Accidental Blogger is happy to announce the addition of a new author to the current stable of six. Our roster now includes a seventh blogger who prefers for now to go by the name of "D." Please see his profile here. I invited D to join us after reading his many incisive and interesting comments on another blog. D hasn't told me what he will be writing about. Like all the other authors here, it will be whatever suits his fancy. (I have requested him to spare us the minutiae of particle physics though) We are looking forward to his debut on our pages. Welcome D!
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A few weeks ago, I saw the intriguing works of twin painters Amr
it and Rabindra, better known as the Singh Twins via Asian Window. They have applied the techniques of Indian miniatures to contemporary Indo-British life, making for an intriguing and what they like to term a 'Past Modern' approach to painting.
They use the same vivid and highly detailed composition and techniques as the Indian miniaturists of yore, examplified here in the Padshahnama pictures of court life in the age of the Mughals.
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With the recent news that David Souter is retiring from the Supreme Court, President Obama will have his first opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court Justice. Putting aside speculation on what Obama might in fact do, I want to comment briefly on the type of ideological appointment he ought to make (this ignores other characteristics, such as gender, race, and legal background, all of which are important to varying degrees).
There are basically two major options: One, appoint a strong liberal. Two, appoint, a wishy-washy liberal. At least in the short run, I think the latter is actually the better option.
Justice Kennedy is the median vote, with Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter/Replacement comprising the liberal wing; Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito comprise the conservative wing. So Obama can't actually move the median until one of the conservatives (probably Scalia) or Kennedy himself retires. Given that, the question is how to move the law to the left.
Appointing another Bill Brennan or Thurgood Marshall would be gratifying, but it would not move the law to the left. Recent empirical work by Lee Epstein and others on supermedian Justices suggests that appointment of a moderate, say, right of Breyer but left of Kennedy, would dilute Kennedy's power by allowing Moderate Replacement to write some of the controversial opinions (since there would now be two median Justices) — while the outcomes would be the same, those opinions would likely be, in minor ways, more agreeable to the left. More important, Kennedy would be more likely to join the Court's liberal wing, and on occasion he would. That is because he is more likely to accommodate or to be swayed by an ideoligcally proximate Justice than by an ideologically distant one. There is a pretty big gap from Breyer to Kennedy, and from Kennedy to Alito. A far-left appointment would decrease the odds of Kennedy voting for the preferred liberal result in the cases where these things matter.
At minimum, there is reason to not be dismayed if Obama appoints a moderate rather than a liberal (by which I mean ideology in Court terms; in U.S. politics generally, of course, Scalia and Thomas are radically right-wing, Kennedy is a conservative rather than a moderate, and even Ginsburg is moderate or slightly liberal [Stevens is more of a liberal, but still not a far-left liberal in the way that Scalia is a far-right conservative]).
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This is probably the best-case scenario for Democrats that I have seen and believe to be plausible:
Rather than announcing that he has agreed to change his views to align
with the majority across the board, Specter understandably at least
wants to make it seem that he is maintaining his
independent-mindedness. The Democrats have surely (one hopes) felt him
out in terms of his likelihood to support them on other issues on which
Specter's positions are not yet public. (On the other hand, as Michael
Dorf pointed out earlier this week, Specter's move could also make it more difficult to win confirmation of Obama's judicial nominations.)This could end up mattering, in that the Democrats might have just lined
up a crucial additional vote on some unspecified contentious future
issues, and in return they allowed Specter to continue to say that he
is not selling out — for anything other than the seat itself.60 is a magic number, it seems to me, only if the 60 are all on the same page. If not, the "moderates," the purple Democrats (Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter) and the purple Republicans (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins) are going to keep calling the shots. Filibusters will typically play out the same way. I know a lot of people were excited about this — but why?
(It may also be worth noting that Specter was going to lose to his far-right Republican challenger in the Pennsylvania primary. The way PA has gone, that person surely would have lost the Senate election to the Democrat running against him. So at mid-term elections, this is, in a sense, a loss for our side.)
