Accidental Blogger

Bobby Jindal: Exorcist and Oncologist

June 17, 2008

Lindsay Beyerstein in Majikthise.
Have had it with Harrop! (And other hypocrites)

June 16, 2008

The Democratic party’s presidential nomination process thankfully ended in early June. Most voters and party members would now like to focus on getting the disparate Dems united in order to take on John McCain and the Republicans in the fall. The majority of Democrats realize that the clearest path to keeping Congress in Democratic hands and taking back the White House depends to a large extent in uniting behind Barack Obama, the party’s nominee. Even most among the disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton agree. Some Hillary supporters however, many of them older women who are crestfallen at not realizing their dream of seeing a woman become president, have not taken the defeat of their candidate very well. They are not just disappointed but have become hostile towards Senator Obama for "stealing" the election and not waiting his turn in line. Some have declared vengefully that they won’t vote for Obama in the general election and others have gone a step further in letting us know that they will in fact vote for John McCain.

So what is the case that the disgruntled and bitter Hillary supporters make for their contrarian vote for McCain? There are huffy but vague accusations of "disrespect and insult" towards their heroine Hillary from the Obama campaign and even Obama himself. In fact Geraldine Ferraro, one of the furious femmes, has accused Obama of being sexist (!!!) We are hearing reports of the such sulkiness in the media although I have personally not met anyone with this attitude. Froma Harrop a columnist for the Providence RI Journal, whose columns are syndicated by the Houston Chronicle, has been one of the angriest voices against Obama. She writes:

The woman who shouted "McCain in ’08" at the Democratic rules committee was speaking for a multitude. After mounting for months, female anger over the choreographed dumping on Hillary Clinton and her supporters has exploded — and party loyalty be damned. That the women are beginning to have a good time is an especially bad sign for Barack Obama’s campaign.

"Obama will NOT get my vote, and one step more," Ellen Thorp, a 59-year-old flight attendant from Houston told me. "I have been a Democrat for 38 years. As of today, I am registering as an independent. Yee Haw!"

A new Pew Research Center poll points to a surging tide of fury, especially among white women. As recently as April, this group preferred Obama over the presumptive Republican John McCain by three percentage points. By May, McCain enjoyed an eight-point lead among white women….

Remember Peggy Agar? The women do. They can’t stop talking about the Detroit TV reporter who asked Obama a serious question at a Chrysler factory — "How are you going to help American autoworkers?" — to which he answered, "Hold on a second, sweetie."

The women are angry at the ludicrous charges of racism leveled against Clinton by the Obama camp — amplified in the supposedly respectable media — and projected onto themselves…

"How Obama’s campaign has treated Hillary will not be forgotten," Janet Rogers, 55, who runs a Bed and Breakfast in Medina, Ohio, wrote me. "I will vote for McCain if Hillary is not the nominee. My husband and friends all feel the same way."..

Indeed. McCain in ’08 has suddenly become a more likely prospect.

Ludicrous charges of racism? I don’t think so.. let’s not even go there. What is ludicrous is that smarting from the results of the primaries and to justify their misplaced anger against Obama, Harrop and others like her are contorting logic to explain why McCain is not such a bad choice for Democratic women in 2008. Using the most transparently disingenuous comparisons, Harrop argued in a recent column that even on a feminist issue such as abortion rights, McCain is almost as "pro-choice" as Obama!

Hillary Clinton’s blessing notwithstanding, many of the New York senator’s supporters will resist the handover to Barack Obama. The sexism that permeated the recent campaign still rankles, and John McCain is far from the standard-issue Republican they instinctively vote against.

A big sticking point for wavering Democrats will be McCain’s position on reproductive rights. Clinton’s backers are overwhelmingly pro-choice, and they’ll want to know this: Would McCain stock the Supreme Court with foes of Roe v. Wade? The 1973 decision guarantees a right to abortion.

The answer is unclear but probably "no." While McCain has positioned himself as "pro-life" during this campaign, his statements over the years show considerable latitude on the issue.

In a 1999 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, McCain said, "I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America" to undergo "illegal and dangerous operations." (read the whole convoluted article and laugh… or cry)

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An Overdose of Grief (Sujatha)

June 13, 2008

Far be it for me to minimize the shock and suffering of the Russert family but aren’t the cable and broadcast TV stations going too far with their hours long eulogizing of Tim Russert?

