Biography

WHEN I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life?
And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life;
Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real life;	5
Only a few hints—a few diffused, faint clues and indirections,
I seek, for my own use, to trace out here.) --Walt Whitman

Genius Beauty

I was just directed to a rather nice collection of photographs at a site called Genius Beauty: Magazine for Smart and Beautiful Women. I thought this sounded a little intriguing, but it turns out that genius beauties are, or so the editors think, interested in the same things as stupid women. The categories of articles are: Celebrity Gossip, Cosmetics, Relationships, Fashion, Health, Pregnancy, Fitness, News, and Weightloss. Yes, Weightloss is now one word.

On the flip side, Spike TV is now advertising some new show with the tag line, "Now Every Guy Can Get Some."

Dubai is a Scam

When the world's tallest building rises next to the world's largest manmade harbor and its largest manmade marina and a whole bunch of other biggests and tallests and mosts, what do you get? The vast real estate scam that is Dubai. Dubai is a huge confidence game hatched by the Emir and his cronies to enrich themselves. The financing for the Dubai boom has come mainly from Arab governments and rich Arabs, who were looking for someplace to invest their oil money. It's no surprise that as the money has dried up, the Emirate is on the brink of default.

The announced goal of the Emir is to make Dubai into a world financial center rivaling New York, London, Mumbai and Tokyo. What a great idea. It might even work, although so far by far the biggest industry in Dubai is construction, with tourism second and finanical services pretty much negligible. I mean, Los Angeles started as a real estate scam, too. But I suspect that as soon as the Saudis and Kuwaitis get tired of throwing money down the Dubai rathole, the whole vast, glittery party will whither away, leaving a bunch of huge, empty buildings in the desert.

Sigh

Another member of the family displays her contempt for my writing.

Realism in Israel/Palestine

At the NY Review, a long, pessimistic article by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley on the prospects for peace in Israel/Palestine. Like me, they are not enthused about the prospects for a two-state solution any time soon, bemused that people think the problems can be solved by clever diplomatic manuevering, and interested in what they call a "Long Term Interim Solution":

As currently defined and negotiated, a conflict-ending settlement is practically unachievable; even if signed it will not be implemented and even if implemented it will not be sustained. Against this background, the idea of a long-term interim arrangement acquires some logic. Instead of a resolution that promises finality, Israelis and Palestinians could strive for an agreement that seeks to minimize risks of violence by attempting to stop some of the dispute's more inflammatory manifestations. Such an agreement could create a more positive climate and new realities that may, in time, end the conflict. Israel would withdraw from all or part of the West Bank, diminishing friction between the two peoples. Security arrangements would be put in place. More vexing questions, including final boundaries, the fate of refugees and of Jerusalem's holy sites as well as Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state, for now put on a slow track, would be taken up only after both peoples had grown accustomed to their new interaction.

The Range of Our Color

"Synecdoche" by Byron Kim, each of the 429 panels based on the skin tone of a person who sat for him. As an image I think this is kind of neat, but if you want to read a little art criticism at its most pretentious and awful check out what Blake Gopnik wrote about the new installation of this work at the National Gallery.

Deltora Quest

Ben and I just started the third of the eight original Deltora Quest books. These little books, by Emily Rodda, have been among the first beloved chapter books of all my children. I read them to Robert and Mary when he was 6 to 7 and she 5 to 6, to Thomas when he was 6 and 7, and now to Ben at the same age. They are structured like a fusion of bad dungeons and dragons with derivative fantasy: three characters adventure together through a world threatened by an evil Shadow Lord, solving puzzles, battling monsters who look scary but are beaten with ridiculous ease, and generally acting strangely. But, you know, I would rather read bad fantasy than any other sort of bad book, and these go quickly. Plus they have held the attention of all my six- and seven-year-olds through the whole series, which is something of an accomplishment. So two cheers for Emily Rodda and Deltora Quest, as I read them for the third time.

The Placid Generation

NPR reports on the newest way to talk about Japan's ambitionless young men:

The sensitive New Age man has finally arrived in the land of the salaryman. But there is a catch — a particularly important one in Japan, where the declining birthrate has caused alarm: The new Japanese man doesn't appear to be interested in women or sex.

In Tokyo on the weekends, the trendy area of Harajuku is a melting pot of urban tribes: Lolita goths bat their fake eyelashes, while the punks glower.

Away from the strutting are the retiring wallflowers, a quiet army of sweet young men with floppy hair and skinny jeans. These young men are becoming known as Japan's "herbivores" — from the Japanese phrase for "grass-eating boys" — guys who are heterosexual but who say they aren't really interested in matters of the flesh.

They are drawn to a quieter, less competitive life, focusing on family and friends — and eschewing the macho ways of the traditional Japanese male.

