On Schadenfreude

I posted recently that there's a reason the word sabotage is from the French. Apparently, it's also no accident that the word schadenfreude is from the German.

Whose Interest?

President Obama has continued to spin his decision to declassify and release the Department of Justice "torture memos" as a decision based on the national interest, even on national security. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with a continued campaign against the Bush administration. Because of course, the Obama administration is about "post-partisanship".

Right. The Washington post publishes an account of the 11th-hour deliberations over the memos' release, in which the President compelled his staff to participate in an academic-style debate. Those supporting the release of the memos argued it would "focus public attention on the coldness and sterility of the legal justifications for abusive techniques" and "demonstrate that the nation lost its "moral bearings" in the Bush years" Those arguing to keep the memos secret, on the other hand, feared their release "would spark a national security debate with conservatives that could undermine Obama's broader agenda." So the debate was entirely about which course of action would be more beneficial to the administration; the national interest never came up. Or, on the other hand, it was the center of the debate, since the administration's interest is the national interest as far as these people are concerned.

UPDATE: (HT PowerLine) Stephen Hayes comments in the Weekly Standard on the selective redaction of the details on the intelligence value of the controversial interrogations, as well as the suspicious editing of Admiral Blair's statement on the matter:

It is possible, I suppose, that a series of fortunate coincidences has resulted in the public disclosure of only that information that will be politically helpful to the Obama administration. It is also possible that Dick Cheney has taken up synchronized swimming in his retirement.

Grab A Roller, Let's Get Started

So painting roofs and parking lots white has immediate cooling effects by reflecting sunlight while also reducing the amount of energy used for air conditioning, both directly in the affected buildings, and indirectly by reducing the urban "heat island" effect. Pretty cool (no pun intended). So why aren't we doing this yet? If we're going to be throwing money around at labor-intensive projects in the name of stimulus (and it's quite clear we're going to be doing quite a bit of that), we can at least lobby for comparatively commonsensical projects. Painting a roof white is a lot cheaper than installing solar panels, for instance. I'd be curious to find out how the energy produced by a solar roof stacks up against that saved simply by a white one.

Ahh, France!

It's no historical coincidence that the word sabotage comes from the original French. It's a culture addicted to the strike, and if a work stoppage intended to show how invaluable and undercompensated you are falls a bit flat when nobody really notices that you're not doing your job, then you just make darn sure they do notice. The union's representative:

"We’ve been on strike for three weeks but at first no one paid any attention at all. It was only when some of the guys started cutting the electricity and gas that things got moving."

I'm sure. So what are the workers' demands? Bread and circuses, mostly. More money and de-privatization.

"Now is the moment to push back the capitalist logic which has crept into the company."

Yes, that evil capitalist logic, always asserting that money has to come from somewhere before it can be given to someone. A les barricades!

Two Quotes

"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it's also a sacred union. You know, God's in the mix."

"I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be — between a man and a woman."

Two nearly identical responses to a question on the definition of marriage. Carrie Prejean has of course been reviled for her response and lost the Miss America pageant because of it, while Barack Obama's answer was broadly ignored by his supporters, and he remains beloved of gay-marriage advocates. How can they hate Prejean's statement and shrug off Obama's identical assertion? Quite simple: they know he's lying.

I Want One: Fluorescent Puppy

South Korean scientists have bred a beagle puppy with genes from a sea anemone that cause it to produce fluorescent proteins in its skin that glow red under a blacklight. Now he can chase around that fluorescent cat.

Credit Where Credit Is Due: President Obama Pushes Colombian Trade Agreement

One of the things I promised myself this past election night was that I would do my level best to give President Obama credit where credit is due. His announced commitment to champion the long-stalled free trade deal with Colombia, along with his promise to visit Colombia and his offer of a state visit for President Uribe are by far the most substantive fruit of his otherwise ill-starred visit to the Summit of the Americas. His warm embrace of Hugo Chavez and abdication of American history before Daniel Ortega still grate, but further extending the long geopolitical alliance with Colombia into the economic realm is a poke in the eye to both leftists, and sound policy besides. Bravo, Mr. President.

Who Said That?

The point of death is that Christ took the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.

That, my friends, was Bono, interviewed in Rolling Stone, no less (via Strange Herring). Now, I'm as cynical as they come when it comes to celebrity opinionating. Perhaps a bit too cynical, as I'm proven to be when some global celebrity goes and shares this theologically sound Christian witness.

Best Thing Ever (Yet): Laser Cannon Dreadnought

Well, probably not. It still makes for a pretty awesome story, even if it is just the usual defense-contractor "just pretend you want to do this so what you've been planning to do the whole time will seem more reasonable" proposal. And it really does make a lot of sense. The first really effective laser cannon will be huge and power-hungry, so it makes a lot of sense to put it on a destroyer that has a) plenty of room and b) megawatts of power to spare. That actually makes so much sense that I'm really starting to wonder who first had the idea to mount the thing in an airplane.

Kids and the Environment

Nowhere in American society is "green" orthodoxy pushed more stridently than in our schools. Green activists have admitted that indoctrinating children to hector their parents about environmental issues is a key plank in their plan to mold an envirorthodox society. We see the result now in a survey that shows a third of American preteens fear an "environmental apocalypse" and over half believe they will grow up to a world less healthy than they enjoy now. (I'm sure the parents of the remaining sixth will be getting concerned phone calls any day now). The survey's a bit hard to read much into, as the article on TreeHugger.com doesn't break down the actual questions or responses. It's still clear that America's youngsters are fully indoctrinated into the Left-environmentalist dogma that we're on a downward ecological spiral. The irony, of course, is that the environment of North America and Europe has been getting cleaner and healthier for decades, and even carbon emissions per person have been more or less level. There's a simple reason, too: we've gotten richer. John Tierney argues in the New York Times that in light of the historical evidence showing that societies inevitably get greener as they get richer, the best thing we can do for the world is to help poor countries develop faster. I couldn't agree more. Nations pass through stages of development that simply cannot be skipped. One of those stages is pretty dirty, and half the world's population is at or just about to enter that stage. Nothing is going to keep them from digging up and using the cheap energy at their disposal. Even if it were feasible -- and it isn't -- deceiving or strongarming the world's poor into pursuing some rich man's vision of "green development" will only trap them longer in poverty and its attendant environmental consequences.