Apparently
no other news of interest is occurring anywhere in the US or the world.
RIP Tim Russert, a brief tribute to his life’s work in order, and move
on to covering other happenings such as the flooding in Iowa, or the impact of the Habeas Corpus decision by the US
Supreme court, or the Irish rejection of the EU treaty, or the fuel
tankers strike spreading across the world from Spain to UK to South
Korea.

Instead we get teary eyed non-stop tributes from Keith
Olbermann, Pat Buchanan, Wolf Blitzer, Barbara Walters, Peggy Noonan,
Andrea Mitchell that have been going on for a full 4 hours. We get it-
it was a shocking and unexpected demise. But does it warrant the sort
of all-exclusive coverage of this kind?

It takes me back to the
constant focus on Indira Gandhi as she lay in state in 1984 after her
untimely death by assassination. All the TV showed was the endless line
of people filing by, interspersed with fixed slides backed with
mournful sitar twangs, followed by endless scenes of the grieving
family at the funeral pyre. The only exception was that some head
honcho at Doordarshan, the state-run TV channel, decided that
broadcasting the 1945 B&W version of ‘Meera’, with M.S. Subbulakshmi
in the singing and acting lead, was appropriate telecasting in such a
mournful time – a breath of fresh air for me).

So now, it’s
all Russert all the time, to the point of wishing that we had also
departed with him in order to avoid this deathly dull programming.
There have been clippings of Russert at balls, at conferences, at
meetings, at diners, on his Meet the Press interviewing the celebrities
and politicos du jour, with the Pope, everything but Russert tying his
shoelaces at his son’s baseball practice.

Mercifully, this ought to
end by tonight. Tomorrow we will be back to the usual program and doses
of Brangelina, Baby Mama, how-to-improve-gas-mileage,
how-to-go-green-by-buying-new-appliances, salmonella tomatoes, floods
in the Midwest, the capture for the zillionth time of Al Qaeda’s no. 2
Man in Iraq/Afghanistan…

———————

Note: Cross-posted from Fluff-n-Stuff.
An Apology and An Exit

June 13, 2008

It is always gratifying when a powerful entity apologize to a weaker one for past wrongs. It doesn’t happen often. The US government has paid reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and issued apologies for the infamous Tuskegee Study, but not for the plight of Native Americans or for slavery. Japan refuses to this day, to express regrets for the mistreatment of other Asian nations during its war mongering in the 1930s and 40s. The Norwegian government faced lawsuits and offered limited compensation to its Lebensborn children of Norwegian mothers and German fathers who were mistreated by their own countrymen for their ancestry but it still refused to take the blame. Now the Canadian government has admitted that for a long period of time Canadian Indian children were forcibly separated from their families and deprived of their own culture, making them victims of widespread abuse. The draconian steps were designed in order to assimilate indigenous populations into mainstream (European) Canadian society. Canada’s prime minister has formally apologized to Canadian Indians for the past mistreatment meted out to their children and for tearing apart families. (Recently, a similar apology came from Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd for the emotional, physical and cultural havoc that was wreaked on aboriginal communities of Australia by government sponsored humiliation and abuse disguised as "civilizing measures").

OTTAWA – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized Wednesday to the nation’s Indians for "a sad chapter in our history," acknowledging the physical abuses and cultural damage they suffered during a century of forced assimilation at residential schools.

"Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country," he said to applause.

A group of 11 aboriginal leaders and former students sat before Harper in a circle in the House of Commons, some weeping as the prime minister delivered the government’s first formal apology to them. In the crowded, expectant chamber, Harper bowed his head as he read a carefully crafted speech, asking for forgiveness for separating children from their families and cultures, exposing the students to abuse, and sowing the seeds for generations of problems.

"The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language," Harper said.

The apology was billed by the government as a chance to redress a dark chapter in Canadian history and to move forward in reconciliation.

Over more than a century, about 150,000 native Canadian children were sent to boarding schools run by churches and the government to "civilize and Christianize" them. Expressions of native heritage were outlawed, many children suffered sexual and psychological abuse, and grew up with neither traditional roots nor mainstream footing, their ties to family and community unraveled.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine, wearing a feather headdress, took the floor to declare that the occasion "testifies nothing less than the accomplishment of the impossible." In 1990, he was one of the first to come forward with his story of abuse and push for an apology. "Finally, we heard Canada say it is sorry."

