Pessimism scale

One test of whether you're an optimist or a pessimist just occurred to me; in skimming the headline
TIME TO GIVE UPON US
do you insert a space ? I did.

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Self-hating Nerd s

Tom Clancy, covering all bases, has a series called Netforce, about government antiterrorist hackers; about which the only remotely interesting thing is how one can write many books about hacking without the slightest interest in any aspect of computing, IT, or hacking. The hackers locate the villain (by such high-tech strategems as reading the carpark signout sheet) and from then on it's all shootout. The authors can drool for pages over the "medusa... three-inch, match-grade, one-in-nine twist barrel, 8620 steel, heat-treated to 28 Rockwell....." (it's a gun) but they really can't face the thought of a keyboard; any hacking that really has to be done is translated into VR so that that, too, can be conducted in Navy Seal mode -
"The back door was made of unpainted wooden planks, crude, but solid. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a skeleton key. In reality, the key was a password provided by Dr. Morrison... The spring lock clicked open. Michaels quickly stepped inside and closed the door behind him."

It's like reading porn written by Cardinal Newman.

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War crimes in the second degree.

The New York Times reporting on Fallujah surely constitutes war crimes in the second degree. When the paper says

"Military commanders point to several accomplishments in Falluja. A bastion of resistance has been eliminated, with lower than expected American military and Iraqi civilian casualties. Senior military officials say up to 1,600 insurgents have been killed and hundreds more captured, altogether more than half the number they estimated were in the city when the campaign began.

The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties."

- how can any reporter not ask "OK, how many civilian casualities were there?" and "How many did you expect?" and "How do/did you know?"

It's not as if it's information liable to aid the enemy. except insofar as it constitutes 'a propaganda weapon for the militants'. Which is why they don't give it; which does at least make clear that it's not wrong or misleading reports of civilian casualties that justifies closing the hospital, it's any reports at all.

It's a war crime to fire on a hospital. It's a war crime to close a hospital. and it should be a war crime to justify soldiers taking these actions. Which are, in effect, that anything with a red crescent on it is an enemy propaganda unit.

And when the paper says

"Our experience is that, after battles in which they lose many fighters, the insurgents require some days to gather, treat their wounded and try to figure out what to do next," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham ... said Sunday in an e-mail message. "Our job is to work to not let them rest and to not allow them time to reset."

and

"It seemed clear that any further resistance would have to come from smaller bands of rebels rather than from a coherent fighting force."

- any decent reporter would have asked "What evidence did you have that they ever were a coherent fighting force? What evidence is there that the insurgents in Mosul are the same insurgents as those in Fallujah?" The Americans still expect to fight something with a command structure, rather than something much more like that old American film (loosely based on Xenophon) - The Wanderers? Something with 'the' in it - where a hundred street gangs came together. Look at them on Al-Jazeerah - they're kids who've learned their tactics from Shwartzenegger movies where the hero leaps out with a machine gun and mows down better-armed and better-armoured enemies without any difficulty, which is why they're so easy to kill.

And then, do the math.

"The searches have turned up large caches of weaponry like artillery shells and mortar rounds along with electronics for bombs and mujahedeen literature. Fearing booby traps, the troops generally entered the houses only after tanks rammed through walls or specialists put explosive charges on doors."

250,000 people in Fj, say 5,000 households and 1,000 businesses, 15,000 doors - and how many of them have been blown in? 500? a thousand? How can they search the place without demolishing every house? Or is that the plan? "We had to destroy...."

Similarly, the military say they've killed 1600 of the 3000 resistance fighters. Does this mean they'll end up with 1400 in custody? How many have they captured to date?

The stories are factually impossible, internally inconsistent, and amoral, and by reporting them cold the Times is complicit.

The start of a long war

I'm shocked and astonished at how little the world seems to fear the blowup in southern Thailand. As someone who can remember how the Sri Lankan war began, this seems to presage a fierce war, and one that will drag in Malaysia, and increase its national touchiness, and lead to worse relations with Singapore, and send ASEAN down in flames, and start another arc of instability between the moslem world and the Chinese hegemony. Shinawath seems to be as clueless as bush, and there really is no good news.

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Commonplace Book

O MEMORY! that which I gave thee
To guard in thy garner yestreen –
Little deeming thou e’er could’st behave thee
Thus basely – hath gone from thee clean!
Gone, fled, as ere autumn is ended
The yellow leaves flee from the oak –
I have lost it for ever, my splendid
Original joke.

