Travelling Shoes

Thursday, April 08, 2004

 

Required Reading

Here's a quick list of three blogs you should be reading:

JunkYard Blog: Always funny, always trenchent. I especially like this photoshop of Muqteddy al-Sadr

National Security Blog: Big props for pointing out that Vietnamese Americans really don't like John Kerry.

Babalu Blog: Simply the best anti-Castro blog out there.


posted by H.D. Miller on 11:07 AM. . .Link. . .

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Wednesday, April 07, 2004

 

You Might be a Medievalist If...

-Your secondary sources are somebody else's primary sources.

-Everyone else on your conference panel has taken holy orders.

-You have a favorite decree of the fourth lateran council.

-Your particular field of study could be wiped out by a car accident.

-You've ever been asked "the truth" about King Arthur.

-You refer to the American Revolution as a "recent development."

-You specify which level of hell your day has been like.

-You call the renaissance "a dirty lie."

It's so funny because it's true.

And it's also true about my field of studies being wiped out by one unlucky car wreck...heck, my field of studies could be wiped out by me slipping in the bathtub.

(via Another Boring Medievalist)

posted by H.D. Miller on 7:07 PM. . .Link. . .

 

Happy 2nd Blogday!!!

Yes, it's been exactly two years since I set up shop at this site and started pushing electrons into the ether.

Two long, eventful years, in which I've tried to entertain, explain, and make sense of the world. I certainly haven't succeeded in every case, although occasionally, like the blind sow, I've found my truffle.

For nostalgia's sake, here's a link to my very first post.

A year ago, on the occasion of my first anniversary as a blogger I gave what I think is still the best explination of the blogosphere, one that is worth repeating here:

It is [the] individuality of the idiosyncratic voice that makes the blogosphere such a grand and glorious place. As a whole, it's an enormous crazy orchestra composed of a thousand bangers, clangers, kazoos, bazookis, and gongs, all going full blast, playing a thousand different tunes at once. And yet, strangely, if you give yourself over to the noise, you can hear in the madness the making of a beautiful, wild music. That is how the blogosphere should be understood, as the triumph of free speech over all else, of noise and riot banging out the cacophonous symphony of freedom.

I'm proud to have played my own instrument in the orchestra pit of the blogosphere, pounding out my own notes, contributing in my own tiny way to the glorious noise of a free people speaking their minds.

I still feel exactly the same way, that blogging is something worth doing, even if it sometimes sounds like a riot of noise.


posted by H.D. Miller on 4:53 PM. . .Link. . .

 

Ghost Town

Wow!

That's the only way to describe a site that features a beautiful brunette on a fast motorcycle giving us a guided tour of Hell.

Incredible.

(Hat tip to Ed Driscoll)
posted by H.D. Miller on 3:48 PM. . .Link. . .

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Tuesday, April 06, 2004

 

Hans Blix, Idiot

I have seen few statements more perniciously stupid than this one by Hans Blix:

"What's positive is that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when figuring out the score, the negatives weigh more," the former chief U.N. weapons inspector was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper Jyllands Posten.

"That accounts for the many casualties during the war and the many people who still die because of the terrorism the war has nourished," he said. "The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great."

Read that final line again and marvel at the mendacity and stupidity behind those words.

"The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great."

What sort of misguided cost accounting goes into figuring that?

On average, Saddam was killing something like 3600 Iraqis a month, and brutalizing thousands more with torture, rape and imprisonment. By comparison, the best estimate for deaths since January of 2003, one given by Iraq Body count stands at a little over 10,000.

So by this measure, more than 40,000 people are alive who would not have been if Saddam had remained in power. (I won't even try to calculate how many rapes or incidents of torture have been avoided.)

Meaning, based solely on the number of lives spared to date, the war has been a success.

Yes, there is chaos in Iraq, and yes, 600 American soldiers are dead who would be alive if we'd remained out of Iraq. But, scores of thousands have been saved, and millions have been liberated from tyranny.

How can Blix be so stupid, so morally obtuse, so blind as to diminish the good that has been brought about by the removal of the Saddam?

Once again, I find myself standing with David Gelertner. I want to scream at Hans Blix:

But don't you understand, a listener wants to scream, that Saddam's government was ripping human flesh to shreds? Was consuming whole populations by greedy mouthfuls, masticating them, drooling blood? Committing crimes that are painful even to describe? Don't you understand what we achieved by liberating Iraq, what mankind achieved?

posted by H.D. Miller on 12:42 PM. . .Link. . .

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Monday, April 05, 2004

 

Fruit Fly Fight Club

This is very cool:

As it turned out, fruit fly fights were less predictable than lobster fights, which the Kravitz lab has been studying for 20 years. Lobster fights seem to follow a strict choreography, usually beginning with low-intensity moves and countermoves and slowly escalating to higher intensity encounters before the loser retreats for good. Fruit flies fights are more random affairs. Yet, patterns emerged. Fruit flies have a favorite tactic--fencing--but they can also surprise their opponents with wing threats, charging, and even retreating.

(Via the excellent science blog Pharyngula)

posted by H.D. Miller on 3:17 PM. . .Link. . .