In another part of the world, the newly elected Maoist government in the tiny nation of Nepal has abolished the centuries old Nepalese monarchy. For a poor and backward country where the king enjoyed a status almost on an equal footing with the gods (Nepal is the only "official" Hindu nation in the world), this is indeed a momentous development. King Gyanendra, who ascended the throne after his elder brother King Birendra lost his life in a palace massacre in 2001, vacated the royal palace (to be converted to a museum) with his wife in a black Mercedes. The couple, henceforth known as Mr. and Mrs. Shah, has moved into a humbler residence to begin life as regular citizens. The erstwhile monarch surrendered his crown to the government before leaving. It is not known if he also apologized for having led a life of privilege and callous luxury while a large number of his subjects eked out their hardscrabble lives amidst conditions of acute deprivation.

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A Corny Prediction (Sujatha)

June 11, 2008

If you are, like me, bemoaning the costs of your regular groceries due to the uptick in oil and gasoline prices, be prepared for worse this coming fall.

Driving through rural Illinois and Iowa over the Memorial Day weekend, I was shocked to see vast stretches of unplanted corn fields. Very few had a faint fuzz of sprouting seedlings. I was puzzled: I had been assured of what a spectacular sight they would be, and had at least hopes of seeing growing crops, even if they wouldn’t be anywhere as large as they would be at harvest time.

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Surgical Subterfuge in Virgin Territory

June 11, 2008

Face lifts, tummy tucks, breast augmentations, collagen injections, skin lightening cream – all means of enhancing social acceptance, self image and sexual / matrimonial prospects. Physical attributes that are deemed attractive are polished and altered surgically or chemically – overwhelmingly by the female half of the population in prosperous societies. We accept these interventions, some quite drastic, as merely personal choices available in a free society. (Whom are we kidding?) How about Hymenoplasty? Comfortable as we are with our own cosmetic choices, should we on the other hand, frown upon "sexually backward" communities that put a premium on some other physical attributes that signal "morality" rather than "beauty?" Can that too be a personal choice? Odious as it is to us, the proof of virginity of the bride is prized in some societies even in this day and age. Most of the time in their native environments, the women in certain cultures usually ARE virgins at the time of marriage because social commingling of opposite sexes is severely curtailed. But when members of those same cultures allow their girls and women educational and economic freedoms or when they relocate within societies which afford women much greater autonomy of movement and socialization, the virginity of a prospective bride cannot be taken for granted.

While we were busy hotly debating whether a woman can serve as the Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful nation, a marriage was annulled in France on the grounds that a bride who claimed to be a virgin turned out to be not one. A furor has ensued … and predictably so.

(AP) The bride said she was a virgin. When her new husband discovered that was a lie, he went to court to annul the marriage – and a French judge agreed.

The ruling ending the Muslim couple’s union has stunned France and raised concerns the country’s much-cherished secular values are losing ground to religious traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities.

The decision also exposed the silent shame borne by some Muslim women who transgress long-held religious dictates demanding proof of virginity on the wedding night.

In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin and that, in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite.

But in treating the case as a breach of contract, the ruling was decried by critics who said it undermined decades of progress in women’s rights. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them.

Do note that the judge’s decision had nothing to do, at least formally, with the couple’s religion (Islam) or the bride’s virginity (or lack thereof). He granted the annulment because the marriage was formalized under "false pretense" and hence it amounted to a breach of contract, according to him. The bride admitted that she had indeed led the groom to believe that she was a virgin, knowing that it was a condition for his agreeing to the marriage. We (and the French) can argue the merits of the judge’s decision and whether the law should permit undue burdens of purity being placed solely on one marriage partner as a prior condition. Muslim women in France and elsewhere in Europe are not holding their breath for the law to weigh in on their behalf. And even if it did, the cultural reality for most of them will remain unchanged. Unfortunately the majority of these women bear the antiquated burden of "shame and honor" (their own as well as those of their families) on their shoulders. Most therefore tacitly accept that virginity is a condition expected of them in the nuptial bed. For those young women who give in to their natural youthful passions and thus fail to live up to the strict code of sexual purity before marriage, the wedding night can sometimes become a game of playing the "virgin" to reassure their husbands, gain favor with their families and ensure marital harmony.

