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In other words

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Over two months since a posting was done. Ah, yes, since I doubt but few read this blog anyway, it’s been good to spend less time on it, and on sitting in front of a computer in general. Nonetheless, given that tomorrow is the Fourth and there’s always much hoopla surrounding it, I thought it good to keep criticism alive by citing someone else’s words and calling them agreeable.

Liberal democracy, so beloved of American neoconservatives that they are prepared to lay about like MacDuff to spread it to every tribal society on earth, is in fact neither truly democratic nor particularly liberal. As it presupposes the ad infinitum expansion of a centralized state’s ability to acquire ever-growing power over the individual, it is not liberal in any other than the virtual sense of the word. And as the state has dictatorial power (in spite of putting people through the charade of virtual elections every few years to make them believe they govern themselves), it is not democratic. In other words, ‘liberal democracy’ has become nothing but a mendacious slogan of a virtual world.

–Alexander Boot, The Crisis Behind Our Crisis

And here’s another interesting thought: what if the American Revolution was driven in the main — as I listen to the neighborhood ruckus that surely keeps British rule in mind — by the greed for land that the Crown did not stoke enough? Or I could say, “Listen, I’ll take freedom any day, as long as I don’t have to know what it really is.”

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Dubliners

Thursday, April 21, 2011

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Econometrics

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Since my return from Greece in 1940 it has been one long, uninterrupted struggle to keep my head above water. Thousands of dollars have passed through my hands, but that means nothing here. To live as well as an ordinary plumber or bricklayer demands an income such as only a pulp writer could hope to earn. No matter how handsome the check I receive, it all goes out the next day. There is no getting ahead of the game. Everybody is in debt, mortgaged to the hilt, from the national government (which sets the example) on down to the common laborer.

–Henry Miller, Reunion In Barcelona, May 1 1954

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Little tools

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Often in life, or not often enough, we have at hand little tools that get the job done but are often, yet again, forgotten. We like to think that complexity alone = quality. Of course there are occasions when a very complex tool is required, but given that we normally interface graphically at a very abstract or ‘high’ level with the machine, we can reduce, reuse, recycle…

What is my point, yes. In the gun shop, one finds not only a book shelf, but Hemingway. Thus, take sed, for example. “Sed is a stream editor.” KISS, baby. Or, keep it simple, stupid. (At least this acronym is not recursive, unlike GNU, GNU’s Not Unix). Find and replace? No need for point and click. Just type. Ah, the days of just typing, or better yet, just writing.

(Far afield? The importance of being E(a)rnest? You’ve gotta have fun with this stuff. Language isn’t fun if there’s no play [on words]).

Last week I was chewing my nails trying to figure out how to delete, in one fell swoop (and yes, like Tolkien’s fell beasts), all of the installed programs on the home router here, to start afresh, clean out the stuff no longer needed, like Xfce, or X itself, for that matter. Well, how to do that? OpenBSD’s pkg_delete command kept stopping on dependencies. That is, it wouldn’t remove a program (package) if said (sed?) program depended on other programs. Fair enough, but if only it could be told what to do, rather than how to do it. But, for how, it can be short and sweet.

Enter while:

#!/bin/sh
ls /var/db/pkg > /home/doug/pkglist;
while read f
do
for i in `cat /home/doug/pkglist`; do pkg_delete $i; done
done < /home/doug/pkglist

I knew I needed a loop of some kind. Oh yeah, while, duh. Forgotten, ashamedly so. Basically, then: dump the current list of packages into a file, read this file, and for each package in the list, delete it, looping through every one, including dependencies. Try doing that that simply on Windows. Maybe it can be done in some batch file, but then there’s the registry, which… I shudder, and so stop.

Simple is good. Little tools please. And you can add a comma to that.

