Another Journalism Lesson

The opening of the Gettysburg Address after an imaginary trip through the Boston Globe copy desk:

Fourscore and seven years ago (can't we just make it 87 years ago?) our fathers (WHO ARE THEY?? Any mothers???) brought forth on this continent (North America?? Northern Hemisphere??) a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (people, men and women, what???) are created equal. (Why don't we just say they founded the United States and leave it at that? Pacing's better.)

From a celebration of print media's ancient and beloved culture of in-house in-jokes in The Atlantic.

Journalism Lesson

How to write a headline

But the dead deer with an IV made it weird

And the drop-head:

At first, it was just a guy, dressed like a doctor, driving an ambulance reported stolen

And followed by a "graphic picture" warning. I defy any mentally alert human being not to start reading the story.

Rhma's Fate

Michael Yon's latest from the Middle East is up.

Much world travel has convinced me that the “average American” is a good person. But even a good person needs information in order to act effectively on their best impulses. Oftentimes, good things do not happen simply because information does not make it to the right people.

I believe this was the case for a sick little Iraqi girl named Rhma. American “Deuce Four” soldiers found Rhma one night in Mosul. She needed serious medical attention. Doctors, nurses and others back in America, along with the soldiers in Mosul, worked diligently on behalf of this child, and eventually they generated the support required to get Rhma the treatment she desperately needed. But it wasn’t just Americans: I also saw offers come in from the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, among others.

This time, I'm not going to reveal the ending. If you're like me, you'll discover when you read the last line you've been holding your breath since the first.

Bludgeoned by the Blogosphere

Mary Mapes, the CBS ex-producer who went down in the infamous Rathergate incident, still doesn't seem to grasp what went wrong. Indignant, self-righteous, muttering about right-wing conspiracies, she blunders out into the highway of public discourse again, and Rand Simberg doesn't even have to veer out of his lane to mow her down.

It's hard (perhaps impossible) to prove that a document is authentic, but it only takes one solid strike against its validity to show it to be inauthentic. And the fact that you still don't understand that, or understand basic logic at all, is why you are now out of a job, and should never have had that job to begin with.

[Hat tip Neo-Neocon, who asks the relevant question, "Is Mapes stupid, or is she ignorant--or is she banking on the fact that we are stupid and ignorant?"]

The Rogue Less Trampled

R.I.P., M. Scott Peck, author of "The Road Less Travelled," as memorialized by the London "Telegraph."

Its opening sentence, "Life is difficult", introduced a tome which argued, uncontentiously and sensibly, that human experience was trying and imperfectible, and that only self-discipline, delaying gratification, acceptance that one's actions have consequences, and a determined attempt at spiritual growth could make sense of it. By contrast, Peck himself was, by his own admission, a self-deluding, gin-sodden, chain-smoking neurotic whose life was characterised by incessant infidelity and an inability to relate to his parents or children. "I'm a prophet, not a saint," he explained in an interview earlier this year.

In 1983 he began a bid for the presidency in order to be "a healer to the nation", but was forced by health fears to abandon his ambitions. Recently he had written in Glimpses of the Devil (2005) about his experiences of conducting exorcisms and had embarked on a new career as a songwriter. The voice of God asked him to be objective about the merits of a song he had written on the subject of faithfulness. "I went into a sort of guided meditation and I imagined there were a million people around the globe, Japan, Ethiopia, Brazil, America, what not, all with headphones on listening to this thing and that their consensus would somehow be objective… I played it for the 62nd time and I said: 'Holy s***! It's not good. It's great.' "

What a character! The obit unfolds in a style that only a British newspaper can accomplish. Along the way, we pass such gems as, "By his own account, he was a tiresomely brilliant child. Like all the others, his ambition was to write the Great American Novel."

Through all the permutations and evolutions of his long life, the "Telegraph" reassures us, "he remained unfaithful to his wife."

I hate to give away endings, but this one is too good to sit on:

Latterly he suffered from impotence and Parkinson's Disease and devoted himself to Christian songwriting, at which he was not very good.

He married Lily Ho in 1959; they had three children, two of whom would not talk to their father. She left him in 2003. He is survived by his second wife, Kathy, an educationalist he picked up, while still married, after a lecture at Sacramento, and by his children.

The line that begins "Latterly" might be the best I've ever seen in an obituary.

[The best deliberate line, I mean. The newspaper where I work now once ran an obituary for a guy who was, according to the text, "the longest confirmed male member of his church." Of course his name was Dick something.]

The Killing Mind

Apparently Israel has allowed some jailhouse interviews Rafat Moqadi, a Palestinian suicide bomber who changed his mind at the moment he was supposed to detonate himself in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Both AP and CBS have stories on him. (I can't find the AP one on the Net yet.)

As the pace of attacks increases in the Middle East and beyond, a surprising profile is emerging [Surprising to the AP, I guess -- ed.] of those willing to take their own lives: many are young, middle class and educated.

Nearly four-fifths of all suicide attacks over the past 35 years have occurred since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes in the U.S., according to the RAND Center for Terrorism Risk Management. And 80 percent of those have been carried out by radical Islamic groups, said the center's director, Bruce Hoffman.

Both the AP and CBS stories steer the "motivation" angle away from religion. "But religion is only part of the picture," AP writes. "Moqadi said that wasn't his motivation."

"The main reason was to resist the (Israeli) occupation, to create a balance of power with the Israeli army," he said.

"At the moment they put the (explosives) belt on me there were a few seconds of doubt," he said. "But after that I felt strength. I felt stronger than the whole state of Israel. It was a good feeling."

Emphasis added. Moqadi said he joined Hamas "in response to massive gunbattles between Israeli forces and Palestinians in Jenin."

Yet the attempt to steer it away from religions inevitably spirals back toward it. AP writes of the role of group commitment, and then specifically of the heroic image of the suicide bomber in modern Palestinian culture.

Often what makes the person carry out the mission is commitment to a group, making it difficult to back out without losing face, experts say. Many of today's suicide bombers, especially in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, come from societies where many people condone the action, making it easier to execute.

CBS tracks down Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a Muslim who heads Gaza's only psychiatric clinic.

The families of suicide bombers often come to him for help after the deed is done. That's how he has built up his profile. But are the people who want to become suicide bombers especially violent?

“No. On the contrary. If you look at their personal histories, they usually were very timid people, introvert, their problem was always communication in public or communicating their feelings, so they were not violent at all,” says Sarraj.

“There is a pool of suicide bombers everywhere in the world among the community of Islam and Arabs everywhere. They are ready to act when the time comes. Anybody who is living in this area, including yourself, would have seen the rise of temperature, the rise of hatred, the rise of anger every year after year because of the continuous suffering of these people.”

And in Gaza, if you want to tap into this pool of hatred and suicide bombers, you don't need to go further than the neighborhood mosque.

“If they know I am the one who is going to recruit, they will come for me. I just give the message in the mosque that this is what we should do,” says Sarraj. “And then people who are ready will contact me.”

The AP notes the work of Western terrorism expert Jessica Stern on this topic. Stern is more or less non-partisan (she's an opponent of many Bush policies, but who isn't?), and she has focused on Christian, Jewish and Islamic terrorists. In this interview, her frothing Bush-hating questioner wants her to assent to the idea that, "Because of 9/11, many Americans have demonized that this is something that’s Islamic. ... It’s getting back to this point that it’s not exclusive to any one religion, and, therefore, the battle against it isn’t a crusade -- quote, unquote -- because there are many more common factors between terrorists of different religions than terrorism as defined within a religion."

Stern, politely, won't have it.

But there’s something about what’s going on in the Islamic world. Islamist terrorist leaders are able to raise large armies. As you know, we don’t see Jewish terrorists able to raise large armies, and we don’t see Christian terrorists able to raise large armies.

More recently, Stern and researcher Scott Atran have noted that today's Islamic radicals operating in the West (the 9/11, London, and Madrid bombers) have a different profile than the Palestinian and Iraqi bombers. They "have no clear political goals but instead act 'to oppose a perceived global evil.' ... [M]any potential suicide bombers in the West feel marginalized from society and 'bond as they surf jihadi websites to find direction and purpose.' " [AP, quoting a letter from Stern and Atran]

Abdel Haleem Izzedin, an Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank town of Jenin, said Palestinian candidates for suicide bombings are "normal people" who "believe that Israel is occupying and confiscating their land and want to fight back."

Bombers in places like Madrid and London, he said, were "unusual" and "extreme."

Which suggests two different problems, rooted in one religious/cultural tradition. Perhaps two solutions are in order. The rigorous "law enforcement" approach might work best in the West. In the Middle East? Most suicide bombers were men in their late teens or early 20s. Almost all were single and childless. Many suicide bombers have come from middle class families and have attended a university. But most were "relatively unimportant people, not leader types but follower types," one psychologist said.

How about giving those restless young men something to live for besides death. Give them some sense of a stake in their own futures, a country to participate in governing, a job not dependent on bribery, a chance to raise children who can do even better than their parents did. The American Dream? Something like that. Why not? You got a better idea? As Samuel Johnson knew, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money."

Moqadi, serving time in an Israeli jail, is not getting the American Dream. He'll be out on the Gaza streets again by the time he's the age Mohammed Atta was when he plowed a jet into the World Trade Center. AP reports Moqadi "spends most of his time in jail learning to speak, read and write Hebrew, the language of the Jewish state. Islam, he said, teaches that it's important to 'know your enemy.' "

Where Have All the Achesons Gone?

In discussing the Electoral College and voting reform, we've been seeing various plans in the light of mass, direct, participatory democracy as an inherently good thing. The people and the president in direct power hook-up. The more the better. But where's the proof we're better governed today than we were in 1800?

Michael Lind offers one shaft of illumination on the topic. He writes a sober defense of the crucial role of the "mandarin" class in a modern liberal democracy, claiming, "one of the main reasons that the experiment with large-scale democracy has worked is because it was accompanied by the creation of a modern mandarinate." He defines this as "a meritocratic elite, based in the middle class but not limited to it, provided the natural leadership for a modern society."

He notes the American Founders' fears "that universal suffrage would produce 'mobocracy.' But the nightmare of mass democracy never fully materialised, in large part because of the political and cultural role of the mandarinate ...."

In constitutional politics, the meritocratic mandarinate would moderate tendencies toward demagogy, plutocracy and special-interest corruption by supplying the leaders of the career services within government and the informal establishment outside of it.

It worked. Mobocracy was averted in universal-suffrage democracies by a version of the Polybian "mixed constitution." For Polybius, Cicero and many later political thinkers, the ideal constitution was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. The mixed constitution is not to be confused with the separation of powers advocated by Montesquieu and found in the US federal and state constitutions. The purpose of the mixed constitution was to balance social forces, not to separate government functions.

The modern mixed constitution is a blend of democracy and meritocracy. In it, the mandarinate—in government and out of it—plays the role of the aristocracy in the Polybian system, checking the elective "monarchy" of democratic executives and the majority "tyranny" of democratic legislatures.

As Lind notes, this is an "unofficial system." The American Founders saw the states, and the Seante chosen by the state legislatures, as the equivalent of the aristocracy. But the Civil War broke that balance entirely. Into the gap, temporarily, flowed the mandarin class.

[The system] has been breaking down for some time, as the elected executive has overpowered the mandarinate as well as the legislature. In parliamentary democracies like Britain, the separation of the roles of head of government and head of state helped to restrain plebiscitary populism for several generations after universal suffrage was adopted, as did the strict rules and conventions on government behaviour guarded by senior civil servants. However, by the late 20th century, as many have observed, prime ministers like Thatcher and Blair were behaving like presidents, while US presidents were behaving like kings. The increasingly powerful mass media, instead of acting as constraints on plebiscitary populism, have tended to act as cheerleaders for it, even while savaging particular governments and political leaders.

... Four sources of authority are invoked to fill the vacuum left by the decline of the modern humanism that legitimated the mandarinate: pro-fessionalism, positivism, populism and religion.

Professionalism is the opposite of mandarinism, in the sense in which I am using the latter term. It was not always so. In the Anglo-American countries, more than in continental Europe, the professions have in the past served as the basis of democratic mandarinism. In the US, for example, the great law firms and investment banks that would allow their members to serve in the government for years on end sometimes compensated for the absence of a high civil service. Nevertheless, over time professionalism and mandarinism have diverged.

While the mandarin is a generalist, the professional is a specialist. The mandarin's claim to social authority rests on a liberal education, which is assumed to be the best preparation for public and private service. The professional's claim to authority rests on mastery of a complex body of technical or scientific knowledge. The needs of professional accreditation have tended to make professional education increasingly technocratic. Legal education in the English-speaking world, for example, once consisted chiefly of a gentleman's liberal education plus Blackstone's Commentaries. Now a liberal education is at best an optional preliminary to a legal education.

He has some intriguing observations of the contemporary American scene:

To the extent that the mandarin ideal of duty to the public survives in the US, it is found among America's career public servants in the national security executive: the military, the foreign service and the intelligence agencies (America's domestic bureaucracy being weak and patronage-ridden). The most damaging opposition to George W Bush and the neoconservative clique has come from soldiers like Anthony Zinni, career civilian experts like Richard Clarke, the former "terrorism tsar" and diplomats like Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was "outed" as a CIA operative by Bush's chief adviser, Karl Rove, as part of a campaign to punish Wilson for rejecting the president's claim that Saddam was importing nuclear material from Niger. These and other career public servants have been models of Ciceronian rectitude—a fact that is more than a little troubling, because Cicero was one of the few leaders of Republican Rome who was a civilian. It is not a good sign that in the American republic the officer corps has become the mandarinate by default.