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The Long Hot Summer of Creationist Discontent

June 10, 2008

Summer is here, schools are out and the Texas State Board of Education is about to undertake the overhaul of the school science curriculum for the first time in a decade. As usual, the focus will once again be on teaching the theory of evolution in science classes. Conservative lawmakers and social activists have tried repeatedly to banish evolution from Texas classrooms and replace it with Biblical creationism. To that end, they have adopted both aggressive and passive means – firing administrators who are seen as "evolution friendly," scaring Christians by spreading the calumny that evolution is a Jewish conspiracy and most importantly, appointing dedicated creationists to lead the Board of Education. This year however, rather than attempt an outright ban on the teaching of evolution, a battle they have lost repeatedly, the creationists have come up with a strategy to plant doubts in the minds of students in the name of "accuracy."

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

“Very often over the last 10 years, we’ve seen antievolution policies in sheep’s clothing,” said Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education, a group based in Oakland, Calif., that is against teaching creationism.

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.

Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.

“ ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ are regular words that have now been drafted into the rhetorical arsenal of creationists,” said Kathy Miller, director of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that promotes religious freedom.

The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase “is subterfuge for bringing in creationism.”

“Why in the world would anybody not want to include weaknesses?” Dr. McLeroy said.

See more articles on this latest attempt at subterfuge here, here and here. The last link is to a site published by Texans for Better Science Education, a pro-creationist group, the likes of which Brian Leiter aptly refers to as the Texas Talibans.
Friends-In-Law

June 9, 2008

During my blogging days at Dissemination I became somewhat familiar with friend and fellow blogger Ethan Leib’s views on "friendship." Ethan argued that friendship should be looked upon as more than a fuzzy and feel-good relationship. In fact he thinks that it can and often does become an important social safety net in time of physical and mental distress for those who may either lack or cannot reliably depend on family support. As such, he feels that the legal recognition of non-sexual friendships based on trust, affection and emotional solidarity can expand the definition our formal human alliances.

Friends are at the center of most of our lives. Yet public policymakers and lawyers rarely spend any time thinking about how the structure of our public policies and our law can help sustain and promote our friendships with our nearest and dearest. Few realize that choices we make in the design of our public institutions structure and sometimes regulate our friendship networks. Decision-makers and legislators spend an awful lot of time focusing on the family and designing our public law to account for and promote the family unit. More, special professional relationships of trust and confidence, like our interactions with our lawyers, doctors, and psychotherapists, are heavily structured and regulated by law; even informal intimacies such as those that are produced through cohabitation and co-ownership have a set of rules that structure those relationships. Our friends are no less important than our families, our households, and our professional relationships, and friendships deserve some of the same protection and recognition under the law. (see the full article here)

Not everyone agrees. Many feel that the nature and scope of friendship should be left to the mutual comfort of friends and not regulated by law like so many of our personal and professional interactions are. Sunday’s Boston Globe has an interesting article that presents the pro and contra voices in this debate.

IN THE AMERICAN hierarchy of relationships, friendship often seems distinctly second-class. We obsess about the "work-family balance," but the leisurely conversation with an old friend is a quick casualty when it conflicts with either one. Just in the last generation, the number of real confidants we have outside the family has dropped substantially, according to one 2006 study.

Now, a number of scholars are seeking to shore up friendship in a surprising way: by granting it legal recognition. Some of the rights and privileges restricted to family, they argue, should be given to friends. These could be invoked on a case-by-case basis – eligibility to take time off to care for a sick friend under an equivalent of the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example. Or they could take the form of an official legal arrangement between two friends, designating a bundle of mutual rights and privileges – literally "friends with benefits," as Laura Rosenbury, a law professor at Washington University, puts it. One scholar even suggests giving friends standing in the tax code, allowing taxpayers to write off certain "friend expenditures."

Such changes, proponents say, could contribute to a shift in how our society values personal relationships. In part, they say, the point is to acknowledge that society has already changed: as more people are living outside of marriage, friendships have become the primary relationships on which many Americans rely. But a broader aim is to recognize the universal social and psychological benefits of friendship, which rival those of other relationships, notably marriage, that receive active state support. New laws could elevate friendship’s status, recasting it as an essential part of our lives, rather than a luxury often sacrificed to other priorities.