What was it? I know I was brushing
My hair when the notion occurred:
I know that I felt myself blushing
As I thought, “How supremely absurd!
How they’ll hammer on floor and on table
As its drollery dawns on them – how
They will quote it ”– I wish I were able
To quote it just now.

I had thought to lead up conversation
To the subject – it ’s easily done –
Then let off, as an airy creation
Of the moment, that masterly pun.
Let it off, with a flash like a rocket’s;
In the midst of a dazzled conclave,
Where I sat, with my hands in my pockets,
The only one grave.

I had fancied young Titterton’s chuckles,
And old Bottleby’s hearty guffaws
As he drove at my ribs with his knuckles,
His mode of expressing applause;
While Jean Bottleby – queenly Miss Janet –
Drew her handkerchief hastily out,
In fits at my slyness – what can it
Have all been about?

I know ’twas the happiest, quaintest
Combination of pathos and fun:
But I’ve got no idea – not the faintest –
Of what was the actual pun.
I think it was somehow connected
With something I’d recently read –
Or heard – or perhaps recollected
On going to bed.

What had I been reading? The Standard:
“Double Bigamy;” “Speech of the Mayor.”
And later – eh? yes! I meandered
Through some chapters of Vanity Fair.
How it fuses the grave with the festive!
Yet e’en there, there is nothing so fine –
So playfully, subtly suggestive –
As that joke of mine.

Did it hinge upon “parting asunder?”
No, I don’t part my hair with my brush.
Was the point of it “hair ”? Now I wonder!
Stop a bit – I shall think of it – hush!
There 's hare, a wild animal – Stuff!
It was something a deal more recondite:
Of that I am certain enough;
And of nothing beyond it.

Hair – locks! There are probably many
Good things to be said about those.
Give me time – that’s the best guess of any –
“Lock” has several meanings, one knows.
Iron locks – iron-gray locks – a “ deadlock ”–
That would set up an everyday wit:
Then of course there’s the obvious “wedlock;”
But that wasn’t it.

No! mine was a joke for the ages;
Full of intricate meaning and pith;
A feast for your scholars and sages –
How it would have rejoiced Sidney Smith!
‘Tis such thoughts that ennoble a mortal;
And, singling him out from the herd,
Fling wide immortality’s portal –
But what was the word?

Ah me! ’tis a bootless endeavour.
As the flight of a bird of the air
Is the flight of a joke – you will never
Find the same one again, you may swear.
‘Twas my firstborn, and O how I prized it!
My darling, my treasure, my own!
My brain and none other devised it –
And now it has flown.
C.S. Calverley

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Laughter; the best medicine

My grandfather had lost an arm in the war, and later ran for state parliament for the Country party.

During the campaign he was taking a train trip with my uncle Bill, who was then about fifteen. Settled in their carrage for the journey, grandfather got his pipe out of his pocket, then the plug of tobacco, than the knife to shave tobacco off the plug, and then the matches, and put them on the seat next to him.

He picked up the tobacco, and then put it down and picked up the knife, and then put down the knife helplessly and picked up the pipe, at which point a man sitting opposite leapt up and said "Here, let me help you." and quickly cut off a few strands, packed the pipe, passed it back to my grandfather, and lit it for him.

"Why, thank you," said grandfather gratefully, and the conversation moved off on to the state of the crops.

As soon as they got off the train Uncle Bill asked"What was all that about, Dad? You don't need help with your pipe. I've seen you do all that one-handed on horseback in a thunderstorm."

"My boy," grandfather said, tucking his pipe back into his pocket, "Once let a man do you a favour, and he is yours for life."

He won the election.

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Bushwah

Mind you, there are some things to be said in favour of George Bush. Given that he's an imperialist religious maniac, just think of the state the world would be in if he was all that and efficient with it. It's not inconceivable that a slightly smarter president might have succeeded in the Iraq adventure and given America confidence that it could do whatever the hell it wanted to, which would really have been cause for general panic. If you're in a small pub with a mean drunk, you want it to be someone who falls over a lot.

And on the Statute of Limitations thing, I was in Ireland a couple of years ago for a conference and we were given a reception just out of Dublin at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a marvellous seventeenth-century pile. Taking a flute of champagne from the waiter, I remarked to him "Nice place you've got here."

He replied "It's not ours. They built it."

He could, I suppose, have meant it the way Lenin did in London when he was pointing out to a friend "This is their British Museum" and "This is their houses of parliament," meaning by 'them' not the English but the capitalists, but I tend to doubt it.

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