Decadence! See what happens when a society renounces war!

On the bright side, maybe all the Japanese women rejected by herbivores will marry some of the excess men from China and Korea.

November Roses

Blaming the Americans

The NY Times has an editorial complaining the Obama and his team have bungled the Israeli-Palestinian "Peace Process":

Nine months later, the president’s promising peace initiative has unraveled.

The Israelis have refused to stop all building. The Palestinians say that they won’t talk to the Israelis until they do, and President Mahmoud Abbas is so despondent he has threatened to quit. Arab states are refusing to do anything.

Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in Israel is 4 percent) that serious negotiations may be farther off than ever. . . .

Most important, they allowed the controversy to obscure the real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks.

Peace talks that will accomplish exactly what? Let's see, we can convene the two sides around a table somewhere so the Israelis can offer the Palestinians a pseudo-state with no military, no control of its borders, and no airport in Gaza and maybe half of the West Bank, in return for recognition that everything else will be permanently part of Israel. The Palestinian authority, which doesn't represent even half the Palestinians, will counter that they want a full nation in all of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the right of any Palestinian who wants to to return to his or her pre-1947 home. What does anyone think will come of that? Even if some future Israeli government accepted those terms, how would they evict the Settlers when units of their own army have already said they won't do it?

Until people want peace and are willing to sacrifice something to get it, there is nothing to talk about. I have said before and will repeat again that I don't believe this conflict will end in my lifetime. The only things that might be accomplished in talks would be to find some ways to make the lives of Palestinians easier.

Thanksgiving in Richmond

Had a pleasant trip to my father's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Except for Robert, who slept all day, my children found ways to amuse themselves -- fortunately it was a lovely day. I saw most of my Richmond relatives and ate too much.

16-Year-Olds

Robert just came in saying, "Wheelbarrow plus night vision goggles equals fun!"

Cramped in Hong Kong

A series of photographs by Michael Wolf that document people living in 100-square-foot apartments in Hong Kong.

On the Road

The best license plate I saw going to Richmond and back was

O2B WISE

And the best bumper sticker said

WIN WITH BEER

Another Bit of Timeless Orwell

Via Andrew Sullivan:

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action ... He [H.G. Wells] was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity.

Giving Thanks

I sit alone in my dining room on this gray, foggy Thanksgiving morning, wrapped in silence, feeling warm and thoughtful, and pondering the things for which I feel thankful.

My thoughts turn first to my children. I have felt, from the beginning, that who my children are is almost completely beyond my control. So when I reflect that I like them and feel proud of them, I feel blessed. I enjoy their company, and they enjoy mine. It is sometimes a little annoying that I have to chase them out of my bedroom to have a little peace, but how much worse it would be if they never wanted to be with me or were afraid to jump on me. I am pleased that they seem happy, and that they all have friends who like them. I am pleased that they all have their own interests and don't seem to care what the rest of the world is into. They are all fascinating people, and the older ones show every sign of growing into fascinating adults.

I am thankful for my marriage, and that after twenty years together I still really like to be with my wife.

I am thankful for my friends, but wish they lived closer.

I am thankful for the internet.

I am thankful for the intellectual richness of the world I live in, full of books, magazines, images, essays, ideas, discoveries, and every other kind of fodder for thought and wonder.

I am thankful for November roses, and the rain that made this a green and lovely year.

Peter Callesen

I love these wonderful papercuttings.

Unmoored and Purposeless in a Vague Way

From a moderately interesting article about the boom in "boy studies" and the debate over whether boys are having some kind of crisis, I extract this from psychologist Sara Mead:

What seems to most resonate with teachers and parents is not as much the empirical evidence but this sense of boys being unmoored or purposeless in a vaguely defined way.

And this, it seems to me, puts the finger on what is wrong with our entire civilization: we are unmoored and purposeless in a vague way.

It's Tough to Be President

Reading over comments left by readers at the NY Times, I get the impression that Obama is going to disappoint everybody over Afghanistan. The liberals all say things like:

Please remove our troops from Afghanistan. This is an absolute no-win tangle that will never resolve itself. Bring our money, efforts and intentions back home and let's rebuild this country. We have jobless people wandering around broken cities with falling bridges. Put us to work to help the US for a change. Afghanistan needs to repair itself, or fail on its own. Nothing we can do will save them. This is their job.

Whereas conservatives think the whole thing is a sham and are mad that he is talking about eventually getting our troops out:

an exit strategy-- that means cut and run, right?

It seems that the word "victory" is a particular bone of contention. Conservatives are mad in advance that Obama won't use it, but people who follow the military say that Petraeus and McCrystal never use the word, for reasons having to do with counter insurgency doctrine or something -- but then maybe they don't use the word because the White House has told them not to. Who knows?