Ethan’s support for the legalization of friendship is cited in the article (see page 4). Some however, find that onerous …

Robert Vischer, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, is skeptical of expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to include friends, which would place a burden on employers. At a minimum, he says, the employee should have to prove that there is no other caregiver for the friend. Tax deductions for "friend expenditures" (proposed by Ethan Leib at UC Hastings) could have related drawbacks. "It’s hard enough for me when I do my taxes to figure out what a work-related expense is," says Rebecca Adams, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and editor of the journal Personal Relationships. "That doesn’t seem terribly practical to me, although I would love to be able to deduct these."

… and unnecessary.

Some of his colleagues are appalled by the idea of defining and governing friendship. "There is a danger that the state could go from recognizing to regulating friendship," says Rosenbury. Her ideal is support without constraints, a tricky balance in any context. Indeed, it sounds a lot like what people find elusive in most relationships – and uniquely valuable in friendship.

I don’t find anything terribly objectionable about states awarding friends certain rights under the law by mutual agreement. But how formal and broad should those rights be? Can they be like the power of attorney when needed, covering a narrow area of duties, rights and obligations? Or does the legal declaration of friendship amount to a quasi-marriage? In the latter case, can it be rescinded? What if one friend doesn’t agree to the dissolution of the contract? Does the other then have to "buy" his/ her way out of the defunct friendship?
A Slash in the Night Sky (Sujatha)

June 8, 2008

A few days ago, the local media was abuzz with the defacing of a $1.2 million dollar painting at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The painting was Night Sky 2 by Latvian- American artist Vija Celmins. (Click on thumbnail for larger view).

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"I didn’t like the painting," Timur Serebrykov told police when they arrested him at the museum on May 20, the affidavit said.

He added, "I’m sorry."

Vija Celmins has wowed the art critics for her work, from a 1992 review by the NYTimes:

The ratio between natural fact and painted fact, an essential aspect
of Ms. Celmins’s art, changes radically from painting to painting. To
this point the five night sky paintings that constitute the core of the
show also form a series of variations on the double theme of painting
and nature.

Compared with the straightforward, almost
flat-footed dotting of "Night Sky No. 1," "Night Sky No. 2" might be
called flamboyant. Its glowing gray surface conjures a night when
gentle, translucent fog expands every star in the sky to a soft blur of
light.

With so many artists pushing the boundary of what could be defined as art, one wonders why the museum guard Timur Serebrykov chose to run his keys and create a large vertical slash in the middle of this painting. The subject matter is meditative and Zen-like, but hardly the stuff of controversy on cultural or religious grounds. Could there be political implications (the artist being Latvian, while the guard is an Azerbaijani immigrant to the US? A personal animus of some kind?

A reporter from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (Scaife’s mouthpiece) dug into the motivations which turned out to be nothing more than a stressed out young man with mental health issues, as per his attorney’s statements.

An Azerbaijani immigrant had no political motivation for slashing a
$1.2 million painting by a Latvian artist at Pittsburgh’s art museum,
his attorney said Friday.

Something inside Timur Serebrykov, 27, of Greenfield just
"snapped," and he’s sorry for defacing the artwork at Carnegie Museum
of Art with a key, leaving a large vertical gash in the oil on canvas,
said his attorney, James Sheets.

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

Or should the museum just display the damaged painting as an artistic statement of a different kind entitled ‘Human in the Cosmos’ ? It might draw even more crowds than the original, methinks.
George Will Reads Accidental Blogger

June 6, 2008

See George Will’s column in today’s Washington Post and then see my post of June 4 and comments below.
Real Afflictions – Common and Uncommon

June 6, 2008

I came across two interesting articles about the workings of the human brain, one a common enough condition and the other I heard of for the first time in my life.

The Tip of the Tongue moment is something we are all familiar with. What begins as an occasional event in our youth, becomes frustratingly common as we grow older. A familiar word or name escapes our memory and although we may remember the meaning of the word or the face associated with the name, we cannot recall them. Research on memory and brain function shows that the disconnect happens because we do not store related information in one place neatly bundled together. For example, the name of a person (the word) and the memory of his or her face (the image) are stored in different parts of the brain. So, even when we successfully retrieve the image, the name attached to it may take a while to locate, being buried in another corner of our memory archives. The human brain, it appears, is not a perfectly organized file cabinet. Rather, it more resembles a cluttered desk with concealed (not lost) information. It takes some time and effort to rummage through it.

