Accidental Blogger

Return; Reinstate; Refund

October 24, 2009

We have discussed this topic a couple of times here, the last time was not so long ago. What do modern nations owe each other regarding the return of or restitution for art and artifacts (some of them very ancient and invaluable) removed from their place of origin by way of sale, stealth or superior military power?  In the current climate of globalization, international trade and treaties and resurgent nationalistic feelings, the debate can be long and heated. Usually the demands for restoration come from less wealthy nations whose ancient religious and cultural relics often adorn the glittering halls of museums in far away countries, some of them, past conquerors and colonizers. In recent days Egypt has demanded the return of the priceless (and gorgeous, I should add) bust of Queen Nefertiti which has been in German hands for more than a century. It also wants some items housed in the Louvre to return home from France. Ostensibly, as Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass has claimed, the wish to regain control of these objects of art arises from Egypt's pride in its national history.  But as it turns out, it may also have been influenced to a large extent by a recent political skirmish with the host nations.

BERLIN — As thousands lined up to catch a glimpse of Nefertiti at the newly reopened Neues Museum here, another skirmish erupted in the culture wars. Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, announced that his country wanted its queen handed back forthwith, unless Germany could prove that the 3,500-year-old bust of Akhenaten’s wife wasn’t spirited illegally out of Egypt nearly a century ago….

Globalization, it turns out, has only intensified, not diminished, cultural differences among nations. The forces of nationalism love to exploit culture because it’s symbolic, economically potent and couches identity politics in a legal context that tends to pit David against Goliath.

Mr. Hawass also recently fired a shot at France, demanding the Louvrereturn five fresco fragments it purchased in 2000 and 2003 from a gallery and at auction. They belonged to a 3,200-year-old tomb near Luxor and had been in storage at the museum. Egypt had made the demand before, but this time suspended the Louvre’s long-term excavation at Saqqara, near Cairo, and said it would stop collaborating on Louvre exhibitions.

France got the message. It promised to send the fragments back tout de suite.

It didn’t go unnoticed in Paris, Berlin or Cairo that Mr. Hawass pressed his case about Nefertiti and suspended the excavations by the Louvre just after his country’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, bitterly lost a bid to become director general of the United Nations’ cultural agency, Unesco. The post went late last month to a Bulgarian diplomat instead. Mr. Hosny would have been the first Arab to land the job, and Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, had banked a not insignificant amount of his own prestige on the minister’s getting it.

Also, a feud has begun between India and Albania (Macedonia may enter the fray soon) about the rightful resting place for a more recent relic – the remains of Mother Teresa who was born in a town that was once part of Albania but which now belongs to Macedonia. As everyone knows, from the age of eighteen onwards, Mother Teresa lived and worked in India, where she also died.

India has rejected a demand by the Albanian government for the return of the remains of Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, buried in the city of Calcutta.

"Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land," Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.

A spokeswoman for the nun's Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as "absurd".

Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.

Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.

The row is expected to intensify by August next year – the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth – by which time many commentators expect her to have been canonised as a saint.

And then there is the report of a refund. It is taking place quietly without much fanfare. It seems that a highly touted "educational" merchandize did not quite do what it had promised eager consumers.

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.
Some day there will be liberaltarians. But not today (D)

October 23, 2009

To someone who’s broadly liberal, but doesn’t think so ill of corporations as these people, and on the whole rather approves of free trade and globalization, this Reason article by Kerry Howley should feel like a friendly handshake from across the divide. She sounds libertarian, but in a nice, sensible sort of way:

I call myself a classical liberal in part because I believe that negative liberties, such as Min’s freedom from government interference, are the best means to acquire positive liberties, such as Min’s ability to pursue further education. I also value the kind of culture that economic freedom produces and within which it thrives: tolerance for human variation, aversion to authoritarianism, and what the libertarian economist F.A. Hayek called “a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.”

But I am disturbed by an inverse form of state worship I encounter among my fellow skeptics of government power. This is the belief that the only liberty worth caring about is liberty reclaimed from the state; that social pathologies such as patriarchy and nationalism are not the proper concerns of the individualist; that the fight for freedom stops where the reach of government ends. It was tradition, not merely government, that threatened to limit Min’s range of possible lives. To describe the expanded scope of her agency as merely “freedom from state interference” is to deny the extent of what capitalism has achieved in communist China.