America's unofficial mandarinate, the northeastern establishment, crumbled in the last quarter of the 20th century. The result is a social experiment in today's US as audacious, in its own way, as that of Soviet collectivism: an attempt to have a government without a governing elite. The US ship of state veers now in one direction, now the other. From a distance, one might conclude that the captain is a maniac. But a spyglass reveals that there is no captain or crew at all, only rival gangs of technocrats, ideologues, populists and zealots devoted to Jesus Christ or Adam Smith, each boarding the derelict vessel and capturing the wheel briefly before being tossed overboard.

Hello, Irene

What's in a name? A whole lot of statistics.

The Social Security Administration has put all its baby-name data up online, and it's a trasure-trove for a history geek like me.

Let's start with the most popular boys' and girls' names for babies born in the U.S. in 2004:

1 Jacob Emily
2 Michael Emma
3 Joshua Madison
4 Matthew Olivia
5 Ethan Hannah
6 Andrew Abigail
7 Daniel Isabella
8 William Ashley
9 Joseph Samantha
10 Christopher Elizabeth

Jacob is the Old Testament patriarch's name, a Latinized form of Hebrew Ya'aqobh, which means literally "one that takes by the heel" (Gen. xxviii.12), a derivative of 'aqebh "heel." Emily, on the other hand, is Roman, via French from the feminine form of Latin Aemilius, name of a Roman gens, from aemulus "imitating, rivaling" (related to emulation and ultimately to imitate and image.)

One of the cool things about the site is you can look for the most popular birth-names from any year, back to about 1880.

For instance, here are the top 20 American birth-names of 1904:

1 John Mary
2 William Helen
3 James Anna
4 George Margaret
5 Robert Ruth
6 Charles Elizabeth
7 Joseph Marie
8 Frank Florence
9 Edward Mildred
10 Henry Dorothy
11 Thomas Ethel
12 Walter Lillian
13 Harry Alice
14 Willie Gladys
15 Arthur Edna
16 Albert Frances
17 Clarence Annie
18 Fred Rose
19 Paul Grace
20 Harold Bertha

Names come and go over time, and girls' names come and go more often and more rapidly than boys'.

Just looking at the most popular names from my birth year (1960) is like opening the high school yearbook. When I was in school, it seemed I was surrounded by Susans and Sues and Susies (it was the number two girls' name in 1960). In the generation just being born, though, Susan will be the new Mildred. It ranks a mere 565.

My sister was the only Megan we had ever heard of when she was born in 1969. My mother was chagrined when Megan got to school and found herself among a sea of others. It's an example of how a girl's name can burst on the scene: Megan didn't even register in the Social Security list until 1952; its popularity exploded in the 1970s and got as high as the number 10 girl's name, but now it is fading.

Another Celtic name that boomed in the late 20th century was Jennifer -- not even on the chart until 1938 -- which held the number one spot from 1970 right through to 1984. It's since fallen to number 38. Jennifer is from Welsh Gwenhwyvar, from gwen "fair, white" and (g)wyf "smooth, yielding."

That's one of the other cool things you can do with the Social Security site: track the popularity of any given name over time.

My name, Douglas, is more unpopular than it's ever been in the past 100 years. It's been declining steadily since 1962. The year I was named it was the 30th most popular boy's name. Its peak of popularity was 1942, when it was 23rd. I think a fellow named MacArthur had something to do with that.

My son's name, Luke, has been climbing out of the cellar since the mid-50s. The popular "General Hospital" character gave the name more of a blip than a boost, and it actually seems to have set the name back a few points, since, after a spike in 1980, Luke was less popular in the late '80s than it had been in 1979. It was on the decline when I chose it for my son in 1990, but since then it's been moving up with a bullet ever since, from the 118 position in 1990 to number 42 last year.

My wife's name, Amy, was fairly popular in the mid-19th century, but it almost fell from use in 20th century, then roared into the top 10 from 1969 to 1982. It's not unusual for girls' names to fade and be resurrected like this. The current number 5 Hannah shows a similar trajectory to Amy, but with a later come-back.

Abigail, now at number six, only cracked the top 1,000 three times between 1904 and 1948. I'm not sure how to account for the come-back, except that a popular biography of Abigail Adams, by Janet Whitney, was published in 1947.

Abigail is an Old Testament name; Abigail the Carmelitess was a wife of David. It comes from Hebrew Abhigayil, literally "my father is rejoicing," from abh "father" and gil "to rejoice." It used to be the generic name for a lady's maid, from the character of that name in Beaumont & Fletcher's popular play "The Scornful Lady." The waiting maid association perhaps begins with I Sam. xxv, where David's wife often calls herself a "handmaid."

Samantha, too, was essentially dead from 1903 to 1963. Now it stands at number nine. There's no mystery to that rebirth, though. The TV series "Bewitched" debuted in 1964 starring Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens. The show's producers reached back to echoes of the Salem Witch Trial era for many of their witch character names -- Samantha, Esmeralda, Clara, Tabitha, and yes, even Abigail.

But girls' names, much moreso than boys, often appear out of thin air. Of the current reigning top 10, Madison did not register on the Social Security chart not before 1985, and Ashley not before 1964.

After spending some time plugging in dates and watching names go up and down in popularity, I realized stock market players and dog track addicts ought to be able to figure out a formula to predict the next hot names. I've even got a prediction of my own: Irene.

It was my grandmother's name, and my aunt's name. I've always liked the sound of it anyhow, and though it's a strong name that resounds with "iron" it really represents Greek eirene "peace."

It's a name redolent of the early 20th century; the original "Gibson girl" was Irene Langhorne, wife of Charles Dana Gibson. Irene was the 28th most popular name for girls when my grandmother got the name in 1903. It was in the top 20 from 1915 to 1925, and has been doing a slow fade ever since and now stands at 541.

[There was one blip of revival in 1950, when it jumped up 19 places on the list, only to give them all back and more in 2 years. Why? Maybe because Irene Dunne got a Best Actress Oscar nomination for "The Mudlark" that year, or because of Ernest Tubb and Red Foley's "Goodnight Irene" which was number one on the jukebox in September and October.]

But that's some upward movement from 2003, when it stood at 583. I think we're due for an Irene revival.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Check the name of the new typhoon brewing in the western Pacific.

Now how am I supposed to write a headline about that that won't bring in irate phone calls?

"Longwang douses fertile delta region."

"Longwang whacks off-shore oil rigs."

"Taiwan reels from Longwang's blow."

Or imagine if it turned up in Dear Leader's missile site:

"Longwang flattens No Dong factory."

The Squids are Alright

This photo (online here) is labeled as an "undated handout combination image released September 27, 2005 by the Royal Society," and is said to show "the first photographs of a live giant squid in its natural environment, taken by Japanese scientists in the Pacific Ocean."

Cool! Except the last frame in the panel seems to have been taken in a sushi kitchen.

More Trouble for Bush

ouch.

[Satire alert]

Christians in the News

Andrew Sullivan salutes the Christian faith, strict morality, patriotism, national idealism, and sense of soldier's honor in one American military man.

Tell the truth: Who out there is rolling eyes right now? Well, guess what? It's the soldier who persisted in protesting the torture and abuse of prisoners in the war on terror.

It doesn't surprise me that the newest hero in the American armed services, Capt Ian Fishback, is a devout Christian. Fishback tried for 17 months to get his superiors to address systematic, condoned torture and abuse of military prisoners. His superiors knew they had the green light from the very top and did nothing but intimidate Fishback. He persisted. Why? He has a conscience. As he put it: "We are America. Our actions should be held to a higher standard. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.'" Part of his courage, however, came from faith:

[F]or Fishback, who friends describe as a deeply religious Christian and patriot who prays before each meal and can quote from the Constitution, his ordeal may be just beginning. Army officials have temporarily furloughed him from Special Operations training school at Fort Bragg, N.C., to make him available to the Criminal Investigation Command as it sorts through his allegations.

The Bush administration policy of allowing cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners is about as deep a moral crime as one can imagine. It violates every central tenet of Christianity, and the hard-won honor of the U.S. military, which is why some evangelical Christians, to their credit, have spoken up about it. These last few days, however, I have waited for others to take note of what Fishback has testified to, at great personal risk. I have waited for his courage to be hailed, especially on conservative Christian blogs. There are few moral evils worse than torture. So why the silence? Why?

Aye, Andrew, why indeed?

UPDATE: More thoughts on that in the comments section here.

Discovering Japan

My favorite blog about Asian languages is Amritas. He's a real big-deal linguist, though, so his discussions, while always fascinating, can get technical.

For a layman's approach, I read Peter Payne, an American living and doing business (and raising a family) in Japan. I found him via his business site, J-list, where I order all sorts of funky toys that delight my son and me. (Warning, of course, this being Japan, the sexuality is more frank and somewhat shifted from American standards, so the site isn't entirely work-safe).

Besides obvious words like kamikaze, mikado, bonsai, karaoke, karate,, and soy, some words in English that are Japanese include:

• kudzu, the vine that ate the South. Native to Japan and China, it was introduced in U.S. southeast as forage (1920s) and to stop soil erosion (1930s) and quickly got out of hand.
  
  
• honcho, a word picked up by U.S. servicemen in Japan and Korea, 1947-1953, from Japanese hancho "group leader," from han "corps, squad" and cho "head, chief."
  
  
• tycoon, originally the title given by foreigners to the shogun of Japan (said to have been used by his supporters when addressing foreigners, as an attempt to convey that the shogun was more important than the emperor), from Japanese taikun "great lord or prince," from Chinese tai "great" and kiun "lord." The word has been used in English since at least 1857. The transferred meaning "important person" is attested from 1861, in reference to Abraham Lincoln (in his secretary Hay's diary). The specific application to "businessman" is post-World War I.
  

But a great many more words have flowed the other direction, from English into Japanese, though many of these are considered "slang" in Japan.

One of the evidences that English is a living world language is that it evolves, and in each pocket where it takes root, it grows a little more apart from the English of England. English in India (especially in some of the smaller newspapers) is almost its own tongue. Same with Jamaica and Sierra Leone. In Singapore, they speak Singlish. Here's a blog entry from Emily, 24, about a visit to Long John Silver's in Singapore, demonstrating both formal and conversational Singlish:

Had dinner with Kim at Long John Silver earlier. LJS is such a Cheaterbug!

Ordered a combo one which consists of two pieces of chicken, fries and a drink. The chicken pieces were strunken, much smaller than a goreng pisang. (!!) They probably held just as much(little?) meat as two chicken mcnuggets cojoined.

I looked at the cashier and went, "How come like that? Bird flu then all the chicken pieces become so small ah?! How can???" She laughed and chimed, "Er...all the chicken now become smaller lah" which actually wasnt any explanation at all.

It's appalling how dishonest businesses can get. It's atrocious. Blatantly downsizing and compromising quality while keeping the price the same...or even worse, raising the price altogether.

Check out Ronald's Mcnuggets. They've never tasted worse in the entirety of a millenium. Ronald should be ashamed of himself. Shame on you, you yellow dirty fellow with your dirty little business tricks!

I love it!

So back to Japan. Even there, where English is in no sense an "official" language or a primary language, it evolves. It starts with little things; as a brand name becomes the name for the whole class of things it represents (Kleenex, e.g., to the eternal frustration of the manufacturer), in Japan the word for "stapler" is hotchikisu. This is the good old American Hotchkiss from E. H. Hotchkiss Company of Norwalk, Connecticut, an early and prominent manufacturer of staplers (incorporated 1895, name from 1897).

So here's an English word, with a definable meaning in Japan, that exists nowhere in the English-speaking nations with that meaning.

I knew about that one, but Peter Payne recently wrote about a couple more:

Sometimes the Japanese use words they're sure are English -- but they're completely unintelligible to you and me. One such word is biking, as in, "I had breakfast at the hotel, and it was biking style." It turns out the word comes from the word "viking" and means "all you can eat" (aka smorgasbord). Then there's the term freeter, which sounds like something to eat, but means a person who works part-time jobs, never bothering to find full-time employment or start a career.

Good words!

Of course, there's always this.

Cracking Up

Smash notes some dissent within the peace movement.

JAMAL KANJ, a fiery Palestinian from a group called Al-Awda, takes the podium. “We Palestinians,” he begins, “have been subjected to GENOCIDE at the hands of the Israelis for generations." He rants on. "In 1948, they forced us out of our homes, and today we must DRIVE THE JEWS FROM PALESTINE!”

Suddenly, a middle-aged man wearing a black “F the President” T-shirt rushes the stage, screaming at Kanj, “I’m TIRED of this CRAP! You people keep bringing this up! This is supposed to be an ANTI-WAR rally, not an ANTI-ISRAEL rally!”

Kanj yells back, into the microphone. Others in the crowd stand up and join in the shouting match.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has arrived in San Diego.

Hitchens, meanwhile, is among those amazed that ANSWER is allowed to hijack the anti-war movement again and again.

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side.

Truth Be Told

The Pat Tillman story deserves to be told in full. It seems part of the problem was incompetence among commanding officers -- hardly a new thing in a war.