It’s estimated that, on average, people have a tip-of-the-tongue moment at least once a week. Perhaps it occurs when you run into an old acquaintance whose name you can’t remember, although you know that it begins with the letter "T." Or perhaps you struggle to recall the title of a recent movie, even though you can describe the plot in perfect detail. Researchers have located the specific brain areas that are activated during such moments, and even captured images of the mind when we are struggling to find these forgotten words.

This research topic has become surprisingly fruitful. It has allowed scientists to explore many of the most mysterious aspects of the human brain, including the relationship between the conscious and unconscious, the fragmentary nature of memory, and the mechanics of language. Others, meanwhile, are using the frustrating state to learn about the aging process, illuminating the ways in which, over time, the brain becomes less able to access its own storehouse of information.

"The tip-of-the-tongue state is a fundamental side effect of the way our mind is designed," says Bennett Schwartz, a psychologist at Florida International University who studies the phenomenon.

One of the key lessons of tip-of-the-tongue research is that the human brain is a cluttered place. Our knowledge is filed away in a somewhat slapdash fashion, so that names are stored separately from faces and the sound of a word and the meaning of a word are kept in distinct locations. Sometimes when we forget something, the memory is not so much lost as misplaced. (link via 3QD)

One arm (hand, leg, foot) too many? Apparently there are people who are uncomfortable with their limbs. Even while in possession of the right number of healthy legs, hands, arms or feet, they feel there is something wrong with their physical make-up, something extraneous. Sufferers of Body Intergrity Identity Disorder (BIID) have the uncontrollable urge to "amputate" the offending limb – sometimes by their own hands!

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The Long Goodbye or A Fly In The Ointment?

June 4, 2008

Senator Barack Obma is officially the nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidential election of November 2008. Whether you are black, white or brown, a man or a woman, a Democrat, Republican, Independent or politically indifferent and whatever happens in November, you must acknowledge the historic nature of this nomination.

Why then are the Democrats not celebrating like giddy teenagers at a prom party? They are subdued and cautious because Hillary Clinton refuses to exit the stage gracefully even when it is amply clear that she has lost the contest. Earlier in the day when the numbers showed that Obama would become the nominee by the end of the evening, she and her supporters floated the idea of her "willingness" to be on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate. It was seen clearly by all as a pressure tactic to force Obama’s hands. (I hope he has the intestinal fortitude to say "no." It is going to be horribly injurious to Obama to have the Clintons trail his shadow) After the last primary results were in and the delegate count went clearly in his favor, Obama gave a speech in Minnesota that was inspirational, substantive, gracious, forward looking and confident. In any other circumstances, Democrats should have been ecstasic. But most of us only feel somewhat relieved and our continued anxiety about a fractured party was reinforced by HRC’s astonishingly self-serving, tone deaf and defiant performance.

Hillary informed us that she had not decided what she would do next and made it abundantly clear that the 18 million votes she got were a substantial bargaining chip in her bag with which to twist Obama’s and the DNC’s arms. She also continued to claim (falsely) that she has won the popular vote, pretending for all purposes, that she is the "real" nominee. With her dogged denial of reality, Hillary lost the opportunity of being conciliatory and gracious at her own going-away party and history will record that churlishness along with all the other callous missteps that she, her husband and her campaign have made in their quest for the grand prize. In her non-concession speech to her supporters (who chanted Denver! Denver! Denver!) she basked in their adulation and enumerated her own victories one by one and cunningly congratulated Obama only for "running the race" but not for winning. What Hillary doesn’t realize (or has forgotten) is that "she" was supposed to be the inevitable nominee – the formidable grande dame of the Democratic party with an interantional name recognition and a vast war chest. Like the fate of the "unsinkable" Titanic, her victories are therefore not the story of this election cycle – her defeat is. Obama, the mostly unknown new comer on the national political stage ("the skinny black man with big ears", as Obama describes himself) was the long shot and he won against all expected odds. That is the remarkable story that the rest of the world will take note of. But incurable narcissists like the Clintons have a hard time accepting that any event of importance can be about someone else. So inflating their own gains and raining on someone else’s parade comes naturally to them.