As former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints leader Warren Jeffs can tell you, it’s possible to be an anti-government zealot with no interest whatsoever in individual liberty. If authoritarian fundamentalist compounds are your bag, the words personal agency will hold no magic for you, and Min’s situation will smack of social chaos. But libertarians for whom individualism is important cannot avoid discussions of culture, conformism, and social structure. Not every threat to liberty is backed by a government gun.

The response at the site, both from the first discussant, and especially in the comments section, is far from congenial. People like Jonathan Haidt have said that differences in moral intuition between liberals and libertarians are hard to detect in tests, that the divergence in views really traces back to substantive disagreements about the tendencies of different economic and political institutions. If the commentators at Reason magazine are representative of American libertarians though, that seems implausible to me. These aren’t kinda-sorta liberals who’re distinctively committed to the thought that freedom entails the freedom to be wrong, or who’re atypically sensitive to state power grabs or bureaucratic inefficiency. Going by the views expressed, not to mention the level of vitriol, libertarian_Reason is closer to being a social and cultural conservative who in addition really, really hates the gummint, even when it does things he might like.

Howley does achieve a quite beautiful parody of her adversaries:

Potential Libertarian: What’s libertarianism?
Seavey: A philosophy of freedom and property rights.
Potential Libertarian: Oh, right. Freedom like civil rights?
Seavey: No, not that kind of freedom.
Potential Libertarian: Oh. Freedom like the freedom to be openly gay?
Seavey: No. That has nothing to do with liberty.
Potential Libertarian: Oh. Um…
Seavey: Let’s talk about easements!

Update: on the other hand, this discussion of Howley’s post is not just thoughtful and civilized, it’s carried out largely by people who do fit Haidt’s profile. Perhaps I’ve just rediscovered for myself that comparable blogs can have comments sections of wildly differing quality.
U.S. Government Does Not Assassinate People (Joe)

October 21, 2009

That would be, rumor has it, illegal. The government does, however, engage in this (see also here). But, you know, a secret C.I.A. Predator drone program in which C.I.A. operatives in Virginia are remotely terminating people who rank highly on our "they're terrorists, kill 'em" list (or else on Pakistan's "people we want the U.S. to kill" list, but they're probably bad people, too) is definitely totally probably maybe not at all the same thing as an illegal political assassination. Did I mention that this is all classified as covert and not subject to public scrutiny? And that under the Obama administration the use of drone warfare has increased dramatically?

Fun times we live in, eh?

EDIT: I have no opinion on the wisdom or legality of this program. But I would invite others to comment.

EDIT II: I also have no opinion as to the existence of this alleged program. People are also invited to comment on that.
A Diplomatic Diary: Maddening Nigerians, Dishonest Nicaraguans, Lewd Thais, Unimpressive Canadians …

October 21, 2009

And bloviating bureaucrats! Recently disclosed letters from UK diplomats to their home office in London reveal the contempt and exasperation they harbored for their foreign hosts. To their credit, the supercilious officials sniffed equally impatiently at cocktail parties and the "stuffiness" of their own ministry.

LONDON – It's not exactly diplomatic – details of what British ambassadors really think about their foreign hosts were disclosed Sunday following the release of a series of frank, and sometimes outright rude, letters to London from embassies around the world.

Canadians are deeply unimpressive, Nigerians are maddening, Nicaraguans often dishonest and the Thais commonly lewd, British diplomats claim in notes sent to Britain's Foreign Office over the past five decades.

The letters were disclosed to the BBC under Freedom of Information laws.

Lord Moran, high commissioner in Ottawa between 1981 and 1984, claimed Canadians had limited talents.

"Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do – in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever – tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once," Moran wrote in his letter, according to files released to the BBC.

The letters also reveal how diplomats were bored by endless rounds of cocktail parties, and exasperated by the British government's failure to shake off its stuffy image overseas.

