Posted Tuesday, April 1 Dum de dum. . .makin' the coffee. . . do de do. . . checkin' the email. Hmmm. Who the hell are these folks? Jeepers. The Instapundit linked. Thanks, prof! And just when I was going to take a few days off from this here blog to sit in the corner and feel vaguely twitchy about Sars. Speaking of which: here's the latest Sars news from out here in Singapore. Another death. The hospital in question is next to the university where I work. Urk. But it seems our city-state's aggressive containment measures are broadly holding. No new cases. That's good news for us and for the world. If this thing does turn out to be cousin to the common cold, there may be no cure. (Or, rather, the cure may continue to be two weeks on a respirator, rattling at death's door. No thanks.) A few days ago (the link eludes me) I came across a remark by a WHO doctor: we are watching Singapore with interest. The general implication being: if it can't be contained here, by these sorts of measures, maybe it can't be contained. If I were a public health official in the United States, I would already be busy making sure everything that is being done in Singapore can be done in the US, and very quickly if and when the time comes. (Here is the Singapore Medical Association deservedly praising the government's measures.) Otherwise it may have to be done too late, as would appear to be the case in Hong Kong. Sent wife and kid home to DC just yesterday. Not because of Sars. Family stuff. Belle has to be there. I'm sure going to miss my 2-year old daughter, but I can't say it isn't a bit of a relief to have them in the clear. Posted Saturday, March 29 He always seemed like such a nice boy. . . Nicholas de Genova - radical Columbia prof impaled on post after post after post after post, the blogosphere over - was my college roommate at the University of Chicago back in 1986. (This New York Newsday piece catalysed the chain-reaction of righteous indignation. And now I find this National Review piece as well.) The following quote will do to set the tone: "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus." Sad, sad. Thoughtless. Indefensible. Appalling. Nick was an orthodox Marxist (Trotskyite) way back when. He was actually homeless way back when. He had a full scholarship at the University of Chicago but nowhere to live. (Well, it was a bit more complicated than that; but it boiled down to tuition-paid homelessness.) I let him live in my dorm room. Mostly a generous gesture of charity on my part; but in part a shrewd, tactical gambit. I'd recently had an unsatisfactory roommate move out and was risk-averse. I knew I could get along with Nick and guilt-trip anyone the housing office sent over - 'you don't want to responsible for kicking this poor guy out on the street, do you?' - into looking elsewhere in the system. Scheme worked for five months. Everyone on the floor thought we were gay. 'Comrade Nikolai,' I said, 'my running-dog white-guard counterrevolutionary floormates believe we two are lovers.' That was part of a running gag. Whenever anyone annoyed Nick, I would put on my best Boris Badinoff: 'Comrade Nikolai, it is absolute impossible he will not be firrrst against wall when rrrrevolution comes.' He thought that was quite hilarious and we got along great, agreeing to disagree about politics. I was sort of a wishy-washy Mondale Democrat at the time. (Pardon me, that last sentence contains a redundancy.) As I was saying, we got along fine (except he hated The Feelies album Crazy Rhythms, which I was in the process of wearing down to a useless wafer; and he liked Gil Scott Heron.) We didn't keep in touch after college. Nick visited the Bay Area once while I was in grad school at Berkeley (some sort of Spartacus Youth get-together he was attending;) we did dinner. And, then - just a few months ago - I googled him out of the blue, tracked him to Columbia, fired off the requisite 'long-time, no see' email; included a few JPEGS of wife and kid. He sent back a jokey, friendly reply. That was that, until I got up this morning and discovered the stink Little Nicky has raised. I'm bummed out. I know some folks would say: why are you even surprised that your radical friend has radical things to say? Truth is: I always pegged Nick for a sweet and gentle soul, basically level-headed. I typecast him as the humane and too-concerned-for-his-own-good union organizer in some classic film like On the Waterfront. (Well, there actually isn't such a character in that classic film. But there could be.) In the revolutionary yearbook I figured he would be voted most-likely-to-be-brutally-purged, on account of his soft heart and genuinely high level of fellow-feeling. I always tempered my complete political disagreement with Nick with a high degree of respect for his moral seriousness. (Orwell was a fervent socialist, we must always remember. I always figured Nick would bail if he ever saw ugly writing on the wall.) I'm not going to join the dogpile on my old friend. I don't have the heart or stomach for the exercise, and there are already enough dogs on the pile. I'm sure as hell not going to defend what he said. I'd like to think he fired