and broadmindedness that are hallmarks of our faith."

Deepak Chopra, a friend of Myers and a New Age icon, who has a cameo in the film, thinks the issue has been blown out of proportion. The Hindu community needs a better sense of humor, he said.

But to Pallod and Shukla, it has nothing to do with humor."I have seen many people try to defame Hinduism, and as a Hindu activist, we have to protest and stand up," Pallod said. "In the past we kept quiet about movies, but we believe we have to do it because the media is very powerful."

Worldwide Webb? (Andrew)

Political journalist Elizabeth Drew has a piece in the New York Review of Books this month that, while disguised as an appraisal of Jim Webb's career, is actually something of a pitch for him as Obama's VP.  In describing how she was pleasantly surprised that he wasn't irascible or ill-tempered -- not like there's ever been anyone like that in the Senate -  experienced political reporter Drew sounds almost smitten with the guy:

Webb turned out to be an easy conversationalist with a low, gentle voice, a ready smile, and a sometimes very full laugh. During an hour-and-a-half-long conversation over sandwiches in his office, I kept waiting for him to be weird, but that never happened. Even Webb's looks are surprising: on television his large, flat face, with its broad forehead, looks like a potato—pale and pasty. In person his complexion is ruddy—with piercing blue eyes that suggest a man who might in fact have a wild side, a man whom one doesn't want to cross. Yet there is an air of almost preternatural calm about Webb, of a man who knows who he is. He is reserved; one gets the sense that he's seen things he just doesn't want to talk about. (This is a characteristic shared by other Vietnam veterans.)

The strong point she makes for Webb as VP is that he is a pugnacious, military hero, angry about blue-collar pocketbook issues, from a crucial area in which Obama got clobbered  -- Appalachia.  To my surprise I learned that he's quite an energetic writer -- he even wrote a history of the Scotch-Irish people in Appalachia.  Given the large Obama-unfriendly Appalachian population in populous swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, Webb would be an excellent complement.

Less attractive to progressives are his continued support of Vietnam and late-70s, and ridicule of the idea that women can serve in combat (although he has since recanted his published views on female soldiers). 

But since the VP position is more symbolic than substantive, I'd give it some serious thought.  Political utility trump policy for this attack dog position.  Plus, anyone who's told W. to shove it, to his face, has my vote.

The GOP Gift Shop

Ah, the Republicans! See what else they were selling at their convention.

Mainstreaming Obama.... Or Baring The Head To Cover The Rear End

In order to make certain sections of America comfortable with his candidacy, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Hussein Obama has some nagging problems to tackle beyond just his skin color.  He also has a Muslim problem, a patriotism problem, a friends and pastor problem. He even has an edgy wife problem.  So it came as a surprise and a disappointment to those of us who supported and defended him against charges of un-American exoticism to learn that some overzealous campaign staffers of Senator Obama are themselves "othering" others who do not in their view fit the description of true blue Americans.  It is somewhat ludicrous but not surprising in the realm of political pandering that the campaign of a candidate who is dogged by the suspicion of being a secret Muslim, should try to bar honest Muslims from being seen in the same frame as Obama on TV broadcasts.

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

The campaign has apologized to the women, both Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally. 

“This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers.”

Building a human backdrop to a political candidate, a set of faces to appear on television and in photographs, is always a delicate exercise in demographics and political correctness. Advance staffers typically pick supporters out of a crowd to reflect the candidate’s message.

When Obama won the North Carolina primary amid questions about his ability to connect with white voters, for instance, he stood in front of a group of middle-aged white women waving small American flags.

On the Republican side, a Hispanic New Hampshire Democrat, Roberto Fuentes, told Politico that he was recently asked, and declined, to contribute to the “diversity” of the crowd behind Sen. John McCain at a Nashua event.

Read Only (Dean)

Ruchira nudged the A.B. authors to respond to a recent story in Wired, the magazine that by my lights utterly confuses its content with its ads. "Tell us if you agree or disagree" with the story, she asks, noting incidentally that she agrees. I'm pretty sure I disagree.