Until 2006, ambassadors retiring from their post or moving country traditionally sent a valedictory dispatch to London, offering their candid personal assessment of the country in which they had served.

In a 1967 memo, Roger Pinsent, Britain's outgoing ambassador to Nicaragua, was scathing in his criticism.

"There is, I fear, no question that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcoholic of the Latin Americans," Pinsent wrote.

Two years later, David Hunt – then high commissioner to Nigeria – said the West African country's leaders had "a maddening habit of always choosing the course of action which will do the maximum damage to their own interests."

"Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery," Hunt claimed in his letter.

Anthony Rumbold, Britain's ambassador to Thailand from 1965 to 1967, mocked his hosts for an apparent lack of culture. "They have no literature, no painting and only a very odd kind of music; their sculpture, ceramics and dancing are borrowed from others, and their architecture is monotonous and interior decoration hideous," Rumbold wrote.

"Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all," he said.

Other diplomats used their letters to criticize British bureaucracy, and the sometimes dull world of international relations.

The rest of the diplomatic report card here. I guess bureaucrats are the same everywhere – always pompous and mostly contemptuous of what they are in charge of overseeing. The Brits I suspect, are especially jaded. Although Nicaragua, Nigeria (and other African countries) and Thailand bear the brunt of bitter and hostile criticism, I find the condescending assessment of Canada as a nation satisfied with utter mediocrity, a withering low blow. Wonder if it will prompt Ottawa to opt out of the Commonwealth.
Praising with a forked tongue

October 21, 2009

Gotta love the GOP ignoramuses. I mean, what would we be doing here without the endless stream of gaffes, Freudian slips and calculated outrages that emanate from the right wing corridors of power? This one comes from South Carolina:

After his words attracted national attention and drew condemnation from a Jewish state senator, a South Carolina Republican official is now apologizing for co-writing a newspaper op-ed that described Jews as penny-pinchers.

James Ulmer, chairman of the Orangeburg County GOP, said he made a "great error" in the op-ed, which he penned along with Bamberg County GOP chairman Edwin Merwin.

The piece, which ran Sunday in the Orangeburg Times & Democrat, was meant to defend South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint's position against congressional earmarks.

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," the piece read. "By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation's pennies and trying to preserve our country's wealth and our economy's viability to give all an opportunity to succeed." (emphasis mine)

Oops! At least he didn't go into the subject of the powerful international banking cabal that controls the world through invisible financial strings.
Four Years of Fun, Frolic and Occasional Fury

October 19, 2009

Today Accidental Blogger enters its fifth year. For the past four years my co-bloggers and I have shared our thoughts with each other and our readers, doing our bit to add to the cacophony of the blogosphere, whether or not anyone was listening. On the past three anniversaries, I reported on the health of the blog and some of the more interesting moments that we encountered on our way. This year I will let my co-bloggers weigh in on what they think of being Accidental Bloggers. Also, instead of posting one of my own paintings, I am attaching a festive image associated with the Indian festival of Diwali which was celebrated last Saturday. It is interesting and heartening to note that despite the multiple voices that have been added since its inception, the character of this blog remains true to what I had envisioned when I first launched it as a solo effort in October, 2005. Thanks to my co-bloggers and our readers for staying with A.B. over the years.

The authors' comments appear in the order that they were sent to me.

Joe:

It's hard to believe that A.B. has been around for four years. In that time, lots of things have changed: I went from being an aspiring law student to a lawyer. Anna and Andrew got married. Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush. And yet, how does the saying go? The more things change, the more they stay the same? So it will no doubt be comforting to my co-bloggers and our readers that, for example, Dean remains, self-describedly, an unrelenting curmudgeon. Or, take the recent balloon-boy incident. Among other things, I have been complaining about the media and their news creation/reporting since I started blogging. As Ezra nicely sums it up: "it certainly served as a perfect metaphor for cable news: America spent hours riveted by a powerful and gripping story that turned out to be totally meaningless, and will have no significant impact on anybody's lives going forward."

Sujatha:

We all love to tell our stories and anecdotes, wax profoundly and eloquently, or indulge in occasional silliness. We are thoughtful, mordant, indignant, pedantic, satirical, political, conspiratorial, as the mood takes us. We are the bloggers at Accidental Blogger, and are having a blast blogging and discussing here. Happy Blogversary!

