An Archaeopteryx Chronicle

The New Roman Empire

2009-11-08T02:02:32Z

I remember an Eddie Izzard joke from a few years back. I forget exactly how it went, but he said that the USA is the New Roman Empire, a thought that a lot of people have expressed in a lot of places. Then he pointed out what we have to look forward to; years of decadence, joy, and other orgiastic things as our Empire crumbles around us.

I used to think that way. It's an easy comparison to make, given that Rome was Really Freaking Powerful and the USA is too. But then I heard about a little thing called the British Empire. I mean, I knew about it, of course. Everyone knows about it. We've all seen The King and I or whatever movie, musical, book reminds you of British Imperialism. But in this modern age, the UK is impotent when compared to the US. They've only one major landmass, which is tiny, they're a service economy with approximately zero manufacturing capacity, they're fighting to avoid being swallowed up by Europe, etc. It's hard to get an idea of what it really meant for them to hold almost all of Africa, all of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, most of Southeast Asia, Australia, Canada, significant portions of the Caribbean, and Gibraltar. That's really a crapton of stuff, and they didn't just hold it via colonial connections and governors. British soldiers marched in the streets of these places, and their wealth all flowed back to that European isle. It's a message that doesn't sink in until you really think about it, in detail, because just reading it on paper doesn't get across the scale of what that Empire really was.

It was also an Empire that contained the USA. However, at the time, it had to contend with France and thay left it with enemies at its gates, enemies that it could not distract itself from in order to stop our little Revolution.

The point of all this is that I'm saying the USA is not the "New Roman Empire," but rather more like an offshoot of it. The British Empire cracked, over the course of 150 years, into many tiny pieces. It began with our rebellion that they could not put down, and it extended across the centuries with continual bifurfations. In some cases, its former US colonies helped prop it up, but to no avail.

You know what that sounds like to me? It sounds a lot more like the Eastern Roman, aka Byzantine, Empire. The US happened to be where a lot of wealth and opportunity was concentrated while the original seat of power, London, quivered under administrative strain. Some wise, rich, and powerful folks from the Old Empire saw that the New Empire had more resources, more capabilities, and more potential. So they jumped ship and rode the wave of their progenitor's glory to catapult their new power to a high level in world affairs. Over the next hundred years, the Empire that they abandoned disintegrated and its outlying regions became backwater countries with varying degrees of stability. Canada, Australia, and India (more recently) have managed to get more than that. Essentially the same thing happened to the Western Roman Empire on essentially the same time scale after the East stopped caring. The scales are bigger here, but travel times are shorter.

Meanwhile, the USA soldiers on. It uses a lot of the lessons learned from the fallen British Empire to inform its decisions (instead of conquering little countries, we engage in stock market imperialism, for example), and it keeps stable, for the most part. Obviously there are some game-changing technologies that exist today that didn't exist during the first Rome, but I still see remarkable parallels between us and the Byzantines.

Interestingly, the Roman Empire had approximately 1 central ruler for every 14 million people (if you use some assumptions as well as the Diocletian rulership scheme) whereas the British Empire had approximately one central ruler for every 300,000 people. I actually expected to find that the numbers would be more comparable, but I guess that representative democracy has actually done rather a lot to dilute power away from single-person concentrations. Incidentally, the US has about one central ruler for every 600,000 people, so we really need to get our acts together ;).

The Jew as a Social Construct and Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-31T20:16:05Z

This won't cut on facebook, so I warn you there are spoilers in this note.

I really should be working. Or writing a post for another, less personal blog than this one. What I should not be doing is obsessing over the political and social implications of Nazi Germany and the new Tarantino movie, which is what I've been doing all day.

I saw it last night, and it's the revenge fantasy that it was promised to be. It's fantastic filmmaking, with every shot designed to bring an emotional impact of some degree. I don't think that there is wasted screentime. I almost want to repeat that sentence for emphasis, because I find it kind of staggering.

Either way, I'm left, after most Tarantino films, with the fear that Tarantino does not actually know what he's doing. He's so effective, through his methods of borrowing or stealing little clips from other films in his vast cinematic memory, that he produces something with significant impact. He's frighteningly effective at it, but then he gets on television and says something like, "This is my bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission movie," and to me this is the equivalent of Spike Lee describing Do The Right Thing as his "Quirky people in a pizza place movie." It's a total tangent to what is really being shown to the viewer, or in reality what the film is actually about.

What I want to believe is that Tarantino is some kind of diabolical genius who is fully aware of all of the messages that his films project, and that he dramatically understates their meaning because arrogant as he is, he thinks it's funny.

I want to believe that because Inglourious Basterds makes such an exceedingly deep statement, when you step away from the filmmakers' in-jokes, that I'm scared it all happened by accident as someone with the maturity of a seventeen year old kid played around with splicing different pieces of film together for the sake of playing director. For some reason Tarantino's public persona is that seventeen year old, and I think just about everyone wants to believe that that is a lie.

The reason I want to, though, is because Inglourious Basterds was simultaneously triumphant and repugnant in its depiction of an alternate WWII history. I'm a Jewish person. I've been raised in a world where the sheep-like, state-owned unemanicpated European Jew has been rescued and replaced by the ballsy, unbeatable, Israeli warrior-poet. Sure, that latter Jewish identity is having its own problems right now, but the Never Again mentality has fully taken over. We are not going like sheep to the slaughter, not ever. We will fight if we see the brownshirts coming, in whatever form they come again. At least until we forget what it was like.

In that social context, Inglourious Basterds is what every proud Jew wishes the past was like when we read of Jews being rounded up like cattle in boxcars. It's what we wish someone had done when the first "Judenrein" banner went up, or when Kristallnacht ended and the sun came up. In reality, very few took up arms and fought. Very few bought guns, even. Very few fled. They just expected the whole "Nazi" thing to blow over. And they died in droves for it. I almost feel a little embarassed thinking how impotent my people were in the face of that existential threat, when during the other times in history someone has risen up to free us from those sorts of oppressors. That's not to say I look down on Holocaust victims for dying, just that I wish that a savior had actually been around to do the dirty work.

