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 Saturday, April 26 |
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| Spider-Man Watched Spider-Man again on DVD. It's really entertaining, no? (Honey, come home. I miss you.) I remember when it came out, Lileks declared it Best. Superhero. Movie. Ever. On a scale of 1 - 10, I’d give it a 147. It’s like this: if you like movies, and you love Spider-Man in that geeky 12-year-old way, then you will adore this movie. You will laugh and you will cry. If you like movies, and you have no opinion about Spider-Man, you will enjoy this movie, because it’s brisk, cheerful, scary when needed and sweet whenever possible. It’s smart and self-effacing and deserves every dollar it’s getting. That's just the beginning. Read the whole thing. Spider-Man gets declared the cultural document of 2002, and With great power comes great responsibility is the message. Well, I dunno. Don't get me wrong. I think Lileks is a genius cultural critic - no kidding - and I love superhero movies in that geeky 12-year-old way. I understand that some people reflexively lump them with all the tired TV-retreads Hollywood compulsively hawks: the Seargent Bilkos and Flintstones Rock Vegases that plague us. I wish those movies ill, since they have no right to exist. (Wouldn't it be nice if some hack director threw eighty million dollars in a pit, set fire to it, filmed that for 90 minutes, and released it under the title, At Least I'm Honest?) I could never bring myself to wish a superhero movie ill. That would be like wishing for rain on the 4th of July. You'll never get that day back. They'll never make another Daredevil movie. Chance missed forever. I am so relieved the X-Men series is in competent hands, and the trailers for The Hulk look good, too. Really, it makes me smile just to think. But here's a thing that struck me about Spider-Man. A scene that completely fails - one of the only such in the movie. Spidey and the Green Goblin on the roof. Gobby makes his salespitch to his temporarily goblin-gassed nemesis. 'Join me, and we'll rule this city together, Hahahah!' Or words to that effect. This is supposed to be a moment of moral truth - a crucible of temptation through which our hero must pass. But the fact of the matter is: teaming-up with a schizophrenic to lob pumpkin bombs at innocent civilians forevermore is not actually all that tempting as job offers go. Where's the up-side? Oh, all right. I'm being a pain. But, pace Lileks, the movie is a delight, yet precisely does not manage to work as some sort of moral drama. And here's another thing about that scene that struck me. It's interesting that it didn't strike the writer/director that it would be terribly boring, because Spidey - paralyzed and masked - and Gobby - masked and soliloquizing while gesturing awkwardly, are not all that interesting to watch. (How much more interesting is Willem Dafoe's unmasked face in Shadow of the Vampire, may I say?) Yet it would have been possible to make this scene incredibly effective and moving, actually. If you are a 12-year-old comic book geek at heart. I'm assuming anyone who doesn't fit the bill has already hit the back-button in disgust. Still here? Well, OK. Two utterly still masks confronting each other for an entire scene. Just darkness besides. You could do something with that by accentuating the stillness rather than letting it be a boring by-product. It could be imbued with a kind of classical pathos, I daresay. (Now I'm starting to go out on a limb. Read the Lileks piece to see how this sort of thing can be taken way too far.) Have the Goblin offer something tempting. Have him sober up for just a second. Have him paint a picture of a plausible life of superpower sin. And Spider-Man says ... nothing. !!WARNING: NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS PLOT SPOILER!! (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED) Actually, there is one more point to be made about the morals of this movie. The ending. Gobby confronts Spidey with a dilemma. Save the people in the car or save his girlfriend, MJ. Of course, he saves both. To begin with, for historians such as myself, this is flagrant revisionism. The girl, Spidey's first girlfriend, Gwen Stacy (daughter of captain Stacy) is supposed to die. And if she had, Peter Parker's monk-like determination not to get another girlfriend at the very end might make a bit of sense, which - as things stand - it does not. There is something gloriously American about this adjustment to the plot-line. The refusal of tragedy. The insistence that it must be possible for power to overcome tragedy. We could write an American Agamemnon, in which he builds a super wind-device to get the troops to Troy without having to kill his daughter; an American Oedipus, who teams up with an eccentric scientist, whose time-machine takes him back to that crossroads to save his own father from ... himself (!) An American Antigone, who acquires powers of super-speed in a scientific experiment gone awry, who uses her power to bury her brother while - to the naked eye - simulataneously obeying the dicates of Creon ... oh, you get the idea. Is it morally immature to refuse tragedy? To think there is some whiz-bang solution to every problem? I don't think it is immature. It is merely optimistic, and American. The French would probably have had Spidey try to save both, and have both die as a result. With Gerard Depardieu as The Green Goblin. I enjoyed Spider-Man very much. |
