If you've been wondering what we should do about the apparently permanent military bases which we are constructing in Iraq and which are causing so much unrest among Iraqis, Fafnir has the answer:

Should we keep permanent bases in Iraq or should we leave the area completely? Why not do both! The compromise: keep our permanent bases, but put up great big pieces a cardboard around em with paintings of permanent bases on em. Then paint signs on the paintings of the permanent bases that say "Ceci n'est pas une permanent base." That way when Iraqis wander by they'll just take our militarization of their country as a whimsical statement on the elusive nature of representation.

posted by wk at 9:14 PM 0 comments Friday, August 26, 2005

You know what I'm finding difficult to stop watching?

Panda Cam.

posted by wk at 2:38 PM 0 comments More Doctor Data

For those of you following the one-year-old's statistics, we have some new data. First, a little review:

And now the latest results are in:

18 months.....25 lbs. 9 oz.; 32.25 in.

After shrinking an inch last time, she managed to gain in both dimensions. Now she is definitely more than half of her mother's (and maternal grandmother's) height. Not that it matters, I'm just sayin'.

posted by wk at 2:28 PM 0 comments Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Good and Evil without Metaphysics

This is the seductive beginning of a rather thoughtful article by Robert Anton Wilson:

The late Laurance Labadie once told me a parable about a king who decided that everytime he met somebody he would kick them in the butt, just to emphasize his power. My memory may have elaborated this yarn a bit over the years, but basically it continues as follows: since this maniac wore a crown and had an army, people soon learned to tolerate being kicked fairly often, and even began to accept it philosophically or stoically, as they accept taxation and other impositions of kings and governors. They even learned to bend over as soon as they saw the king coming.

Eventually, the king died and his successor naturally continued the tradition and kicked anybody *he* chanced to meet. Centuries passed, and, in the usual course of things, the nobility as a whole had demanded, and acquired, the same "right" as the king: any baron could kick anybody of lesser rank, and the knights could kick anybody except the barons or the royal family, etc. A large part of the population spent most of its waking hours facing a wall, crouched over, waiting for the next boot in the bottom.

The coming of democracy, in that amazing parallel universe, could only be understood according to the traditional thought-forms or acquired mental habits of the strange people there. Democracy therefore meant to those peculiar folks that *anybody* could kick *anybody else* as long as the kicker could prove that he (or she) had a bigger bank balance than the person receiving the boot in the rump. Within the context of the gloss or grid or reality-tunnel in that world, "democracy" could not have any other *thinkable* meaning. (See Berger and Luckman's The Social Creation of Reality if this sounds fantastic to you.)

He goes on to discuss the problems of a metaphysics of "Good" and "Evil" (as opposed to the more useful existential-phenomenological categories of "good for me or my group" and "bad for me or my group"). Much of it is quite good, but his criticism of Christianity and theologians needs qualification: he's talking about fundamentalism and fundamentalists (and, of course, these terms need to be further qualified, but the point is that they are subset of a much larger group). Thus, a sentence like the following seems naive and overextended: "The Christian theologian, historically, seems a person intent on terrorizing others into doing what he wants them to do and thinking what he wants them to think, or killing them if they will not submit." Still, he makes some nice points that many "real" theologians, i.e., the ones I would tend to agree with, have been making as well.

posted by wk at 1:06 PM 0 comments Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Health Care in the U.S.

Via Kevin Drum comes this excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article:

People need first to be aware of this and then (logically) pissed off about it.

posted by wk at 4:25 PM 4 comments Stem Cell Research

This report in this Post article could be important: Skin Cells Converted to Stem Cells. As the article states, "the technique could offer an end run around the heated social and religious debate that has for years overshadowed the field of human embryonic stem cell research."

posted by wk at 3:29 PM 0 comments Saturday, August 20, 2005

Oil Queues in China

Remember this chart about oil supply and demand from a few days ago? Well, now there's this happening in China: posted by wk at 3:02 PM 0 comments Sunday, August 14, 2005

Frank Rich Is Good

Frank Rich has another good article today:

posted by wk at 9:53 PM 1 comments I read Hilzoy's post at Obsidian Wings on stem cells (upon the recommendation of Mark Kleiman and Brad DeLong) and found it to be one of the best short pieces on the topic I have read. I think I now understand what Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) is and why it matters.

posted by wk at 2:10 PM 0 comments Friday, August 12, 2005

Tipping Point?

Is this the tipping point? What happens next? Until now the supply of oil has always outstripped the demand for its production. The demand has finally caught up, and the prices are going up. In itself, that fact is nothing to worry excessively about, but the possibility of another oil shock (when, for example, one major supplier goes off-line for a period of time) is definitely worrisome. See this article for details.

posted by wk at 9:10 AM 0 comments Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Woe(s) of the Democrats

Why do the Democrats suck so badly these days--at least in the vote-garnering department? Kevin Drum has a list of popular answers. Kevin Drum quickly skewers #9 in his description of it, but I enjoy Fafnir's more humorous rebuttal:

Sometimes I just can't stop worryin about the Democratic Party an its terrible internal divisions an stuff. On the one side you got your centrist DLC-types with their balanced budgets an their lax gun control regulation an their health care plans an their reverence for Bill Clinton, and on the other side you got your hard-core lefty Howard Dean types with their balanced budgets an their lax gun control regulation an their health care plans an their reverence for Bill Clinton. If only there was some kinda way to bridge this vast an terrible ideological gap!

If I had to bite the bullet and choose, my dark side would lean toward #6. But some combination of #3 , #7, and #8 (which are more or less the same thing) is probably the wise answer. And, yes, #10 is correct to a degree, but Democrats need to learn to manipulate the press as well as the Republicans. I blame Democrats for failing to figure out how to do that as effectively. At this point, if George Bush said he believed the earth is flat, the New York Times would write that opinions differ on shape of the earth and then get back to the latest Paris Hilton "news" of the day. Our press corps needs to get over its case of A.D.H.D. and focus on exposing the b.s. coming from our politicians. Aw, it's hopeless, isn't it?

posted by wk at 9:59 PM 0 comments Giblets of Fafblog responds the only way one possibly can to radical cleric James Dobson's lunacy at Focus on the Family.

Your children are gay, you have always known it! But how can you prove it for sure? Behold Giblets's Guide to Proving Your Son Is Gay! These are can't-fail tests that should have you diagnosing deviant offspring as early as age 5. There's no use bothering with your daughter; she's stuck as a girl as it is.
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