And so out of the mists rides this alternate history, where a Bear Jew can bash in Nazi heads with a baseball bat and make every SS man in France fear his name. Where Hitler and Goebbels can be torn apart by machine gun bullets, along with the rest of the Nazi regime, trapped like rats in a burning theatre. Then burned to death. Then exploded. It is a fantasy; a fantasy that gives you the spirit that perhaps if the chance had arisen, some basterd might actually have managed to set it straight the other way.

But that's just one social context. The other social context is one where I know all of the Holocaust stories. The one where I know how my people, trapped within subterranean bunkers, were asphyxiated with the mass-produced rat poison Zyklon B. How they clawed at the locked doors to the gas chambers until their fingernails tore off and their arms dislocated and every ounce of life was given up trying to get the hell out of the trap that the Nazis put them into. I think of the massive piles of shoes, taken from the people killed at concentration camps, that tower inside museums like the National Holocaust Museum in DC or Yad Vashem in Israel. And when I think of these things, I am sickened by Inglorious Basterds.

The massive pile of film reels used to burn down the theatre was so evocative of the shoes that I mentioned it at the time. It was backlit and arranged just like they were in Yad Vashem, and Shoshanna's laughter juxtaposed with the flames, in black and white, was like a sick and twisted Schindler's List playing out before my eyes. Then we cut to the two Basterds, dynamite at the ready, machine guns blazing, as the theatre burns down. The Nazis, choking on smoke and in fear for their lives, pile themselves up on the doors of the theatre, only to find them locked. The Basterds gun them down, en masse. The killcount is astounding. We watch Hitler and Goebbels get torn to pieces, like so much deli meat, by machine gun bullets. Then the whole thing explodes.

And right before it does, the Nazis lying dead at the door look almost (though far better fed) like the Jews who yearned to escape the concentration camp gas chambers. In a way it's a poetic realization of revenge.

And in another way, it's something that I would never want to see done to my enemies. The Jewish desire for revenge against the Nazis has never become a bestial desire to kill Nazis, though the desire to beat them during WWII was quite great. We knew they were evil, but we did not wish to go and desecrate them as they desecrated us. Partly, we never knew. But largely, we are not like that. Our revenge has been to rub in their stinking faces how utterly they have been destroyed and their ideology erased while we continue and propagate and succeed.

Had I been there, and the situation real, I would have stabbed Hitler and Goebbels quietly, then just let the explosives take care of the rest. Not because I think that Tarantino needs to tone down the violence or something like that. Because I believe that just as assertiveness is part of the New Jew mentality, so too is dignity. There is no dignity in the Basterds. Only fury.

A satire of facebook quizzes

2009-06-28T22:56:56Z

This is what the facebook quizzes should be telling you (and me) but are too nice to say. Also, this is just satire written with a deep dose of ironic misanthropy. Don't get huffy, you're probably a beautiful person inside.

How long would you survive in a horror film?

Seventy to ninety years, on average.

What decade fits your personality best?

This one might actually have some merit to it.

Which stereotype do you fit?

Most likely, whichever disgusts you the most when you realise you're fitting it.

What does the week you were born say about you?

It tells you which week your parents got it on.

What is your best trait?

Warm-bloodedness and the adaptive immune system.

Which Michael Jackson song are you?

"Beat It"

A More Accurate Harry Potter Sorting Quiz

Muggle House, obv.

What drug are you most like?

Lipitor: It's unclear that you have health benefits, and people have to take you for the rest of their lives.

What should you get pierced?

Ego.

What weird fucking creature are you?

Human.

What US state do you belong in?

Probably none. There are six billion people on this planet, and a bunch of the ones currently starving to death probably deserve your spot.

Which character are you from the movie The Hangover?

An extra.

Who is your celebrity boyfriend?

The premise of this question is flawed.

Which Transformer are you?

Face it. You're a person. The only thing you're gonna turn into anytime soon is an older person.

Which Friends character are you?

This is kind of a reasonable question, but no matter which Friends character you are, you can't afford a Lower Manhattan apartment as nice as the ones in the show.

What do your eyes say?

If your eyes say anything, see a doctor. Alternatively, "Yes."

Which Full House character are you?

Again, a reasonable question. The characters on Full House are pretty good simulations of real people! That's why it was so bad.

What kind of mask do you wear?

If it's a breath mask, go away.

Which total badass are you?

Again the premise of this question is flawed.

How fat are you?

If you ate today, even if you're skinny by Western standards, you're way fatter than you need to be. Also, why is this even a quiz? We have scales for this purpose.

Which of the X-Men are you?

You're a scared human, who voted for mutant segregation because you're afraid of them.

Which serial murderer are you?

Even I wouldn't go this far.

What kind of teacher are you?

Think back to the quality of your teachers in school. You're probably a bad teacher too.

Which of your Chakras is most open?

Your TMI Chakra.

What natural disaster are you?

Human!

What plastic army man are you?

The minesweeper one that everyone has too many of and is just waiting to get blown up.

What element are you? (earth, fire, air, water)

Mostly carbon.

Which sex position are you?

Solo. And the only Han I'm talking about is the first three letters of "Hand."

What is your inner self?

Something nobody but you cares about.

What crazy bitch are you?

[Insert name here]

That's not even a question.

This quiz had me at "I am making fun of facebook quizzes."

What work of literature are you?

Anything Russian.

How to set up a proxy for people in Iran

2009-06-17T17:15:59Z

blog.austinheap.com/2009/06/15/how-to-setup-a-proxy-for-iran-citizens/

Radio Free Iran.