 

Here Comes the Dumb

John Kerry's official campaign blog (to quote Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, "We must all have waffles forthwith!") has revealed that poor John (F. for Old Fogey) Kerry is hopelessly mired in the 1960s.

And to top off all of your obvious qualifications for president (which dramatically outnumber Bush's...), you're a Beatles fan! Mr. Kerry, it really doesn't get any better than this.

Now, I love the Beatles, too.

But then:

a)I'm not trying desperately to portray myself as a man in touch with urban street culture.

b) Nor, am I man who has a risible reputation for retreating into my luxurious basement to watch home-movies of my glory days in 1969.

c) Nor do I believe, as those at the Kerry blog seem to believe, that love of the Beatles qualifies me for a high-level position in the government.

As president, you would be "fixing a hole where the rain gets in" as a result of prior administration. Things will be "getting better all the time." There's going to be a "Revolution" against the old government's mismanagement. Maybe there will be less bitter divisions between the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, if they say "We can work it out." People will see that a president can get things done without a little help from his friends in big business. "When I'm Sixty-Four," I hope my grandchildren will be learning about the forty-fourth president of the United States- John F. Kerry!

Don't hold your breath, Ringo.


posted by H.D. Miller on 8:37 AM. . .Link. . .

 

O'Franken Blog

Hey kids, be the first on you block to check out the Al Franken's new blog. Hurry, do it before he wrecks everything by making his first post!

UPDATE: Now it seems to have vanished. What's up with that?


posted by H.D. Miller on 8:31 AM. . .Link. . .

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Sunday, April 04, 2004

 

Peter the Not So Great

Amid all the accolades for the recently deceased Peter Ustinov, one thing has been missed: he was a particularly loathsome piece of work.

I have tried to fathom how else a man with Ustinov's record of excusing tyrants and defending tyranny could have been so eulogised. The butchers of Tiananmen Square, Stalin, Milosevic, bin Laden, Saddam: he defended or gave succour to the lot.

Among his many accolades, Sir Peter was chancellor of Durham University. In an address to the university in 2000, he made clear that, as far as he was concerned, Chinese dissidents are not real human beings: "People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights." So it is fine to kill them or let them rot in prison. We really should be more understanding of the Chinese government.

Hardly surprising really, given his attitude to the gulags. In his book, My Russia - a grotesque piece of Soviet sycophancy - he conceded only that Stalin had caused "suffering" to "thousands" - as if the gulags were a nasty outbreak of food poisoning on a busy night in a Solihull balti house. Then there was his television series, Peter Ustinov's Russia. Noel Malcolm's review said it all: Ustinov showed "all the investigative inclinations of an Intourist guide with a coach party and a lobotomy".

(via Samizdata)

posted by H.D. Miller on 11:16 AM. . .Link. . .

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Saturday, April 03, 2004

 

Books Worth Reading

Over the spring break, instead of grading dreary papers, or reading dreary academic histories, I treated myself to some popular histories. Let me recommend three that I think are well-written and worth reading:

God's Secretaries: The Making of the Kind James Bible by Adam Nicolson.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King.

Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.

I especially recommend Weatherford's book on Ghengis Khan. Although he sometimes overstates his case, and occasionally relies too much on unverifiable legend, the book is still a heck of a good read. The introduction, itself, in which Weatherford describes how he spent eight years doing research, much of it on horseback in Mongolia's "Great Taboo", the forbidden zone which supposedly holds Khan's tomb, repays the purchase price.

posted by H.D. Miller on 9:35 AM. . .Link. . .

 

Real Life Zoolander

Yesterday at the bookstore, my lust for gossip caused me to browse through The Other Man: A Love Story, the new tell-all book by the late Caroline Bessette Kennedy's boy-toy, underwear model Michael Bergin.

As expected it's crap. Which is all fine and good. However, much better than the main story, is the picture that Bergin, an amiable dunce, paints of the life a male underwear model. (In the mid-90s Bergin was the face, abs, and package of Calvin Klein underwear.)

Like Derek Zoolander, Michael Bergin comes from a working-class background, is dumber than a box of rocks, is surrounded by ridiculous fashion-industry characters (like Valentino), and has his own signature "look" (not Blue Steel, but "sultry").

Yes, foks, it's true: Zoolander is a documentary.

posted by H.D. Miller on 8:41 AM. . .Link. . .

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Thursday, April 01, 2004

 

Too Graphic

Instaman points to the following bit from the Mudville Gazette concerning the decision by various media outlets to show pictures of the mutilated bodies from yesterday's attack in Fallujah:

But once again, broadcasters and news executives were torn between a question of taste and the demand to give viewers and readers information that could affect the course of history.

"War is a horrible thing. It is about killing," ABC News "Nightline" Executive Producer Leroy Sievers said in an unusual message to the program's e-mail subscribers discussing the issues posed by Wednesday's killings. "If we try to avoid showing pictures of bodies, if we make it too clean, then maybe we make it too easy to go to war again."

Read that last bit twice. "If we try to avoid showing pictures of bodies, if we make it too clean, then maybe we make it too easy to go to war again."

My response is simple, aren't these the same people who refuse to show images of the carnage of the September 11th attacks, lest it stir up American anger?

Update: Ed Driscoll says the same thing.

posted by H.D. Miller on 9:11 AM. . .Link. . .

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