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| Saturday, April 26 |
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| Highly illogical, doctor ... Fish fare, from the NY Times: In the latest sign of mounting crisis, on April 11 the editors of Critical Inquiry, academe's most prestigious theory journal, convened the scholarly equivalent of an Afghan-style loya jirga. They invited more than two dozen of America's professorial elite, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., Homi Bhabha, Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson, to the University of Chicago for what they called "an unprecedented meeting of the minds," an unusual two-hour public symposium on the future of theory. Understandably, expectations were high. More than 500 people, mostly students and faculty, squeezed into a lecture hall to hear what the mandarins had to say, while latecomers made do with a live video feed set up in the lobby. In his opening remarks, W. J. T. Mitchell, the journal's editor and a professor of English and art history at Chicago, set an upbeat tone for the proceedings. "We want to be the Starship Enterprise of criticism and theory," he told the audience. Nor did he succeed, apparently. ... Then a student in the audience spoke up. What good is criticism and theory, he asked, if "we concede in fact how much more important the actions of Noam Chomsky are in the world than all the writings of critical theorists combined?" After all, he said, Mr. Fish had recently published an essay in Critical Inquiry arguing that philosophy didn't matter at all. Behind a table at the front of the room, Mr. Fish shook his head. "I think I'll let someone else answer the question," he said. So Sander L. Gilman, a professor of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, replied instead. "I would make the argument that most criticism — and I would include Noam Chomsky in this — is a poison pill," he said. "I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways." Mr. Fish nodded approvingly. "I like what that man said," he said. "I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it." The whole affair is striking, not because the activists have become disconsolate, but because there is no temptation even to consider the possibility of, say, theorizing - i.e. attempting to offer general accounts or explanations or reasoned arguments about some suitable subject matter - as an alternative to 'theory', which is understood to be forevermore synonymous with effective left-wing political activism. More tomorrow. |
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| Saturday, April 26 |
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| Separated at Birth? While I'm at it, I might as well note that, in certain moods - no, I didn't force her to do that - my daughter bears a more than passing resemblance to Modok: |
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| Saturday, April 26 |
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| My Wife Is A Babe; My Daughter is the Queeeeen of Ether On Thursday, I posted a picture of my wife and child in which the former looked rather goofy and the latter quite cute. In the interest of fairness (and matrimonial harmony), I present:  |
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| Friday, April 25 |
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| Our Texts For Tomorrow The main problem with discussing Stanley Fish is that there ought, rightly, to be some point to what one talking about. I do think there is something important about Fish's trademark tight concentrations of intellectual error and unapologetic sophistry. But it is hard to bring out what is going on in his writings except as a catalogue of individually rather obvious and apparently trivial missteps and confusions. It is largely a question of one's attitude towards philosophy. There are at least two attitudes possible: 1) Philosophy is about something distinct from the philosopher who produces it, in which case there might be a point to careful, consecutive reason about whatever that particular subject-matter might be. 2) Philosophy is, as it were, an expression of personality or temperament or culture. It is interesting as achievement, or indicative as symptom. It may be a monument to the human spirit; it may be