Moralistic Principles Useful in Science

2009-06-02T22:47:02Z

So this is sort of a strange post. Strange in that I'm doing something I rarely if ever do, which is to discuss religion's interaction with the workplace. Since I typically consider this sort of thing a super-personal issue, I really do want to emphasize that this is in no way an attempt to enforce any beliefs onto anyone else or suggesting that you're doing anything wrong/right/whatever by being a monotheist/pagan/FSMist/atheist/pareve. What this post is is just a list of things I learned in my yeshiva education that have aided me as a scientist and nothing more. Many of these things will not be unique to Judaism, either. They're just things I learned in my upbringing.

Inquisitiveness/Doubt
Benefit of the Doubt
Talmudic Logical Principles
Shabbat
Fairness in business transactions
Not eating limbs from live animals (more specifically, respect for living things)
The limits of human knowledge

I may add more to this list later, but I think seven is enough to explain now.

The first is of course a central principle in Judaism--that there are always lessons to be learned and questions to be asked. Chaim Potok's novel The Chosen includes a Talmud quotation that sums this up neatly, translated there as "A question is worth one coin; silence is worth two." This is of course meant to indicate that a question during a lesson is very worthwhile, but even more worthwhile is being receptive to what you're being taught, though "silence" can have other connotations of course. Either way, both principles are important--be inquisitive and curious, but also doubt that you have all the answers, or even all the questions.

The second is sort of contradictory with the first now isn't it? Scientists are portrayed as skeptics, but in the excellent game Alpha Centauri, the character Provost Zakharov reminds us that "...the scientist must be the consummate optimist..." in order to see past countless failed experiments towards a beautiful, elegant theory. Part of that is the ability to give the benefit of the doubt to others' work as well as your own. To keep an open mind in this fashion goes beyond the Jewish moral principle of not assuming the worst about your neighbors; you should also assume good faith and that researchers are genuinely producing good work for humanity, thus making you receptive to new ideas about your field and the world in general. The scientist who loses this towards others soon loses it towards his own ideas and stops being creative.

The third is there because Talmud study taught me succinct ways to summarize logical arguments inside my head, greatly improving the speed with which I process others' arguments as well as making it easier for me to see when I am demonstrably wrong.

Shabbat gives me time to collect my thoughts. I cannot express enough how important taking breaks is to the scientific process, at least in biology. When you are thinking about what you pipetted where, it is easy to lose the forest for the trees. Taking a day of rest has helped me regroup so frequently that I don't know how I could live without it.

Fairness in business transactions taught me fairness and honesty in scientific discourse. Scientific fraud is a plague, and I am glad to have no part in it. When one paper is questioned, we end up questioning a whole world of conclusions.

Biology requires me to work with animals, and I think the respect for them instilled by rules like what I quoted has helped me to think about experiments ethically. Mice are not just machines from which to harvest virus, and we only sacrifice them for research when we know it will be beneficial to human lives. I might be a speciesist, but that doesn't mean I would harm other creatures needlessly.

The idea that there is more than we can know is pretty important to me also. Sure, Kurt Godel showed it unequivocally in 1921 with his Incompleteness Theorem, but I think it's religion that really taught it to me, in simple terms, the first time I was told I couldn't understand the inner workings of G-d. I find science's constant pursuit of answers, even when it knows there are really unanswerable questions, to be a very empowering endeavour that resonates with these childhood lessons.

Targeted Ads

2009-06-02T13:13:50Z

Dear Google,

  Sometimes a targeted ad is not quite appropriate. For example, if I'm reading about a plane crash in an email news alert, this does not indicate I want to go to flight school.

  Sincerely,

  A Concerned Citizen

An age-old argument that might be worth revisiting

2009-06-01T15:54:48Z

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor discusses goings on in the Israeli Parliament as regards the "idea" of having the Palestinian State be the State of Jordan, since a lot of people think that's what should have happened in 1948 and blah blah blah.

I don't support that view, but I do think it raises an interesting possibility. There are a lot of problems with the current Israeli status quo. One of them, namely, is that the West Bank as the Palestinians know it can't strategically form the basis of their state, either for their sake or for the sake of the Israelis. The Israeli desire to give them a portion of this land also seems less than viable in the long run, though slightly better strategically for Israel.

The peace process also has the problem that it does not fully consider the other nations that are Israel's partners in responsibility for the Palestinian crisis. Egypt and Jordan were the nations that kept the Palestinian refugee crisis a crisis until 1967, and these problems would not be as serious if not for those two countries. Is it reasonable to suggest that in addition to the lands that will be given up by Israel, Jordan and Egypt should also give some small portion of their territory for the sake of a strategically and economically viable Palestinian state? I think this might lead to a more peaceful region overall.

A Return to Judaism

2009-05-26T17:15:45Z

Both for the sake of my livejournal and for my own sake, I've decided to return to making posts about Judaism. For the past few months I've posted mainly my adventures and frustrations (the latter of which have led to some unfortunate arguments), and now that I'm in a slightly less stressful phase of life I think I should change the character of this journal to reflect that.

Other posts will probably be related to my efforts to publish my first novel, which is also something interesting. More on that later.

Today I wanted to write a quick note about the most basic of things. I grew up Jewish, as many of you are aware. Judaism, especially in New York, can be a pretty insular thing. You mostly see other Jews, know other Jews, and get little exposure to the ways of the world and its non-Jewish inhabitants. Thankfully my teachers and parents always taught tolerance, or I fear I'd be far more xenophobic than is right.

The important thing about this insular upbringing is that I never realised how truly strange some of the things that Jews do appear to other people. Few, if any, other religions have such demanding practice. Most of them are about showing up and being at the service for whatever reason. Americans experience religion in religious places, and that's also where they learn about it. If they learn about it.

It was a big shock to me to be exposed, in college, to Christians who knew less of their religious texts than I did (that's not to say every Christian lacks in Bible study, simply that a religious Jew who doesn't spend lots of time learning is basically unheard of). Furthermore, many of the people I met had lots of questions for me; why I do what I do, etc. Why are my practices so strange? Athiests, I find, are the most blunt about it. Often to the point of extreme disrespect, but I've always felt it was best to take questions like, "Why do you waste time on that bullshit?" with a certain amount of stride. Responses like "Who the fuck asked you?" don't help the interfaith dialogue that is vital to religious freedom.