Bravo

I don't know which makes me happier, seeing 20 world leaders and diplomats walk out of the room, or hearing the thunderous applause when they did.

The Lost Symbol

Anthony Sacramone has somehow gotten his hands on an advance copy of Dan Brown's just-announced DaVinci Code sequel and kindly shares a summary:

The Catholic Church has a rogue monk/priest/canon lawyer/legion of Mary tractarian out to kill a select group of Masons who possess the key that unlocks the code that reveals the secret of the ancient riddle that solves the mystery that will uncover the conspiracy that hid the truth about the cabal that obscured the meaning of the cryptic script that when deciphered will unveil the face of the man who died to protect the arcanum embedded in the Masonic symbols, which, if made public, will shake the very foundations of the Catholic Church, rendering the papacy a spent force and reduce several hundred million Catholic laypeople to mainline-Protestant status.

Of course, they've already got the movie deal.

Just Sayin'

You know, there was a time not too long ago when strategists contemplating a strike on declared enemies of the U.S. would not have had to concern themselves overly much that the killing of treasonous American citizens who had joined them would cause a "political nightmare". Just sayin'.

Some Things Never Change

I suppose one's interpretation of the significance of this 1934 cartoon's relevance would depend entirely on one's perspective toward the New Deal (via Professor Bainbridge).

(Click to embiggen.)

Truthers and Birthers

What is it that attracts people to conspiracy theories? What motivates a person to believe that the moon landings were faked? I sort of understood -- though I still can't accept -- why some might want to believe that the our government was behind the 9/11 attacks. What I really don't get is how many of those very same people have shifted gears and are now ranting about President Obama's birth certificate. I guess there's just a certain personality type that desperately needs to believe they're part of the tiny minority that knows the truth.

Smart Diplomacy

The cultural performances down in Trinidad must really be something. Even after listening to a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by the Sandinista Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton could only comment on how marvelous the cultural performance had been.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored two questions about Ortega's speech, instead offering lengthy praise of a cultural performance of dance and song opening the summit.

"I thought the cultural performance was fascinating," Clinton said. Asked again about the Ortega speech, Clinton said: "To have those first class Caribbean entertainers on all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space, I was overwhelmed."

I'm sure you were, Madame Secretary, I'm sure you were. At least you're out front in demanding Iran release Roxanna Saberi, you know, like State Departments generally do when their citizens are convicted in foreign kangaroo courts? Oh, right, not so much. Now Ahmadinejad swoops in heroically to promise fair treatment and hint that clemency might be in the cards. John Hinderaker nails what happens next:

Iran takes a hostage; the State Department says Iran will be rewarded if it goes easy on the hostage; Ahmadinejad urges judicial authorities to reconsider. Three predictions: Iran will relieve Ms. Saberi of some or all of her sentence; Iran will be rewarded; American newspapers will praise Obama for his "smart diplomacy."

The mullahs are playing Obama like a violin.

So This Is Odd

So the Tea Party protesters are outraged at the irresponsible, unaccountable, and opaque spending of hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts. So is Jon Stewart, though I doubt he and his audience have the self-awareness to realize they're outraged at many of the same things as those crazy right-wing yahoos.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Stewart quotes his guest Elizabeth Warren, regarding her misgivings about the bailouts, "capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell". Astute, but many Americans seem to think both can work.

And of course, Stewart can't help himself but to throw out a strawman attack at the end, as if sensible regulation of the financial sector is what opponents are calling "socialism". Regulation isn't the issue, the issue the manipulation and control of these businesses without the honesty of nationalization. It's forcing businesses to accept bailouts, and refusing to allow others to pay theirs back, precisely to maintain that control. And to be fair, nobody should be calling that "socialism", because it isn't. The term is "state corporatism", and it's far worse.

A Disappointing Handshake

There are a few different angles to our President's warm embrace of the autocrat Hugo Chavez. From one, Obama embarrasses himself and sells out America when he accepts left-handed compliments and pointedly ironic "gifts" from leftist thugs. But I like William Jacobsen's point best:

When are those who fantasized about Obama being an agent of hope in the world going to realize that in Obama's quest to be liked by those who hate us, he is throwing freedom-loving peoples under the bus. Obama doesn't need to invade countries, or even attack them. But he could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the hopes and aspirations of Venezuelans, Iranians and others, instead of with their oppressors.

Too true. Nothing President Obama has yet done has disappointed me more than this legitimization of despicable regimes.

I'm Not Sure "Disappointed" Cuts it, Madame Secretary

"Disappointed"? Really? That's the strongest language our Secretary of State can conjure in her statement on Iran's conviction of an American journalist on trumped-up charges of spying? Oh, sorry, she's "deeply disappointed". Good grief.

On Graduate-Recruits

Tom Ricks remarks on the increasing number of Ivy League graduates choosing to enter the military after graduation:

What is going on here? I think two things, one negative, the other historical.

The negative trend is, I think, that a significant portion of students are finishing at our best universities feeling let down and unfulfilled by the experience. Ultimately, they tell me, they didn't feel challenged to be more than themselves, intellectually or morally.

The historical moment is that these young men are from the 9/11 generation... they are deciding that al Qaeda's attack and its consequences are becoming the defining event of their lifetimes, and they want to be part of that.

Now, I didn't go to one of our nation's "best universities", but rather, one of its best universities, if you'll grant me the distinction. I came out of St Olaf looking to be part of something bigger than myself not in reaction to my education, but to a large degree because of it. The Army became that something, for reasons I've explained in the past. That aside, none of it undermines Ricks's broader point, as the number of Oles entering the military has increased along with that of the Ivy Leaguers. The recordkeeping is a bit haphazard, but the only alumni survey (class of 1999) that broke out military as a distinct category listed 0 students. The more recent records break down a half-dozen different volunteer corps, but military service presumably gets lumped with "government". In any case, from 0 in 1999, to a half-dozen from my graduating class, and certainly more who've enlisted or gotten commissioned in the years since, there's a pretty clear increase.