shameful evidence of something dark and otherwise hidden. There is no particular reason why it should be strapped onto the potentially Procrustean bed of logic and reason and have any extraneous limbs lopped off. Two passages from Plato's Republic speak to these divergent attitudes. No one can contradict the things you say, Socrates. But each time you say them your audience has an experience something like this: they think that because they are inexperienced players of the game of cross-examination, they are tripped up by the argument – a little here, a little there, at each of your questions. When all these small concessions are added together in the end, they find they fall flat, fallaciously contradicting their own starting points. Just as novice game players are in the end trapped by masters, and cannot move, so this lot are trapped and have nothing to say in this different sort of game, played not with counters but with words. Yet they aren’t the least bit inclined to accept the conclusion for all that. I have in mind here our own present position. Someone might well say now that he cannot, as each question is asked, oppose you in argument. Yet he sees perfectly well that – unlike those who take up philosophy lightly and put it down quickly, as young people do who are only after a touch of intellectual polish – those who devote themselves to the subject seriously and continuously become a bit strange in the head, not to say complete rascals. Those who seem the best of these end up suffering for the sake of this pursuit you praise so highly – even to the point of making themselves completely incompetent to engage in practical affairs. (487b-d) The common impulse to completely ignore the conclusions of philosophical arguments (cf. Plato's Euthyphro) is a very striking and important phenomonon. It indicates, as Glaucon says, an easy assumption that claims about justice, beauty, truth, whatever, are totally meaningless - like game tokens. But, quite apart from the question of whether this notion is ultimately correct or incorrect, what does it say that it arises so naturally, almost unconsciously? As the second half of the passage suggests, there is a tendency to fall back on judgments of moral character. To convict an argument as guilty by association with a bad character. But why should this even seem like a sensible thing to do? Another passage: The intolerance of the many towards philosophy is due to those outsiders who, like drunken revellers, force their way in where they don’t belong. They constantly insult each other and quarrel; they always talk in personalities, which is quite unsuited to philosophy. – Yes, truly. The man whose thoughts are indeed directed to real existences, Adeimantus, has no time for gazing down at the affairs of men, and, by entering into petty squabbles, becoming filled with malice and ill-will. (500b-c) They always 'talk in personalities'. I don't know what the Greek is at this point, but it is an evocative phrase. Plato means to be insulting. But, of course, what are his little dialogues if not plays, with personalities walking around talking? And is it obviously wrong to say that, in point of fact, philosophy always is 'talk in personalities'? If it ever ceases to regard itself as such, it loses track of itself? Nietzsche would say that is how it is. I think it is a formidable thought. The second half of the passage, of course, urges attention to 'real existences', set over and against the affairs of men. So here we have it: are we arguing about things outside ourselves, or are we just talking about ourselves, or expressing ourselves, just venting our personalities? Fish - this will be my point tomorrow - is an inveterate 'talker in personalities', and a defender of a pure conception of philosophy as nothing but. He says that nothing can follow from philosophy. It can have no consequences. He is hereby saying: you will do what you will do, but not because of philosophy. It simply never crosses his mind that something might follow from a philosophical claim in a logical, as opposed to a psychological sense. This is a very striking oversight, and - I think - quite commonly met with.. More tomorrow. |
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| Friday, April 25 |