Since I get this question so often, and I had a discussion about it this weekend, I thought I'd write a little about it here. Why do Jews do weird things? We wrap ourselves with leather strips and boxes that contain Bible verses. Some days we don't work. One day a year, we're told we should get drunk. Other days, we're told not to eat. Eight days of the year, we eat greasy, fried foods. Sometimes we live in little temporary shacks. It's a jungle of convoluted religious practices out there.

My father is regularly skeptical of some of the practices that he doesn't see explicitly written in the bible--the boxes/leather strips, known as Tefillin, for example. He thinks it's a too-literal intepretation of some verses. His argument was that unlike the commandments to eat unleavened bread on Passover or to rejoice with the specific branches of specific trees during Sukkot, the commandment of Tefillin is too vague to be taken literally. There are no details for how we're supposed to do it, merely a symbolic commandment to bind these words as a sign upon our arms and wear them as "frontlets" to our eyes.

My argument in response is actually a rather general statement about religion. I argued that perhaps we do take that commandment too literally, and that all that was being said is that we should inundate our minds with Torah so that we do not come close to forgetting its words. Even so, there is no harm in wearing them, and beyond that, other commandments are equally, if not more, vague about the details of practice. The fact is, Judaism is filled with many such practices, where we are given a vague commandment, like, "Live in huts for seven days" for a symbolic purpose, such as, "to remember when your ancestors dwelled in huts in the desert after G-d took them out of Egypt."

That, I think, is the central motivator of Judaism. We do strange things, but they are done to be strange and unusual, because for us, they are physical, active manifestations of symbolic ideals. It would not be simply enough to say "Oh, for seven days I'll remember that we wandered in the desert." Certainly that captures the spirit and symbolism of the rule. No, we must build the houses and dwell in them, and they serve as a constant reminder both to us and to those around us, as well as a teaching tool for our children, to show our dedication to both remembering and to being moralistic individuals. It might be enough to inundate ourselves with Torah, and not wear Tefillin. It might just be sufficient, and it's certainly in the spirit of the law. But every morning I physically bind the words to my arm and sit them as frontlets on my eyes, I wake myself up to a reality of Torah and proclaim it to the world. I take the intangibles and make them real to me and to those who choose to practice with me. With each wrap of that leather, I make manifest the words of the Torah in the world. It is, as it should be, simultaneously empowering and humbling, and that can be a very fulfilling contradiction to live through.

too slow...

2009-05-21T11:39:03Z

I can't believe it took me this long to realise the parallel between the first Austin Powers movie and that guy who threw a shoe at (former!) President Bush.

un poisson, deux poissons

2009-03-01T20:38:44Z

An altogether exciting evening was had in New York.

I went to (Le) Poisson Rouge with friends to see They Might Be Giants perform all of Flood. Excellent, of course.

The crowd was satisfyingly eclectic and full of intelligent people. Good Thai food was had beforehand.

I saw a woman wearing a "the man" (arrow up) "the legend" (arrow down) t-shirt. Fantastic. If it hadn't been for the annoying middle-aged guy standing between us, I might have tried to start a conversation of some kind.

Exciting things occurred on the train down, as well. Overheard some people talking about bacterial population dynamics, chimed in. Before I knew it they were giving me their phone numbers. Rumors of Settlers of Catan drifted through the conversation. That's how New York should be!

On the way back, I ran into someone from the lab I did my first rotation in. I see this guy all over the city, as I do with many of the people with that lab. It's pretty neat.

I think I'll leave this post unlocked just to prove that I don't spend all my time thinking about politics, religion, and other things nobody wants to talk about over dinner. In fact, sometimes I just have dinner and listen to some kickass music.

Wars

2009-02-23T04:15:40Z

I have been watching Band of Brothers for much of this weekend. It is a very moving piece of film making, and probably one of the best things that television has been used for. You get a small taste of what being at Brestogne was like during the Battle of the Bulge, or the elation of the British escapees during Operation Pegasus. War is hell, and the way it's shot...it's an incredible miniseries.

But it's made me think of wars, why we fight them, and how humanity has been fundamentally changed by the massive wars of the 20th century.

War began as a very simple prospect. It wasn't far from a football game. People would hit each other with rocks and sticks, stab each other, steal some cattle, maybe some women, whatever. Maybe burn some houses. It wasn't massively destructive, people weren't torn into pieces. Sure it wasn't *nice*, but the odds of being ripped into little bits were much lower and if you were good at it I imagine it might once have been a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, early on, there were no referees. Nobody screened what equipment was allowed. So we made bigger, worse weapons. By then things that gotten into a place where you had to keep up the arms race. Bigger, better, faster was *necessary*- but still, even up until the Middle Ages, people enjoyed fighting wars, especially when they won. There were rules to warfare that kept this system working.

In the Middle Ages, things started to crack. You see your first peace activism there, and I think it's because the waging of war had become a much more expensive and destructive prospect. Still, however, those in command of the armies liked to do it. There was something fun to being dressed up in armor and going out on your horse. And those people, the people who could stop it, were the ones who died the least frequently, thanks to their big beefy suits of armor.

Then we invented stuff that can really mess somebody up. Guns. Artillery. Bombs. Planes, machine guns. Later, nukes.

It didn't get better. War became hell, and that became a theme of the 19th century. Even the officers were not spared, but because of the terrible requirement of not backing down from this global game for fear of utter destruction, we kept going.

I find it very telling that there are only three or four major wars that have shaped the course of recent human history in a major way, that have fundamentally changed human society as a whole.