John McCain in his speech on Tuesday, tacitly acknowledged Obama as the legitimate Democratic nominee and his eventual opponent in the general election. So, even Republicans and the rest of the world recognize the Democratic party’s election results. Sadly, but not surprisingly, it now appears that Hillary Clinton and her diehard fans are the only ones who cannot come to terms with the truth.
The Cognoscenti of Perfumes (Sujatha)

June 3, 2008

I happened upon this article about the inspiration behind Hermes perfumes via Asian Window. This year has been declared by Hermes to be the Year of India, with " silk scarves … vivid with raw pinks and fleshy mangoes, elephants harnessed to carriages and tigers rampant." Parfumeur Jean Claude Ellena travelled through Kerala, India in search of olfactory inspiration for his new ‘Jardin apres la mousson’ (‘Garden after the monsoons") set to be released this summer.
(As with all overwrought prose dedicated to the exotification of India and the monsoons, this article has its hilarious bloopers, which will undoubtedly pass unnoticed by the majority of the target audience. A sampling below:
"all rooms are cobbled out of 200 year old teak cottages (tharavadu)" –Tharavadu means family, not cottage
" Women wear their saris differently here than they do up in the north, draping them like togas" – Sarongs are a more appropriate comparisons.
"And when the first monsoon blows in from the Arabian sea….the modest women of Kerala rush out into the rain…"and the saris cling very close to the body" " –Sounds like a Bollywood rain song, not reality

But I digress ,as usual.)

Ellena travels about the world, inhaling scents and attempting to recreate their most pleasing elements not with the original source, but a palette of chemicals such as geraniol, indole, castoreum and a whole host of other derivatives from floral, animal and other sources. It’s a fascinating field that revels in the blending and mixing to generate a whole forest of sensation in a single sniff.

While Monsieur Ellena cooks up his olfactory masterpieces and Hermes markets them at astronomical prices to the cognoscenti, another company has taken a different kind of potshot at the Asian mass market.

You might think twice before telling a friend, and you would bite your lip
rather than mention it to your boss, but one soap company has no qualms
about telling 3 billion Asians that they need to use a deodorant.

Unilever is preparing to confront the issue head-on with a marketing and
advertising push directed at a new Asian generation.

Russell Taylor, global vice-president for Axe, the Unilever-made deodorant
marketed as Lynx in Britain, said that no one had yet found a way of making
Asians self-conscious about body odour. “Asia is a market we have never
really cracked. They don’t think they smell, but people everywhere smell,”
he said.

He said that the region was a billion-pound opportunity – “the last empty
space on the map”. He estimated that only 7 per cent of Asians used a
deodorant, with consumption in India virtually nil, and his team is dreaming
up advertisements that will induce shame about sweat stains and odour across
the region.

All this, despite the fact that body odor is not really a pressing problem in these countries, where frequent baths (even twice daily in the hot season) are the norm. But that won’t deter the marketers from creating an illusion of need to sell their product. The question is whether their audience will be receptive or oblivious to these blandishments. That’s still up in the air, just like the "Jardin apres la mousson", I guess.
Have You Had Yours?

June 3, 2008

Humorist Dave Barry’s journal of colonoscopy. (link from a friend who recently had hers)

An excerpt:

I left Andy’s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ”MoviPrep,” which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America’s enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes — and here I am being kind — like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ”a loose watery bowel movement may result.” This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ”What if I spurt on Andy?” How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the hell the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn’t thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.
Rendition at Sea

June 2, 2008

The Guardian reports that the US has been holding suspected terrorists without trial in ships off the coasts of foreign countries – a floating Guantanamo Bay, in other words. The UK human rights group Reprieve has accused the US government of illegally detaining prisoners and possibly torturing them aboard the ships using CIA and foreign interrogators. Torture "black sites" are therefore not just on land in countries like Romania, Thailand, Poland and Afghanistan, but also on foreign seas.

Does John McCain know of this practice? Does Obama? Will the US Congress look into it? Somebody ought to ask. More important, will the revelation have any effect on the immoral, lawless and lame duck Bush-Cheney administration? (via Sepia Mutiny)

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

The full report here.

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