I feel sad. Not angry, because we all knew that given everything Obama has said and done, this is what would happen. Just sad that we are who we are and the world is what it is. Americans, like many people, are easily seduced by violence, angered by opposition, determined to see ourselves as right and anyone who shoots at us as wrong. We like courage and resolution, and we despise weakness. We want to stand by our friends and humble our enemies.

There is an old saying that nations get the leaders they deserve. Because Americans are who we are, we could never elect a real lover of peace as President. We set a high standard of bellicosity for anyone who would be our commander-in-chief. So we get leaders who are not reluctant to start wars and determined to win them once they have begun. We tend to think of Vietnam as a "tragedy" because we understand how we were trapped into acting as we did. Once Vietnam was divided, we had to stand by our friends and fight our enemies. There was no exit that would not humiliate us.

General Longstreet, watching Pickett lead his doomed men up Cemetery Ridge, observed to noone in particular that the charge had already been repulsed before it had even begun, but it "must continue until the last measure of honor is filled." That is the way of warriors. They do not quit, even when the mission is stupid or doomed, until honor has been served. How long that will take us in Afghanistan, I can't say. But I am sure it will be years, years marked by thousands of deaths and tens of billions squandered. Because that is the way we are.

From the Mouths of, um, Babes?

A commenter on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog:

Just the sheer volume of responses confirm my suspicions, the liberals are scared to death of Sara Palin because she stands for freedom, honesty, decency and motherhood. Not afraid to speak her mind and not afraid to confront critics. Her message rings true to much of America.

Speaking as a liberal terrified of freedom, honesty, decency, and especially motherhood, I quake in my socks at the thought of Sarah Palin's electoral juggernaut. Please, no, not Sarah Palin! Oh, my poor liberal heart is weak with terror! Please, wicked Republicans, please nominate somebody less scary!

A Dream Within a Dream

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

-- Edgar Allen Poe

Novel Oaths

My 16-year-old son is playing "Modern Warfare 2" online and getting so excited that he just shouted out, "Lactating llamas!!"

Final Word on Mammography

For anyone who really wants to explore the background to and implications of the latest breast cancer screening debate, check out the Respectful Insolence blog. This is written by an oncologist of very skeptical character. He has covered current events thoroughly in recent posts, and he also had a good series of two posts back in 2007 which explain very well the issues involved in improving the detection of early stage cancer.

He notes, among other things, that one autopsy study found that nearly 100% of 50-year-old men have thyroid cancer, but only about 0.1% of men ever develop any symptoms from the disease.

Shoot the Messenger

Amidst the uproar created by the USPSTF's decision to tell the truth about breast cancer screening, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has a solution:

Many oncologists, no doubt, would like to send Calonge and his colleagues off to Gitmo, where they could live out their years happily denying one another cancer screenings. Luckily, Congress has a simpler solution at hand: It can abolish the task force and turn it into a group that is more accountable to the public.

Why would we want to do that? Because they reported facts that cancer activists don't want to hear? Oh, that's a great way to get the truth from your scientific advisers; fire the ones who won't toe the line.

You might think that as citizens of a world built by science, we might have some conception of its power. But, no, we happily use our hi-tech cell phones and internet connections to spout medieval conceptions of how the world works. Here is Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure:

What works is what we know: early detection, awareness, research and treatment, and, yes, screening, mammography and self-awareness. Let me say it as clearly as I can, as a breast cancer survivor whose breast cancer was found with a mammogram at the age of 37. . . . Mammography saves lives.

If mammography saves lives, why can't anyone count the lives saved? When something changes the material world, it is a general principle of our science that we should be able to measure the effect. Sometimes this is difficult, but not in this case. It is, after all, rather easy to count how many people are alive and how many are dead. True, scientific studies often turn out to be wrong, and you should never take any one study too seriously. But we aren't talking about one study, we are talking about an area of medicine that has been intensely studied across the world for 40 years now. What Nancy Brinker thinks, or what you think, or what I think, just doesn't matter. The numbers are clear.

If we are serious about fighting cancer, we should follow the recommendations of the task force and put the money saved into the scientific study of cellular genetics. When we really understand cancer, we will be able to stop it, but not until then.

The Anti-Federalist

That a national government will add to the dignity and increase the splendor of the United States abroad, can admit of no doubt: it is essentially requisite for both. That it will render government, and officers of government, more dignified at home is equally certain. That these objects are more suited to the manners, if not [the] genius and disposition of our people is, I fear, also true. That it is requisite in order to keep us at peace among ourselves, is doubtful. That it is necessary, to prevent foreigners from dividing us, or interfering in our government, I deny positively; and, after all, I have strong doubts whether all its advantages are not more specious than solid. We are vain, like other nations. We wish to make a noise in the world; and feel hurt that Europeans are not so attentive to America in peace, as they were to America in war. We are also, no doubt, desirous of cutting a figure in history. Should we not reflect, that quiet is happiness? That content and pomp are incompatible? I have either read or heard this truth, which the Americans should never forget: That the silence of historians is the surest record of the happiness of a people. The Swiss have been four hundred years the envy of mankind, and there is yet scarcely an history of their nation. What is history, but a disgusting and painful detail of the butcheries of conquerors, and the woeful calamities of the conquered?