One of them wasn't terribly destructive. There wasn't a huge loss of life, it didn't really involve a giant amount of people. It was fought over the principle that perhaps people should be able to have a say in their own governance, even if they were born under the hegemony of some foreign power. This war was, of course, the American Revolution, and it changed the ideas of government globally. It touched off another fifty years of war and upheaval that re-shaped ideas of rulership and the right of kings. This war was fought for noble ideas and a nation was born of it, but on top of that, an ideology that has made the world an overall better place. It was a war of ideologies made real in guns and steel, of Enlightenment born on the battlefield, and the creation of the idea of democracy. And it was done with less bloodshed that one might expect.

Two more wars I want to highlight were the World Wars. Fought in the twentieth century, the death and destruction they wrought left the world that experienced them and the species that tore itself apart over them with the distinct impression that they should perhaps reevaluate war. Today, the difference between belligerent nations and peaceful ones has a lot to do with which nations experienced these world wars directly, and they killed tens of millions of people. They were horrible, and they were fought by nearly equal enemies with opposing viewpoints, lasting for years and laying waste to entire countries. Terrifying weapons were born of them. Terrible things were done. These wars' scale blew the wars before them out of the water, and the American Revolution is nothing by comparison.

When one strips away the layers of political intrigue, propaganda, and euphemism involved in these wars, it produces a somewhat disturbing conclusion. The most terrible conflicts of our history, the ones that have finally made us wonder whether we should fight each other, were not fought over lofty ideals.

These wars were fought to answer a stupidly simple question: "Should Germany be bigger?"

Some said yes, others said no, that it came at too high an expense to those it took from. And over that simple, pathetically petty question, we might have learned that it's just not worth killing each other over land. At least some of us might have. Hopefully enough of us.

On Political Failure

2009-02-09T04:32:08Z

There's been a lot made of how the media and the Obama campaign interacted, vs. the McCain campaign, in the recent election. If you listen to most conservatives you'd get the impression that the Obama campaign was given absolute favoritism by an elitist liberal media; everyone has heard that song and dance. Or, at least, most people have.

First, let's talk about what the media are. The media are politicians. They're just like the politicians that we have in Washington, in fact. They take enormous amounts of money from special interests and are somewhat beholden to the whims of those special interests, which take the form of advocacy groups, corporations (mostly corporations), and other concerned, moneyed entities. They make their living off of appealing to the majority of people, and most networks have political niches, just like parties or candidates do. They have individual public faces that are supported by massive staff organizations all putting together a complete package of what is happening in your world (that, the product, is their biggest difference from a politician). And we vote for them. In nielsen surveys, with our remote controls, by blogging about them, by quoting them, by taking little snippets of their stories online and linking to them, we vote for the media just like we vote for any other politician.

Politics is all about relationships; ask anyone who's been involved with passing the bailout lately. As such, I think that most of what we see in politics can be broken down into relationship metaphors. The media was anticipating a chance to get out of a really bad relationship it had with President Bush. The media wasn't happy; he didn't dazzle them anymore like he did in the early days, and his excuses for his mistakes (in addition to never admitting when he was wrong) had worn it down to where they just couldn't take that kind of crap anymore.

The media, in short, was itching for someone to come along and sweep it off its feet.

Obama definitely had some things going for him in this respect. McCain, as a former Bush opponent, could have had a lot going for him too. What I'm trying to show here is that it's not because the media is composed of crazy liberals that they came out painting the liberal in a better light (which they did, but I don't think it was from inherent bias). This is the media that we "voted" for. Basically every American buys things. Definitely every voter buys things. Therefore, everyone voting in the election in some sense also voted for the media, so the media we have is the media we selected. The media are a government independent elected representative; they have been elected to replace the audience at the political speeches that used to be possible when we were a much smaller country.

Therefore it is essential for a political candidate to maintain a good relationship with the media, because that is tantamount to having a good relationship with their audience. Obama went for both ways of reaching his audience, with high media transparency in both explaining his grassroots moves and in maintaining excellent rapport with reporters, coupled with the aforementioned excellent grassroots element.

McCain simply didn't. His political moves were mystifying. He didn't answer questions with much explanation of his political moves during the election. People didn't support Sarah Palin not because she sounded like an idiot, but for a reason that includes that while being more complicated. People didn't support her because the campaign didn't adequately explain why the country needed what expertise and skills she brought to the table, something absolutely necessary to making her not sound like an idiot. Without that proper context it was easy for her to be portrayed as a total moron; the media had nothing to go on, and in probing her unprepared status, they found her wanting. Surprrrrrise!

So excuse me if I think saying that the media favored Obama is a bit of sore-loser behavior. Yes, they favored Obama. They favored Obama because he courted them and maintained a good relationship with them, just like he did with many other groups. If McCain had done that, they'dve favored him too. Instead, he was defensive and acted like the media were the enemy, which, of course, made them into one. He paved the path he walked.

Criticising the War in Gaza

2009-01-18T06:53:42Z

I've spent a lot of time being very uncomfortable with the war, there's no way to put that more nicely. The high numbers of civilian deaths have made me very, very unhappy. The awful situation Israel and the Palestinians have been forced into, by Hamas, makes me really unhappy. The things that Israel has done have also made me unhappy.

I was thinking about it a lot recently, and I decided that I could be okay with the civilian deaths; Hamas is definitely more responsible than Israel.

I decided I could be okay with the infrastructure damage; again, Hamas chose to store weapons there.

I decided that how far this set back "peace" could be okay, also, because it would keep people safer.

But I have to say, Israel made the wrong call, straight up. You don't enter a war without clear diplomatic objectives aside from "make it stop," and then as people die, write out your terms. That's not how you do this. You approach your enemy and say, "The following things about the status quo change right now, or we are going to hurt you very badly." That way, when the bombs start dropping and the troops start marching, the entire time, the enemy knows what is on the table and what they can do, at any time, to make the pain stop.

Instead Israel just hit Gaza with a hammer, in the name of the right of self defence, admittedly with demands, but ones that were quite vague, ("We will keep fighting until you stop fighting" is strangely uncompelling) until Hamas said, "OW! What can I do to make this stop??"