his mouth off in the heat of the moment and somehow it came out horribly not how he meant it. Agreements to disagree are getting harder to agree on these days. Posted Friday, March 28 When life gives you two kinds of rice noodles, sweet dark sauce, cockles, and pork cracklings, make Char Kway Teow! Yesterday I went down to Chinatown, to my travel agency, which gets good flights but never has things ready on time. Nonetheless, it was all worth it. I took Zoë on the first shopping trip in which she truly participated. Armed with fledgling aesthetics and the newly-found ability to say "cute", she took the store by storm. I held up hangers and she said either "no, no" or "yeah, cute." Then she held things up in front of her, or I helped her put them on, and she ran to the mirror. "Cute!" "Pitty!" The store aunties were beside themselves. The clothes at this store are from Hong Kong and they are amazing. I wish I had these clothes. In addition to being brightly colored and seemingly tailored for a midget Cantopop group they have the special Asian feature of incomprehensible English slogans. My favorite is the one that just says "Korean Concept" in silvery Future-Shock font much like that displayed above. The other reason it was worth it was the char kway teow. This place (Outram Park Fried Kway Teow, Blk 531 A Upper Cross St., #02-18 Hong Lim Market & Food Centre) has the best I've ever had. It rates three chopsticks in Makasutra (a local hawker-stall guide and T.V. show) and deserves every one. The best part was the pork cracklings. The people around us were amused to see all 30 inches of Zoë perched on the mushroom-like fixed stool and eating char kway teow off my chopsticks. We had fresh sugar cane juice with lime to wash it down. Mmmmm. I always wanted to get sugar cane juice when I was travelling in India, but since the grinders there were invariably black with flies I somehow didn't think it was a good idea. Probably the greatest thing about Singapore is the chance to eat amazing street food from all over Asia with perfect confidence that you're not going to get dysentery. Although I don't think that'll be their new tourism slogan any time soon. Singapore: you're not going to get dysentery. Zoë opined later that it had been "loud" in the hawker center, which it was, they always are. People shouting and woks crashing and flames leaping up. "Having here or taking away?" "Chili: can or not?" Old uncles nursing kopi and young business types looking incongruously neat at the greasy tables and stools. It's pretty great. I'm not looking forward to a 26 hour flight with my 20 month old. One hour for each month would probably have been plenty. But hey, when we get to Philly, we can have cheese steaks! Make mine "whiz with" (that's with Cheese Whiz and grilled onions.) And let's all hope that my brother isn't eating hospital food again tomorrow. Posted Wednesday, March 26 From the Guardian desk for generating truly Cartesian levels of doubt: In Nassiriya yesterday, US officers said they had found 3,000 chemical protection suits and large quantities of nerve gas antidote at a hospital which had been used as a base by Iraqi soldiers fighting the invasion. This is being interpreted as evidence that Iraq may be prepared to use chemical weapons. However, the "antidote" - atropine - also has routine medical uses for treating heart patients and some respiratory conditions. Why, yes; it would be logically possible for three thousand asthmatic, heart-murmuring Iraqis in chemical protection suits to engage coalition forces using conventional weapons. Posted Wednesday, March 26 'It's a combination of size and mystery, something full of questions which we need the answers to. Al-Qaida, perhaps? 'Some day, somebody is going to find it, I have no doubt about that, and I hope it's me.' The words of a heroic UN weapons inspector, you wonder? No! The words of Dr. Clyde Roper, giant squid hunter. (He came to NUS and gave a lecture but, sadly, I couldn't attend. These quotes are from a Straits Times article) Children as young as four have donated money to help fund the search for the squid, while others have e-mailed him from all over the globe, suggesting ways to catch one. But it doesn't look like the researchers will be getting funded as part of the War on Terrorism any time soon. Despite having shown up in the nets of fishermen and the bellies of sperm whale from time to time, there is no documented Osama-cephalopodia connection. 