Spc. Russell Baer, a soldier pinned down by gunfire on the hillside near Tillman, told the Chronicle that commanding officers were to blame for the friendly fire because they split the platoon and ordered it to leave a secure location in favor of a region known as a Taliban stronghold.

"It was dumb to send us out during daylight," said Baer, who was honorably discharged from the Rangers earlier this year.

The story is getting a very different spin, however, on the left:

It turns out that Tillman was very anti Bush and the Iraq war and that may be why he was killed (fragged) by US troops in Afghanistan.

Fascinating. And of course if there's never a scintilla of evidence produced to the effect that that was so, it will just be more proof to numnskulls like the one who wrote that, that it's because Shrubbie McChimpler with his incompetence/omnipotence, managed to cover it up again.

When you lie to the people, you only strengthen the paranoid.

What's wrong with this picture

The AP caption says it's an undated photo showing a glaciologist and a botanist "examining deposits of ancient alpaca moss recently exposed by the retreat of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Peruvian Andes."

"Rapidly melting glaciers in the Andes in Peru have uncovered moss and grasses that have been covered by ice since they first grew about 6,500 years ago, said the Ohio State researcher who has predicted global warming will erase mountain ice caps that are a valued water source for many communities around the world."

That would be a catastrophe. And no doubt that prediction will twist the cranks of climate-change cassandras.

But think about it (like the AP didn't). That hunk of moss was growing there 6,500 years ago. That's about 6,490 years before the first SUV. Climate then in that place was warmer than it is now (no moss grows there today).

That doesn't mean we can stop thinking about the role of man-made factors in the Earth's shifting climate.

It means we can start thinking about them. Without the passion and the politics. Yes, the world seems to be getting warmer in recent decades. What does that mean? Is human activity the only reason? What if it turns out that CO2 pollution from cars is heating up the planet, but that, say, farming is heating it up ten times more? What if deep ocean currents are shifting for no man-made reason, and actually turning the northern hemisphere back to another ice age, but human pollution is counterbalancing that?

What we need is some serious scientific work, not a lot of pseudo-religion. It's a common complaint of the secular left that their opponents put dogma above science. But the underlying fallacy of much of the climate-change alarmist rhetoric is that it is the left's equivalent of creationism. It presumes a steady, stable world ecology humming along for millenia in perfect balance like a Swiss watch, until evil Anglo-American corporations come along and destroy it.

Go thumb through a paleoclimatology textbook (or find something like one online). Look at the charts and graphs. Not a straight line among them. They go up and down like a toilet seat in a rock concert Port-a-John.



Here's one that a climate-change alarmist will love. This is the average global temperature of the last 2,000 years, as plotted from a range of indicators across the globe. Look at 2004! Runaway global warming for sure.

Or not. You have to read the fine print to know that the lines across the graph are "best-fit" projections, up to 2004, which is the only year that stands alone and isn't "smoothed down" into the graph. The range of hot years in the Middle Ages, for instance, is much more dramatic than the graph indicates.



Now take 100 steps back. In this graph, the time flows the other way: the far right is the oldest part of the graph. In fact, over on that end you can see the temperature rising up out of the depths of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. The "climate optimum" of about 4,000 to 8,000 years ago corresponds to the moss under the Quelccaya ice caps. The whole of the previous graphic (reversed) is contained in the thumbnail of space between 0 and 2.



Here's a still longer view. (Time flows the other way again, as in the first graph). The whole of the second graphic is squeezed into the far right end of this one. Here you can see the whole range of the Ice Ages, and even a little bit of the much warmer earth that existed on the far side of them, about 125,000 years ago.

So it looks like we live in one of the warmest ages in global history, right? Now step all the way back.



This very rough graph plots the likely temperature through geological time (the present is on the left again) since about the time life first was recorded on earth. Looks like we're in one of the chilliest epochs of world history.

Why were there Ice Ages after millions of years without them? Why were there dramatic warm spikes in the middle of them? Nobody knows. No good scientific model of world climate change yet has been constructed.

That's a scary thought, frankly. No wonder it's so much easier to approach the topic as pure politics.

BBC, for instance, recently took a spin through some of the conclusion-jumping done in the liberal European press in the wake of the recent hurricanes, including The Independent's screaming front-page headline "This is global warming" above an "alarmingly portentous graphic of Hurricane Rita's projected path."

Ross Gelbspan's book "Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis—And What We Can Do to Avert the Disaster" gets a critical notice in Reason. The book seems to be no worse than many others I've seen (my eco-minded brother has a habit of giving me such books as holiday gifts).

Gelbspan ... fails to explain that the “greenhouse skeptics” he cites — those “criminals against humanity” — accept that the industrial emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases has contributed to a warming trend during the last century. What remains at issue is the extent of this contribution and the magnitude of warming that can be expected during the next century. Computer simulations of uncertain reliability indicate that by 2100 the globally averaged surface temperature will rise approximately 2.5 degrees Celsius, which would seem to require a wholesale switch to nuclear power in the next few decades to avoid the devastation of energy poverty. But other lines of evidence suggest a change of 1 degree or less, which would be comparable to past natural change, making the transition to 21st-century energy technologies much more affordable. Boiling Point obscures this ongoing debate by repeatedly appealing to a nonexistent scientific consensus.

And, predictably from the subtitle, the book's premise is that this destructive evil is allowed to continue because there's so much money to be made at it. Interesting notion: sell a lot of books by promoting a political positions about how much money there is to be made promoting the opposing position.

Gelbspan portrays dissent from his view of climate change as evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s corrupting influence, which apparently extends to scientists, journalists, the current administration, even labor union leaders and environmental activists. Yet Boiling Point does not consider the financial, ideological, and personal interests that favor alarmism, such as the desire by scientists for more research funding; by activists for more donations, media attention, and political relevance; by journalists for better play and bigger book advances.

Sallie Baliunas, the reviewer, makes what ought to be an obvious point here: "The existence of nonscientific motives does not tell us which side is right; only careful consideration of the evidence can do that."

And she goes on to note that, while hot air is being wasted on insults and conspiracies that presume the scientific question is fully settled, the science is just beginning to grapple with the very complex problem of climate change.

While Boiling Point alludes to scientific uncertainties concerning the “role of clouds, future rates of warming, and specific impact in particular geographic areas, to name a few [issues],” Gelbspan immediately redirects focus by declaring that “the overwhelming predominance of climate research today focuses on the [ecosystem] impacts of warming.” If so, climate research has misplaced priorities. In fact, however, many researchers refuse to skip the hard work of achieving a scientifically sound understanding of climate change, a requisite for accurately estimating its impact.

Climate is a complex, dynamic system that involves the oceans, the atmosphere, biota, ice, and land, which interact with each other in multifaceted ways. An accurate computer simulation of climate does not yet exist. Quantitative impacts of natural and anthropogenic influences, of which the enhanced greenhouse effect is one, are works in progress.

I want to know the real answers, rather than leaping to the conclusion, precisely because I love some places -- Venice and the Florida Keys, for instance -- that are seriously at risk under climate change models.

Three Numbers, One Problem

WaPo op-edder E.J. Dionne in a new column celebrates the fact that "President Bush has finally faced his moment of accountability. The travails of Hurricane Katrina followed a bad summer for the president and have called into question his leadership style, competence and intense partisanship."

He veers from that into the inability of the Democrats to capitalize on this, and their collective indecision over whether to be "liberal ideologues" or "centrist." I think his analysis of the party's woes as a matter of three numbers is a good one:

According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate. Those numbers mean that liberal-leaning Democrats are far more dependent than conservatively inclined Republicans on alliances with the political center.

[In my Internet interactions (admittedly a small and unscientific sampling), committed Democrats' reaction to centerists have ranged from mildly condescension to outright flamethrowing. Marc Cooper is the only one I've corresponded with who's been genuinely engaging. The frustration that underlies the hostility is understandable. But it makes better psychotherapy than political sense. But then that -- misplaced priorities between personal and political -- has been one of the center-right's grievances with much of what's left on the liberal side.]

Dionne also points out how these numbers present a problem for the Democratic dream of capturing the House in 2006.

It takes 218 seats to form a majority in the House of Representatives. Kerry carried only 180 congressional districts, according to the Almanac of American Politics. Put another way, Democrats, according to the Almanac, now hold and have to defend 41 House districts that Bush carried. Republicans are defending only 18 districts that Kerry carried.

After more ruminations on the Democrats' dilemmas, Dionne turns to the bright side:

The truth is that opposition parties normally get a chance only when the governing party disappoints. For the time being, that means that Democrats will have no problem staying united behind the imperative of keeping Bush on the ropes. The flow of negative news about the administration will do much of the Democrats' work for them.

Oh, but he makes no mention of what a tight-rope walk to the promised land that will be.

Dionne is careful to write "flow of negative news about the administration" (emphasis added), but too often his target audience blows right through that clause without regard for the qualifying element. They look like the ghoul party. "When America hurts, Democrats benefit."

And while highlighting the administration's problems is potentially a winning strategy, events like hurricanes and war deaths and even high oil prices mean suffering for all of America. The voters may be able, intellectually, to parse out the political angle from those tragedies and problems, but in their guts they will feel that anyone who actually celebrates such events is essentially on the other side.

It's up to the party that attempts such a strategy to do it without a smirk, without a twinkle in the eye. It's exactly because the voters will pay more attention to the opposition at such moments that the opposition has to be on its best behavior. If the voters sense the grim reaper smile on the opposition's face at the sight of American suffering, the door slams shut. Essentially conservative (in the non-political sense) American voters will stick with the devil they know.

When bad news for America hits the front pages, too often my Democratic peers celebrate it. They only see it as bad news for Bush. They don't seem to sense that an indictment of a Bush official is one kind of bad news, and a terrorist attack is another. There's a dissembling art in politics, and they haven't learned it.

Might I suggest that too often they are hamstrung by an essential and relentless pessimism about America's history and its virtues, its potential and its promise, among the chief spokesmen and women of the movement? Might I suggest a reacquaintance with the rhetoric of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., as a lesson in how to say, "We are a great nation, but we can do better than this; in fact, we must do better than this, because we are a great nation."

Look, the Federalists were right about the War of 1812 and the Madison administration's shenanigans. And look where it got them: They branded themselves as a party of national traitors, who preferred the British to their fellow citizens and held aloof in the nation's time of dire need. They never won office at the national level again. Opposition is not in itself fatal, but it's all in how you do the thing.

As someone with a strong suspicion of many people on the right, I don't relish the sight of the party of the political left charging down the path to permanent minoritarianism. But I'll keep waiting for political leaders from that side who convince me America can be moved forward by appeals to what is great in our national heritage and dreams, rather than driven shame-faced into "progress" by the lash of Michael Moore's tongue.

Peace Rally

Baldilocks swears she overheard this at the ANSWER, etc. anti-war/anti-Bush protest Saturday in Los Angeles:

“I’m an atheist, but if there is God, we deserved the hurricanes.”*

Jeff Jarvis, meanwhile, notes that all the sense and power seems to have been drained out of "We Shall Overcome" by overuse in inappropriate circumstances, such as a rally to pull American troops out of Iraq and thereby return the people of that country to hell.

Solomonia (among others) notes the way mainstream Democratic politicians avoided the scene in D.C. like it was infested. Which of course it was.

"The movement" is a cesspool of hate and bizarro pathologies all the King's horses and all the King's psychologists couldn't sort out. It soils anyone uncautious enough to get near it. You want politicians to be stronger and more outspoken against the War? Articulate a message that fills your numbers with regular, respectable people and doesn't attract flies, allowing you to push aside the weirdos, not use them and imagine you can air-brush them out and hope no one will notice. The fact that this has not been done, and I believe cannot be done, is a very important indicator to those of us who believe we need to keep up the fight -- that we are right.

---

* Courtesy of the Paladin, you can steer to this delightful Democratic Underground thread. Whenever I read that site I really pay attention to the posters because they sound exactly like about half my co-workers in their most worked-up moments.

Yes, it looks like the secular left finally has discovered religion. Well, if not religion, then "evil" -- a concept that forces them into religious frames of reference.

41. yesterday I was pondering this question with a Unitarian minister

We were pondering the sense of evil that seems instilled in the actions to control New Orleans, and then moved to talk about the battle between good and evil that is taking place as Bushco fronts for forces that seek dominion and oppression.

I showed her information about the founding of Skull and Bones, and then we really were struck by the enormity of the struggle. She said that she was having to re-assess her beliefs on the nature of evil in human form. She hadn't believed in Satan. Now she's not sure.

All day long, I wrestled with the understanding that the forces W. fronts for are old and are powerful beyond our capacity to imagine. The minutiae we fight daily on DU are insignificant in this battle -- even the battle over the FEMA response.

THIS IS A BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL.

Resistance will take EVERY one of us. Resistance will require that we set aside many of our daily concerns and activities. Each of us has a use. Some must give more than others, but all must give to the effort.

This minister said that people ask what they are to do. (She's considered to be a bit of a prophet.) This is the list we devised, for what to do.

1. Name the evil. This is a struggle between good and evil.

2. Identify your particular role and task.

3. If your task is not to be a leader with the dangers of exposure, then support those who are on the front. (Provide for their children. Help them with subsistence. Be at their back.)

Good lord, can you say "Left Behind"?