First, however, I have to decide what it is I'm disagreeing with. The story, like the layout of the print edition of the magazine, is confusing. Is it suggesting that our ability to memorize basic data like "standard personal info" is declining? Or that we are simply learning to use technological devices to outsource memory tasks? Or both? It appears, contrary to the lede, that author Thompson is not in fact arguing that "we're running out of memory," but that some of us are growing more adept at interacting with storage and retrieval devices in lieu of taking care to memorize simple data. Unfortunately, when he asks, "Does an overreliance on machine memory shut down other important ways of understanding the world?," I'm afraid it's too late. As with jazz, if you have to ask, you'll never know. In Thompson's case, I'm afraid the answer to his query is "yes."

When Age Is Just A Number

Dahlia Lithwick in Newsweek.

Bobby Jindal: Exorcist and Oncologist

Lindsay Beyerstein in Majikthise.

Have had it with Harrop! (And other hypocrites)

The Democratic party's presidential nomination process thankfully ended in early June. Most voters and party members would now like to focus on getting the disparate Dems united in order to take on John McCain and the Republicans in the fall.  The majority of Democrats realize that the clearest path to keeping Congress in Democratic hands and taking back the White House depends to a large extent in uniting behind Barack Obama, the party's nominee. Even most among the disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton agree.  Some Hillary supporters however, many of them older women who are crestfallen at not realizing their dream of seeing a woman become president, have not taken the defeat of their candidate very well. They are not just disappointed but have become hostile towards Senator Obama for "stealing" the election and not waiting his turn in line. Some have declared vengefully that they won't vote for Obama in the general election and others have gone a step further in letting us know that they will in fact vote for John McCain.

So what is the case that the disgruntled and bitter Hillary supporters make for their contrarian vote for McCain? There are huffy but vague accusations of "disrespect and insult" towards their heroine Hillary from the Obama campaign and even Obama himself. In fact Geraldine Ferraro, one of the furious femmes, has accused Obama of being sexist (!!!) We are hearing reports of the such sulkiness in the media although I have personally not met anyone with this attitude. Froma Harrop a columnist for the Providence RI Journal, whose columns are syndicated by the Houston Chronicle, has been one of the angriest voices against Obama.  She writes:

The woman who shouted "McCain in '08" at the Democratic rules committee was speaking for a multitude. After mounting for months, female anger over the choreographed dumping on Hillary Clinton and her supporters has exploded — and party loyalty be damned. That the women are beginning to have a good time is an especially bad sign for Barack Obama's campaign.

"Obama will NOT get my vote, and one step more," Ellen Thorp, a 59-year-old flight attendant from Houston told me. "I have been a Democrat for 38 years. As of today, I am registering as an independent. Yee Haw!"

A new Pew Research Center poll points to a surging tide of fury, especially among white women. As recently as April, this group preferred Obama over the presumptive Republican John McCain by three percentage points. By May, McCain enjoyed an eight-point lead among white women....

Remember Peggy Agar? The women do. They can't stop talking about the Detroit TV reporter who asked Obama a serious question at a Chrysler factory — "How are you going to help American autoworkers?" — to which he answered, "Hold on a second, sweetie."

The women are angry at the ludicrous charges of racism leveled against Clinton by the Obama camp — amplified in the supposedly respectable media — and projected onto themselves...

"How Obama's campaign has treated Hillary will not be forgotten," Janet Rogers, 55, who runs a Bed and Breakfast in Medina, Ohio, wrote me. "I will vote for McCain if Hillary is not the nominee. My husband and friends all feel the same way."..

Indeed. McCain in '08 has suddenly become a more likely prospect.

Ludicrous charges of racism?  I don't think so.. let's not even go there.  What is ludicrous is that smarting from the results of the primaries and to justify their misplaced anger against Obama, Harrop and others like her are contorting logic to explain why McCain is not such a bad choice for Democratic women in 2008. Using the most transparently disingenuous comparisons, Harrop argued in a recent column that even on a feminist issue such as abortion rights, McCain is almost as "pro-choice" as Obama!