'I have tried to bring the reality of the giant squid to the public, and show them that it's not a monster, and it's not out to get us. It's nice to know, in this mixed-up, topsy-turvy modern world, that there is at least one thing I don't have to worry about. Giant squid! Cool! Posted Tuesday, March 25 Yeah, this Coldplay album does rock. In a mopey way, but it rocks. Our old copy got left in a discman on pause and it somehow got a hole melted into the shiny surface, surrounded by an organic-looking crackly pattern. For some reason it didn't play so good after that. I've been thinking about music too. My sister stole my copy of the Only Ones a while ago in Italy and now that I'm going to the states maybe I can get it back, or at least buy a new one. The Whole of the Law is my favorite track, even more than Another Girl Another Planet. My brother's in a bad way. I started crying listening to Boston's Feelin' Satisfied today. That's obviously an indication of how depressed I am because it's not even a sad song, like, say, Hitch a Ride or something. I really want my brother to realize something: you know it's now or never--take a chance on rock and roll. And like it used to say on all those Trainspotting posters I scoffed at: choose life. Posted Tuesday, March 25 Watching the BBC and thinking about something ol' Art Schopenhauer once said: "Journalism is the second hand on the clock of history." With all that implies. Now I'm sitting, playing bridge on the iBook, listening to Coldplay's Parachutes. It is, for me, one of the two album's of pre-9/11 2001. By which I mean: it conjures full sense-surround memories of what I was doing two almost years ago. Music is very necessary for keeping memories in order, particularly in a climate that doesn't have seasons to speak of. (Until you have no winter you have no idea how useful winter is for proving to you you didn't do that thing in the dead of summer.) To live in a seasonless land that is, to boot, aurally overrun by indistinguishable boy-bands is tantamount to amnesia I have found. So what do I remember? The proprietors of this fite site had recently moved to Singapore. Zoë 'the teed' Holbo was an eye-gleam. (Babies wear 'onesies' - you know, those one-piece pj-style newborn garments. Belle and I joked at the time that our baby-to-be was wearing 'nonesies' to keep warm in limbo. Cute, no? Well, that's what people are like when it comes to their kids.) We were living in "Heritage View", a 'resort-style-living' condominium complex so new they took the shrink-wrap off our apartment when we moved in; kid you not. Most of the shrieking denizens of the shallowest kiddie pool (there were four pools, all told) were older than the oldest building I could see out our window. That's Singapore. There were a great many shoddily faux-marble-faced obelisks scattered about the grounds providing that - you know - heritagey feeling. (Remember the military camp Bart gets sent to: Rommelwood, 'a tradition of heritage?') The aesthetic effect was not unlike that of all those many obelisks Napoleon schlepped back to Europe from Egypt; that is, if Europe were Singapore and Egypt rather more like Disneyland. At X-Mas the heritage elves draped these assorted spires with lights and didn't take 'em down for two months. They blinked merrily at the sun and palms of January. Anyway, I used to put on the headphones, slap in Coldplay, tread the treadmaster; then jump into one or more pools. It was pretty good times. My other album for 2001 is Belle and Sebastian's Tigermilk. It takes me back to this little Malaysian island. We lay around on the beach for a week, swimming and drinking beer. I read three novels by John Crowley: Little, Big; Engine Summer, and Beasts. We only had a few CD's, so I played Tigermilk over and over and over. Those songs are forever more synaesthetically crossed with sea and sun and cold, creepy Crowley fairies and changelings. Good times. Good memories. Now there's war and SARS and family trouble back state-side. Belle can tell you about it if she feels like it. But Zoë is healthy and happy. What a kid she is! Posted Monday, March 24 Here's something more cheerful that what we've been watching and thinking. My daughter loves Blues Clues, and she likes the Flaming Lips OK. (She likes dancing to "Buggin'".) So this is good news. Posted Monday, March 24 Amitai Etzioni on the wonder of 'issues that seem cut and dry to me, that evoke such heated debate in others.' His example is from a 1989 panel discussion: “In a future war involving U.S. soldiers, what would a TV reporter do if he learned the enemy troops with which he was traveling were about to launch a surprise attack on an American unit?” Both ABC anchor Peter Jennings and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, responded that getting ambush footage for the evening news would take priority over warning the U.S. troops. A Marine Corps Colonel then made his feelings about this answer tongue-lashingly plain. (Ouch.) Cunningly, Mr. Etzioni does not see fit to say exactly how he himself sees fit to cut and dry this issue. I take it he takes the Marine's side, but I could be wrong. He gives the question a flip: should American journalists accompanying the enemy warn the enemy if Americans are about to attack? My own view is: let's start with a simpler question. Galactus is about to eat the planet Earth to assuage his cosmic hunger. Do you just stand around WATCHING? Or do you help the Fantastic Four stop him. I find this issue to be extremely cut and dried. Not to mention near-mint and autographed, adding to its value. (Thanks to the Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index for providing valuable source material.) Posted Sunday, March 23 But, honey, I wasn't making fun of their size. As you rightly say, size doesn't matter. I was merely bemused by insistence on modest concealment for ten