Whatever it says about the state of our Ivy Leagues, it's a good thing for our country. The history of the all-volunteer military has been one of its gradual momentum toward an endogamous caste in American society. Year after year, the percentage of "legacy" recruits, to use academia's term, grew higher and higher. For vast swathes of American graduates without military backgrounds, military service just wasn't on the radar, and the number of Americans with absolutely zero contact with military servicemembers was growing. I suspect that the changes in recruitment patterns after 9/11, OEF, and OIF have reversed that trend. If this is true, it's one piece good news for the future of the armed forces, and for the health of American society.

I Want One: Atomic Coffeemaker

I mean, espresso drinks really aren't even my thing, I usually prefer classic drip. But this is just too cool.



And it's "atomic", so you know it's good.

On Arab Civilization

With remarkable timing, after my post on the Crusades and the Arab world, John Derbyshire points to this clip from Al-Jazeera of Algerian author Anwar Malek decrying what Arab civilization has become (subtitled by the invaluable MEMRI-TV):

Anwar Malek: The Arabs are afflicted with fantasies and obsolete bravado... the Arabs believe they can go to the moon. If you asked your viewers whether the Arabs would be able to reach the moon by 2015, they would say: "Yes, the Arabs will get to the moon." By Allah, the Arabs will not go more than a few hundred kilometers from their doorsteps. These are empty words...

Interviewer: Look what small resistance movements have achieved, by means of very primitive weapons, in confronting aggressors and enemies. Can you deny this? This completely refutes what you say.

Anwar Malek: What resistance are you talking about? If you are talking about the resistance of Hizbullah – Hizbullah has destroyed Lebanon, in the framework of a Persian conspiracy. I say this point blank... The reality of the Arabs is one of defeat, hitting rock bottom. We are defeated, politically and militarily, and economically, socially, and even psychologically. We have a discourse of conspiracy, and we blame everything on others...

Interviewer: Didn't Egypt win several wars?

Anwar Malek: No. The 1973 war was not a victory. It was another defeat... No Arab country has won a war in modern times. There has been no victory worthy of mention. All we have are defeats, which we package as victories.

The 1973 war is rather famously the war that both sides won, and the Egyptian "victory" is one of the great sacred cows of the Arab history of the 20th century. This whole interview is a great example of how Arab media is far more open in some ways than our own.

Last Tea Party Post, I Promise

We've seen that the media just don't get it. Safe to say then that many Americans have been mislead about what the Tea Party thing has been all about. IndianaJane explains better than I ever could. Excerpt (my emphasis):

What they are about is spending. They are about bailouts, whether for Wall Street, GM, or the neighbor down the street who refinanced, bought that big screen, and now can't afford his mortgage and owes more than his house is worth. They are about unbridled spending under the guise of rescuing the economy, and passing an ever-growing debt on to our children. They are about politicians passing spending bills when they don't know what's in them.

They are about concerns that our constitution is being shunted aside by a federal government that insists that states and companies take funds they don't want and that seems almost daily to stretch the limits of its power. They are about the printing of more money, more foreign ownership of our debt, and the devaluation of our currency and inflation that many economists believe is coming.

Precisely. A friend commented that it was a poor choice to connect the Tea Parties to April 15, because the message ended up getting mixed. People aren't upset about taxes per se. They're upset about a level of government spending and interventionism they see as dangerously irresponsible. And then there are the crazies, but if the Left isn't held responsible for their crazies, it's ridiculous to hold us answerable for ours.

Crusade Tirade

Apparently there are those in Spain who believe that their government should apologize to the Moors for the Reconquista. Yes, you read that right, the Spaniards should apologize to their colonizers for having liberated themselves. This is via Gerald Warner, who thinks it's a load of hooey, along with the great fashion for national historical apologies in general. No points for guessing that I agree.

There's an insidious interplay of forces at work here. In the West, there are those (mostly academics) who desperately want the opportunity to apologize for Western Civilization. Many of them have absorbed to various degrees the ideology of a generation of Arab Nationalist intellectuals who painted the history of Europe's relations with the Arab world as an unending litany of oppression and malfeasance. Despite the waning relevance of Arab Nationalism, this narrative of victimology has lingered on, even blossomed, as a foundational precept of Islamist geopolitics. This brings us to the present day, when Western intellectuals and the majority of the Muslim world can slowly shake their heads together in sorrow over all the injustices perpetrated on Muslims by Europeans in ages past, the greatest of which is, of course, the Crusades. "Oh! The Crusades!" they wail, "how horrible, how barbaric! What monsters we were!".

I'm just going to throw this out there: the medieval Arabs didn't seem to take the Crusades very seriously. The Crusaders were never anything close to an existential threat to the Caliphate-- unlike the Mongols or the Turks -- and prior to the 20th century, they were little more than an interesting historical anecdote and a backdrop for the heroism of Salah-al-Din. It wasn't until the Arab Nationalists realized they could use the narrative as a club to beat at the West that the Crusades were recast as the pivotal tragedy of Arab history, on which everything else turns. And with few exceptions, we swallowed the narrative hook, line, and sinker.

Despite the fact, of course, that it doesn't make any damn sense. The Crusades occurred very shortly (historically speaking) after the Muslim Arabs had conquered and subjugated fully half of the Christian world by area, and all the greatest Christian centers of population and prestige except for Rome and Byzantium. From a broader historical perspective, the various attempts to recapture the Holy Land were nothing more than a rather pathetic and shortlived pushback against the Muslim expansion, after which positions were consolidated for a few centuries. But before, during, and for centuries after the Crusades, the Arabs and then their Ottoman successors never stopped trying to conquer Europe, right up until the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate after World War I. Yet we're supposed to beat ourselves up that some European nobles conquered a few measly bits of Palestine and held Jerusalem for a few years, nearly a thousand years ago? Spare me.

I don't mean to suggest that the Arab world never suffered at the hands of Europe. But this is history, everybody did terrible things to everybody else. Apologizing for it accomplishes nothing.