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| Sars, Good Sense, Singapore, and the Mandate of Heaven A bit from BBC as I was surfing through. Earnest young reporter on the streets of Singapore. To the best of my recollection, it ran something like this: “Erm, Ayv been on the street ahl day, essking whot people think of the government’s annnouncment of aggressive new measures against quarantive-breakers. Clearly they hev no strong conception of civil rights here, because I hevvent heard a bad word from anybody.” Well, no. That would not follow, strictly, because last time I read J. S. Mill’s “On Liberty” - last week - there wasn’t anything in it about how liberalism is a suicide pact. A bit of background: we are on the cusp of a deadly epidemic here, not to mention a global pandemic. More background: the Singapore government has asked parliament for the authority to treat quarantine-breakers thusly. Not only are they to be electronically tagged, then fined, but then (for the truly, obstinately out-of-doors-types) prison; without trial. Without trial? The scene: A trial room Judge: What does the defendant have to say for himself. Defendant: Hack! Cough! I feel feverish. Judge: Bailiff, quarantine the courtroom. Multiply scene several hundred, or thousand, times. Sometimes a moment’s thought will reveal the reasons for things, don’t you find? But seriously, folks. I’m not saying Singapore is a model of Millian liberalism. Nor that the locals are ordinarily fiery, outspoken critics of their government. Nor that giving authorities the right to jail people without trial is a move without obvious risks. My point is that the reason locals decline to bad-mouth their government to the BBC is not necessarily that they are a bunch of surrender-to-authority monkeys. Everyone here just might be satisfied with the actions taken by the government because we are satisfied it has acted responsibly and – above all – transparently. It has not only done the right thing but has been at pains to explain to the citizenry how and why the things it has done, and is doing, are the right things. And it is right. What more could J. S. Mill ask for? (The debate in Parliament was televised, for gosh sakes. Mill had never even seen a television.) Well, one could ask for guarantees for the future. Where are the checks and balances on abuse of power? There is an interesting and general point about Singaporean politics to be made on the basis of this case. Bit of background – in fact, let’s take it way back. One of the features of classical (Confucian) Chinese political thought that is invariably noted in comparative studies of Western and Eastern philosophy is that your basic Chinese emperor enjoyed ‘the mandate of heaven’ – nice work if you can get it; but it falls short of the niceness of ‘the divine right of kings.’ European kings have, from time to time, fancied themselves answerable only to God – even for their misdeeds. The Chinese, by contrast, have always taken it for granted that if heaven shows its disfavor, the emperor’s political authority is legitimately forfeit. By implication, it is legitimate to rise up against an emperor manifestly suffering from acute mandate-withdrawal. So, in a sense, the ruler rules by the consent of the governed. Democracy, get it? For a while in the early to mid-90’s there was a minor vogue for ‘Asian values’, ‘Confucian democracy’, ‘rites versus rights’ and such like. I wasn’t won over. The ‘mandate of heaven’ – which kept cropping up in all these discussions – was obviously only a metaphor, in any modern context. A dodge, actually. A sorry excuse for a check on bad, excessive, oppressive government. (If this is the best you can do, get out of political philosophy and take up astology.) As a good liberal, I prefer something solid – at any rate, sublunary; at any rate, real, with which to swat the naughty mighty into line. For you will comb the history of China in vain for a single instance of a bad ruler who admits to having lost his ‘mandate’. Lots of peasant revolts; sometimes successful, usually not. Free and fair elections are altogether a more orderly and less messy way to get the same basic unit of work done. So the difference between ‘divine right’ and ‘heavenly mandate’, though theoretically significant, is practically nil. I am not a monarchist. Skipping up to the present day: a striking feature of Singapore’s situation, oddly enough, is the degree to which the authorities here do rule subject to a ‘mandate of heaven’, which they must constantly strive to earn and which, if withdrawn, would almost certainly lead to their downfall. What am I talking about? Singapore is tiny, with no natural resources. In fact, almost no fresh water, not enough dirt (we are trying to buy more from the neighbors), and – when the neighbors set fire to their forests – not such great air. And the beaches are lousy. That’s it. So when it comes to basic lack of self-sufficiency, Singapore is competitive with the Vatican, only with more mouths to feed. As a result, this is an island of merchants; an entrepot that lives by the good will of the global marketplace – or else dies. I exaggerate slightly. In recent years, Singapore has established a significant industrial base. But the point stands. Singapore’s economy was globalized practically from the day of its birth in 1965. No choice in the matter whatsoever. Call this ‘the mandate of HP’ – Hewlett-Packard being an early arrival on these shores, and still a significant corporate presence. (But, of course, this is just shorthand