Entrepreneurs

Make of this what you will. You could use it to compare yesterday's entrepreneurs to today's. Or as a glimpse of an early understanding of macro-economics. It fascinates me as an insight into a time and a mind.

When you think of the great age of European exploration, what images come to mind of the men who led it? Greed? hubris? Lust for power?

How about "concern for the poor people of one's homeland"?

Probably wasn't on the list. But history is more complicated than it looks.

Richard Hakluyt was an Elizabethan scholar and clergyman fascinated by voyages and discoveries, who set out to be an expert in the geography of the world which had suddenly doubled in size and complexity following the discoveries of Columbus.

Hakluyt sought practical knowledge, not merely book-learning. In part this was because, in his era, the ship's captains and common sailors had outrun the learning of the old geographers, still stuck on Ptolemy.

His work came to the attention of the English authorities, who sent him to France as a chaplain to the British ambassador, the better to study the French and Spanish explorations that were leaving England in the dust.

Hakluyt was a tireless proponent of English settlement in America and was involved in the planning of James Town. But English exploration in those days reached east, as well as west, and the document I've cited was written in 1582, to an unnamed English "factor" in Constantinople. It gives him instructions and suggestions as to what he ought to do, and look out for, in the national interest.

That in seeking private gain, the Englishman also would seek the common good of England, Hakluyt presents as an obvious matter.

Since all men confesse (that be not barbarously bred) that men are borne as well to seeke the common commoditie of their Countrey, as their owne priuate benefite, it may seeme follie to perswade that point, for each man meaneth so to doe.

Hakluyt's letter is written for the sake of offering his correspondent details on how best to do this. For England's sake, he writes, the merchant should pay attention to clothing, and dying.

And therefore I am so bold to put you in minde, and to tell you wherein with some indeuour you may chaunce to doe your Countrey much good, and giue an infinite sorte of the poore people occasion to pray for you here throughout the Realme this that I meane is in matter of Cloth, &c.

The superior quality of English wool was well-known. The trade employed many poor people, enriched the middle class, and puts money in the royal coffers. Hakluyt told his man to look for markets for it abroad, or as he writes it, "ample and full Vent of this noble and rich commoditie." He directs his man to investigate, for instance, whether there is a market for red Scottish caps in Egypt

To compete with local products, the high-quality English wool must be enhanced by superior dying. He urges the Constantinople factor to pay particular attention to this business.

But if Forren nations turne their Wools, inferiour to ours, into truer and more excellent made cloth, and shall die the same in truer, surer, and more excellent and more delectable colours, then shall they sell and make ample vent of their Clothes, when the English cloth of better wooll shall rest vnsold, to the spoyle of the Merchant, of the Clothier, and of the breeder of the wooll, and to the turning to bag and wallet of the infinite number of the poore people imploied in clothing in seuerall degrees of labour here in England.

He urges him to send home samples of the best Turkish cloth, to show to the English master weavers, "partly to remooue out of their heads, the tootoo great opinion they haue concerned of their owne cunning, and partly to mooue them for shame to endeuour to learne more knowledge to the honour of their countrey of England, and to the vniuersall benefit of the realme."

But he also urges him to take to Turkey certain plant derivatives from England that produce a glorious blue, but which English dyers had been unable to fix, to see if Turkish dyers knew or could discover a way to do it.

He urges the factor to hire, and send to England, a young man who had been trained in native dying methods. He urges him to learn all the methods Turks used in dying cloth, "be they plants, Barkes, Wood, Berries, Seedes, Graines, or Minerall matter, or what els soeuer. But before all other, such things as yeeld those famous colours that carrie such speciall report of excellencie, that our Merchaunts may bring them to this realme by ordinarie trade, as a light meane for the better vent of our clothes."

If the dye-stuff comes from plants, he wants to know how and where the plants grow best. He wants to know about sesame seed oil, a product useful in the dying process. He is especially interested in anil, a blue dye which we know as "indigo."

There's an element of espionage in this. Nations were aware of their special products and resources, and smuggling them into a rival power's hands was an act of high treason.

It is reported at Saffronwalden that a Pilgrim purposing to do good to his countrey, stole an head of Saffron, and hid the same in his Palmers staffe, which he had made hollow before of purpose, and so he brought this root into this realme, with venture of his life: for if he had bene taken, by the law of the countrey from whence it came, he had died for the fact. If the like loue in this our age were in our people that now become great trauellers, many knowledges, and many trades, and many herbes and plants might be brought into this realme that might doe the realme good.

As a result, English saffron had "sent many poore on worke, and brought great wealth into this realme." So much so that Hakluyt was looking for a "vent" for it in Tripoli.

Thus may Sumack, the plant wherewith the most excellent blacks be died in Spaine, be brought out of Spaine, and out of the Ilands of the same, if it will grow in this more colde climat. For thus was Woad brought into this realme, and came to good perfection, to the great losse of the French our olde enemies.

Conversely, Hakluyt tells his "factor" to look for a "vent" in Turkey for yellow- and green-dyed English woolens, "because yellowes and greenes are colours of small prices in this realme, by reason that Olde and Greenweed wherewith they be died be naturall here, and in great plenty, therefore to bring our clothes so died to common sale in Turkie were to the great benefit of the merchant, and other poore subiects of this realme, for in sale of such our owne naturall colours we consume not our treasure in forren colours, and yet we sell our owne trifles dearely perhaps."

At the end, he lists the number of things brought into England in historic times, and more recently, and the great good they've done.

And the Romans hauing that care, brought from all coasts of the world into Italie all arts and sciences, and all kinds of beasts and fowile, and all herbs, trees, busks and plants that might yeeld profit or pleasure to their countrey of Italie. And if this care had not bene heretofore in our ancestors, then, had our life bene sauage now, for then we had not had Wheat nor Rie, Peaze nor Beanes, Barley nor Oats, Peare nor Apple, Vine nor many other profitable and pleasant plants, Bull nor Cow, Sheepe nor Swine, Horse nor Mare, Cocke nor Hen, nor a number of other things that we inioy, without which our life were to be sayd barbarous: for these things and a thousand that we vse more the first inhabitors of this Iland found not here.

And in time of memory things haue bene brought in that were not here before, as the Damaske rose by Doctour Linaker king Henry the seuenth and king Henry the eights Physician, the Turky cocks and hennes about fifty yeres past, the Artichowe in time of king Henry the eight, and of later time was procured out of Italy the Muske rose plant, the plumme called the Perdigwena, and two kindes more by the Lord Cromwell after his trauell, and the Abricot by a French Priest one Wolfe Gardiner to king Henry the eight: and now within these foure yeeres there haue bene brought into England from Vienna in Austria diuers kinds of flowers called Tulipas, and those and other procured thither a little before from Constantinople by an excellent man called M. Carolus Clusius. And it is sayd that since we traded to Zante that the plant that beareth the Coren is also brought into this realme from thence; and although it bring not fruit to perfection, yet it may serue for pleasure and for some vse, like as our vines doe, which we cannot well spare, although the climat so colde will not permit vs to haue good wines of them.

And many other things haue bene brought in, that haue degenerated by reason of the colde climat, some other things brought in haue by negligence bene lost. The Archbishop of Canterburie Edmund Grindall, after he returned out of Germany, brought into this realme the plant of Tamariske from thence, and this plant he hath so increased that there be here thousands of them; and many people haue receiued great health by this plant: and if of things brought in such care were had, then could not the first labour be lost. The seed of Tobacco hath bene brought hither out of the West Indies, it groweth heere, and with the herbe many haue bene eased of the reumes, &c. Each one of a great number of things were woorthy of a iourney to be made into Spaine, Italy, Barbarie, Egypt, Zante, Constantinople, the West Indies, and to diuers other places neerer and further off then any of these, yet forasmuch as the poore are not able, and for that the rich setled at home in quiet will not, therefore we are to make sute to such as repaire to forren kingdomes, for other businesses, to haue some care heerein, and to set before their eyes the examples of these good men, and to endeuour to do for their parts the like, as their speciall businesses may permit the same.

Thus giuing you occasion by way of a little remembrance, to haue a desire to doe your countrey good you shall, if you haue any inclination to such good, do more good to the poore ready to starue for reliefe, then euer any subiect did in this realme by building of Almes-houses, and by giuing of lands and goods to the reliefe of the poore. Thus may you helpe to driue idlenesse the mother of most mischiefs out of the realme, and winne you perpetuall fame, and the prayer of the poore, which is more woorth then all the golde of Peru, and of all the West Indies.

Fast Forward

Every now and then, a media outlet puts something up online that was written before an event -- such as a State of the Union address -- but written in such a way as to indicate it is a reaction to the event.

When the media outlet is caught at this, the alert Internet users often jump all over it. And the discovery strengthens the suspicion that this sort of thing happens all the time.

It does. As an insider, I can tell you. Only a few publications are dim enough to get caught on the Internet with their chronological pants down. But many more play the game.

Right now, it's Friday evening and I'm sitting at the wire desk reading a Boston Globe editorial about Iraq that is written as though looking back on the anti-war protest slated for tomorrow. Not only is it looking back on them, it is bolstering its argument based on the number of people who (turned out) haven't yet turned out for them.

IRAQ WITHOUT ILLUSIONS

BY NOW it should be clear to Bush administration policymakers that their blunders in Iraq have led to the current situation in which US forces are unable to stamp out a quicksilver insurgency, parts of the country are slipping into a sectarian war between Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites, and the specter of a many-sided civil war looms over the future.

Most of Washington's mistakes originate in a failure to grasp - or accept - Iraqi realities that do not correspond to administration hopes or delusions. One consequence is that many Americans see no reason to continue sacrificing American lives in Iraq, as evidenced by this weekend's large antiwar protests.

Emphasis added. At the bottom of the piece is a timestamp that reads "NYT-09-23-05 1831EDT," meaning this story was moved on the New York Times wire at 6:31 p.m. Friday.

BDS, a Clinical Definition

David Brooks gives a case-book description of "Bush Derangement Syndrome," based on Kerry's post-Katrina speech. I didn't see the speech, and I don't follow Kerry anymore, so I don't know if it's a legitimate diagnosis of the man. But I do recognize the syndrome herein described. It walks around me every evening, like a political zombie movie:

Kerry began his speech by making the point that Bush and his crew are rotten. He then went on to make the point that Bush and his crew are loathsome. In the third section of the speech, Kerry left the impression that Bush and his crew are evil.

Now we all know people so consumed by hatred for George Bush that they haven't had an unpredictable thought in five years, but in Kerry's speech one sees this anger in almost clinical form.

In the first place, not even Karl Rove's worldview is so obsessively Bush-centric as John Kerry's. There are many interesting issues raised by Katrina, but for Senator Ahab it all goes back to the great white monster, Bush. Bush and his crew should have known the levees were weak. Bush and his crew should have known thousands in New Orleans would be trapped. (Did I miss Kerry's own warnings on these subjects?)

All reality flows back to Bush. All begins with Bush, ends with Bush, is explained by Bush and is polluted by Bush, cursed be thy name.

And as the speech stretches on, a second thought occurs: Doesn't this guy ever get bored? If Kerry ever makes an anti-Bush jab, he makes it again. The old DeLay jibes, he makes them again. The Wolfowitz attacks, he makes them again. Porn movies have less repetition than this, and yet the "Mission Accomplished" carrier deck scene gets hauled out again, for one feels this is not a normal speech designed to persuade or inform, but a primitive rite designed to channel group outrage.

I wish I could quote the whole thing without violating "fair use." He goes on to compare comments by John Edwards which are much more reality-based and helpful. And then he ponders which way the Democrats will blow in years to come.

On one side are those who believe that the party's essential problem is with its political style. The Republicans win because they are simply rougher, so the Democrats must be just as tough in response. They must match Karl Rove blow for blow. Democrats in this camp are voting against John Roberts just to show the world, and their donors above all, that they are willing to give no quarter.

On the other side are those who believe that the Democratic defeats flow from policy problems, not from campaign style or message framing. They don't believe that Democrats can win wrapped in their own rage, or kowtowing endlessly to their psychologically aggrieved donor base. For them, the crucial challenge is to come up with policies more in tune with voters.

Salam Pax

Did you know Salam Pax is back? Or am I like the only one that didn't get the memo?

In the run-up to the Iraq War, he was essential reading. Inspiring, pugnacious, opinionated, free-wheeling. Simply awesome. If there was any one blogger who gave me a sense of the potential importance of this medium, it was him.

He gave it up for a while, but now he's back at it. His commentary on the Iraq draft constitution is among the best I've seen. The most recent post there is a fine, sad tribute to a recent victim of the violence in Iraq.

I know you have smarty-smart journalists who tell you the most amazing stories from foreign lands and explain everything for you, but there are many cases where a journalist has just been parachuted into a country he knows nothing about and where he, as the Arabic saying goes, can’t tell the difference between a stick and a corncob. That’s when the journalist is only as good as his/her fixer. Before all you journos out there get indignant I know what I’m talking about because I was a fixer myself.

And for all those freshly parachuted journalists there can’t be a better gift from the skies than a passionate and knowledgeable fixer. This would be Fakher’s cue to make his entrance. Fakher al-Tamimi, Fixer extraordinaire, with a ready smile and a million stories to tell.