New Book Smell!

Now I can finally buy a Kindle! (via Cyberbrethren)

CNN in Chicago

And this is the state of American media today, a "reporter" contemptuously badgering a "tea party" demonstrator, cutting off the point he was making so she can get on her own soapbox, and then commenting on the "threatening tenor" when other demonstrators tell her to let the guy speak. Appalling. (Via HotAir).

I think my favorite part is where she interjects, as the man is explaining how Lincoln stood for self-reliance and individual responsibility, that Illinois is going to receive $50 billion in stimulus funds, as if that somehow rebuts his point. They just don't get it.

There's Something About American Idol...

... or in this case, Britain's Got Talent, that I just have to support. Something about these shows brings a primeval authenticity back to celebrity, creates a forum where people stand out for what they can do, not just who they are. I don't really know an objective reason why having a beautiful voice should be more virtuous than simply having a beautiful face. But if untold seasons of reality singing competitions have taught us anything, it is that the public values the former over the latter far more than the record companies would have ever believed. And with that intro, Susan Boyle.

It Is Time We Remembered the Subjunctive

Geoffrey Pullum learned something new about the English language today. The idiomatic construction "it is time that noun verbed" is increasingly showing up in the vernacular as "it is time that noun verbs". This particular instance is new to me, too, but I don't exactly see why such a distinguished linguist is so surprised. "It is time that ____ were true" is just a variant of "would that ____ were true!" or "I wish that ____ were true!", which is to say, it's an introduction to a subjunctive clause, one expressing wish or possibility. Thing is, the subjunctive mood is disappearing all over the place, even in its most formulaic extances. "I wish I were ___" is sounding positively quaint these days. Part of me really wants to rail against this linguistic sloppiness, but I know there's no hope. I can shake my tophat and cane and glare disapprovingly through my monacle all I please, but linguistic prescriptivism gets us nowhere. Sadly.

On Demonstration and Radicalization

Apparently I'm a dangerous right-wing radical. There's a better-than-even chance, dear reader, that you are, too. Do you favor local or state authority over federal authority? Do you have strong feelings about abortion, or illegal migration? Then you, dear reader, might just be a right-wing radical. But don't worry, so am I. On two counts, no less, on account of being a "disgruntled veteran" ready to "swell the ranks of white-power militias". Oh, and so are the legislative and executive branches of the government of the state of Texas. So you're in tolerable company.

Oh, and if you read all the way through the Washington Times piece, on page three they've got the parts where the authors of the report explain that this is actually a fairly standard report, similar reports referring to threats from left-wing extremists have also gone out recently, and the concern about veterans was only that their combat skills would be valued by extremists, so law enforcement should be aware that veterans might be specially targeted for recruitment. Huh. That's not nearly as fear- and hatemongering as the lede. Good thing I and everybody else who saw the story read the whole thing, right? Right?

The media are pushing the "scary dangerous right wing" meme as hard as they possibly can, because they so desperately want it to be true. The reality is a bit different, as we've seen today with the Tax Day "Tea Party" protests around the country, in which thousands of anti-big-government "extremists" milled around with signs for a few hours, listened to some speeches, and then went home. Practically Nuremburg 1938, I know. Despite dire warnings and whisperings whether we'd need to bring out the Guard, the closest thing to drama was the dispersal of the White House Tea Party after a "suspicious package" went over the fence. It turned out to be, go figure, a carton of tea.

This brings us to the issue that's been bugging me all week, with all the buzz leading up to today's demonstrations. How is it that the American Left, so enamoured of mass demonstration, is so aghast at the idea that conservatives would dare to embrace the technique? I don't know how many variations of "you lost, deal with it!" I've heard in the last few days, as if the opposition is supposed to sit quietly in the corner until the next election. Because, you know, that's what the Left did during the Bush years, so it's only fair, right? Right? For that matter, the message of these demonstrations is directed as much at the Republicans as at the Democrats. RNC Chairman Michael Steele's offer to speak at the Chicago Tea Party was turned down rather sharply, with the suggestion that he'd be welcome to attend and LISTEN: "This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."

I should add, not all the Left is displaying their irrational hostility toward the Tea Party movement: some are channeling it into pure snark, and pretty low-grade snark at that. I get the joke, Rachel Maddow, teabag = degrading sex act. Ha ha ha. And I got it when you used it again. And again. And every ten seconds or so for the next seven minutes. Thing is, the demonstrations are being called "tea parties", not "teabaggings", as you prefer it, and if the phrase "tea party" has you and your audience thinking of scrota rather than Boston 1773, well, I guess that's a personal problem.

Micro-Knitting

I know I've got some pretty crafty readers, in all senses of the word. Thought you might be interested to see this, the woman who knit the miniature garments for the movie Coraline (via BoingBoing):

I Want One: Soviet Nuclear Detonator Control Console

Console Detonator
Originally uploaded by Mark Pitcher

Seriously, Russia. You don't need this anymore. It's just taking up space. And think how happy it would make me.

On Military Privatization

[Just found this post from a few weeks ago orphaned in my 'drafts'. Thus the out-of-date news story.]

I've got some mixed opinions about military contractors in Iraq. I think it's manifestly clear that the unaccountable triggerhappiness of some of the mercenaries private security contractors has made the task of victory tougher and more dangerous for constitutional American forces. On the other hand, the privatization of many support operations to contractors like KBR has raised the standard of living at US bases in Iraq to unimaginable levels. I lived and ate better in Iraq than I could even dream of on a base in the US. Behind the build-your-own panini line, Mongolian barbeque and ice-cream sundaes, however, some truly worrisome safety issues have come to light (from CNN, via hilzoy).

Thousands of buildings at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have such poorly installed wiring that American troops face life-threatening risks, a top inspector for the Army says.

"It was horrible -- some of the worst electrical work I've ever seen," said Jim Childs, a master electrician and the top civilian expert in an Army safety survey. Childs told CNN that "with the buildings the way they are, we're playing Russian roulette."