And that is no way to fight a just war. Sun Tzu said to always leave your enemy a way out; a trapped enemy fights like no other. Israel should have thought about that.

Well at least someone is saying it...

2009-01-14T19:38:34Z

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231866576202&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Of course I don't think this means we can't place blame on both sides (in fact, I love blaming both sides), but I think that the media at large have not been placing enough focus on the seriousness of Hamas's war crimes.

This pretty much speaks for itself

2009-01-09T03:12:43Z

Thoughts on the current Israeli operation in Gaza

2009-01-05T22:24:59Z

I've been deeply debating even opening my mouth on this subject, but after reading some of the vitriol and nonsense being written by people with whom I am nominally aligned on this issue, I feel like a stab needs to be made at explaining what sets me apart from people I am very disappointed with.

My views will not, however, be objective. I am very subjective in terms of being completely opposed to Hamas.

That doesn't mean I like what a lot of pro-Israel bloggers are doing with the current crisis. A few points necessary to explain before continuing:

I find the five years of rocket and mortar assault on Israel from Gaza totally unacceptable.
I do not fully support Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians over all of history. There are definite mistakes that have been made.
I find the current IDF operation to be justified sufficiently, especially when you consider that Israel, as a sovereign UN member state has a right to self defence against non-state actors under the UN Charter.
I'm completely against Hamas tactics. They are cowards and murderers in the worst sense of those words, using human shields and indiscriminately attacking parts of a country that they have no legitimate claim to. If their operations were completely limited to Gaza I might have different views, but that is not the case.
That said, I am deeply saddened by the fact that any civilian casualties have occured. They're unavoidable in a military operation of this kind, and I blame Hamas for them, but I wish that there were another way for the IDF to achieve its objectives.

Having established that I have to comment on some patterns that I'm seeing in news stories and blogging both for and against this conflict.

Specifically, this concept of proportionality. Proportionality is something that UN member states are supposed to keep in mind when planning military operations. Military operations should be proportional to the threat perceived, so sayeth the UN Charter. A lot of people seem to feel that this means both sides should for some reason have equal casualties, that "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is the overriding principle of international military law, and that Israel has made a terrible breach of international law because more Palestinians have died than Israelis. On the other side of the coin we find pro-Israel people claiming that 500 Palestinians (or some other ridiculous number) is the "value" of one Israeli life.

I cannot express enough how much both of these viewpoints are completely without relation to the concept of "proportionality," or how devoid of real moral thought they are.

My first point relates to people who believe it improper for Israel to use advanced weaponry and munitions with advanced guidance systems against a force of people armed with 1990s russian military hardware. This point is easily dismissed: If "proportionality" is defined as limiting yourself to the same kinds of weapons and application of force as your enemy, then Israel should be launching unguided Grad rockets at Gaza's population of 1.5 million and hoping that this somehow solves the problem by being as likely to kill civilians as Hamas's attacks. If you don't think that's a terrible idea, please stay well away from me.

Point the second: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" implies that every time an Israeli is killed, Israel must go and find an equivalent Palestinian, and kill that person. That's terrible. Further, the idea that in some way the number of deaths should be equal is just downright disturbing. What we should be wishing for and working towards is a world where in order to prevent the deaths of more Israelis, no Palestinians have to die. There is no way to assess equivalence between two lives, and that goes for my next point too.

People who believe that any great number of Palestinians must die in order to make them "pay" for Israeli deaths, whether or not these people say "only terrorists should be killed," are also completely off the map as far as proportionality and as far as morality. This war is not about justice. War should never be about justice, because militaries are not judicial. They are executive in nature, and they are used as an enforcement arm of government police. They do not, and should not, judge or exact punishment. There is a system for doing that internationally. Its validity is not something I wish to discuss here, but suffice it to say that militaries do not exist for the sake of punishing wrongs committed against sovereign states. It is disgusting to think that people I agree with in supporting this offensive could make arguments that blood must be spilled in *any* quantity to somehow make up for the blood shed in Israel.

No, in fact, what proportionality refers to is the idea that a nation should limit the military force it uses to match the threat that it is trying to defend itself against. The concept that drives the UN is that a member state should never be the aggressor, so I'm speaking from a definition of military operations as being a method of neutralizing threats to a state that limit its rights as a UN member state. A great portion of Israel's population is threatened by rocket attacks, especially now that Hamas is capable of storing up thousands of them at a time. Israel responded with a degree of force that is proportional not to the damage done by the rockets because it is more concerned about the ongoing threat from those attacks. The degree of force being used is proportional, instead, to the amount of threat posed by the rockets and is carefully weighed to consider the objectives of Israel's incursion: to quickly limit Hamas capabilities and avoid a protracted war while keeping civilian casualties as low as possible. To do that takes advanced weaponry, careful planning, and a lot of military resources.

The take home message is this: This is not about punishing the Palestinians. This should not be about providing an exactly even response to all Palestinian attacks. This should not be about some misguided sense of justice. This war is about removing a threat to Israel's sovereignty, and Israel is trying to do that with a minimal number of civilian casualties. The civilian casualties are extremely unfortunate, but Israel is literally against a wall here. However, I am not happy that people on both sides are continually devaluing Israeli and Palestinian lives by claiming that there is some calculus of equivalence between casualty numbers. This will end when IDF objectives are achieved, and the IDF's objective is to keep Hamas from attacking targets outside of Gaza. If that can end without another shot fired, I would love to see it happen, as would a great many Israelis.