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Putting aside criticism of the bizarre sports-world obsession with "purity," there's another angle to the Alex Rodriguez steroids "scandal." As I previously remarked:
He obviously said what his agent and his lawyer and his other people
(whoever they may be) told him to say. But why did they tell him to
admit to only those three years? He confessed to a lot, but won't even
gain credibility points because of the way he did it. So either he
should have said that he also took steroids before those three years in
Texas, or he should have just said "I took steroids; the report of a
positive test is accurate. I apologize to my fans" and left it at
that. I just think this is fascinating. Alex Rodriguez admitted much
more misconduct than any other professional athlete ever has, and yet
he's being attacked by columnists (who have praised those other
athletes for their own forced, incomplete disclosures) for not being
forthcoming enough. He admitted to more than the reporters had
evidence of in order to make his story believable, and as a result no
one believes his story. How does this happen?Well, new reports indicate that A-Rod used performance enhancing drugs while in high school and while with the Yankees, i.e., both before and after the three years with the Texas Rangers that he admitted.
The moral of the story? Tell the truth.
Okay, just kidding. The real moral of the story is that if you're going to lie, lie well. No one is going to believe that you only used steroids in Dallas for three years in response to the pressure from the $252 million contract you juts signed, but did not use steroids in response to the greater pressure of (1) trying to get drafted (high school), (2) trying to make it in the big leagues (Seattle), (3) trying to get a quarter-billion dollar contract (late Seattle), or (4) playing for the most scrutinized team in the U.S. (New York Yankees). Further, even if people were inclined to believe your preposterous lies in the absence of proof, given that this was such a big story and people already found some evidence which prompted your first big confession, it's pretty likely that people are going to find more evidence about other times you used PEDs.
In sum: First, make it believable. Second, don't lie about something that is naturally going to be disproved.
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Who is the most influential person of 2009? Instead of relying on assorted "experts" Time magazine decided to open this year's annual polling on this topic to the "general public." And just as democracy is messy, so are on-line public polls. Totally unexpectedly, the top position has gone to someone named "moot." (There is more to moot than meets the eye. Read the story). The following nine positions are equally stunning. According to the "public" the ten most influential people of 2009 are:
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Moot
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Anwar Ibrahim
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Rick Warren
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Baitullah Mehsud
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Larry Brilliant
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Eric Holder
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Carlos Slim
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Angela Markel
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Kobe Bryant
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Evo Morales
How many of these have you heard of? Okay, at least some I am sure. A couple are leaders of their countries (Morales, Markel), one is the newly appointed AG of the US Justice Dept who beat out his widely popular, better known and vastly more influential boss in the White House. Then there is also a Christian pastor (#3), a wanted terrorist (#4) and a basketball player (#9). # 2 is someone I have never heard of. What gives? I guess this will teach Time (and other media outlets involved in list making and wishing to influence public opinions) a lesson in at last figuring out that the "public" is not only quite often ignorant but sometimes, as in this case, also mischievous. NASA learnt the same lesson when it opened up the naming of the International Space Station to public voting and was mortified when it ended up with Stephen Colbert. I suspect that this result too was skewed by the parochial partiality of the voting public.
Barack Obama does figure among the top 100 most influential persons of 2009. He is at a hopelessly feeble # 37 … well below Britney Spears, Jon Stewart, Ron Paul, Tina Fey and some other knowns and unknowns.
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The loudest support for the unjust Iraq war came from right wing draft dodgers and armchair warriors. Now that Bush-Cheney's torture memos are under scrutiny, some supporters of illegal methods of interrogation are declaring that the decision to define the nature and the morality of torture should be left to non-combatant bureaucrats and not those who have faced the ordeal themselves. Boggles the rational mind but here is a conversation between a couple of commentators on Fox News radio:
ANDREW NAPOLITANO (co-host): You may not know the name unless you live in California. Jay Bybee was a professional researcher for the Justice Department when he authored the principal of — the main one — of the torture memos.