Childs recently returned from Iraq, where he is taking part in a yearlong review aimed at correcting electrical hazards on U.S. bases. He told CNN that thousands of buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan are so badly wired that troops are at serious risk of death or injury. He said problems are "everywhere" in Iraq, where 18 U.S. troops have died by electrocution since 2003.

Most of these bases were built by the much-maligned KBR, which has been such a liberal punching-bag I instinctively want to defend it. But I've seen how they operate, and so this story is all too believable. KBR keeps costs low by employing "third-country nationals" or TCNs, mostly from South Asia and the Philippines. I've got no problem with these guys cooking my dinners and cleaning my bathrooms, in fact I'm quite grateful for it. But if they're going to be wiring my hooch and plumbing my showers, KBR ought to be expected to hold them to first-world safety standards. And the contractor's non-apology makes sympathy difficult:

What is important to remember is the challenging environment in which these issues exist.

The electrical standards in Iraq are nowhere near those of Western or U.S. standards. Add to this the challenges that exist in a war zone. We have been and remain committed to fully cooperating with the government on this issue.

Except that we're talking about bases that KBR has built from the ground up, powered by grids built by KBR and fed by generators supplied by KBR. I don't honestly know what they're trying to pull.

Potemkin Photo Op

What to make of these reports floating around that the President's reception with the troops in Baghdad was "staged"? My verdict: non-scandal. One: of course it was staged. Nothing the President does isn't. It's sort of part of the job. Two: if you've got to choose a pretty small group of soldiers to meet the President, why on Earth wouldn't you pick from those who are his enthusiastic supporters? There's a high-minded constitutional argument that meeting the President is meeting the President no matter what you think of him, and that is true. If it had been a ceremonial setting, selecting only Obama supporters to fill the formation would have been seriously crass. But for a face-to-face meet-and-greet photo-op, why let someone who would have enjoyed it miss the chance and leave some die-hard conservative to grit his teeth and smile for the cameras?

I don't think anyone who knows a thing about the military believes for a minute that Obama is as popular among the troops as Bush was (for that matter, is). At the same time, the military is a fairly representative sample of America, and there's nothing monolithic about troops' opinions, political or otherwise. So let's not read too much into this.

America 1, Pirates 0. Also: Terrorism?

Yay for America. Boo pirates. And I'm tired of hearing about it already. The captain seems a stand-up fellow, so hopefully he'll resist the siren song of the cable "news" circuit and endless inane interviews recounting minute-by-minute how he was feeling throughout the crisis.

All this talk of pirates, (with the requisite jokes about peglegs, eyepatches, and parrots) has of course awakened a desire among some to give them a more 21st-century name. They're terrorists! after all. Maritime terrorists!

Count me with Yglesias in saying: puh-leeeeze. These guys board ships to either steal the booty outright or ransom the ships and crews. They've not expressed a moment's interest in advancing any particular ideology, and how their activities could possibly do so is beyond me. They're not attacking civilian populations with the intent to further their political goals. They don't meet any coherent definition of "terrorists" other than that we don't like them and they happen to be Muslim. Then again, that's uncomfortably close to what passes for a definition these days.

"Terrorist" is one of many words in danger of being overused into meaninglessness. There are plenty of terrorists in the world. And there are also Muslim extremists fighting us who are not terrorists by any reasonable definition. Most of the Shia militias in Iraq that fall under the Jaysh al-Mahdi/Sadrist umbrella, for example, are guerilla fighters who targeted uniformed soldiers of the enemy (us) and took reasonable care to avoid civilian casualties. By definition they are not terrorists, and it confuses the issue to conflate them.

For the Children

Yes, it's for the sake of the children that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has axed the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, just weeks after this year's cohort had been informed of their acceptance into the program, and well after the deadlines to apply to D.C.'s better charter schools or for transfers out of the district. See, since Congress will be debating the program sometime within the next year, it's not in the students' best interest to let them into a program that might get cut for next year. Of course, in geopolitics this is what we call creating "facts on the ground". I fully understand that as a successful voucher program in our nation's worst education district, and right under the government's nose, this program absolutely had to be killed. But when you're throwing 200 students to the wolves to reward Big Education for their unwavering support, spare me the pretense that you're doing it for the students' sake.

It's Fun to be Aggrieved

The layers of hostile ignorance on display in this training video put out by Penn State University's Counseling and Psychological Services office are beyond my patience to dig through. This is also a must-see for anyone who doesn't believe it's seriously unhealthy that significant portions of our society are completely insulated from contact with military servicemembers.



James Taranto fleshes out the complete absurdity of the vignette. Here's the crux: a veteran student believes he's being treated unfairly because of his service. The narrative of the video tries to present this as completely unreasonable for him to believe, and yet here's the opening dialogue between his professor and her supervisor:

Instructor: Actually, I kinda wanted to talk to you about something else? Um, I'm still having problems with that student I mentioned.

Chairman: The Veteran.

Instructor: Yeah.

There are so many more angles to look at this, but I just get too depressed or angry thinking about it. It's probably my PTSD making me unpredictable and vaguely threatening.

Good Friday: Love Unknown

Ecce Homo ("Behold, the man"), by Antoni Ciseri 1821-91

My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,
Who at my need His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!” is all their breath,
And for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries! Yet they at these
Themselves displease, and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they saved,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,
That He His foes from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say? Heav’n was His home;
But mine the tomb wherein He lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.

--Samuel Crossman, 1664

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes

That wasn't a bow. Also, these are not the droids you are looking for. Relevant non-bow starts at about 0:50 or so.

Freedom and Security

The Obama administration continues to double down on the Bush Department of Justice's legal cover for warrantless wiretapping and "sovereign immunity" from prosecution, expanding their scope far beyond that of the previous administration. As I've said before, this is why conservatives ought to have opposed these measures when they were introduced, something I myself am only belatedly realizing. While I might once have considered security justifications to outweigh the encroachment on individual freedoms, I no longer believe they do. Did these measures help keep us safe from terrorist attacks over the last 7 years? Quite possibly. But is that security worth several turns of the ratchet toward Panopticon?