Today I heard of his assassination on the radio. The report said that he was kidnapped last night from his home and was found shot dead today. I met Fakher while I was a fixer for the New York Times, his English wasn’t yet up to speed then and I was sent down to Basra to translate for a new NY Times reporter who was working with Fakher. For me at the time he was like the Rolls Royce of fixers. He had endless reserves of enthusiasm and he made you feel he knew everyone in Basra’s phone directory personally and more importantly he cared about the stories being researched, he genuinely wanted these stories to be told and read by the outside world.

Eavesdropping

You may know that I also post regularly over at a site called Donklephant (not my name choice), which strives to strengthen the center in modern American political life. It's not a wimpy conflict-avoiding center, or else I wouldn't bother. It can get cantankerous and robust, which is as it should be.

The main man over there is Justin Gardner. I don't know him except on line, but he's a very decent fellow with a good heart and even though his background and sympathies are all to the left (from where I stand), I am certain he sits down to the Internet and tries to write to the tune of higher virtues than partisan positions. He tries to keep the long view of things, and look out for the ultimate good of the people and the country.

I know how difficult it is to look at a particular case and not take note of certain personalities you despise and mark and which side of it pleases them most. I have to swallow hard sometimes before speaking up for something I believe is right, even if demagogue X and blogger Y, who has savaged me in the past, also applaud it.

I suspect Justin's a good bit younger than me, but he already has the quality of a statesman, something so rare in the blog world: like Peel, when he suspended the Corn Laws in 1826 amid public unrest to keep the English poor from starving. The agricultural faction among the MPs accused him of bowing to the mob, he shot back, "Sir, there are two sorts of courage which may be displayed in respect to them. There is the courage to refuse to accede to such demands at all. And there is another kind of courage -- the courage to do that which in our conscience we may believe to be just and right, disregarding all the clamour with which these demands may be accompanied."

If Peel had chosen a stronger verb than "may believe to be just and right" to hinge that on, it would be one of the great things ever said in politics. As it is, it's good enough to hang above the computer screen of any online writer with a bent for polemics.

So I'm pretty much the only "conservative" posting daily over there, and I'm a damned poor example of that genre, but it's the hat that everyone keeps putting back on my head every time I try to take it off, so I accept it. Funny thing is, most of the commenters seem to break to the center-right, and they're an informed, thoughtful bunch. If It ever falls apart, I want the commenters.

But Justin is himself an active commenter on some of the leftward blogs he's used to reading, and he usually seems to link his comments back to Donklephant. At least from the small sample of blog reactions to Donklephant, the idea of a centrist dialogue is much more acceptable on the right than on the left. To the degree the right has noticed the site, it's been politely applauded. But it's been savaged from the left.

Again, that makes sense in the overall political scene. When you're behind in the score (as thge left seems to be every election day), you don't want more compromise, more bridge-building.

So I don't follow Justin's career as a poster on left blogs, but sometimes it develops into a row that spills back into the site I share with him. Here's an example. And when that happens I feel awkward, like when you go to a friend's house and he and his wife start a plate-hurling argument right in front of you.

But I can't help noticing how brutal are the intermural battles of the left. Like medieval Venetian gang wars, all stiletto and jugular. In the fight cited above, one character keeps coming back to post and tell his rival why the rival isn't worth the trouble of answering. I once shared a house with a very kind jazz musician whose girlfriend broke up with him and called him about 5 times a night for a week to harangue him for hours about why he wasn't worth one minute of her time. Sort of like that.

And how revealing, perhaps. In the thread above, the smug commenter sums up the gist of a disagreement thus:

Wow.

You still don’t seem to grasp the Simpson’s reference. I suppose that this is representative of the entire conversation; we make points that you don’t seem to understand, so you ignore them.

Fascinating.

Wow, indeed. That's everything wrong with the modern left in America. That's why, while George W. Bush's approval slouches toward single digits, the same polls reveal that, if you reran the 2004 election today, Kerry still would lose.

The "progressives" are a high school clique. "You didn't get the Simpsons joke. You're not one of the cool kids." The Red States don't get the Simpsons jokes, either.

Carnival of Etymologies

[A regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors"]

The habit of President Bush (and, to be fair, Congress) of spending mountains of cash and cutting taxes at the same time has many heads spinning. It's all about the money.

Indo-European language history is older than the use of coin as money, and the most ancient words for "money" are based on the chief standard of value in very ancient times: cattle. This survives in English in a few words -- fee, pecuniary, etc. -- which were discussed in an earlier carnival.

Some other pre-coin standards of value that have become words for "money" in various languages include horses and jewels, and pelts. Russian kunec "merchant" comes from an Old Russian kuna "money, a small coin," which literally means "martin skin."

A more recent group of words for "money" or "coin" derives from precious metals, notably silver (Greek argyros, Irish airgead, Latin argentum, French argent). Other "money" words originally were names of specific coins, such as Spanish dinero, Italian denaro, both from Vulgar Latin dinarius (classical denarius) the name of a Roman silver coin originally worth ten aes, and derived from deni, the distributive adjective form of decem "ten."

The original Old English word for "money" was geld, a word which also could be used for "payment, tribute, offering." This is the native noun form of the general Germanic word for "to pay" (cf. German geld, Old High German gelt, Old Norse gjald). The reconstructed root is *gheldh-, but this does not seem to exist anywhere outside Germanic. It is not related to gold, however it survives in guild and yield.

The final step in the progression from cattle to precious metals to actual coins is represented by Greek nomisma "coin" (the study of coins is called numismatics, a word coined in French in 1579 from the Latin form of nomisma); but originally nomisma meant more broadly, "anything sanctioned by custom." In fact, the root of it is nomos "custom, law." This important Greek word also forms the back half of anomie, autonomy, astronomy, economy (literally "household management"), and Deuteronomy.

According to this site, the first appearance of what we recognize as coins took place in the 7th century B.C.E., probably in Lydia in Asia Minor.

But what of money itself? It made its way into English from Latin, and originally it was the nickname of a goddess.

Money entered Middle English from Old French moneie, which comes from Latin moneta "mint, coinage." This is the same word as Moneta, a title of the Roman goddess Juno.

The temple to Iuno Moneta on the Capitoline Hill was vowed by M. Furius Camillus during the war with the Aurunci in 345 B.C.E. and dedicated on June 1 of the following year. It stood on the arx, on the site formerly occupied by the house of M. Manlius Capitolinus, and where the church of S. Maria Aracoeli and the Vittoriano now stands.

In late republican times a mint was established next to, or in, the Temple of Juno Moneta, conveniently close to the city treasury in the Temple of Saturn. The mint perhaps was established in 269 B.C.E. when the Romans introduced silver coinage.

Apparently the name of the temple got transfered to the name of what was made there -- money.

But that still leaves the question of what moneta originally meant in Latin. Linguists and historians aren't exactly sure. But they have a good guess.

Probably Camillus' temple replaced an earlier cult centre of Iuno Moneta. In fact, it's likely this was the site of the cult temple to which Plutarch refers when telling the tale of the geese who saved Rome in 390 B.C.

The story is set at the peak of the tumultuous years of the early 4th century B.C.E., when Celtic Gauls crossed the Alps and invaded Italy. A Celtic tribe, the Senones, under command of Brennus, pushed down through Etruscan lands and advanced on Rome. Eleven miles north of the city, the outnumbered Romans made a stand under A. Quintus Sulpicius (July 16, 390 B.C.E.) and were routed on the banks of the River Allia. Roman defenders fled to the Capitoline Hill to set up a last stand, while civilians streamed out the city gates to seek refuge in the countryside or cities further south. The Gauls flooded in, killing those who remained and looting and burning the city.

Attacks up the hill were repulsed, however, and the Gauls sat down to a siege. For seven months they remained. Open assaults on the Capitol all failed, but at least once the Gauls tried to scale the heights at night, by stealth. They might have succeeded, and history might be rewritten, but for the sacred geese kept on the grounds of the Temple of Juno. They detected the intruders and set up a clamor which awoke the defenders.

The Romans at last were able to bring Brennus to negotiation, and they bought peace and the departure of the Gauls for the stiff price of 1,000 pounds of gold. The final deal, as recorded by Livy, records one of the famous quotes of antiquity:

Quintus Sulpicius conferred with the Gallic chieftain Brennus and together they agreed upon the price, one thousand pounds' weight of gold. Insult was added to what was already sufficiently disgraceful, for the weights which the Gauls brought for weighing the metal were heavier than standard, and when the Roman commander objected, the insolent barbarian flung his sword into the scale, saying 'Vae Victis-- 'Woe to the vanquished!' "

One result of the Romans' harrowing near-disaster was that they reorganized their legions on practical lines and began the rise to military ascendancy.

So, Moneta seems to be from monere "advise, warn." The specific aspect of Juno worshipped at that temple became "Juno of the Warning."

That at least is the most likely story. But other explanations also sometimes were given by Roman antiquarians for the epithet Moneta. Cicero says it was derived from the warning voice of the goddess heard in the temple on the occasion of an earthquake, "ut sue plena procuratio fieret." Suidas states that during the war with Tarentum the Romans, needing money, obtained it by following the advice of Juno; and that in gratitude they gave her the epithet Moneta and established the mint in her temple. That story would reverse the explanation, deriving the epithet from the "money" word.

Even the usual derivation of the word is open to question. Moneta also could be derived from mons "hill." Tucker suggests "there may be some connection with the moon." Both these are less satisfactory than the explanation from monere, however.



This old stonework, perhaps the only surviving depiction of the temple, certainly suggests the importance of the geese.

At some time between the reign of Vespasian and the early second century the Romans moved the mint to a new site on the Caelian Hill near the modern church of S. Clemente, and nothing further is heard of the Juno temple in Roman records. Excavations for modern structures at the site (such as the monument to Victor Emmanuel) have revealed no trace of it, and some archaeologists think it may lie under the transepts of S. Maria Aracoeli.

The Latin verb monere "to admonish, warn, advise" is related to memini "I remember, I am mindful of," and to mens "mind." They all come from the Proto-Indo-European base *men- "to think," which has yielded a prodigious number of modern words in Modern English, both via Latin and via the Germanic form of the root, expressed by Old English gemynd "memory, thinking, intention."

If monere is the root of money, that makes money a cousin of monument (literally "something that reminds"), premonition ("a forewarning"), admonish (ad- "to" + monere), summon (sub- "under" + monere), monitor (" one who reminds, admonishes, or checks"), and monster, from Latin monstrum "monster, monstrosity, omen, portent, sign." Abnormal or prodigious animals were regarded as signs or omens of impending evil.

Outside Latin, monere has relatives in Sanskrit matih "thought," munih "sage, seer;" Greek memona "I yearn," mania "madness," mantis "one who divines, prophet, seer;" and Russian pamjat "memory."

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Americans, of course, measure their money in dollars, which is a German word. To get more specific, it's a variant of the Low German form (daler) of High German taler.

Any way you spell it, it's an abbreviation of Joachimstaler, which literally means "(gulden) of Joachimstal." This was the name of a coin minted in Germany first in 1519 from silver brought up from a mine opened in 1516 near Joachimstal, a pretty town in the Erzgebirge Mountains in northwest Bohemia (modern Jáchymov in the Czech Republic) named for Saint Joachim. German Tal is cognate with English dale.

The German thaler (as it was spelled in the 16th century) was a large silver coin of varying value in the German states; it also was the name of a currency unit in Denmark and Sweden. English colonists in America used the word generically in reference to Spanish pieces of eight. On suggestion of Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson, Continental Congress adopted dollar as a coin name when it set up the U.S. currency, because the term was widely known but not British.

The legislation establishing the dollar became law on July 6, 1785, but no dollars were in circulation until 1794. The dollar sign ($) is said to derive from the image of the Pillars of Hercules, stamped with a scroll, on the Spanish piece of eight (below).



All this spending on war and relief has unbalanced the federal budget.

A budget is literally a "little leather pouch," which is what the word first meant when it appeared in English in the early 15th century. It comes from Old French bougette, a diminutive form of bouge "leather bag, wallet," which comes in turn from Latin bulga "leather bag," a word believed to be of Gaulish origin (cf. Old Irish bolg "bag," Breton bolc'h "flax pod"). The Romans picked up more than a few words from the Gauls, but probably fewer of them in the period of the Gaulish invasion of Italy, and more later, when Caesar's conquest of what is now France brought a large Gaulish population under Roman rule.

The modern financial meaning of budget is recorded from 1733, and it preserves the notion of a treasury minister keeping his fiscal plans in a wallet.

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Deficit is only attested in English from 1782, fwhich seems a surprisingly (to me) late date. Even in French, it only goes back to 1690. It is a pure Latin word, deficit, literally meaning "it is wanting." This was an introductory word in clauses of inventory, from which it was extended to the modern sense.

The Latin is the third person singular present indicative of deficere "to be deficient, to desert, fail," a compound of de- "down, away" and facere "to do, perform."

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Debt on the other hand has been around since the 13th century, from Old French dete, from Latin debitam "thing owed," the neuter past participle of debere "to owe," originally, "keep something away from someone." This is a compound of de- and habere "to have." The -b- was restored in the English word after c.1400 (The King James Version has detter three times, debter three times, debtor twice and debtour once).

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Spend was one of the first words the Germanic peoples borrowed from Latin; it was in use as far back as the Old English period. (in forspendan "use up"). Its source is Latin expendere "to pay out, to weigh out money, pay down." This is a compound of ex- "out" and pendere "to pay, weigh," literally "to hang."