President Bush awarded him by appointing him to the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. That's the level of appellate court just below the Supreme Court. He was appointed to the 9th Circuit, which covers the western third of the United States.
There's a lot of pressure on Jay Bybee — on Judge Bybee, now, because these memoranda, which obviously were not known about under — during the time of his confirmation came — came out.
Here's what John McCain had to say about it yesterday.
JOHN McCAIN http://clip: A resignation would be a decision he would have to make on his own, but he falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting fundamentally what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions.
Plus, under President Reagan, we signed a agreement against torture. We're in violation of that.
BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Oh, come on. Number one, we all know John McCain is not a lawyer; this guy is. Number two, Judge, you knew at that time, this is —
NAPOLITANO: This is your guy, John McCain.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, now. Come on.
KILMEADE: No, he's not my guy. I like John McCain. I respect him. But there's a lot of issues I don't understand. Plus, he should not be allowed to talk on torture because he is clearly somebody who went through unspeakable pain and punishment —
NAPOLITANO: You mean, he shouldn't be allowed to talk — he has an opinion like everybody else. He represents the state of Arizona.
KILMEADE: But he was tortured. He was tortured. And —
NAPOLITANO: Therefore, his views on torture are —
KILMEADE: — are skewed.
NAPOLITANO: — irrelevant because of what happened —
KILMEADE: — are skewed.
NAPOLITANO: — in 'nam? I think his views are particularly telling because he's been through this kind of thing.
KILMEADE: But what do you think he's going to be — pro-torture —
NAPOLITANO: No.
KILMEADE: — after he's been through it?
NAPOLITANO: Of course, he's not going to be pro-torture.
KILMEADE: And plus, I don't think this is torture. And they don't subscribe to the Geneva Conventions. We had this debate in 2002. You were on our set — you were on constantly saying, "Look, they don't — right — the way the courts look at it right now, they do not fall under the Geneva Conventions." And that was what they were going under.
NAPOLITANO: I never said they didn't fall under the Geneva Conventions.
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Andrew wants someone to throw a shoe at Republican minority leader John Boehner. Well, it looks like a flying footwear has been launched toward Boehner's head by one of his own party. Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter is about to switch parties. With Al Franken almost certain to win a Democratic seat from Minnesota, this will hand Barack Obama a super majority in the US Senate. Hopefully the new arithmetic will embolden wishy washy red state Democrats like Ben Nelson (NE) and Evan Bayh (IN) to vote more reliably with their own party. Bluish Republicans like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine too can breathe easier. Here's hoping that Democratic leaders can now bring the party together which at times is a lot like herding cats.
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Kosher Coke is great, so isn't it even better if there are more such options? I was at Target today and saw a couple of interesting new Pepsi products: Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, "made with natural sugar."
Sadly, it looks like these may not stick around: they're scheduled to be available only until June 13. But if the response is positive enough, who knows? They're not going to leave money on the table if they think it's there to be had!
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Krugman is disturbed by this trend. Something about how Wall Street fat cats don't add value to society, and financial firms are public utilities now so this is inappropriate. Now, I'm not saying that he's wrong, but his focus on the economy right now is a bit peculiar — obviously he hasn't heard about the global pig flu pandemic.
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I have been sitting on a couple of blog posts that I wanted to expand upon since they appeared on 3 Quarks Daily on the same day in the beginning of March. Both pertain to food, both are written by Indian born authors who muse on Asian food habits and their relation to religion, culture and the versatility of the human taste buds.
The first article is written by Namit Arora who is familiar to our readers through his comments and blog linked on A.B. Namit took his readers through the eating habits of two large Asian countries – India and China, geographic neighbors with ancient histories and vastly disparate culinary cultures. He focuses on the prevalent natural, religious, and philosophical climates that may have influenced the choice of food of the two peoples, in particular, meat eating and vegetarianism. Read the article and comments below and see if you find the arguments convincing. Although Namit did not address the morality of eating meat in this article, I know that he had the thought in mind (he admitted to me as much in an email) as I myself do occasionally. If I were to ponder this issue, the practice of killing animals for food or other consumer products, I will have to answer some of the following:
- Is it an "all or nothing" proposition? Is killing another sentient being for our comfort and appetite immoral under all circumstances?