If we have no degree of acceptable risk, if any posited successful attack is presupposed as a negligent "failure" of our intelligence community, what incentive do they have but to seek to know everything about everyone? We failed to "connect the dots" before 9/11, so now our agencies are coached that the "need to share" is as important as the "need to know". But the potential capabilities of a unitary intelligence agency are truly worrying: it takes at most 33 data points to identify a person statistically through mining of open-source data. A nation with a unitary intelligence agency mandated to prevent any conceivable security threat is on a dangerous road to becoming a police state.

And to what end? Should we really be letting the threat of terrorist attack define our society? Nuclear terrorism alone is the one threat toward which we should be putting greatest effort, but we can't seem to get our act together to deal seriously with the world's most dangerous proliferators. Instead, we spend billions on meaningless security theater. John Goekler nails it:

The only things that can truly make us more “secure” are not things. They are the courage to face whatever comes with dignity and intention, and the strong relationships that assure we will face the future together, and find comfort and meaning in doing so.

Imagine, then, what might happen if we simply quit listening to the scaremongers and those who profit from our paranoia. Imagine what the world could look like if we made a conscious choice to live out whatever time we have with courage, compassion, service and joy.

Terrorism is an act of the weak. But so is walking through the airport in our socks.

Faking French

Learning a handful of conversational phrases and some everyday vocabulary can get you a long way in a foreign country, if only as a gesture of goodwill. Learning them too well can put you in an awkward spot, when it finally becomes clear that's all you know:



Being fluent in a language with few second-language learners presents the opposite problem, where for the first few minutes of smalltalk everyone assumes you just know the stock phrases, and five minutes into the conversation, your acquaintance excitedly exclaims, "Wow, you speak ____!!" Well, yes, we've been speaking it for five minutes now.

Franz Kafka International

I'm pretty sure I've been through this airport. Or maybe it's just that all airports start feeling like this after a few consecutive days of air travel.



Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Blogging at Work!

I can't believe it, I'm blogging from work! I know that for most of you, this isn't a revolutionary concept, but things work a little differently in the wonderland that is Army. See, for the longest time, all DoD internet connections have blocked anything having to do with blogs. Anything that even had "blog" somewhere in the URL was automatically blocked, on the assumption, I presume, that all bloggers are either ne'er-do-wells intent on compromising national security or inane timewasters. Because we wouldn't want our soldiers reading such trash as Tom Ricks, Kings of War, or Abu Muqawama. They should be reading serious commentary such as they'll find on "real news" sites like CNN or FoxNews.

Let Them Fight, Already

Tom Ricks has been talking deployments, specifically, why on Earth is there still such a large contingent of Soldiers and Marines who have never deployed? An Army officer familiar with these matters weighs in. After explaining several case examples of eager soldiers who've unwillingly spent their whole careers in non-deploying positions, he explains the heart of the problem:

So, my point is the numbers don't tell the whole story... The vast majority of those who haven't deployed can be reasonably explained based on current personnel policies. Yes, some people are avoiding deployment, but nowhere near all of them.

Current personnel policies are the true problem... We are operating our service personnel programs under a peacetime model. There is no appetite for creative thinking. There is no willingness to examine and understand the issue. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that manpower management does not exactly attract all-star players. It's hard to think outside the box when you don't really understand what's inside the box.

Is there an answer? Maybe. We could throw some money at the problem. If we are going to deploy Soldiers and Marines we could come up with interesting ways of taking care of families without jerking them around with unnecessary PCS moves. We could force the G1s [personnel branch] and G3s [operations branch] to talk to one another. Maybe if the 1s understood the scope of the operational requirements they would have a greater motivation to provide viable solutions. We could also take a chance that non-traditional career patterns won't hurt chances for promotion and retention.

Here's my own suggestion: find the flexibility to make use of those soldiers who are chomping at the bit to deploy again and again. I would happily have spent my entire contracted service in Iraq, with maybe a few months between tours at most. I know I'm not alone in this either; a goodly proportion of my buddies are of the same mind. Many of us have never planned anything but a five-years-and-out Army career path, so burnout or interrupted career advancement are irrelevant. It doesn't make the news, probably because it's far more difficult for civilians to identify with, but for every soldier profiled on CNN, burnt out and struggling with the separation from his wife and kids after his third or fourth deployment, there's a single soldier languishing in garrison who would give anything to get back to the desert. I know the Army isn't a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but it really grinds my gears to see soldiers with critical skills that are desperately needed in theater scraping paint and pulling weeds in garrison, particularly when those soldiers would give anything just for the chance to do their jobs. I've heard of soldiers in my unit get denied a transfer to sooner-deploying units because their job is listed as "Critical Need", so they had to stay here and pull weeds for a year before we deploy again. Rather than wrap their minds around that one, most of them just left the Army instead. Fighting multiple long wars isn't going to "break" the Army. Hopelessly squandering the human resources we need to win them just might.

Down With Big Cul-De-Sac

I hate modern subdivisions. I hate getting lost in the cul-de-sac maze with no way to escape but to retrace my route, because Morningheatherspringwood Lane doesn't actually connect anything to anything else. I hate having to get in my car to get anywhere. And we can be bipartisan on this: Matthew Yglesias gives some progressive reasons to hate them, too, as they force people to drive far further and also make biking and walking less practical:


In reality, there's no reason for this to be a necessarily partisan issue. Last time I checked, the Republicans weren't in hock to Big Cul-De-Sac. And the New Urbanism is, at its roots, profoundly conservative. It is saying "lets build cities the way we did 100 years ago". Yglesias's final point is also a conservative one, or at least a federalist one: "Fundamentally, though, the role of state and local agencies is always going to be important to this kind of decision-making, and things will only improve if people pay more attention to politics at this level." Agreed.

Classic Moments In Soldiering: The Guy Who Just Left Did It

There's a weird phenomenon in the Army, which apparently also happens in civilian life as well: people who are about to leave the unit suddenly get incredibly proactive in their last few weeks. They reorganize storage units, delete important documents, and generally just make a slew of unilateral decisions right before they leave the unit forever. At least, that how it plays out for the month or two after they're gone:

Classic Moments In Soldiering: Sketchy Booze

When the 'arf-made recruity goes out to the East
'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks like a beast,
An' 'e wonders because 'e is frequent deceased
Ere 'e's fit for to serve as a soldier.
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

--Rudyard Kipling, "The Young British Soldier"

Things haven't changed much since Kipling's day, and we soldiers still love our drink. In the last few months, a collective fashion for Carolina wines has hit our barracks. A buddy of mine (who we know by his nickname "Ice") recently picked up a suspiciously cheap bottle of North Carolina "Pomegranate" wine.