for all the international business and trade that has taken root in the town.) In a case like the present one – the Sars crisis – the government is absolutely, totally at the mercy of powerful foreigners, who can vote with their feet by piling out in a panic. And if they did, the country would be killed. Last one out turn out the lights. This threat is a whopping great check on bad, irresponsible government. It’s huge. It could hardly be overestimated. As a result, the government – in a case like this – is instinctively a model of action, efficiency and (above all) transparency. Sars is bad for business. International capital does not like to feel it is being lied to. Much less does it like to feel afraid. It is fleet of foot. It can’t be bullied in authoritarian fashion (cf. People's Republic of China). But are the interests of the ordinary Singaporean citizen always in line with those of the average, prospective multinational corporate investor? Do we have here guarantees of citizens’ rights by foreign economic proxy? Stable emulation of liberalism’s main perks and protections without actual liberalism? It would take a book, or at least an article. (I am not the one to write either.) But I suspect, over a range of cases – certainly in the Sars case - the answer would be: yes. Yes, I am aware that the following proposal would be absurd: revoke the US Constitution, do what the corporations say, and you will get the same basic results. You obviously wouldn’t. What’s the difference? Well, here is a small clue. It would be bad if corporations seized control over the government of the United States. (All this is a bit fanciful, I realize.) Oligarchy is bad. But there is no danger of foreign corporations actually seizing political control of Singapore outright. They don’t want to, for one thing. The locals don’t want them to, for another. Foreign corporations have a vested interest in Singapore being governed well. That interest is powerful enough to guarantee it is transparently met, but this powerful demand is in no danger of tipping over into an unhealthy desire to rule. (Sooner the corporations would just up stakes.) The Singapore government, and foreign capital, have thus hit upon a happy equilibrium point: checks and balances on their mutual powers, which redound to the security and benefit of the citizenry. OK, let me be a bit more precise. Liberalism is an end in itself – an ideal of how civil life should be led. Tocquevillean rough-and-tumble. It’s my ideal. Gimme, gimme. But it is also a means to many ends: cruelties and stupidities and tyrannies and venalities of various sorts are kept to a minimum. (Not dying of Sars, to pick an example not completely at random.) And goods are secured: a broad basket. I won’t root around in it just right now. Lots of good things. I think that Singapore has, due to peculiar local conditions, managed to secure almost the same set of basic goods, while ruling out almost the same set of basic bads, without being liberal, which is no mean feat. Singapore lacks liberal political culture as an end in itself. The Tocquevillean rough-and-tumble, which is no mean loss. But would you be willing to risk a couple weeks on a ventilator just for a little Tocquevillean rough-and-tumble? The mandate of heaven, eh? Global capitalism isn’t heaven, but it may play one on a little island in East Asia. The occasion for these off-the-cuff musings of mine – besides that momentary blip on BBC – is this article from the Straits Times. The paper is a government cheerleader; but I have little doubt the sentiments expressed by foreign business leaders are genuine, and genuinely representative. And the bit at the end is choice. The mayor of Toronto rails against an international health conspiracy like an angry little emperor; while the government of Singapore – like a dutiful son of heaven - sets about meeting the WHO’s reasonable demands for reasonable controls on unsafe air travel. I live in this country and am sincerely grateful for sensible, efficient measures taken on behalf of my continuing biological existence, and the continuing biological existence of my daughter, my wife, and other humanoids who share the planet. And I'm a devout, Millian liberal. For the time being, I discern no direct contradiction. |
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| Thursday, April 24 |
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| Not Gone Fishin' No Fish today. (I've decided it would be better served day old.) Check back tomorrow. I'll just provide a bit of visual accompaniment to Belle's story (below). My daughter likes to play hide and seek ...(Where's Zoë? There's Zoë!) |
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But if you are ill-mannered, she gets very angry! Zoë SMASH! |
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 Thursday, April 24 |