Dean:

A lot of discussion concerning A.B. over the years has taken place "under the radar," via email between the authors, usually with Ruchira at the hub of the network. We get caught up in a topic, have at it among ourselves, and then–oops, sorta accidentally–we end up publishing the proceedings as a post and comments. I seem to remember that this is how I met Ruchira, by introducing myself individually via email, but in fact it could have been the reverse. I might have posted a comment or two in response to one of her posts, and then heard from her later via email. This situation continues. I'll often vent to her directly, and then she'll remind me to "Comment, please." Of course, I've never actually met her, nor any of the other authors, except Anna and Andrew, who coincidentally moved to the area not two years ago. I never thought much of Howard Rheingold's touchy-feely notion of a virtual community, but there is something both comforting and perplexing about the familiarity that grows among remotely dispersed people who talk to each other occasionally using digital telecommunications. It goes without saying that A.B., the blog, couldn't exist without all the wires, silicon chips, tubes (pneumatic and vacuum), and protocols that are the 'net. Friendships or acquaintances with Ruchira, Sujatha, Joe, somebody who goes by D, another who goes by M, Narayan, or the folks who regularly comment could have arisen without any of that, but likely would not have done so.

D:

Hullo all, and it's lovely to be accidentally blogging, interacting with such excellent co-bloggers and commenters. A big huzzah then for our gracious host. And it's a privilege to have an audience for my rants, of which I promise more in the future.

Andrew:

I really value A.B. as a place where people from around the country can gather to talk about current events without the excessive snark or knowingness of a lot of the political blogs. And as a jazzhead, I appreciate its free-form nature, i.e., the opportunity to bounce ideas about musicians off of the various co-authors. Lastly, I first fell in love with Ruchira's writing from her eviscerations of Thomas Friedman — though she generally keeps her tone level, it's still a pleasure to see her let it rip every once in a while.

( Editor's note: "D" is our newest author who came on board in the past year . So far five authors have sent me their thoughts. If and when I hear from Anna and Narayan, I will publish their comments as updates. Or perhaps we will hear from them in the comments section.)
Don’t get battered; don’t get pregnant.

October 16, 2009

We have all heard about cancer, heart disease, diabetes and even mental illness creating road blocks for people trying to get health insurance. Guess what else can qualify as a "pre-existing condition" for some insurance companies to deny you coverage? The possibility of becoming pregnant and being the victim of domestic violence!

When Peggy Robertson went shopping for a more affordable health insurance plan for her self-employed husband and two young boys, she ran into an unexpected problem: the birth of her son Luke in 2006 by caesarean section. The healthy young mother was shocked when the Golden Rule Insurance company denied her coverage due to the C-Section birth of her son. "I called Golden Rule and they said that if I would get sterilized, they would then be able to offer insurance to me."

and —

With the White House zeroing in on the insurance-industry practice of discriminating against clients based on pre-existing conditions, administration allies are calling attention to how broadly insurers interpret the term to maximize profits.

It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
When good physicists go rogue (D)