Me: So whatchya drinkin' on tonight?
Ice: Some of this here "Pomegranate"?
Me: Wait, how does that work? Is it actually made from pomegranates?
Ice: Hmmm... label says "real grape wine with added flavors".
Me: Wow, that sounds pretty sketchy.
Ice: Yeah.... Not sketchy enough for me not to drink it.

A Great Movie

Bruce Gee reviews The Lives of Others, one of my very favorite movies, over at Pagans and Lutherans. My own review finds its way into the comments.

Dretful Scorn Goes Viral

Daniel Hannan sounds a bit befuddled by the viral breakout of the verbal blitzkrieg he launched at Gordon Brown on the occasion of the Prime Minister's visit to the European Parliament. The clip became the most-watched video on YouTube in less than 48 hours. As he says, he has "been making similar speeches every week and posting them on YouTube for the past seven months." But for whatever reason, the wisdom of the masses chose this particular speech, and in 24 hours an obscure representative to an opaque transnational government that few Americans know or care much about has gained an international following:

How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting.

Breaking the press monopoly is one thing. But the internet has also broken the political monopoly. Ten or even five years ago, when the Minister for Widgets put out a press release, the mere fact of his position guaranteed a measure of coverage. Nowadays, a politician must compel attention by virtue of what he is saying, not his position.

It's all a bit unsettling for professional journalists and politicians. But it's good news for libertarians of every stripe. Lefties have always relied on control, as much of information as of physical resources. Such control is no longer technically feasible.

All Hail the New Media!!

Dretful Scorn

If only we had politicians who could stand up and give a browbeating like this (HT Strange Herring):



I aspire some day to achieve Daniel Hannan's mastery of dretful scorn. Is there any way we could lure this guy over here? Maybe we can offer him asylum if Britain sinks beneath the waves, as seems likelier by the day.

The Four Deadly P's

A perennial topic of conversation in the barracks is, unsurprisingly, what's wrong with the Army and what could be done to fix it. I've argued for a while now that all our biggest frustrations have common roots in that top leadership is trying to be a wartime and a peacetime army at the same time. It's the mindset that has soldiers in Iraq returning from long patrols to get browbeaten because their pants are bloused below the 3rd eyelet of their boots. It's the mindset that has soldiers coming back from a year's deployment to an atmosphere not of "we're going to try not to waste your time so you can spend some more of it with your families", but rather "better buckle down, because we've got a year's worth of hoops to jump through and boxes to check". Well, leave to it Tom Ricks to have already given it a catchy name: The four deadly P's, the Persistence of Peacetime Personnel Processes.

Longest Weekend Ever!

... but in a good way. An "I can't believe we did all that stuff in just two days!" sort of way. A spontaneous road trip built on the ashes of a plan that fell through, we headed out with no plan, just a vague destination: the Outer Banks. And this is what we ended up with (click to embiggen):


Along the way: open-faced turkey sandwiches, the Plymouth lighthouse (which is literally just a house with a light on it), an ironclad replica, a German tourist commenting to her husband how much she liked my hair, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, the Wright Brothers' memorial on Kill Devil Hill (not actually in Kitty Hawk!), far too many billboard innuendos, the Bodie Island lighthouse, several completely inappropriate posed shots with said lighthouse, driving on the beach, some remarkable multi-colored sand dunes, a big bridge, a bromantic sunset, ribs and shrimp with some very friendly (and very drunk) rednecks, an invitation to go deep-sea fishing with aforementioned drunk rednecks, a very dated motel so lovingly maintained it was like going back in time, a delicious breakfast on styrofoam plates, the most iconic lighthouse in the country, more adolescent photo ops, another beach, off to the ferry terminal to see if the schedules might line up for us, a decision to go for it, a short ferry hop to the next island, then a furious drive down the length of it to arrive just as the next ferry is loading up for our trip back to the mainland, and an uneventful return trip. What a weekend, and a highly-recommended itinerary for anyone road-tripping in the area.

Third World America: Sacramento Tent City

Sacramento is considering routing utilities to a tent city that has grown in the shadow of the California state capital. Do we really need to explain why its a bad idea to haphazardly legitimize and make permanent establishments out of unauthorized housing (or tenting, as the case may be)? Anyone who doesn't think this is a problem, I've got a movie you ought to see.

Scandal! Outrage!

Get the torches and pitchforks, friends. Have you heard? AIG spent nearly 1/10th of 1% of their government bailout money to pay previously-contracted bonuses for employees who had no connection to risky securitizations! Scandal! Outrage! Wait, that's not quite how you've heard it on the news? Huh.

Randall Monroe has great commentary, as usual:

Of course, when you live to be outraged, it's a lot more fun to pretend the latter.

Straw Men and Chimney-Sweeps

Sometimes I wonder what we could accomplish in the realm of education in this country if we could all actually debate each other rather than our own strawmen. For instance, I'm sure Matthew Yglesias and I could have a great conversation about education policy, once I managed to convince him my ideas weren't all just a secret plot to turn poor kids into chimney-sweeps.

More of that Change We've Been Hearing About

The Obama administration doesn't believe it should need so much as a search warrant to get cell tower records on American citizens, which can be used to track callers. And after all the (mostly justified) caterwauling about "warrentless wiretaps" during the Bush administration, where's the outrage here? At least the good folks at Wired's Threat Level are still paying attention.

Incidentally, this is a great lesson to conservatives who defended the Bush administration's stance on wiretapping. Any increase in government power &mdash even when wielded for good by an administration you trust &mdash will be inherited by future administrations, for good or for ill. And then they might just go and one-up you in the process.