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Lieberman’s language

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Herewith presenting the finest in public discourse by Sen. Joe Lieberman:

My answer is, yes. My answer is yes because Saddam was threatening the stability of the entire region. He’d shown that by his actions. I believe that the evidence is very clear that he was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Obviously we don’t have evidence that he had a big program. But the most official and comprehensive report show that’s true. He was also, the evidence shows, beginning really tactically to support the terrorist movements that had attack[ed] us on 9/11 and today, to make a long story short, instead of a brutally repressive dictator in Iraq, we’ve got a government that was elected, that’s self-governing and the country is self-defending. By the end of this year, we’re going to have most of our troops out of there. I think that’s had a major effect on the entire region. Iraq is now the most democratic country in the Arab world. so, yes, I think it was the right thing to do. Terrible cost we paid in life and treasure, but ultimately I think the right decision.

And further, with Huffington in riposte:

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: It was stunning to hear you say that there was evidence that Saddam Hussein was working on weapons of mass destruction, given that even President Bush himself has now accepted that there had been no evidence. So on what basis are you saying that?

JOE LIEBERMAN: I’m basing it on the so-called Duelfer Report. Charles D-U-E-L-F-E-R conducted the most comprehensive report on behalf of our government. And it was, nobody thought it was partisan. I want to be very clear: he didn’t find big caches of weapons of mass destruction. But he found, and proved I think, that Saddam had every intention, and particularly to develop nuclear weapons, was developing chemical and biological weapons, and had a structure in place including nuclear scientists that he was prepared to support if he broke out of the sanctions, which he was inclined to do. So I think that the evidence is clear that if we did not do what we did that Saddam Hussein would today have at least chemical and biological weapons and have a nuclear program probably like Iran’s beginning to move toward capabilities, and that the entire world would be a much less…

HUFFINGTON: Well, based on this completely unfounded assumption, I sincerely hope for the sake of the country that you do not become Secretary of Defense.

LIEBERMAN: Now Arianna, these are not unfounded. Go read the Duelfer Report.

HUFFINGTON: There is nothing in the report that proves anything that you have said.

Evidence, no evidence… whatever could be the difference, Joe? Nevermind Halabja, of course, because of U.S. support for Saddam at that time. That must not exist. Nothing to see there. Wink wink, nod nod.

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Harsher terms

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Every now and then I read something which surprises me in a pleasant way. In this case, it is by the self-described “libertarian socialist” Noam Chomsky (whom I last wrote about here) –

Adherence to doctrinal truth confers substantial reward, not only acceptance within the system of power and a ready path to privilege, but also the inestimable advantage of freedom from the onerous demands of thought, inquiry, and argument. Conformity frees one from the burden of evidence, and rational argument is superfluous while one is marching in an approved parade. In contrast, those who dare to question are required to meet high standards of evidence and argument, often standard unattainable in the soft disciplines. [...] First, these [Reagan administration] policies are as far from “conservatism” as one can imagine. We might refer to them as “reactionary jingoism,” or perhaps harsher terms are appropriate. There are few genuine conservatives in the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term “conservatism” can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.

–The Culture of Terrorism, p. 21, 29 (1988)

The first excerpt speaks concisely to the problem of the hack, the mandarin, such as Cass Sunstein, the second to the confusion and abuse of language in the furtherance of power.

Update: And I delightfully happen upon this article by Charles Glass, Chomsky’s Inner Conservative. Ah, the wonders of reading!

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Thoughts on calcio

Monday, January 3, 2011

As told to me by one Sean Pallenberg –

Americans – some, anyway, we’re not told who the lump sum is, but we can guess – complain that soccer is a low-scoring game; there aren’t enough points. Well of course, Americans – now it’s my turn to think of a lump sum – prefer quantity over quality, as they prefer white over color: white flour, white sugar, white rice. Or they’ve been led to prefer it, but didn’t really have a choice. I didn’t know of brown rice, growing up. Anyway, take Maicon’s goal against lowly North Korea in the 2010 World Cup. It wasn’t just the near-impossible angle in which he bent the ball’s trajectory with the outside of his right foot, beating the keeper body to post, it was his gratitude, his joy at scoring what is precious precisely because it is rare. His kissed his knuckles and went to his knees! When have you seen Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods or Derek Jeter display such humbled thanks? Goals are like gold; they aren’t zinc dimes a copper dozen. And this against an opponent that no one expected Brazil to lose to. In short, no slam dunks.