The image is of things (in this case, metals used as currency) measured for payment by weight (like the Roman tribute to the Gauls), and weighed by hanging from cords, perhaps in a scale pan.

Patriotism and Peace

"Peace is Patriotic" is one of the anti-war mantras. So is "Support the Troops; Bring Them Home Now." I'm still trying to puzzle this out.

Assume, dear reader, that your overpowering urge in the world is "get America out of Iraq." This is what you really wish to see. Why? Well, that's your business, but the usual reason professed is "peace."

The notion that the only reason Iraq is a violent place is because Americans are there is the kind of wish-thinking that I associate with the kind of "anti-war activist" who only thinks about world affairs after a few long tugs on the ol' bong and a spin through the first two "Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young)" albums. But some thinking anti-Bush types do seem to take it seriously. Gregory Djerejian takes the time to patiently answer this argument.

The gist of it includes the points that Iraq, a fractious but resource-rich society surrounded by predatory enemies, needs time to build itself up and stand on its own. And only the U.S. occupation can give it that breathing room, as the Allied occupation did for West Germany in the late 1940s and early '50s.

Pull out U.S. forces in a hasty phased withdrawal and kiss a national Iraqi Army good-bye, and with it likely too the prospects, however dim they may be (of which more below), of an ultimately successful Iraq project.

The other flaw in the argument is that it presumes the insurgents have the same goal as the peace activists -- to get the Americans out of Iraq and then live in peace and harmony with the world. An insurgent victory -- the necessary flip-side of a quick American departure -- would galvanize jihadism the way the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan did. Casting the future is a difficult business but I'd bet a couple of paychecks that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi riding triumphantly out of the desert into Baghdad will not usher in a new era of world peace and stability.

As someone once said, "America 'occupies' Iraq like a cast 'occupies' a broken leg." The proponents of the "bring the troops home and peace will reign" idea are perhaps deliberately not thinking about this because it doesn't suit them to do so. It confronts them with the maddening possibility that, though the war may still have been unjustified and unnecessary (as they deem it), and the occupation bungled, the best thing to do now, after all that, is to keep doing what's being done, more or less. That's not a very satisfactory answer for those folks, I imagine.

But let that pass. "Bring the troops home now" is your cry, and you really mean it as the best next step.

You want to see this happen right away. But since you are not the commander in chief, you cannot make this happen right away. So you have two alternatives. You can stamp your feet and cry, or you can settle for the next-best option of getting America out of Iraq as soon as possible.

How do you do that? You either believe America wishes to remain an occupying force in Iraq forever, or you understand that it has certain goals there that, once met, will meet the conditions for America's withdrawal from the country.

The path forks before this, actually. If you believe Bush & Co. are a pack of criminal liars who will stop at nothing and waste no amount of other people's lives and treasure to pursue their agenda of world domination and corporate enrichment, then the only way to fight them is full-on, taking any ally who shares your enmity with them. It doesn't matter if Bush sets conditions or not; whenever he talks, he lies.

Frankly, a lot of the people I listen to and read on the anti-war left at least claim to be assured of all that. They just haven't somehow followed their conviction to any sort of logical conclusion. But the conclusion it leads to, I'm afraid, is not consistent with "peace" or with "supporting the troops," at least insofar as they are loyal to the military of which Bush is commander in chief.

If you believe America intends to occupy Iraq forever, and you are bound and determined to see that not happen, is there any alternative but to work toward American defeat in Iraq? The alternative is to accept failure of your purpose. Outright defeat for the American military, if the American people are behind it, is a highly unlikely outcome right now. But a war opponent could lend his or her effort to making the cost of continuing the present U.S. course so steep and bloody that it breaks the national will and forces social unrest and political turmoil a la 1968.

But what if you believe the U.S. will leave Iraq under certain conditions not involving utter military catastrophe befalling U.S. forces?

Bush and Co. don't make this easy. They are a singularly inarticulate and off-key administration. They do well to avoid withdrawal timetables, but they could help themselves by having, and repeating, and sticking to, a coherent brief set of points for success in Iraq. Yet even through the rhetorical haze it is possible to read the administration and discover its rough conditions for success in Iraq, which would be followed by U.S. withdrawal.

A stable, democratic government. A permanent end to the insurgency, preferably by defeat, but perhaps by negotiation. An Iraq strong and capable enough to defend itself from outside interference, and capable of policing its own territory to prevent terrorists from using it as a training and staging ground.

This is a good deal less than many of us who supported this venture had hoped for from it, by the way. And there are signs that the administration is eager to end this venture sooner, rather than later, and would be willing to cut a few corners and fudge some of the fine print on its conditions of acceptable withdrawal.

So what do you do? You bend your time and energy to seeing that Iraq reaches as soon as possible the state where the Americans will leave willingly. You support the reconstruction of Iraq and the empowerment of the Iraqis. You willingly contribute to the effort of rebuilding, either through private donations or personal effort.

How many people who shout "bring the troops home now" are doing that?

Ah, but this simplistic logical walk through the problem ignores so much that is important to the "peace" activist. The Bushies must not feel they have succeeded! They must be punished, and must be held up to the world as a failure, to prevent future administrations from following the siren song of the neo-cons! Americans who support the military overthrow of a nation that has not attacked us in war must be taught by example the error of their ways and made to repent it!

But now we're not talking about peace anymore, are we? We're not talking about supporting troops. Peace and the troops are peripheral to the purpose. Now the language becomes rather similar to the way Eisenhower talked about the Germans in 1946.

Cheesecake for Tolerance

More scenes like this, please. Oh, I know "white shoes after Labor Day," and that dress on the poor thing on the far right just screams "Goth-slut-cum-Lawrence-Welk-singer." But consider the obstacles. This is the "Miss Seamline" beauty pageant, underway today in the Israeli town of Gilo, near Bethlehem, on the West Bank. Both Israeli and Palestinian girls from the local communities on both sides of the line are invited to participate.

I haven't seen a write-up of this year's contest (AP only has moved photos so far), but last year most of the Palestinian girls were scared off at the last minute. I'm hoping the turn-out is better now (though I expect most of the Palestinians will be Christians). The beauty contest is meant to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians in a region that has been a flashpoint of violence.

It may not be much, but great things can come of little meetings.

LYSISTRATA .... Good day, Lampito, dear friend from Lacedaemon. How well and handsome you look! what a rosy complexion! and how strong you
seem; why, you could strangle a bull surely!

LAMPITO Yes, indeed, I really think I could. It's because I do gymnastics and practise the bottom-kicking dance.

CLEONICE And what superb breasts!

LAMPITO La! you are feeling me as if I were a beast for sacrifice.

LYSISTRATA And this young woman, where is she from?

LAMPITO She is a noble lady from Boeotia.

LYSISTRATA Ah! my pretty Boeotian friend, you are as blooming as a garden.

CLEONICE (making another inspection) Yes, on my word! and her "garden" is so thoroughly weeded too!

Unfortunately, not far away and at about the same time, the scene looked like this:

E-mail of the Day

Interesting e-mail today from Eliherbs@aol.com. I've put blank spaces in place of my name.

I'm an Asian female and your are a klan dog racist, ____ _____!

Your terms/phrases for Caucasians/whites are always BIASED and sympathetic, whereas for minorities, it's harsh.

You use garbage like "well-meaning whites" and "innocent adjective 'niggardly'" for whites, but describe minorities as having "black paranoia," "hate," "anger."

Maybe you should study some REAL HISTORY, klan dog doug! The Caucasians or white-as-chlorinated-toilet-paper whites have been butchering native populations in genocide campaigns, killing and banning Asians, and lynching blacks, and sometimes in combinations of all three.

Why don't you start learning to understand the Asian perspective, you klan dog racist doug, instead of spouting your trailer trash of Appalachia garbage! And how about your treacherous Catholic institutions that molest your own people!

Do something productive like supporting civil rights instead of making excuses for your white trash race haters!

NO KLAN DOGS ALLOWED!

My response was, "Nice to meet you, too."

Happy Opinion Day

Tuesday will be Sept. 20, which corresponds to "The Feast of Opinion" (Fête de l'Opinion) in the French Revolutionary calendar.

The calendar was adopted in France by decree in November 1793 as a secular, rational alternative to the Christian calendar. It was back-dated to begin at the autumnal equinox of 1792, and it was used in France until Napoleon restored the Gregorian calendar on Dec. 31, 1805 (or 10th Nivose, Year of the Republic XIV, as it till then would have been calculated).

The calendar was designed by the poet and revolutionary figure Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Eglantine. It may have been intended as a rational construction, but like all soli-lunar calendars, sacred or secular, it faced the challenge of dividing an (almost) 365-day sun-year into equal months.

Twelve 30-day months gets you close to an even division, but this leaves a few days over. The Gregorian solution was to make the months unequal, giving some months an extra day. The philosophical and egalitarian Fabre d'Eglantine chose the solution of keeping all months equal, but adding in the extra days between the end of one year and the start of the next (which was more or less how the Romans did it before Julius Caesar's reforms).*

The year ended with Fructidor ("Fruit Month," Aug. 18-Sept. 16) and began on 1st Vendemiaire ("Vintage Month," Sept. 22-Oct. 21). In between fell five "extra days" -- jours complémentaires. Rather than simply being intercalary days, however, they were designated as Sansculotides, or "feasts of the proletariat," as a later generation of European radicals might have called them.

The model, obviously, was the feast days of the old Catholic Church, but these were decidedly rational. Sept. 17 was the Feast of the Virtues. Sept. 18 the Feast of Genius, Sept. 19 the Feast of Labor, Sept. 20 the Feast of Opinion, and Sept. 21 the Feast of Rewards.

To solve the final problem of this type of calendar, the extra hours that add up to a full day roughly every four years, Fabre d'Eglantine resorted to the "leap year." Every fourth year, a sixth feast day was added, the Jour de la Révolution.

I have no idea how the French celebrated the Feast of Opinions. But it ought to be the national holiday of the blogosphere. Any suggestions for traditions? How about blindfolded games of "pin the blame on the president" and "jump the shark," or bobbing for Instapundit links, or feasts of boiled crow.

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*The Roman calendar was based on the luni-solar year. That is, it tried to reconcile the cycles of the sun and the moon, which seems a tantalizing possibility, since 12 lunar cycles require 354 days, which is just a few short of the 365-day solar year.

A purely lunar calendar of 12 months (such as the Muslims use) picks up an extra year every 34 years, due to the extra days, unless it is corrected. The Romans corrected their calendar by intercalating a whole month every two years, when the deficit added up to 22 days.

Another practical problem with the lunar-based calendar was that the new moons were not mathematically calculated in Roman times, but rather observed by the priests, who once they saw the moon declared the start of the new month. And weather, the landscape, and the nearness of the new moon in the sky to the sun could hinder that observation.

At some early point in Roman history, these two important aspects of the calendar -- intercalation and the declaration of the start of the month by the sighting of the new moon -- were handed over to the priests (pontifices or sacerdotes). When the priests saw the new moon from the Capitol, they would declare the number of days till the nones (five or seven, depending on whether it was a 29- or 31-day month). The first full day of the month was the kalendae, or "calling," which is where the word calendar comes from.

Intercalation was done after Feb. 23 or 24 (the terminalia), every two or four years. Twenty-seven days were intercalated, making a full intercalary month (which included the last four or five days of Februarius), known as mensis intercalaris (and also known, according to Plutarch, as Mercedonius). No one now knows why the intercalation was done in the middle of February rather than after its end, unless it was because the important festivals at the end of that month (Regifugium and Equirra) were closely associated with holidays in early March.

After 153 B.C., the one-year rule of the consuls was given a standard beginning date and synchronized with the calendar year. This introduced a political element to the calendar, which invited trouble. The priests now could shorten, or lengthen, the term in office of a civil magistrate by speeding up, or slowing down, the turn of a new year. Owing to the clumsiness of the pontifices and still more to political maneuvers, by which intercalations were made or omitted recklessly to affect a magistrate's year of office, the calendar got into hopeless confusion.

Censorius (de D.N. 20), Solonius (1.43), and Ammianus (26.1.12) all tell us that the difficulties in which intercalation had involved the romans were increased when they handed over to the pontifices (or sacerdotes) the right to intercalate at their discretion, and the pontifices then used this right to oblige their friends who might for business or political reasons want a longer or a shorter year. [Agnes Kirsopp Michels, "The Calendar of the Roman Republic," Princeton University Press, 1967]

There may have been another reason the calendar got off base: the famously superstitious Romans may have avoided intercalation during times of war, especially the Second Punic War, because intercalary days were regarded as unlucky. Cf. Macrobius, 1.14.1: verum fuit tempus cum propter superstitionem intercalatio omnis omissa est, and Ammianus, 26.1.7: (bissextum) quod aliquotiens rei Romanae fuisse norat infaustum.

The solar eclipse of Oct. 19, 202 B.C., fell on a civic date in early December.
The Republic failed in its duty to regulate the regulators. A dictator like Caesar was the only one who could effect the necessary change.

Storm Warning

I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why...It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless....

Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and, en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?

There is no future in spending UN money to breed hate. There is no future in nagging or bullying Israel to commit suicide by the admission of a fatal locust swarm of enemies.

The date that was written? 1961. An amazing find by Neo-Neocon.