African Obamamania

The enigmatically-named Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing blogs today about the personality cult of Obama in Benin. Even surrounded in a such a warm cocoon of Obama-love, however, she can't help but throw a barb back at our former President:

Bush, as I recall from being here previously, did not enjoy any such popularity, and for good reason. He dropped by Benin in 2008, but is said to have spent all of three hours in the country, never once leaving the airport.

Oh, really? What do you think, Ms. Jardin, are the odds that President Obama will find his way to Cotonou in his presidency? I'm going with slim to none, seeing as Bush was the first US President ever to visit Benin, (not to mention a host of other heretofore neglected statelets). Were many Beninoises disappointed he only spent three hours in their country? I'm quite sure they were, but that in itself is a measure of how remarkably well-liked Bush was in most of Africa. You don't hear many Europeans complaining a Bush visit was too short, after all.

On Festivals

I've got mixed feelings about participating in the rites of religions I don't hold to. On the one hand, outside the West, nominally religious festivals are simultaneously cultural and civic events, and it can be great fun to seek out these events when visiting foreign countries. On the other, however, active participation in a ritual could potentially violate my own faith, and in a way disrespects those who do believe in it. I guess it comes down to a case-by-case basis. Anywho... this is all by way of introduction to Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, which just looks like way too much fun.

Sigh...

Here's another reason to love the stimulus that hasn't gotten much press: the developed world's insatiable hunger for global capital to fund their fiscal stimuli is going to leave the developing world fighting for the leftover scraps of sovereign debt. All the unwashed masses who had presumed to aspire to first-world standards of living in their lifetimes will now stay mired in their destitution. If we can seal the deal with the next-generation Kyoto Protocol, we'll have them successfully locked in abject poverty forever. The delicious irony that we will claim to be doing it for their sake is just icing on the cake.

Help Me Wrap My Mind Around This

So when the Democratic Party holds a contest to create a billboard denigrating a private citizen for the unpardonable sin of publicly wishing for the failure of an agenda he believes disastrous, this constitutes "leav[ing] behind partisan attack politics"? Good grief.

Fiscal Responsibility, Two Ways

Fearless Comrade has a piece of earth-shattering advice on the economy: let's at least consider listening to people who've been proven right. And while we're at it, let's stop listening to (and appointing to high office!) people who've been repeatedly and embarrassingly wrong:

If an economist didn't see it coming, why listen to anything he says about how to fix it? If you had a heart attack, would you go to the curmudgeonly, slightly bonkers doctor who had been warning you about an impending heart attack for the last two years, or go see the affable, soft-spoken guy who gave you the 2nd opinion and told you everything was fine?

And on the microeconomic side, consider this radical program to revolutionize your family's finances:

Paglia On Limbaugh

Camille Paglia at Salon, writing on the Obama administration and Rush Limbaugh:

President Obama -- in whom I still have great hope and confidence -- has been ill-served by his advisors and staff. Yes, they have all been blindsided and overwhelmed by the crushing demands of the presidency. But I continue to believe in citizen presidents, who must learn by doing, even in a perilous age of terrorism. Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.

Case in point: The orchestrated attack on radio host Rush Limbaugh, which has made the White House look like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys... Has the administration gone mad? This entire fracas was set off by the president himself, who lowered his office by targeting a private citizen by name. Limbaugh had every right to counterattack, which he did with gusto. Why have so many Democrats abandoned the hallowed principle of free speech? Limbaugh, like our own liberal culture hero Lenny Bruce, is a professional commentator who can be as rude and crude as he wants.

And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey. Rush Limbaugh is an embodiment of the American dream: He slowly rose from obscurity to fame on the basis of his own talent and grit. Every penny Rush has earned was the result of his rapport with a vast audience who felt shut out and silenced by the liberal monopoly of major media. As a Democrat and Obama supporter, I certainly do not agree with everything Rush says or does... Nevertheless, I respect Rush for his independence of thought and his always provocative news analysis. He doesn't run with the elite -- he goes his own way.

Paglia actually understands what opposition is all about.

On Japan

Does it feel strange to hear Japan referred to as the world's second economy? They've played such a background role since the last time they tried to, you know, take over the world, that it's easy to forget abut them. But then again, I'm one of those that thinks the Japanese really deserve to play a stronger role in international geopolitics than they recently have, so that probably makes me a fascist in and of itself.

Building Bridges

China is building bridges in Africa (h/t Tom Ricks), both literally and figuratively. The question is, bridges to where?

I am not sure what China is up to in Africa. But I have the nagging thought that we will figure it out in 15 years and be sorry.

Yeah, that thought's been more than just nagging me.

The Special Relationship

Here's a question the White House Press Corps is unlikely to ask: Does the administration confirm or repudiate the claim by an unnamed State Department official that there is no longer a "special relationship" between the U.S. and Great Britain? Because that would be, you know, kind of a story.

On Wal-Mart

A Round Unvarnish'd Tale shares Charles Platt's fascinating apologia for Wal-Mart. I really suggest you read the whole thing. All other things aside, the crux of his argument comes to two points: one, Wal-Mart's business model and treatment of employees are typical of the retail sector in general, and better than any of its competitors; and secondly (emphasis mine)

To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?"

The truth hurts.

On Irony, Again

I find it a bit odd that a computer game I purchased legitimately with my own hard-earned money obstinately refuses to run with the official disc in the drive, but when I rip a disc image and mount it on a virtual drive as if I had pirated it, it runs just fine.

See Slumdog Millionaire, No Matter What Rushdie Says

Salman Rushdie is a brilliant author, but he's apparently a bit deficient in irony. He recently criticized the plot of the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire as a "patently ridiculous conceit". The conceit? That a boy from the slums of Bombay could have an incredible series of experiences in which he learned precisely those facts he needed to win on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". Unlikely? Of course. But "patently ridiculous"? Mind you, this two criticism is from an author whose most celebrated novel begins with two men who survive their jetliner exploding 35,000 over the English Channel, and who won the Booker Prize for a novel whose protagonist has telepathic powers by virtue of his superhumanly runny nose.

Postscript: If you haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, please do. It's easily the best movie I've seen in several years.