Hillary Clinton's blessing notwithstanding, many of the New York senator's supporters will resist the handover to Barack Obama. The sexism that permeated the recent campaign still rankles, and John McCain is far from the standard-issue Republican they instinctively vote against.

A big sticking point for wavering Democrats will be McCain's position on reproductive rights. Clinton's backers are overwhelmingly pro-choice, and they'll want to know this: Would McCain stock the Supreme Court with foes of Roe v. Wade? The 1973 decision guarantees a right to abortion.

The answer is unclear but probably "no." While McCain has positioned himself as "pro-life" during this campaign, his statements over the years show considerable latitude on the issue.

In a 1999 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, McCain said, "I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America" to undergo "illegal and dangerous operations." (read the whole convoluted article and laugh... or cry)

An Overdose of Grief (Sujatha)

Far be it for me to minimize the shock and suffering of the Russert family but aren't the cable and broadcast TV stations going too far with their hours long eulogizing of Tim Russert?

Apparently no other news of interest is occurring anywhere in the US or the world. RIP Tim Russert, a brief tribute to his life's work in order, and move on to covering other happenings such as the flooding in Iowa, or the impact of the Habeas Corpus decision by the US Supreme court, or the Irish rejection of the EU treaty, or the fuel tankers strike spreading across the world from Spain to UK to South Korea.

Instead we get teary eyed non-stop tributes from Keith Olbermann, Pat Buchanan, Wolf Blitzer, Barbara Walters, Peggy Noonan, Andrea Mitchell that have been going on for a full 4 hours. We get it- it was a shocking and unexpected demise. But does it warrant the sort of all-exclusive coverage of this kind?

It takes me back to the constant focus on Indira Gandhi as she lay in state in 1984 after her untimely death by assassination. All the TV showed was the endless line of people filing by, interspersed with fixed slides backed with mournful sitar twangs, followed by endless scenes of the grieving family at the funeral pyre. The only exception was that some head honcho at Doordarshan, the state-run TV channel, decided that broadcasting the 1945 B&W version of 'Meera', with M.S. Subbulakshmi in the singing and acting lead, was appropriate telecasting in such a mournful time - a breath of fresh air for me).

So now, it's all Russert all the time, to the point of wishing that we had also departed with him in order to avoid this deathly dull programming. There have been clippings of Russert at balls, at conferences, at meetings, at diners, on his Meet the Press interviewing the celebrities and politicos du jour, with the Pope, everything but Russert tying his shoelaces at his son's baseball practice.

Mercifully, this ought to end by tonight. Tomorrow we will be back to the usual program and doses of Brangelina, Baby Mama, how-to-improve-gas-mileage, how-to-go-green-by-buying-new-appliances, salmonella tomatoes, floods in the Midwest, the capture for the zillionth time of Al Qaeda's no. 2 Man in Iraq/Afghanistan...

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Note: Cross-posted from Fluff-n-Stuff.

An Apology and An Exit

It is always gratifying when a powerful entity apologize to a weaker one for past wrongs.  It doesn't happen often. The US government has paid reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and issued apologies for the infamous Tuskegee Study, but not for the plight of Native Americans or for slavery. Japan refuses to this day, to express regrets for the mistreatment of other Asian nations during its war mongering in the 1930s and 40s. The Norwegian government faced lawsuits and offered limited compensation to its Lebensborn children of Norwegian mothers and German fathers who were mistreated by their own countrymen for their ancestry but it still refused to take the blame. Now the Canadian government has admitted that for a long period of time Canadian Indian children were forcibly separated from their families and deprived of their own culture, making them victims of widespread abuse. The draconian steps were designed in order to assimilate indigenous populations into mainstream (European) Canadian society.  Canada's prime minister has formally apologized to Canadian Indians for the past mistreatment meted out to their children and for tearing apart families. (Recently, a similar apology came from Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd for the emotional, physical and cultural havoc that was wreaked on aboriginal communities of Australia by government sponsored humiliation and abuse disguised as "civilizing measures").