- Does the mere fact of eating amount to immorality or is the suffering of the animal the more important issue?
- Does eating less meat and therefore killing fewer animals count for moral Brownie points? Do waste and over indulgence count towards immorality of meat eating? (the US population will fail miserably)
- Does the "life" of the slaughtered animal matter – (free grazing vs factory farmed) as much as its death?
- Do "compassionate" killing methods count in alleviating the moral pangs?
- If we ate the meat of an animal that died "accidentally" without any affirmative killing agent involved, is that ethical?
- Why can't we eat our dogs and cats but can slaughter the chicken and cows in the backyard who too can become like our pets when we take care of them?
- Should we look upon ourselves as biologically inclined meat eaters like many other carnivores / omnivores and merely accept our place in the food chain? Or are humans, as highly evolved beings with ethics and morality a significant guiding principle in the thought process, be able to buck our "natural" inclinations and formulate our eating habits to accommodate the rights of other animals?
As an animal lover I have oftentimes grappled with the above thoughts. I have answers to some and not to others. But I continue to eat meat. If some day, the fact of another animal dying (being killed) for my food starts to weigh too much on my conscience, I will indeed become a vegetarian. And if I do, one particular veggie will definitely figure prominently on my menu. That vegetable is bitter melon or karela (in Hindi), a delicacy in some parts of the world, mostly in Asia. Not everyone can stand the taste of it, some not even when it is disguised with spices and other ingredients. The second post on 3QD is about this very same bitter item of food. Author Aditya Dev Sood waxes philosophical on why some among us would choose not only to eat but thoroughly enjoy something that by normal standards of palatability, should be quite unpalatable.
Karela is a truly bitter vegetable and the taste is somewhat acquired or perhaps one has a genetic predisposition to enjoying it or not. I myself have loved it from early childhood, when most children reject bitter, to the astonishment of adults. I enjoy almost all the ways the vegetable is prepared. I can even eat it plain, just boiled with a sprinkling of salt. My husband on the other hand, can only consume a few mouthfuls even when it is spiced up. If any uninitiated reader would like to try it, I will present here a few tips and recipes for consuming karela.
First, a quick guide to karela buying. There are two varieties of the vegetable. The Chinese variety features larger, smoother gourds which are less bitter and less delicious to my bitter loving palate. It is more widely available both in Asian markets as well as in the produce section of large grocery stores. The Indian variety is smaller, crunchier and more bristly looking (see photos of both varieties in the Wiki link). Usually, only Indian or Pakistani stores carry the Indian variety. Also, the Indian bitter gourd is decidedly more bitter and truer to the karela taste that I crave. If you have never tasted the veggie, you may wish to begin with the less bitter Chinese variety.Recipes follow.
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Pig flu is on the march!
Now, if you were recently laid off, and you probably were, unless you're only about to be laid off in which case congratulations for making it this far, you might be wondering how the march of the pig flu is good news.
Well, it's not. Obviously. Even the bird flu was the cause of the Iraq War, and the pig flu is much more terrifying than that because it's new and exciting and the next big pandemic threat to end the world as we know it. Think about it: are you more afraid of a couple of diseased Chinese chickens, or a global pandemic that could mean the end of the BLT and which has already destroyed Mexico and moved on to terrorizing schools in New York, a city which, as 9/11 conclusively proved, lies at the center of the lives of Real Americans in Texas and Alaska and maybe even Missouri? Right, you're afraid of the second one, the one that was probably created by those terrorists that Obama insisted on releasing on account of we'd tortured 'em enough. (Obviously, we hadn't.)