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| Shouts and Murmurs Our overseas correspondent in America - my wife and co-blogger, Belle - reports in with a New Yorker-worthy comedy of manners that shades off into ... a profile in courage ... Yesterday Zoë and I got to take the Hamptons Jitney from Wainscott to Islip. It's comfortable, and always an interesting sociological experience. Zoë learned an important lesson about New York manners when a woman making her way down the aisle bumped her purse against Zoë's feet and went on without saying anything. Zoë was indignant. "Lady ... sorry ... baby!" she complained. "That's right dear, the lady should have said she was sorry for bumping into you. But she's from New York." My response got a laugh out of the older couple behind us, who had already been admiring the wonder girl. As we were chatting, I explained that we had been visiting my grandfather in Wainscott. They asked if his family was from there, by which they meant, are you guys Polish potato farmers or summer types? I explained that his family was from there but he was still not a townie, and that he used to be US congressman for the first district in the fifties. They remembered him - how can you forget a name like Stuyvesant Wainwright? The man then asked if my grandfather was any relation to the General, Jonathan Mayew Wainwright, aka "Skinny" (the answer was yes - great-nephew.) It turned out the man had served with him in the Phillipines. Here I didn't exactly know what to say. Well, I thanked him first. Then, I sort of wanted to know more, like: the Bataan death march, how was that? Were you one of those poor bastards holding out on Corregidor with Skinny? And wasn't MacArthur a prize jerk? But I felt a little shy asking about something that was undoubtedly so awful that a man like that might not even ever talk about it with his family. Those crusty old WWII types are close-mouthed; just try getting anything out of my grandfather about being in the OSS on project Enigma. (He was a little more forthcoming to the author of Ike's Spies, but not much.) So I funked it. Now I'm all curious, though, and wish I hadn't. Did you know that that SOB MacArthur opposed giving the Medal of Honor to Wainwright because he eventually surrendered to the Japanese instead of fighting to the last bullet, after holding them off for 90 days with no food, old Enfield rifles, and no hope of reinforcements [and then Mac tried to take credit for getting him the medal later, ed.]? I just learned that today. A sorry tale all around. The sad part is that Wainwright's nickname was "Skinny" before he became a POW. You should see him afterwards [and you may, ed.]. At least they let him accept the Japanese surrender on the Missouri. We're the battling bastards of Bataan. No Mama, no Papa, no Uncle Sam. No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces. No rifles, no planes, or artillery pieces. And nobody gives a damn. There you go. |
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| Wednesday, April 23 |
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| A likely lad, that had a sound fly fisher's wrist I take that handy handle for this post from Farrell. I have, as promised, produced a fiskish sort of treatment of Fish's latest essay. It's name is, "Truth But No Consequences: Why Philosophy Doesn't Matter". But it's called all sorts of $#@*($^ things. For what it is, is very, very bad. My treatment is longish and draftish. I did it in haste, to get it off my chest. (Comments and criticism welcome). If you are interested, it's a Giant Thought: |
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| Wednesday, April 23 |
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| Finally A Green Day For the Generation That Grew Up In February Turned on MTV. Saw a video, "Addicted to You" by a band called A Simple Plan. Turned off MTV. I've learned my lesson. I'm old. And it's good to be old. I remember when the Stone Temple Pilots became, like, grand old men of Modern Rock. I remember sitting on my couch listening to the neighbors downstairs argue about whether the Stone Temple Pilots were from Seattle or Minnesota. I think the answer is: San Diego. In which case the neighbors were in the grips of some grunge paralogism or something. Not all answers are deducible a priori. But I could be wrong about a lot of this. Projected post for next month: finally a Blink 182 for the generation who grew up last Tuesday. I think Beck should fabricate a boy band; have auditions and everything; and write their songs - good songs, but boy band songs: I leave that to him. And be this sort of Svengali/Spector spectre hanging over them. He should have some sort of suit to signify his persona and oppressive role. Maybe he could dress like a Teddy boy, but with Elton John 1970's shades. And have a cane. And then - this will all be scripted in advance and made into a reality TV, superior to The Osbournes - the band will break free from his baneful, overbearing influence and release a platinum-selling album in which they 'speak for themselves'. You see, my problem is this. A lot of good popular culture is a matter of spinning shit into gold. But no one has figured out what boy bands are for yet. There must be a point. Some extreme, manneristic spin on the genre that could redeem us, compensate us for our suffering. I think Beck could do it. |