October 16, 2009
The New York Times has an article about someone who thinks the higgs boson is traveling back in time to stop the Large Hadron Collider (where I do my research) from working. As evidence, we are reminded of project delays, the fact that the Superconducting Super Collider project was canceled in the nineties, and that time travel isn’t strictly impossible. We can confirm the hypothesis by drawing cards from a large deck to see if unlikely combinations arise.
Read the article, but only to marvel at the burning stupid it summarizes (the paper itself is here). It’s just a dreadful paper, and you don’t even need much physics to know so. In fact, time travel is hardly the biggest problem here:
- Not the slightest reason is given for why a higgs might want to not be made
- There’s no explanation for why it would work its magic by playing puckish trickster pranks on physicists and engineers.
- In fact, there’s no consideration at all given to *HOW* a particle would happen to tweak the brains and bodies of tens of thousands of people (including members of congress when they canceled the SSC) in just such ways as would preserve the ordinary operations of thought. You must have people thinking and acting in utterly prosaic ways as they decide whether and how to build accelerators (should this connection between two parts must be made of two-centimeter thick copper or one? Maybe construction on that sub-project ought to be shelved to speed up turn-on…) while all the time they’re being tweaked to achieve something distinctly un-ordinary – the failure of a large-scale multi billion dollar project. This sounds like the adaptive, reasoning, intelligent operation of an Evil Agent, not the steady, simple, lawful action of a particle obeying fundamental laws. What do the authors imagine the tee-shirt equation-of-motion for an adaptive saboteur looks like? Perhaps as a toy model they can present it evolving forward in time, if backwards seems too hard.
- The so-called argument from reverse-causation would apply to anything that has ever faced difficulties. Maybe the universe also hates the big dig or the Kyoto Protocol and tries its damndest to keep them from working.
- The probabilistic reasoning is fatuous – how are we to tell “Ooh, we picked a rare card! The higgs really wants not to be discovered!” from “Man, this card is rare. We must paint Botswana purple at once!” from “Such a splendiferous card! Surely the saints are telling us Roman Polanski is innocent and that the Riemann Hypothesis is false”? In the paper, this magic is accomplished by writing text on the cards. The authors haven’t seen fit to inform us whether words in any language reach the holy ears of the higgs, or if it likes only English. I imagine we are to be direct and straightforward in all our questions – it’s a spin-free boson, get it?
The physics itself doesn’t help one whit – there’s no more than a smidge of formalism about frameworks where you can have backward propagation in time. At least real papers on the subject treat the attendant issues in depth and seriously. Here it’s three or four essentially content free word-equations. The funny thing is there are much saner (and ubiquitous) ways of writing theories where the universe (or a part thereof) has a way of getting what it “wants” – you write an equation with a potential function, and regions of high potential are disfavored. So, the universe “wants” to keep us from escaping the surly bonds of earth by using gravity, if you want to put it that way.

The paper essentially serves as proof, if it was ever needed, that even people embedded in large scientific research communities may temporarily believe astonishingly foolish things when they’re deprived of the means for keeping them sane, busy and active: data, if possible data that don’t agree with what you already know.
Where has he been?

October 15, 2009

An interracial couple has been denied a marriage license by a justice of peace in Louisiana. Keith Bardwell, the man refusing to issue the license, claims he is not a racist but that he is concerned for the well being of any future children the couple may have.

HAMMOND, La. — A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

So what does Bardwell fear may happen to the children? Why, one of them might become the president of the United States, for one thing!
Midweek Linkery

October 13, 2009

Swine Flu Once Again:

This came to me via e-mail – a doctor's guide to protect against the influenza virus, H1N1included. The doctor is Indian born and you will note that his pointers are almost identical to my own advice, posted here a couple of months ago.

The only portals of entry of the H1N1 virus are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it’s almost impossible not coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

Texas Governor Rick Perry's Arson On Decency and Compassion:

Rick "Goodhair" Perry, the governor of my state has chalked up several despicable antics on his right wing resume. He opposes health care reform, federal subsidies for job creation (although he used federal dollars to repair the governor's mansion) and Obama's speech to school children. He supports teaching creationism in science classes, prayer in public schools, every gun law favored by the NRA and paranoid vigilantes and had at one time threatened to secede from the nation. These days however, Perry is feeling a bit hot under the collar. An investigation is currently under way to determine whether the governor is culpable in the wrongful execution of a man. Even in execution-happy Texas, the case is drawing a lot of attention. Perry has impeded the investigation by firing three members of the panel looking into the charges.

A report concluding a faulty investigation led to a Texas man's execution won't be reviewed by a state board as planned Friday after Governor Rick Perry abruptly removed three people from the panel, forcing the meeting's cancellation.

Perry replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two of its eight other board members Wednesday. The upheaval on the commission came just 48 hours before it was to consider a report critical of the arson finding leading to Cameron Todd Willingham's execution for the deaths of his three daughters in a 1991 fire.

Baltimore-based arson expert Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, concluded the arson finding was scientifically unsupported and investigators at the scene had "poor understandings of fire science." His report has bolstered arguments from advocacy groups that Willingham was innocent and wrongly executed.