--A Maryland Farmer (John Francis Mercer), 1787

Democratic Mammography Madness

Just to prove that I am an opponent of lunacy no matter its party, I mention here that leading Democrats have been behaving as stupidly over the new mammography recommendations as Republicans. The new guidelines were not even 48 hours old when my esteemed Senator, Barbara Mikulski, introduced an amendment to the pending health care bill that would require insurers to pay for mammograms for women in their 40s. Because while Republicans may be sure that the government is always trying to oppress somebody, Democrats are equally sure that insurance companies are always trying to cheat somebody. Both parties seem to think that everybody should have all the health care he or she wants, damn the expense and the potential harm, with the money to appear magically from somewhere.

Here is a typical reaction from a breast cancer lobbyist in Maryland, as quoted in the Baltimore Sun:

What people are worried about is the one case where you wouldn't catch a cancer, and that results in someone's loss of life -- and that's real.

The science that shows this would do not good is not real, I suppose.

The one intelligent thing said by anyone the Sun interviewed was that even though our diagnostic technology is not good enough now to make this work now, it is getting better all the time. True. And when it gets good enough for routine screening of women in their 40s to save lives, we can start recommending it.

The one good thing about this brouhaha is that it has probably made a lot more women aware of the USPSTF recommendation, which has been the same since the 1970s. And since all the women I know hate getting mammograms, millions of women will probably use these guidelines as an excuse to avoid getting the mammograms they dread. We will thus save a lot of money and avoid a lot of needless harm despite what the American Cancer Society and Congress say.

The Lights Went Out

Today we had Ben's seventh birthday party. The party was at Pump-It-Up, where they have two rooms full of cool inflatable slides, bouncers, and the like. Everything was going along fine, our 14 small beasts running happily amok, when the other party came stumbling out of the room next door. The power had gone out in most of the building. Now bouncing in the dark actually sounds like fun to me, but without the fans, the equipment all deflates.

What a perfect metaphor for our civilization's dependence on the electrical grid. So when it came time for us to vacate the first room -- the usual drill is you switch rooms after 45 minutes -- we made our way back to the pizza and cake room to eat lunch in the dark. This was actually pretty fun, and the kids had a great time climbing over this throne. I love the way kids can have a great time with nothing more than a foam cube, or a pile of leaves.

Strange Headlines and Sewer Problems

The NY Times is running a series of articles with the rather mysterious title, "Toxic Waters: America's Growing Pollution Problem." Mysterious because while water pollution is a major problem, it is one thing about our lives that is manifestly getting better. The rivers through our major cities used to be giant, stinking sewers that regularly caught on fire, and now they are clean enough that people want to live along them again. From New York to Oakland, waterfront areas that used to be home only to warehouses are filling with condos that have windows looking toward the water, something that was never done in the industrial age.

Today's Times piece is on the old problem that insiders call "combined sewerage overflows." The sewer systems are in our old cities are "combined," that is, sewage and rainwater runoff flow through the same pipes. So when it rains hard, too much water enters the pipes for the sewage plants to handle, and they have to let the mixture of sewage and rainwater flow untreated into the nearest river. The technology for solving this problem is rather simple: separate the sewers. This is how all new systems have been built since around 1970. But we have so many old sewer pipes running deep under all of our old cities that to do this would cost around a trillion dollars. The estimate for New York alone, according to the Times, is $58 billion. So what sewer authorities across the country are trying to do is to increase the storage capacity of their systems, so they can store the rainwater that falls in an average storm and treat it over the next several days. In Washington, DC, the plan is to tunnel a sort of ring sewer deep underground that would serve this function. But these storage devices, even if built -- the costs are in the billions -- would not hold all the water from really large storms, so some sewage overflows will continue indefinitely, and the water in the East River will never be safe for swimming. Not to mention that Americans are constantly increasing the amount of water we use in our homes, further adding to the problem.

Water pollution, whether we are talking about fertilizer runoff, sewage overflows, or synthetic hormones, is a problem we could solve whenever we feel like it. We have the technology. We just don't feel like paying for it.

Characters for an Epic Tale

A print by Tom Gauld. Click on the image to enlarge.

A Perfect Thing

Ben, hiding behind a tree with a double handful of leaves: "This ambush is going to be a perfect thing."