Religion and Democracy

My country is torturing itself with a feud over religion. I feel sorrow for my Christian friends who again must suffer the spectacle of their Christian god being evicted from the government institutions of the United States. This time, again, the battle is over the Pledge of Allegiance as recited in the public schools.

Though not a Christian in any sense, I neither mock the faith nor regard it as irrelevant in the modern age. Rather, I appreciate its central and necessary function in American democracy.

And stop and think, fellow free-thinkers and pagans and non-Christians: Would you replace the mosaic of American Christianity with another faith? Which one? Where would you find one more inclined to steer its adherents toward public virtue, love of humankind, humility, tolerance, optimism, and non-violence?

Like the liberal Founders, who did not practice the Christian faith or believe in its theology, I would do nothing to discourage the American people from their Christianity. Even Jefferson, the deist/Unitarian who so riled the pious Christians of his day, understood this. One Sunday morning, as president, he was walking to church service, prayer book in hand, when a friend accosted him and said, "You going to church Mr. J. You do not believe a word in it." [Americans were more familiar with their presidents then].

Jefferson replied, "no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir."

(Of course, he never denied that he didn't believe a word of it.)

George Washington, the practical plantation-manager among the learned Founders, often spoke about the political importance of religion. He did so in his "Farewell Address" (based on a draft by Hamilton), where he named it along with education and public credit as things productive of "public felicity." He was not talking about government-sponsored religion. He was talking about the people and their faiths. Plural. When it came to the government, Washington was no less a separationist than Madison and Jefferson. He had had first-hand experience with the problem -- or rather the twin problems -- of the people failing to accommodate one another's beliefs and the government's heavy-handed impositions.

As commander in chief during the Revolution, Washington outlawed New England regiments' "Pope's Day" buffoonery because it offended his Catholic soldiers. Politically correct? He had a war to win and he needed everyone. In 1777 he opposed a congressional plan to appoint brigade chaplains in the Continental Army. "Among many other weighty objections to the Measure," he wrote to John Hancock (then president of Congress), "it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess."

America could survive without its Pledge of Allegiance, without its flag, without its public schools. But not without its public virtues, which are driven by its religious sensibilities. Madison used to say that such things could be superfluous to a "nation of philosophers" who were motivated by "the voice of an enlightened reason." Nobody in Philadelphia in 1787 had any illusion that they were living in such a nation. All they had to do was walk a few blocks up to Market Street for evidence.

This concept of virtue was crucially important, and the Founders wrote of it often. But they defined it differently than we do. To them, it didn't mean not drinking too much or sleeping around (though certainly they'd discourage these things), but, as their favorite political writer, Montesquieu, put it, virtue in a republic means "the love of the laws of our country" and "a constant preference of public to private interest."

Just one example: When my wife and I recently went looking for a place to donate our mite to help hurricane survivors in the Gulf, we pretty much knew it was going to be a church charity of some sort. A pagan/freethinking household, we never set foot in a church except as tourists. We ended up giving mostly to the Mennonites. [You can be sure they're not going to go out and blow half of it on Hummers and martini lunches for their executives.] This didn't bother us at all. Maybe someday there'll be an Agnostic World Disaster Relief Fund. Maybe.

But God does not belong in government itself. Rather, religion serves as the counterbalance to the popular liberties the government protects and is forbidden to touch. And it serves as a counterbalance to the competitive essence of our social system.

DeTocqueville, as usual, hit the nail on the head:

At the same time that the law permits the American people to do everything, religion prevents them from conceiving everything and forbids them to dare everything.

Why did the Founders omit it from the Constitution? Because they believed it to be rooted in man's nature, and to be flourishing in the American people. They did not have to build religion into the Constitution any more than they had to build Independence Hall before they met in it.

Because it is no business of government to promote God. True faith has wellsprings in the home. The Scandinavian nations all have official, government-supported churches. And the citizens there are among the most secular in the world. The religions that received the most governmental support in early America -- the Church of England in Virginia and the Congregational church in New England -- are among the least flourishing in the country today. The Amish, among whom I live, are people of deep piety; they run their own school system, according to their own model. And they do not teach anything about religion and God in the classroom. That is the job of the parents and the preachers.

And to the Enlightenment sensibilities of the Founders, to make religion the direct object of government "would be counterproductive, undermining the natural impulses that gave birth to them and kept them alive" [Gertrude Himmelfarb] .To put all in one place -- the government and the religion, is to unbalance this, and it is religion that will be most corrupted.

Part of the problem here is that the Founders also did not conceive or make provision for a national system of public education. This, like religion, they left to the people, or to the states.

I am sorry to see so many Christians aggrieved by this court decision over the Pledge. But the ruling is correct, both constitutionally and spiritually. By now, most people familiar with the case know the "under God" was inserted into the pledge a half century after it was written. The error is not in removing it; the error was made in 1954. We are correcting it now.

The blame, if any, resides not with the judges, but with those who insist on setting up their particular statue of the Christian god in the political edifice of the nation, where it does not belong. I cannot but think some of them do this pugnaciously, knowing politicians will be too craven to follow the constitution and thus enrage their constituents, knowing the courts eventually will have to do it, and the sight of God carted out of the public schools or the courthouse will create the impression of religious persecution. Sadly, this narrative seems to suit some people.

Carnival of the Etymologies

[A regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors"]

While looking through Zeitgeist for the top search engine inquiries this past week, I came across Bob Denver, TV's Maynard G. Krebs and Gilligan (whose first name remains a TV trivia mystery), who died Sept. 2.

Since most of the rest of the top search terms have been etymologized here before, I decided to do a Carnival based on the "Gilligan's Island" theme song.

Island is longer than it has to be. The oldest form of the word was Old English ieg, from Proto-Germanic *aujo, which probably meant "thing on the water" and is derived from Proto-Indo-European *akwa- "water."

The Anglo-Saxons began to feel this as insufficient, for some reason, and added a land on the end to make igland. Perhaps this happened by confusion with another Old English word, ealand, literally "river-land," which meant "watered place, meadow by a river."

The final alteration came in the 15th century, when the spelling was modified on the model of isle, which is unrelated to island. It's a Middle English borrowing from Old French, and ultimately it comes from Latin insula "island," a word of uncertain origin, perhaps from the feminine form of a reconstructed adjective *en-salos "in the sea," from salum "sea."

Old English ieg has vanished, but it survives in some old place names, for instance Runnymede, famed site of the signing of the Magna Charta. The spot, in Surrey, was called Ronimede in 1215 when it earned its place in history; it literally means "meadow on the council island," from Old English runieg "council island," the first element of which is identical with rune.

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Gilligan was the first mate on the TV show. Mate in the sense of "companion, associate, fellow, comrade" is a 14th century word in English; it was perhaps a soldiers' word picked up on the Continent, since the immediate source seems to be Middle Low German mate or gemate "one eating at the same table, messmate," from Proto-Germanic *ga-maton "having food (*matiz) together (*ga-)," which is etymologically identical with Latin-derived companion (com- "with" + panis "bread").

Mate with the meaning "one of a wedded pair" is attested from 1549; it has been used as a form of address by sailors, laborers, etc., since at least 1450. The meaning "officer on a merchant vessel" is recorded from 1496.

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Skipper "captain or master of a ship" is attested from 1390, and like a great many nautical words in English it is borrwed from the languages across the North Sea from England, where people took to the sea much more willingly than the landlubbing Anglo-Saxons did. Its immediate source is Middle Dutch scipper, from scip, the Dutch form of ship.

The Old English form of ship was identical to the Dutch word, with a hard sk- sound at the beginning. But over time the hard sound in English softened to modern sh-, while most of the continental Germanic people kept the hard consonant (though the Germans and Dutch eventually softened it, too). Because there was frequent contact between the English and these neighbors, especially via the Viking settlements in England, the same word sometimes comes down into Modern English in two forms, the native one in sh- and the continental or Scandinavian borrowing in sk-. Ship and skipper are one example pair. Shirt and skirt are another.

The ship word in the modern Germanic languages shows the different ways this sound has evolved: Danish skib, Swedish skepp, Dutch schip, German Schiff. French esquif and Italian schifo are Germanic loan-words. The root meaning of this whole group of words may be "tree cut out or hollowed out," if the word is connected, as some suspect, with the Proto-Indo-European base *skei- "to cut, split."

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Millionaire is first attested in 1826, borrowed from French millionnaire (1762). The first in America is said to have been John Jacob Astor (1763-1848). Million is a 14th century borrowing of Old French million (c.1270), from Italian millione (now milione), literally "a great thousand," augmentative of mille "thousand," from Latin mille.

The number was used mainly by mathematicians until the 16th century. The ancient Greeks had no name for a number greater than ten thousand, the Romans for none higher than a hundred thousand. "A million" in Latin would have been expressed decies centena milia, literally "ten hundred thousand." India, however, with its advanced mathematics and theological love of large numbers, had names before the 3rd century C.E. for numbers well beyond a billion.

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Wife is Old English wif (prounounced "weef"), which meant literally "woman." It's a general Germanic word (cf. Old Frisian wif, Old Norse vif, Swedish viv, Dutch wijf, German Weib), but its origin is unknown. The modern sense of "female spouse" began as a specialized sense in Old English; the general sense of "woman" is preserved in midwife, old wives' tale, etc. A Middle English sense of "mistress of a household" survives in housewife; and a later restricted sense of "tradeswoman of humble rank" in fishwife.

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Movie star, unlike the ancient words above, is pure 20th century. Movie is attested by 1912 (perhaps as early as 1908), a shortened form of moving picture (1896). Star meaning "perform the lead part" (said of actors, singers, etc.) is attested from 1824.

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With professor we're back to the Middle Ages, from Latin professor "person who professes to be an expert in some art or science, teacher of highest rank." It's an agent noun from profitieri "lay claim to, declare openly," a compound formed from pro- "forth" and fateri (past participle fassus) "acknowledge, confess." As a title prefixed to a name, professor dates from 1706.

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Mary Anne didn't have a title in the song -- in fact, in the first season, she wasn't even named in it. But her role was the classic vaudeville one of the fresh-faced, buxom farm girl.

Farm looks to me like a native Germanic word, but it's not. It's a 13th century borrowing of Old French ferme "lease," and as this indicates its ground sense is of the legal relationship of the owner to the land, not the agricultural use of it. The original sense is retained in the phrase to farm (something) out. The French word comes from Medieval Latin firma "fixed payment," from Latin firmare "to fix, settle, confirm, strengthen," from firmus "firm."

The sense of "tract of leased land" is first recorded in English in 1334; that of "cultivated land" (leased or not) is from 1523.

A native word for "farm" would be thorp, from Old English ðorp "village, hamlet, farm, estate," which is preserved in the many English place names ending in -thorp or -thrup.

Girl appears circa 1290 as gyrle "child" (of either sex). Its origin is unknown; current scholarship leans toward an unrecorded Old English *gyrele, from Proto-Germanic *gurwilon-, a diminutive of *gurwjoz (represented by Low German gære "boy, girl"), from the Proto-Indo-European root *ghwrgh-, which also is found in Greek parthenos "virgin." But this is highly conjectural.

Another candidate is Old English gierela "garment." Like boy, lass, lad it is of obscure origin. "Probably most of them arose as jocular transferred uses of words that had originally different meaning," according to "Oxford English Dictionary," lending support to the gierela theory.

The specific meaning of "female child" is from the 14th century; the word was applied to "any young unmarried woman" since 1530.

According to the indispensible Internet Movie Database, Jayne Mansfield turned down the role of Ginger, Jerry Van Dyke turned down the role of Gilligan; while Carroll O'Connor tested for the role of The Skipper, Dabney Coleman tested for The Professor, and Raquel Welch auditioned for the role of Mary Anne.

Raquel? Mary Anne? Not Ginger? What was her agent thinking?

Goddess Dance

My beautiful wife took a day-long performance seminar Saturday in Philadelphia with Ansuya, one of the undisputed superstars of modern American belly-dance. She reports Ansuya "worked our butts off," but was completely involved, down-to-earth, open to every question. At the end of it all, wife said, "I think she's my new hero."

After the seminar we went to dinner at a great Irish place that had Belgian beer on tap (go figure), then returned for a performance concert. About a dozen belly-dancers got up and did their thing, one by one. Some were entertaining, some had skills. All of them were moving to music. Sometimes they wrapped themselves up in the performance so tightly it felt like voyeurism to be watching them. Other times they were chasing the music around the room.

Then, at the end, Ansuya came out. She cued the tape, and the music swelled and she just lit up, improvising every move. I have seen nothing so stunning and powerful in decades. She wasn't a dancer, and it wasn't music. She was an elemental force that pulled music into her body and merged both into something more than human. And she radiated into the room, even when her eyes were closed, and she drew the room's energy into herself, too, so that for the first time in the evening I found my foot stomping, my hands clapping.

Her face was full serene. She didn't even break a sweat. Yet every moment of her performance she was working two or three different isolation movements together -- hip rotations and shoulder shimmies and arm motions, all at once, any one of which would have taxed the abilities of most dancers -- and in each moment she was not only full on moving the music, she was in transition to the next set of movements.

She put the zills to work, and for the first time in a live performance, I understood zills. She wasn't just clacking along to the music but she layered something over top of it all, like a soprano saxophone jazz riff dancing on top of a pounding melody, like butterflies drawn to the unfolding rose of the dance.