small members. On we go. Eugene Volokh feigns foreign unfamiliarity for fun, fisking Fisk for following: [M]any Iraqis are now asking an obvious question: how many days? Not because they want the Americans or the British in Baghdad, though they may profoundly wish it. But because they want this violence to end: which, when you think of it, is exactly why these raids took place. [Emphasis added.] What's the difference between 'wanting' and 'wishing', Volokh would like to know? Let us ponder. . . It is possible to wish for the lesser of two evils, i.e. to wish for what one does not really want. (Although one could probably express the same thought equally well by switching 'wish' and 'want', which says something about these terms.) This may be all Fisk is getting at: Iraqis, in his on-the-spot opinion, are wishing for the least unwanted state of affairs. But perhaps he is hinting more. At any rate, I am reminded of an argument from Plato's Meno: S: Do you take it for granted that there are people who desire bad things, and others who desire good things? Don’t you think, my good man, that all men desire good things? M: I certainly don’t. S: You think some want bad things, then? M: Yes. S: Do you mean that they believe the bad things to be good, or that they know they are bad and want them anyway? M: I think there are both kinds. S: Do you think, Meno, that anyone, knowing that bad things are bad, still wants them? M: I certainly do. S: Wants in what way? To have for himself? M: What else? S: Does he think the bad things benefit he who has them, or does he perfectly well know they will harm him? M: There are some who believe bad things benefit them, others who know that they harm them. S: And do you think that those who believe that bad things benefit them know they are bad? M: No, that’s something I can’t quite believe. S: It’s clear, then, that those who do not know things to be bad do not want what is bad. What they want are things they think are good, that are in fact bad. It follows that those who have no knowledge about these things and believe them to be good clearly want good things. Isn’t that right? M: It is likely. S: Well then, those who you say want bad things, believing bad things harm those who have them, know they will be harmed by them? M: Necessarily. S: And don’t they think those who are harmed are miserable to the extent that they are harmed? M: That seems unavoidable. S: And don’t they think those who are miserable are unhappy? M: I think so. S: Does anyone want to be miserable and unhappy? M: I do not think so, Socrates. S: Then no one wants what is bad, Meno – unless he wants to be in such a state. For what else is misery if not wishing for bad things, and having one’s wish come true? M: You are probably right, Socrates. No one really wants what is bad. Hardly Socrates' finest dialectical moment. As Isaiah Berlin writes in "Two Concepts of Liberty" (can't lay hands on the exact quote right now) it is a 'monstrous impersonation' to slide from the premise that something someone seems to want is bad to the conclusion that no one could really want this thing since it is bad. Is Fisk guilty of being taken in by some such fallacious 'impersonation', perpetrated by himself? He certainly thinks the war is bad. It is rather tempting to accuse him of taking the next, Platonic step off the edge of reasonableness. Rereading the article I am inclined to say: the whiff of Platonic authoritarianism is faint, if it is there at all. And yet the phrase that catches Volokh's attention is so - oddly phrased. Perhaps Fisk's formidable ideological armor has been lately dented in some such encounter as this erstwhile human shield reports: The driver's most emphatic statement was: "All Iraqi people want this war." And a bit further on: Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don't think he believed us. Later he asked me: "Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?" I imagine it would annoy Mr. Fisk considerably to meet an ordinary Iraqi who refused to believe Fisk could possibly believe many of the things he most certainly believes. It would be tempting to repay such a grievous insult in kind. This he may now have done, in a small way. Or maybe he's just so rattled by buildings blowing up around him that he's using words funny. Could be, could be. I'd sure be rattled and not writing straight if I were in Baghdad right now. And, by the by, part of me can't really believe this former human shield is for real. We just sat, listening, our mouths open wide. Jake, one of the others, just kept saying, "Oh my God" as the driver described the horrors of the regime. Jake was so shocked at how naive he had been. We all were. Do they really make people this dumb? Could it be that 'Jake' (does that sound like a real name to you?) and all the others are...super-secret agents? The whole human shield seeming debacle was an ingeniously staged and executed double-switchback psy-ops whatchamajig. A little something to build support for the war on the home-front, since no one would want to associate with such morons? This 'I saw the light' editorial being the cherry on top. Nah, couldn't be. Just a thought.