OTTAWA - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized Wednesday to the nation's Indians for "a sad chapter in our history," acknowledging the physical abuses and cultural damage they suffered during a century of forced assimilation at residential schools.

"Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country," he said to applause.

A group of 11 aboriginal leaders and former students sat before Harper in a circle in the House of Commons, some weeping as the prime minister delivered the government's first formal apology to them. In the crowded, expectant chamber, Harper bowed his head as he read a carefully crafted speech, asking for forgiveness for separating children from their families and cultures, exposing the students to abuse, and sowing the seeds for generations of problems.

"The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language," Harper said.

The apology was billed by the government as a chance to redress a dark chapter in Canadian history and to move forward in reconciliation.

Over more than a century, about 150,000 native Canadian children were sent to boarding schools run by churches and the government to "civilize and Christianize" them. Expressions of native heritage were outlawed, many children suffered sexual and psychological abuse, and grew up with neither traditional roots nor mainstream footing, their ties to family and community unraveled.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine, wearing a feather headdress, took the floor to declare that the occasion "testifies nothing less than the accomplishment of the impossible." In 1990, he was one of the first to come forward with his story of abuse and push for an apology. "Finally, we heard Canada say it is sorry."

In another part of the world, the newly elected Maoist government in the tiny nation of Nepal has  abolished the centuries old Nepalese monarchy.  For a poor and backward country where the king enjoyed a status almost on an equal footing with the gods (Nepal is the only "official" Hindu nation in the world), this is indeed a momentous development.  King Gyanendra, who ascended the throne after his elder brother King Birendra lost his life in a palace massacre in 2001, vacated the royal palace (to be converted to a museum) with his wife in a black Mercedes.  The couple, henceforth known as Mr. and Mrs. Shah, has moved into a humbler residence to begin life as regular citizens. The erstwhile monarch surrendered his crown to the government before leaving. It is not known if he also apologized for having led a life of privilege and callous luxury while a large number of his subjects eked out their hardscrabble lives amidst conditions of acute deprivation.   

A Corny Prediction (Sujatha)

If you are, like me, bemoaning the costs of your regular groceries due to the uptick in oil and gasoline prices, be prepared for worse this coming fall.

Driving through rural Illinois and Iowa over the Memorial Day weekend, I was shocked to see vast stretches of unplanted corn fields. Very few had a faint fuzz of sprouting seedlings. I was puzzled: I had been assured of what a spectacular sight they would be, and had at least hopes of seeing growing crops, even if they wouldn't be anywhere as large as they would be at harvest time.

Surgical Subterfuge in Virgin Territory

Face lifts, tummy tucks, breast augmentations, collagen injections, skin lightening cream - all means  of enhancing social acceptance, self image and sexual / matrimonial prospects. Physical attributes that are deemed attractive are polished and altered surgically or chemically - overwhelmingly by the female half of the population in prosperous societies.  We accept these interventions, some quite drastic, as merely personal choices available in a free society. (Whom are we kidding?) How about Hymenoplasty? Comfortable as we are with our own cosmetic choices, should we on the other hand, frown upon "sexually backward" communities that put a premium on some other physical attributes that signal "morality" rather than "beauty?" Can that too be a personal choice?  Odious as it is to us, the proof of virginity of the bride is prized in some societies even in this day and age. Most of the time in their native environments, the women in certain cultures usually ARE virgins at the time of marriage because social commingling of opposite sexes is severely curtailed. But when members of those same cultures allow their girls and women educational and economic freedoms or when they relocate within societies which afford women much greater autonomy of movement and socialization, the virginity of a prospective bride cannot be taken for granted. 

While we were busy hotly debating whether a woman can serve as the Commander in Chief of the world's most powerful nation, a marriage was annulled in France on the grounds that a bride who claimed to be a virgin turned out to be not one. A furor has ensued ... and predictably so. 

(AP) The bride said she was a virgin. When her new husband discovered that was a lie, he went to court to annul the marriage - and a French judge agreed.

The ruling ending the Muslim couple's union has stunned France and raised concerns the country's much-cherished secular values are losing ground to religious traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities.

The decision also exposed the si