The Flushing Brides of India:

In the northern Indian state of Haryana, some prospective brides are calling the shots in what used to be a wholly male dominated marriage market. The power reversal may have come to pass partly due to the fact that Haryana is also one of the states which now has an unnaturally skewed male : female ratio (males outnumbering females) due to widespread selective abortions of female fetuses. No, it is not about dowry. The young women are concerned about personal hygiene and convenience – they want to marry men who can provide them with indoor plumbing. The girls' serious battle cry is, "Show us the loo, before I say 'I do.'"

Courtship can be an intricate business in India, but the mothers of the northern state of Haryana have a simple message for men who call on their daughters: “No toilet, no bride.”

The slogan – often lengthened in Hindi to “If you don't have a proper lavatory in your house, don't even think about marrying my daughter” – has been plastered across villages in the region as part of a drive to boost the number of pukka facilities. In a country where more households have TV sets than lavatories, it is one of the most successful efforts to combat the chronic shortage of proper plumbing.

That is probably partly because of the country's skewed sex ratio, with 8 per cent more men than women, leading to a “bride shortage”. Woman generally have also become more vocal in their resentment at having to relieve themselves outside, giving brides more leverage in premarital bargaining.

The Supercollidor That Is Saving Us From A Terrible Fate By Shutting Down:

I will let D explain this one. (But read it anyway)
The Texas marriage trap

October 11, 2009

Divorce is good for marriage! At least, that is proving to be true for a gay married couple in Texas, as a current court case here illustrates.

HOUSTON — A judge in Texas paved the way for a court battle over the state’s ban on same-sex marriage when she ruled this week that two men married in another state can get divorced in Dallas.

The state attorney general said Friday that he would appeal the decision, even as gay rights advocates applauded the judge, Tena Callahan of Family District Court, for declaring that the state’s four-year-old ban on same-sex marriages and civil unions violated the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

The case highlights a subtle way gay men and lesbians often face complications when it comes to marriage: gay couples who have managed to marry in the few states where it is legal have trouble divorcing and dividing their property if they move to a state where it is not.

The case in Texas involves two men who married in Cambridge, Mass., in 2006, then moved to Dallas the following year when one of them was transferred by his company, a lawyer for the couple, Peter A. Schulte, said.

The men decided to divorce in January and reached an amicable agreement about splitting up their house, cars and other property. But they had to file for divorce in Texas, because, like most other states, Massachusetts allows only residents to sue for divorce, Mr. Schulte said.

The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, a Republican, took the unusual step of intervening in the divorce proceeding last January. Mr. Abbott asserted that the state court could not dissolve the marriage because the Texas Constitution, as amended in 2005, did not recognize any marriage unless it was between a man and a woman.

But Mr. Schulte said his clients, who were identified in court documents as J.B. and H.B., had not sought to challenge the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. They were asking only to split up without having to return to Cambridge, as a heterosexual couple would have been able to do.

“It’s not fair to make them uproot their lives, move back to another state, wait a year and then file for divorce,” Mr. Schulte said.

What a perfect case of Catch 22! The gay couple could not have married in Texas but having got married in another state where the nuptials were legal, they cannot dissolve the marriage in the Lone Star State where they now reside, when things have fallen apart in their relationship. The non-recognition of the marriage makes a divorce impossible – a painful paradox to say the least. Naturally, many other right wing Texas law makers, Governor Rick Perry and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison included, have climbed on to the attorney general's "no divorce" band wagon. The funny thing is that H.B. and J.B., as the two petitioners are named in the case, are not challenging Texas' ban on gay marriage. They just want out of their own union but are being forced to stay in a state of perpetual wedded "non-bliss" by those who wouldn't have allowed them to marry in the first place.

Professor Andrew Koppelman of Northwestern University School of Law has warned of exactly such a scenario in his book Same Sex, Different States.

Must a state in which gay marriage is not legal recognize such a marriage performed in another state? The Constitution does not require recognition in all cases, but it does forbid states from nullifying family relationships based in other states, or from making themselves havens for people who are trying to escape obligations to their spouses and children.