(C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h): An Enigma Among Jewish Holidays

2008-12-28T01:46:35Z

In addition to being amazingly ambiguous of spelling, (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) is an especially interesting Jewish holiday, for a variety of reasons. The one that I'm going to be focusing on here relates to its standing with basically only Purim as a commemoration of a Jewish military victory over a superior force such that we were able to achieve our always short-lived independence. It's also interesting because it is part of what I like to think of as a neo-holiday because it was instated after the Babylonian exile, rather than being divinely commanded in the Bible. In fact, when I say the blessings over the (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) candles I find myself wondering whether I should really be saying the hebrew for "blessed is G-d who commands us to light (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) candles," because I'm hard-pressed to find a universe in which G-d actually personally commanded their lighting. Even the Talmudic sages who said that we are obligated to light (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) lights rejected the book record of the war against the Hellenes as biblical canon for lack of evidence that it was a divinely inspired document.

So in some sense, (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) is a purely human holiday. We were unhappy about losing our independence and cultural identity, and a small group of intense people formed a resistance unit with the idea of "Whomsoever is for G-d, come with me!" as their founding concept. The image of the elderly High Priest of the Temple, Matityahu (Gr. Mattithias, Eng. Matthew) stabbing Greek soldiers with his sword while wearing his priestly garb, violently refusing to be oppressed by idolatry, and yelling this to the assembled before running off and forming an army, is a pretty interestingly appealing idea for a people who had to shut up and take it for the past two thousand years, and I think was even more appealing when their country was physically occupied by the Romans as it was just 80 years after the (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) story.

I know that I, for one, was amazed at the self-sacrifice of Eliezer ben Matityahu, one of the revolution's military leaders and my hebrew namesake, who gallantly showed the Macabees that Antiochus's elephants could be killed; by running under one, spearing it, and then being tragically lost when its corpse fell on him. The loss of his life showed the rest that these fearsome animals were just as mortal as any others, and that even the Hellenes' scariest beasts of war could at least be stopped. I'd rather he hadn't died, but who can control which way an elephant falls?

At any rate, the story is filled with tales of heroism and self-assurance, a will that was absent during in the many centuries that followed.

Thinking about it, we are now in an age where Jews can afford to be assured of their short-term survival, once again, at least. We know that we have a military backing us up, and one that people do not want to mess with. The image of the late Israeli commando Yoni Netanyahu cast a tall and imposing shadow over those wishing to oppress Jews until the 1970s, and he is simply one example of what the idea of Israel has done to reassure Jews worldwide that we will, in fact, never again be killed in the streets, at least not if Israel has anything to say about it. The rescue of the Ethiopian Jews provides another example of this fantastic role of the State of Israel. We do not have to live our lives in fear, or with a culture of victimization. Cossacks beware.

This modern assertive Jewish culture is one that I find very interesting because the last time it existed, as far as I know, was during the (C)Ha(n)nu(k)ka(h) story. Yet, there is no real holiday, no religious holiday, based on the idea of the military victories that Israel has won for Jews in the past 60 years. There is Israeli Independence Day, which commemorates the end of the Independence War and Israel's victory over incredible odds, but it lacks practices distincly associated with it, and it was a long and bitter war that left all sides at least somewhat disappointed.

The Sinai war, in 1956, not enough people really understand. France and Britain support Israel in a war against Egypt because it closed the Suez? Way too geopolitical for people to really celebrate as a religious holiday.

The Six-Day War, which was an example of a confluence of luck, possibly divine intervention, and excellent military tactics, would be far too controversial to celebrate, though its length does make it deal for a short holiday. However, the only religious practice I can conceive of on this holiday would be skydiving, and I just don't think that the world is ready for aerial tandem prayer services.

I can't get behind the idea of celebrating the Lebanon wars, either. They were total disappointments in both a tactical and human sense.

That leaves only the Yom Kippur War of 1973, during which Egypt and Syria attacked Israel from two sides on a day when its military readiness was at its lowest. There are rumors that Israel's also-rumored nuclear arsenal flew the friendly skies for the first few days of the way, when it was not yet clear that Ariel Sharon would manage to trap Egypt's army on the wrong side of the Sinai and be just a short drive from Cairo, freeing up air assets to push Syria back where it came from. His success in this respect is pretty miraculous, actually. Surprised by two militaries with technology given to them by the Russians and entirely new tactics, and without the benefit of no opposing air assets that they had in 1967, the Israelis were faced with what looked like terrible odds. Hit when they were down, many were worried they would not be able to get back up. But they did get back up. The war lasted three weeks, but was really decided within the first week and a half. The upshot of the war was that Egypt was convinced Israel was there to stay, and just five years later, there was a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, greatly improving Middle East stability and producing a third party that has been instrumental in preventing all out warfare between Hamas and Israel in today's geopolitical arena. And, most importantly, nobody got nuked. The Yom Kippur War was one of the many proxy wars of the Cold War, with Russian weapons in the hands of the Arabs and US weapons in the hands of the Israelis, and if Israel had been threatened to the point of destruction, there could have been a small, or even large-scale nuclear war. I think the fact that this did not happen is something worth celebrating.

Therefore, I propose a holiday, for the day after Yom Kippur, since the practices that I suggest would be impossible on that holiest of days. I propose that Jews everywhere thank G-d for sparing Israel on that day, for forgiving us for whatever it was that merited our being attacked, and for ensuring that the world not be nuked. Well at least, not a second time. I suggest that we sit back and enjoy life. Visit a local nuclear power plant. Eat microwaved food. Light glow in the dark candles, why the hell not. Every good Jewish holiday needs candles. Suspend practices of mourning. Sit back and watch an Israeli soccer game. Most importantly, just be glad we're all of us alive.

Wormsign?

2008-12-25T07:52:54Z

This article has some pretty impressive analysis of the current divide between the Iran bloc and the Egypt-Saudi Arabia bloc in the Middle East.

There are so many layers to these kinds of situations. It's amazing that anyone can get their heads around them.

Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Retrospectives?

2008-12-23T23:27:33Z

I wonder about this whole thing.

The Bush people seem to want to be remembered well. They're putting lots of spin on. "We protected the country, we're like Lincoln or FDR, we were fighting a war," etc.

What I wonder is: do they really believe that?

