Andrew Sullivan, on being English-American. Some of what he says is right, some of it is absurdly self-congratulatory. But I think it does reflect my parents experience here, and to a lesser degree my own. I was brought up to be argumentative in a way that isn't quite done. And you'd think I'd learn, but I still have meetings at work where bystanders are aghast and think I'm about to resign, when I wasn't even upset.
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(5)
03:49:30 PM,
Thursday 3 June 2010
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I may need to carve out a dessert exception to my principled office freeganism. The principle goes like this: if we are at all concerned about the ecological and social costs of how our food is produced and transported, the one clear, unambiguous way to reduce these costs is to waste less food. Most everything else is fraught. The trouble is, in an office where a large percentage of the staff at any given moment is dieting, this means vacuuming up a lot of cookies and leftover cakes.
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(4)
03:28:55 PM,
Wednesday 2 June 2010
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Okay, I still don't like the whole hardware store experience, but a 18" pipe wrench is a wonderful thing. I have disconnected and moved the steam radiator! I feel like if it's less than 3" in diameter, I can turn it, regardless of it's wishes.
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07:09:57 PM,
Tuesday 1 June 2010
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I feel bad for the local gas station that recently rebranded to BP. However, they can't be doing too badly, they're still 2 cents more expensive than the place across the street.
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(6)
09:59:01 AM,
Tuesday 1 June 2010
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While cycling, I had a Novel Experience. My beard flapped in the wind. It's a somewhat peculiar sensation. This lead me to realize, you could measure the length and rigidity of a beard this way. Using this metric, I presently have a 26mph beard*.
*approximately. I didn't actually make an organized attempt to find my flap point, since it only happened going down rather large hills. Ideally you'd use a wind tunnel, of course.
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(3)
07:57:29 PM,
Monday 31 May 2010
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Fortunately, the hardware store was closed, so I wasn't able to buy a 2" crescent wrench, so I had to go for a bike ride to the Decordova Sculpture park, Walden Pond, Concord and the bird refuge instead. Smoke from wildfires in Canada may not be healthy, but it does make landscapes more three dimensional.
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06:19:24 PM,
Monday 31 May 2010
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My plans for the weekend were put aside when I got really into taking down old wallpaper. It's nearly as much fun as tearing the carpet off the stairs. Though I am reaching the point where I will need to disconnect and move the radiator, which involves buying tools. I hate buying tools.
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(2)
08:31:18 PM,
Sunday 30 May 2010
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A mesmerizing animated gif of Gulf of Mexico ocean currents.
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11:11:46 AM,
Friday 28 May 2010
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I think I'm going to make a more determined effort to visit some local churches. I would like to be part of a local community of some sort. Work has been seriously isolating lately. Go players are not the most pleasant people, and they meet in a basement. Badminton is out until my knee stops whinging. I may be wrong, but Town Meeting looks about as much fun as falling down a flight of stairs. And the trouble with book clubs is you have to read the books.
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(24)
12:20:12 PM,
Thursday 27 May 2010
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A longish essay on the history of trials of political leaders, from Charles to Louis to Nazis, built around the question of what to do about Bush, if we believe him to have committed serious crimes as president. I don't have settled opinions on thin, but a couple of interesting thoughts:
Democracy depends on the willingness of political leaders to go into opposition—and on their expectation that they might one day return to power.
(...)
So we should think very carefully before we do anything that raises the stakes of democratic politics—and putting your opponents on trial after they lose an election would certainly raise the stakes. There is a narrowly prudential argument against doing that (in addition to the broader prudential argument that I have been making): if we raise the stakes for them, they can raise the stakes for us. Paraphrasing Saint-Just, we might say that nobody can rule innocently: there will always be reasons for a trial. There will always be political maneuvers or policy decisions that violate the law or that can be made to look as if they violate the law. And once the game gets serious in that way, anyone holding office would have a very strong incentive to do whatever was necessary to win the next election. Winning some and losing some would then look like a fool’s politics. It would be very dangerous, I think, to start down this path.
(...)
If I capture and torture somebody, I should be tried and punished. If the president orders that done, not just to somebody, but to many bodies, acting, so he says, in the name of national security, his only punishment is political defeat: we should organize in opposition to his policies and vote against him as soon as we can. But there is a line here that must be carefully drawn. If the president’s violations of the law or the Constitution aim at the creation of a tyrannical regime, if it is his own political enemies, not actual enemies of the republic, that he is arresting and torturing, or if he is systematically confusing these two, then we have to find a definitive way to defeat him or to overthrow him. And as part of that process, or after it, a full-scale trial might well be the best available means not only of doing justice, but also of demonstrating, to paraphrase Henry Stimson, our determination to extirpate tyranny and all its fruits forever. But we have not yet had trials like that in the United States, and we should not imagine holding them until necessity forces our hand. May this never come to pass.
I find this sort of pragmatism far more acceptable than the blanket notion of sovereign immunity, which makes my blood boil. It comes down to deciding how valuable democracy is, and what sorts of things are more important than preventing tyranny. Destroying freedom in the name of freedom is a terrible mistake. Democracy is in essence an unprincipled compromise, a basically pacifist position. I'm really not comfortable with it. And I really do believe in the law, to a degree most people find crazy. I also believe in the concept of inalienable rights. But I'm not willing to accept the consequences of putting the law above democracy.
Also, please, before engaging, read the essay. It's better than the excerpted conclusions may lead you to believe, and states all the positions quite well.
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(21)
11:51:09 AM,
Thursday 27 May 2010
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A somewhat comforting list of incidents that didn't spark a new Korean war.
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12:45:07 PM,
Tuesday 25 May 2010
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Estimates of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill range from 7 to 115 million gallons. For comparisons sake, the North Korean army is about 20 - 24 million gallons. The upper estimate is about the same volume as the population of greater Miami.
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(4)
09:54:22 AM,
Tuesday 25 May 2010
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site & script courtesy of Moss