But didn't I just call it "good news"? The words are right there, in the title! Nope — I said that the global pig flu pandemic is good news about the economy. And it is. If you're worried that you're going to catch the pig flu and die, or if you're convinced that the world is about to self-destruct, or if you're excited about scapegoating Mexicans, or if you're just easily distracted by whatever is dominating the news, you're definitely not worrying about that other crisis. See? You've already forgotten it was ever a concern! And if that's not good news, I don't know what is!
(Yes, really I just wanted to use the phrase pig flu. Too heavy-handed?)
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The Indian elections are just around the corner. Politicians are out bloviating in full force. Journalists are following them around and asking questions. Some of them are not taking "no" or evasive tactics for an answer. Instead, the proactive reporters have begun taking things in their own hands (or feet in this case, perhaps) and are throwing shoes at the offending politicians. Apparently, assaults by shoe hurling have reached epidemic proportions at Indian political venues.
Reporting from New Delhi — If the shoe fits, throw it. Or so many people in India seem to believe these days.
Taking a cue from Iraqi journalist Muntather Zaidi, who earned a year in jail for his "real-time editorializing" after hurling both of his shoes at then-President Bush, India has witnessed a flurry of flying footwear in recent weeks.
These missiles of malcontent have left politicians on edge and prompted inquiring minds to ponder: Why can't journalists aim better? Do they get their shoes back? And is this so endemic that shoe hurling will become a required subject at journalism schools?"It's become an epidemic," said Ashis Nandy, a political psychologist.
First off the mark here was local reporter Jarnail Singh, who got into a heated exchange with Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram this month. At issue was why a prominent lawmaker of the same party was cleared of all charges in the death of 3,000 Sikhs after he was accused of firing up a sectarian mob a quarter of a century ago. As blood pressures soared at the news conference, Singh, himself a Sikh, launched his size 9 Reebok sneaker at the minister, who was standing five feet away.
Although his question may have been "on target, his shoe was not," one news portal noted. "Perhaps he will practice some more at a nearby shoe-throwing range."Fame of the 15-minute variety quickly followed. The Shiromani Akali Dal, a Sikh political party, offered Singh a $4,000 reward for his "courage and bravery." And several people pushed for an auction so they could acquire the offending item. Singh responded that hurling was a not-for-profit activity aimed at making a point. And anyway, he said, the police who grabbed it for evidence still haven't given it back. No charges have been filed.
A few days later, a 64-year-old retired school principal threw a shoe at popular Congress Party lawmaker Naveen Jindal during an election rally. Let out on bail after a short time, hurler Rajbal Singh Saharan explained that he hadn't aimed at Jindal as much as India's political system. Returning home inebriated that day, he said, he saw the rally and became enraged at the false promises of politicians at a time when his son had just lost his job.Read more about the flying missiles here. The L.A. Times reporter speculates that the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush may have set a journalistic trend. Perhaps. But that applies only to the latest fad in the Fourth Estate. Shoe throwing (or shoe waving) as a gesture of utter contempt, is an age old cultural practice in many parts of Asia. -
Are scientists on the path to deciphering the Indus Valley script? The story here and here.
An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.
Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.
"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what's found in many languages," said University of Washington computer scientist Rajesh Rao.
The Indus script, used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. in what is now eastern Pakistan and northwest India, belonged to a civilization as sophisticated as its Mesopotamian and Egyptian contemporaries. However, it left fewer linguistic remains. Archaeologists have uncovered about 1,500 unique inscriptions from fragments of pottery, tablets and seals. The longest inscription is just 27 signs long.
In 1877, British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham hypothesized that the Indus script was a forerunner of modern-day Brahmic scripts, used from Central to Southeast Asia. Other researchers disagreed. Fueled by scores of competing and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to decipher the script, that contentious state of affairs has persisted to the present.
Among the languages linked to the mysterious script are Chinese Lolo, Sumerian, Egyptian, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Old Slavic, even Easter Island — and, finally, no language at all. In 2004, linguist Steve Farmer published a paper asserting that the Indus script was nothing more than political and religious symbols. It was a controversial notion, but not an unpopular one.
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Can't wait to see this happen. But given the physical and moral cowardice of right wing blowhards, it probably won't.
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