A Moment with no Facade

2008-12-23T04:20:12Z

Hey folks.

I wanted to take a moment and write something of a clarification.

For the past couple of months, there's been a sharp divergence between my locked and unlocked posts on this.

In light of recent events, I kind of have to explain.

I've been experimenting with writing in my unlocked posts. It's part of the things that I'm doing to explore different writing styles and things like that. You will see posts in my unlocked stuff that are angry. Sentimental. Annoyed, sad, bereft, all kinds of things. They will be my emotions, but generally taken to an extreme because I'm really pouring what I feel, pure id, unadulterated, into the writing of them. Sometimes there will be other things, also, that make use of pretentious literary tricks or that are just purely experimental writing.

I just want to say, here and now, don't take any of it overly seriously. It's experimental, I'm working on what I can do with writing, and of course that's a buggy process. Comments on writing are appreciated, by the way. Comments on content are also appreciated. But please, remember. It's *going* to go too far, at times, because to write like that is really beneficial to my creative process.

A Public Service

2008-12-22T16:43:13Z

I have decided to provide you with a definition that is important to keeping your wits in these troubled times:

Twitter: verb [intrans.]

talk rapidly and at length in an idle or trivial way

Ex. he twittered on about buying a new workshop

I suggest keeping this in mind in future endeavours.

Instant Culture

2008-12-16T19:55:33Z

"THERE IS A CRISIS THINGS ARE TOTALLY SCREWED OMG" has been the continual tenor of news channel tickers for the past, oh, three months. Everywhere, on the internet, the television, Times Square, anywhere there is advertising, we have seen for the past few months a correlation of slashed prices and continual economic downturn.

Today, the fed totally killed the fed funds rate. Overnight interbanks loans will essentially be free. This means that the fed is seeing extensive reductions in prices, seasonally adjusted. I could've told you that from all the sales I just mentioned But the fact is, we're seeing something that we haven't seen since the Great Depression: a market that is experiencing rapid deflation.

Except that this market is experiencing rapid deflation because of panic, and little else. Internet culture has created something that is a just-add-water crisis. The effects of the crashing stock and real estate markets are definitely being felt by the richest sectors of society especially, but basically, so far, we still have business as usual on the lowest levels of society in terms of credit availability. Especially with the bailout measures. Layoffs are happening, but they're all "over the next three years", etc. The working class, what little of it is left in this country, is feeling the past years of their debt, which are just like they were before. The thing is that now their media is teaching them to fear this debt rather than be comfortable with it, and so they're tightening their belts.

I'm not saying that this crisis isn't real. I'm saying that we are a culture that has become so used to instant news and rapid events unfolding that we are unable to actually process the idea of an ongoing crisis. These days, wars take two weeks, the news hits the stands from the handheld computers of journalists, and there are cameras that will actively upload photos right to the internet as they are being taken. It's like you're there. It's a great day to be a journalist, really.

Except that on the timescale of the credit markets, it's a load of crap. The current economic issues might be avoidable if people were not under the impression that a dip in the stock market means they will immediately be unable to eat anymore. If people were continuing to spend money, then perhaps we could buck the downward trend that we're predicting for the next few quarters. But these days, if people hear it on the news, they assume that it's already in full swing.

We are definitely currently in the midst of a recession. But a recession is normal. It happens. We don't need to try and duck and cover. You have your hard times and your easier times. And yes, if this trend continues, it could be worse than the Great Depression. But we're trying to stop it and the arms of policy are doing their best to flood the markets with cash to keep the economy going. It seems to be, thus far, preventing the situation from getting worse. If this were a cancer treatment, it would have FDA approval by now.

Still, Instant culture presses on. The Internet said some number you don't understand went up or down, whichever is bad? Shit, it's time to start only eating pasta and feeding your children twice a day! Don't buy new clothes. Let's get a smaller tree this year. Why? Because the Dow moved down by more than 3% last Tuesday (note: not an actual datapoint)? That was one Tuesday, guys. Chill out. 90% of you are still getting paid, still managing, still going to survive this whole thing. It's all going to be all right, as long as you just keep going.

Prices for things are currently exceeding the amount of money that people have. This means there's going to be a price correction. People are going to try to save money while they try to pay down their debts. This means they will pay less money to stores, sure, but prices will go down. Since profit margins lately have been absurdly high, this will mean a reduction of unecessarily high salaries (like those, say, for executives). It will also mean some tightening of the rank and file's belts as well. Then, prices will stabilize. You will find that things are not as expensive as they used to be. You will like this. The economy will get better. Your pay will go up. You'll be able to buy things. Prices will go up again. And everything will be okay.

That's how it worked from time immemorial until 1929, and that's how it will work now. Don't believe the hype.

That's right. I'm cool enough to talk about the weather.

2008-12-10T12:01:44Z

So I'm up early writing a presentation of my results for the past three months.

It has come to my attention that it is December 10th and it is 14 degrees celsius here in sunny (er, yet-to-be-sunny) Harlem. The high for today is to be 18 degrees celsius (incidentally, Drosophila raised at 18C will develop to maturity in about 8 hours from the pupal stage).

It is December 10th. For reference, the current temperature in Pasadena, California is 9 degrees Celsius. The high in Pasadena for this coming Saturday will be 16 degrees Celsius. That is right, dudes in California who I have just visited: New York right now is, for some weirdass reason, warmer than where you are right now, in the middle of December.

I am home...or am I?

2008-12-08T00:58:44Z

This weekend I flew out to California to visit Tech and do some other stuff. I loved the visit, I did lots of things, saw people near and dear to me, and generally enjoyed life a lot.

But getting off the plane in New York, I wondered: Am I back home from a trip, or am I back on my long journey away from home? Emotionally, it's hard to tell.

I think, in the end, the way my life works, home is where my feet fall.

this meme...it has said something interesting about me

2008-11-30T05:46:26Z

Haiku² for freeradical42
else i will always choose the other person g d does not need
@

Created by Grahame