So if Abbott and company have their way in denying J.B and H.B. a divorce, Texas could become a haven for gay men and women who walk away from a legal marriage in another state and default on spousal or child support. And to make matters even more complicated, they could even enter into heterosexual marriages in Texas without the fear of being charged with the crime of bigamy!
The Nobel President

October 9, 2009

President Barack Obama is this year's surprise winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a surprise for me too when I woke up this morning and saw the news. It is unusual for world leaders to win this honor so early in their career without much of a political or social legacy to their credit.

OSLO — The Nobel Committee announced in Oslo that it has awarded the annual peace prize to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

The award cited in particular Mr. Obama’s effort to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal. “He has created a new international climate,” the committee said.

The announcement shocked people from Norway to the White House. “There has been no discussion, nothing at all,” said Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, in a brief telephone interview.

Mr. Emanuel said that he had not yet spoken directly to the president. A senior administration official said in an e-mail message that his press secretary, Robert Gibbs Mr. Gibbs called the White House shortly before 6 a.m. and woke the president with the news.

The president was humbled to be selected by the committee,” the official said, without adding anything further.

The White House has made no official comment.

Well, the news must be particularly heartening for the president. What with things getting rather messy in Afghanistan, on health care and in Copenhagen, he must have been feeling beleaguered lately. Even Saturday Night Live has turned on him.

So, congratulations to President Obama for becoming a Nobelist. Hope this energizes him to go out and fight for the promises he made during the campaign. Otherwise, I feel like Glenn Greenwald is feeling – a bit skeptical.
The Love of an Old Book (Sujatha)

October 9, 2009

It was a small volume tossed carelessly in with the rest of the frayed
spines on the Public Library bookshelf : "Love of Seven Dolls" by Paul
Gallico.
He was one of my favorite authors as a teen, and this was
one book that intrigued me, with a faded rendition of a full-skirted
girl looking at what appeared to be a puppet show on the cover.
I borrowed it frequently, whenever I felt the urge, over the next several years. I must have been
the only person in the city who took out that particular book, judging
from my ability to always locate it on the shelf, whenever I wanted it.
The
years passed, but it remained one of the books seared in my memory,
even though the story, in retrospect, doesn't seem that remarkable now.
On a rereading, some of the story seems rather dated, but the charm of
the main plot still shines through.
After much deliberation, I
decided to see if I could locate a new copy of it for my home library.
It was out of print, only available through second-hand book sellers.
So I turned to the likes of abebooks.com and alibris.com and placed an
order for the least expensive hard-bound edition I could find.
The
book arrived, among others that I had ordered at the same time. This
had a faux leather cover, with the name of the book and the mysterious
legend ALYCE PEKORS at the bottom right.
I couldn't resist checking for the name on Google. And, the history of this particular carefully-preserved copy fell in place.
The
original owner of this book was Miss Alyce Pekors, the longest serving
US civil servant in Singapore, who died in Michigan last November.
From a newsletter with a memorial article:
"Of
course, much of the details of her “working” life prior to taking the
administrative role with the Navy in Singapore were never discussed
among her many friends. She brushed off enquiries with Lauren Bacall
like aplomb. By her very nature, she was reminiscent of an interesting
earlier era.
Whether it was
her Isadora Duncan impersonation as she drove her vintage MG around
town (of course, it wasn’t vintage when she first bought it), or her
Givenchy and pearls Audrey Hepburn look when she entertained, Alyce was
always one classy lady."
She must have loved the book very much to have taken pains to have the original paperback replaced by a custom hard-binding.
Now
the book sits on my shelf, bringing with it a whiff of the chequered
life of the one who owned it before me. We are strangely bound across
space and time, through this slim black volume with gold lettering.