Think too of the territorial game that is American “football” – why not call it handball. It’s almost trench warfare. It’s all about advancing a line. And retreats can never be tactical. You go back, and you’re behind. You pass back in soccer and you regroup, ensure your command. You’ve given up nothing. But in “football” if you go back you’re taking a loss that has to be regained, and then some. American “football” is rigid. And look at the padding! Where in rugby do you see all this padding? It goes hand-in-hand with “wardrobe malfunction,” just as American “football” is hardly that, as “democracy” or “freedom” – you see the pattern, but I digress to the dark side and let’s stick to the beautiful game, eh?

Well, one thing about football – soccer – that does irk me: the theatrics of faking injuries, trying to draw penalties. It’s unmanly. Where the acting came from, I have no idea. No offense, but is it an Italian thing, operatic? Of course the South American players do it too. Just about everyone does. It makes me wince. I’m glad cards are given out now for it. By the way, Howard Webb is a good ref, even if he is English. Or perhaps because of it, he’s got to make up for England’s lame performance in 2010. How could Prince William think England would win any game 10-0? I’m all for blood, but…

I’m getting too drunk. This bourbon’s good. Always was my favorite. Anyway, salute to calcio, eh?

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Persist

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Title taken from the following poem by Susannah Joy Felts in THE2NDHAND’s first anthology All Hands On.

Forecast 2004 Or Weather Poem #123103

Feel around with chance
for a while
Persist.

To persist or not to persist, aye. We choose to persist and so a second anthology coming out in 2011 is very much to be welcomed. Among the many fine contributors: yours truly. My mini-epic poem “Chicago” will see publication for the first time, along with prose craft by Spencer Dew, Todd Dills, Joe Meno, et al.

In the words of editor insuperable Todd Dills:

It’s been a long run for THE2NDHAND, the little magazine — not even a magazine in any traditional sense but rather a broadsheet, perhaps the last periodical on earth to be launched without a prefabbed website to bolster its offset-printed pages (though ’twas to follow shortly, publishing flash and serial fiction here weekly from late 2000 on).

We mean: THE2NDHAND is a page. A big one — 11×17-inch block of black text peppered variously with photo-illustrations, comics, line drawings, distributed in storefronts first in Chicago, then in an ever-growing list of cities around the U.S.. New writing, simply, has been its focus since I founded it in 2000 — a small-format its physicality, but a loud mouth and a big heart its most important parts.

All Hands On: THE2NDHAND after 10 will be published in 2011 to celebrate and lay down the best of the mag’s 10+ years of publishing writing by the budding insurgents of the American lit landscape — and others, no doubt. True to form, the book begins with a section of new, as-yet unpublished work. We’ve launched the Kickstarter campaign to raise the money needed to print 500 copies of the book, essentially. By contributing $14 or more, you can preorder a copy of the 300-plus-page book, which collects work from 40 writers, 3 illustrators, three editors, and a couple janitors, all told. Check out the extras available at the $20 and $25 levels, too, from our signature bergamot-infused bar by Alabama soap maker THE LEFT HAND to several books by contributors and editors.

KICKSTART All Hands On: THE2NDHAND AFTER 10
Preorder your copy via our Kickstarter.com fund drive, through mid-February 2011.

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‘Tis the season

Saturday, November 20, 2010

‘Tis the season for travel and anecdotes, methinks, and with the TSA ‘gate rape’ brouhaha, I found this film fitting to the first while employing the second.

Who would think that Bette Midler’s manager would say such things. Seriously, I like the mixture of the not-surprising — I enjoyed Russo’s anecdotes about Chicago, where I used to live — and the surprising veering on the chilling. It’s not a great documentary, but I don’t think style here is important.

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More of the stuff

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Ah, to skewer and laugh. Reminds me of Radiohead’s Fitter Happier, but with humor instead of despair. (h/t Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock)

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