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| Tuesday, April 22 |
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| A Barrel of Fish. The Hour Calls Forth The Man. And His Gun. And Slavoj Zizek, Too. This blog has been fisking Fish - Stanley, that is - from its inception. Nor has Slavoj Zizek been let off lightly (here or here). Not to mention here. The latest issue of Critical Inquiry has writings by both. And a Zizek appreciation by the obdurately obtuse Geoffrey Galt Harpham. That will be my week. We'll just limber up with a stylistically indulgent Giant Thought. Check back for more tomorrow, loyal reader. |
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| Tuesday, April 21 |
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| Mill On Nation-Building I've been contemplating J. S. Mill's classic devotional diptych - his complementary essays on Bentham and Coleridge. Let me make a Giant Thought out of selections from the Coleridge essay; the bits on nation-building. Seems relevant to this modern world. Or, if not relevant, at least interesting. No narrow-bore allegorical intent behind this posting. But, to give a bit of background, the ostensible targets are the rationalist French philosophes - whose abstract cerebrations our Romantic poet is said to tonic. The French are very different today. |
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| Monday, April 21 |
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| Doctors of Philosophy in Philosophy The final exam for my intro philosophy module was today. 400 students. Everyone gets temperature taken by a med student and a little sticker before they get let in the room. You're a degree celcius above normal? Into the alternative 'quarantine' venue with the other eight coughing unfortunates, who are no doubt likewise suffering from something totally innocuous - but why take chances? Three of my students had mild fevers or coughs or whatever. (A perfectly normal less than 1% rate.) So, after the exam, I got an envelope with their three answer scripts. I think I won't open that envelope until tomorrow. And I have it easy, because my module is a big one. |
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| Sunday, April 20 |
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| On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Doomsday for Life In Dr. Strangelove, that eponymous physician observes: "Za whole point of za Doomzzday Machine...izz lost...ivv you keep it a secret. Vvvvy didn't you tell the world, eh?" There is much ado - I'm not even going to bother to link (here, here and here) - about the WMD that have not turned up. Dogs that haven't barked. Dark speculations. Whispers. Concerns. Well, who am I to say? But. If we are seriously considering indulging in theories of this sort, it seems to me incumbent on the theorists to explain (at least hypothetically) why Saddam Hussein didn't just let the inspectors know, if he didn't have anything to hide. Za whole point of givink up all za Doomzday Machinez ... izz lost .. ivv you keep it a secret. Vyyy didn't he show the world, eh? Assuming innocence, would it have been so hard to win over, say, Hans Blix? I mean: even Blix wasn't saying, even at the bitter end, that the Iraqis weren't giving him the run-around. If UN Weapons inspectors came to my apartment, I would let then turn the place upside down to get it over with. Maybe the answer is: Saddam Hussein was a complete idiot. He didn't have a gun but he kept pointing at armed men with his finger in his coat pocket. Out of sheer ornery cussedness. Aspects of the recently concluded hostilities lend credence to this theory. Is this what many people actually think: that Saddam Hussein had nothing but chose not to prove it? If they don't think that, what do they think? I'm talking like I have some point I'm working up to. Nope. Haven't a clue. Maybe I just haven't read the right articles. Maybe someone has the answer. UPDATE: Oh. But I still don't get it. |
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| Sunday, April 20 |
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| OH! New Taste | |||||||||||||||
| Such ambiguity. Belle found this 'super lemon' candy on the shelf of the downstairs mini-mart a few weeks back. (Same place I bought the squid 'chewing gum' last week.) |
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I'll try one. OH! Tastes like a Lemonhead. |
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