————–

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

Addendum from the comments:
I found the details about the particular copy of the book fascinating,
"Even more than the original book that led to this unexpected discovery of Alyce Pekors.
Here's what I pieced out from what I read about her. She was a huge fan
of Hepburn and Leslie Caron (the latter acted in a 1953 movie called
Lili, loosely based on the Gallico novelette.) In her career, she may
in fact have been a precursor of sorts to the Valerie Plames, a hidden
asset whose role can be never be revealed except in private. She was a
bowling champion in S'pore long before I was even born, earning mention
in the newspapers of the day.
It might have been wonderful to have
known her in person, but I now have to settle for making a picture of
her in my mind based on the obituaries."
Desperately seeking happiness

October 7, 2009

I don't want to come across as cynical or grumpy. In fact, I am for the most part a happy person and have nothing against other happy people. After all, most human enterprises, be it work, pleasure or leisure, are geared toward increasing the happiness quotient in our life's ledger book. Civilizing efforts through the ages – family, community, religion, philosophy, scientific and technological advances, medicine and government were organized and operated around the notion that we should employ these entities to identify what is "good" for us and what make us happy.

In recent years, the concept of happiness has spilled over from the confines of philosophy, literature, religion and the psychologist's office – from the merely personal to a collective concept. I first wrote about the broader definition of happiness when I introduced here a very interesting book by Anthony and Charles Kenny a few years ago. Government agencies too are now concerning themselves with happiness, going beyond economic indicators such as the GDP or the magic of the free market. Cut and dried number crunching is giving way to assessing the more nebulous Well Being Indices. Leading the way in diagnosing national cheer was the tiny country of Bhutan. I wrote about it here and the New York Times had a four page article on Bhutan's attempt at redefining prosperity based not merely on wealth but also the happiness co-efficient and coining the new political phrase Gross National Happiness.

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

It is not surprising that Bhutan, a Buddhist country, is astute enough to appreciate that happiness goes beyond personal material wealth. Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking the help of three Nobel winning economists to educate his own country on what constitutes a healthy and happy society.

So far so good. But what about the quest for individual happiness? Americans have for long relentlessly pursued personal fulfillment (gratification?) as defined by religious leaders, inspirational speakers, media personalities, financial institutions and peddlers of products and services. Do happiness seeking individuals add up to a happier society overall? Not necessarily, says an article in Newsweek. Paradoxically, the obsessive pursuit of personal happiness may in the end, prove to be an obstacle to the very state of over all bliss people seek, say some observers of social trends. The anxiety to be happy (Oprah style) may in fact make us somewhat self obsessed and detract from collective contentment. The article makes some good points but I am afraid that in comparing Americans to Europeans or other "happy" people, there may be some risk of conflating complacency with good spirits. I am copying Julie Baird's article in its entirety below the fold because Newsweek items have a tendency to "disappear" after a while. The most cogent point about happiness appears at the very end. It is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable woman, who obsessed very little about her own happiness and made improving the happiness index of others her life's mission. She is said to have observed that happiness "is not a goal, it's a byproduct."

(more…)
The long arm of justice and overcompensating for one’s genealogy

October 4, 2009

I don't know if you are aware of or have paid any attention to the raging debate over the arrest of director Roman Polanski in Switzerland at the behest of the California courts on charges that stem from the rape of a child thirty years ago. The facts of the case are little in dispute but the morality of arresting the culprit, now an old man, is being argued from all sides. Many sympathetic to the film maker are invoking moral philosophy, classical literature and the perpetrator's own life story in order to find exculpatory reasons on his behalf. For example, here, here and here.

For others the case is simply one of crime, punishment and the law – the moral issues are undebatable (I agree). It is also worth noting that the best no-nonsense articles from this angle are written by women – here, here and here.

I am hardly surprised by the Polanski debate and even less by who his supporters are. The narcissistic and seemingly liberal world of the arts in general and cinema in particular, is notorious for what it deems appropriate for the common man and non-artistes and what it feels should apply to its own glitterati set. But here is an article unrelated to Polanski which did take me completely by surprise and the underlying psychology and morality of which is far more interesting to ponder than whether a 76 year old lecher should go to jail or not. (links to the articles in the Telegraph, The Village Voice and The Smart Set via 3 Quarks Daily)

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him.

"Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

I am curious now. Will Ahmadinejad /Sabourjian be allowed to migrate to Israel based on his ancestry, in case the Iranian elections are overturned and he finds life in Iran a bit uncomfortable?

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