Layer upon layer of ability spun up like non-stop sensual lightning from the supple body of one woman. When I was a sportswriter, I got to see athletes at the peak of their game. Gretzky, for instance. They didn't just perform well, they made things happen. They controlled a space and everyone in it, with a perfect flow of mental-into-physical energy. They owned their muscle and bone and their skill, and they took that ownership and projected it into everyone around them. So did Ansuya.

You don't forget those moments, when you see them. They're times you lie awake and what you saw plays over in your head and you think, is that really a mortal quality? Is there any way to produce that out of the same stuff that I'm made from?

100,000

Sometime in the next few minutes, my stat counter is going to turn 100,000. How appropriate that this happens on this date.

Newsroom, Sunday Night

Still giddy, giggly. This is the greatest thing ever. The quip of the day is the cussing-out Cheney got. I've heard that one a dozen times already in the first two hours. Still no talk about donations, relief, aid to refugees. Just as with the whole Iraq war, millions, tens of millions, of human lives may hang in the balance, but only one person truly exists -- George W. Bush. All, all, is measured by how it helps, or hurts, one man's political destiny.

America, these are the people who make your news for you, who put the world on your doorstep or into your TV set. They may be deliberately professional and passionately partisan at the same time. But don't believe those two qualities exist in hermetically sealed containers. Even the best-made diapers reek after a while.

Lennon's Wife

LONDON (AP) — John Lennon's first wife says the late Beatle had a violent temper and once hit her in a fit of jealousy, according to excerpts from a new book published in a newspaper Sunday.

Cynthia Lennon met John in the late 1950s in Liverpool, where they were both art students. They married in 1962 and had a son, Julian, before divorcing in 1968.

Cynthia Lennon writes in "John," that he was prone to violent tantrums, according to an excerpt published in The Sunday Times, which is serializing the book. "I could put up with his outbursts, the jealousy and possessiveness but not the violence," she writes.

Gee, what a surprise.

Don't get me wrong; I love the Beatles. Especially the 1964-66 Beatles -- which you might conveniently define as "after pot, before acid." If you ask me, they brought the art of pop song writing to perfection in those few albums between "A Hard Day's Night" and "Revolver." They pushed and pushed that envelope. Even on a throwaway number like "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" the harmonics and the changes are just juicy. When I was in a combo, we used to play these songs over and over in rehearsals, just to discover the genius under the hood.

Finally, after 1967, they broke it, broke the pop song, and what followed was, too me, brilliant at times but it had stopped being a pop song. And most of the people who tried to follow them down that path made only mud.

And John was absolutely brilliant in this phase. "I'm a Loser," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "It's Only Love," "Norwegian Wood," "What Goes On," "I'm Only Sleeping."

But there's a dark, dark undercurrent beneath especially the jauntiest melodies in his music. A soothing song like "Girl" is really sadistic if you just strip it down to lyrics. But perhaps nothing in all of pop music is more shamelessly mysogynistic than "Run for Your Life," the last song on "Rubber Soul." It's an open, boastful promise to abuse that would shame a Johnny Cash or an Eminem.

I’d rather see you dead, little girl,
Than to be with another man.
You’d better keep your head, little girl,
Or I won’t know where I am.
You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl.
Catch you with another man,
That’s the end - ah, little girl.

Well you know that I’m a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind,
And I can’t spend my whole life tryin’,
Just to make you toe the line.
You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl.
Catch you with another man,
That’s the end - ah, little girl.

Let this be a sermon,
I mean everything I said,
Baby, I’m determined,
And I’d rather see you dead.
You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl.
Catch you with another man,
That’s the end - ah, little girl.

And so on. Forget the melody, just pronounce the words.

So, yeah, John Lennon had deep dark places inside, and they informed his music, and I believe the genius of it was because of them, not in spite of them. You probably didn't want to be one of the women in his life. Then again, you didn't want to be one of the women in Shelley's life, either.

Remembering 9/11

Rick Rescorla was a soldier

Whining and Giving

Howzabout we institute a national color-coded biometric "Bitchin' Level" card? You donate $100 to hurricane relief, you get a green card that entitles you to talk/write for 10 minutes a day blaming someone or something for everything that went wrong. After that, you shut up till tomorrow and go make yourself useful. $200 gets you a yellow card and an extra half hour. So on up the scale.

Based on what I see and hear, the desire to play "pin the blame on the other guys" is the strongest single motive force in America today. Ought to be a way to turn that hot air into simoleons for the sufferers.

Boob Tube

Some of you may know that, among my other fetishes and perversions, I don't watch television. Haven't seen it except in bars and friends' houses (and I have few friends -- no surprise) since about 1996 or so. It's not a big deal; I love pop culture and when I do see TV in a bar I move toward it, mesmerized; but I just don't have time to sit at home and veg in front of it, and where I live you either buy a cable package or do without tube, so I do without.

Fair enough. Anyway, I happened to be in a vacation house with a TV over Labor Day weekend, and I watched some of the new coverage from New Orleans. I must be way out of touch. TV news is even worse than I remembered. Because now, it's there all the time. So instead of seeing the same idiots for half an hour at dinner time, then seeing something else till you see the idiots again at bedtime, they're always there. But it's the same half-hour worth of footage and blab. Just stretched out over 24 hours. Amazing!

I watched Fox, I think it was, for about two hours. The same stuff kept going across the screne, over and over. It got mind-numbing after 10 minutes or so. In the entire two hours I watched, only one new bit of information transpired on screne. And that was Geraldo Rivera finding a new plump baby to pluck from the crowd at the Superdome and make cry by getting all shaky-furious while waving the kid in front of the camera lights.

I'm glad to find Andrea, who notices the same thing:

I’m watching one of the cable news channels yesterday, and the news guy (I forget who he is — they’re all interchangeable after a while) is going on and on about the dirty, filthy water full of filth, sewage, dead-body-stuff, alligator piss (okay, that one I made up), and did they mention filth? And a “cholera-like” bacteria that will kill you, but it’s not contagious, or something… and then he said it over again, and the camera panned up and down the dirty street, and stopped for a while on a canted-over streetlight (he must have been standing on Canal Street, there was still a puddle of the dirtyfilthysewagecholerawater behind him, anyway that street looked kind of familiar), and then back to the guy, who went over again about the dirty filthy and the stench and the cholera and then the news anchor from his comfy studio asked the question we are ALL waiting to hear: “So is it true that the water is full of deadly bacteria, and what about the pollution and chemicals, and is it true they’ve found some sort of cholera-like bacteria…” and the reporter on the scene goes over it again, syllable by syllable, making sure to e-nun-ci-ate clear-ly so all us Forrest Gumps at home sitting in front of the teevee with our Big Macs and mustard drool down our front will get it ...

... and especially don't miss the part that comes after that.

So I'm done with TV again for another decade. Tell me, what do you people see in this? I mean, "USA Up All Night?" Yeah! Spike and E! networds? Definitely! That's great television. That's what Clerk Maxwell probably was dreaming of when he put those equations on paper (hey, he was a geek-boy). But "TV news" was an oxymoron when I knew it in the '80s, and it's even more oxy now.

The New Navy

Looking good. This is the destroyer of the future. If the current trend in the world is an indication, the U.S. Navy better be thinking in terms of Iranian PT boats, not Russian submarines, at least for the near future. This seems to be a stem in that direction. Quite a few steps, actually.

Stray Thought

Stay focused on the people, the people of New Orleans, the refugees -- "displaced persons," if you prefer. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the hero of this debacle so far, gave us all a terse order before he and his troops went to work trying to salvage the city: "Take care of the evacuees, America."

Tune out the rest for now, if you really care about this place. There will be time to blame and time to punish.

But, once again, the civilian administrations of the United States, from city hall to the White House, reveal themselves to be on the whole a pack of effete bureaucrats adept at political blame shifting and ass-covering and utterly feckless in the face of a storm.

And once again the military showcases our best national qualities and emerges as the one national-level institution that can cope with challenges.

I'm proud of the military's men and women -- and every individual who is helping. I'm glad for all the lives they saved and are saving.

But this is not a good trend in a democratic nation. This is not the way it's supposed to be. This is not something we want to get in the habit of accepting.

Your Media at Work

The mood in the newsroom is absolutely ebullient tonight. Bush finally admitted a mistake! He finally got caught! They're practically dancing jigs. "I hate Bush!" one proclaims over and over. Grins as wide as their faces. "Yer doin' a great job, Brownie," is the line of the day. I've heard it at least 50 times already and the night is only half over. It comes up in every coversation, followed by peals of laughter.

I wonder if any of them has donated anything to a relief effort yet. I really doubt it.

Oh, Michael Moore's smirking letter to Bush has been printed out and prominently posted on the door.

Thank the gods the weekend's coming.

Building Anew

Jack Shafer makes a case for not rebuilding New Orleans:

The city's romance is not the reality for most who live there. It's a poor place, with about 27 percent of the population of 484,000 living under the poverty line, and it's a black place, where 67 percent are African-American. In 65 percent of families living in poverty, no husband is present. ... New Orleans' public schools, which are 93 percent black, have failed their citizens. The state of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as "Academically Unacceptable" and another 26 percent are under "Academic Warning." About 25 percent of adults have no high-school diploma.

And according to an AP poll today, 54 percent of Americans agree with him that the parts of the city that flooded should be abandoned. The statistics are unarguable, of course. Which is exactly why I say, "rebuild it." Right there. Not the same, but better.

Not for the sake of New Orleans' cultural treasures. As Shafer points out, those will endure. The city could survive as an enclave for the very rich and tourists, much as Venice has. But I wish to see the whole city of half a million brought back to life precisely for the sake of curing the failures Shafer lists above. Because the calamity America keeps revisiting is not a hurricane or an earthquake or a financial collapse or a terrorist attack. It's poverty in a land of affluence.

That is our first and enduring national agon. We are a land of people striving for material success, and there will always be losers in that game. At the same time, we are a people of deep spiritual sensbility, and our faiths forbid us to leave the poor to suffer.

Frankly, we have never really worked out that balance. Poverty, increasingly for the last 100 years in America, has been urban, poorly educated, and black. As Shafer notes, almost nowhere did those downhill tracks converge more pitiably than in the run-down parishes of New Orleans.

It is time to rise up and be the Americans again, the people we tell ourselves we are in the national stories we treasure. The people Whitman and Sandburg told us we were. The ones who can stare down devils and build shining cities out of waste and wilderness. Time to finish the job. Perhaps this generation can find greatness after all.

Europeans have another view of us, that they mutter to one another: "You can count on America to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else." There's bitter truth in that, too. We tried to order race relations with slavery and black codes. We tried to break down barriers with with Reconstruction and the Great Society. Jefferson tried and Lincoln tried and Truman tried.

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. offered us a choice: "chaos or community." What have we done since then? We've been stalled on the edge of the Civil Rights dream for more than 30 years now. Busing was a deadly wrong turn. The economic advance of blacks in the last three decades has been real and measurable, but it's painfully slow, and frankly very few in America are getting ahead as fast as we did in the 1950s and '60s. Too many black folks are left behind, in places like New Orleans. Furthermore, too much of black popular culture (nurtured by all races) rejects conventional success, celebrates thuggery, and suggests whites are responsible for all black problems. About half of whites tell pollsters "blacks could do better if they tried harder." What would King make of our fetish for "diversity" and "multiculturalism"? He dreamed of integration of hearts and minds as well as bodies.

The cataclysm in New Orleans brought it all in focus. The failure of the governments at every level left the people to shift for themselves. Those with means got out. Those without often sat and waited for someone with power to help them.

Rebuild it. It will be messy, unglamorous. Give the people of the city the tools to do the job, but don't do the work for them -- let them decide how and where to build. Keep the bureaucrats at a distance. Find real leaders, the Giulianis and Honores, in the situation and let them take the lead. Involve everyone. Build out the old flaws, build in new and better patterns of living. So the people who move back there know this is their place, made and owned by them.

And while you build a new city, build something else, too. The Civil Rights Movement tore down the old Jim Crow South. When you've torn down something decrepit and dangerous, you've only done half the job. You have to replace it with something better.

Government can't pass laws to force people to sit down and get along. The people must do that, one by one, as individuals, not as demographic blocs, not as census statistical brackets. They go to school together and they work together and they meet in public places and hash out respect for one another amid their differences. It happens on the level of a neighborhood -- the 5,000 or so people who live within walking distance of some public swimming pool or library.

To not build -- to fail to build -- again the city left us as a legacy of two centuries would be worse than letting the World Trade Center blocks stand an empty hole. To fail to build again in Manhattan would teach our enemies to think we were beaten, whether we are or not. To abandon the city of New Orleans would teach our children it's not worth it. America's not worth it. Not there, not anywhere.

The Aged Tiger

Fascinating interview, translated and reprinted here, with one of the smartest and most perceptive national leaders of the 20th century, Lee Kuan Yew, founder of Singapore and a wise and benevolent autocrat in the ancient tradition. The interview mostly concerns the rise of China, a topic Lee has observed well, and at close range. Among his insights here:

What is gradually happening is the restoration of the world balance to what it was in the early 19th century or late 18th century when China and India together were responsible for more than 40 percent of world GDP. With those two countries becoming part of the globalized trading world, they are going to go back to approximately the level of world GDP that they previously occupied. But that doesn't make them the superpowers of the world.

***

Suppose, China had never gone communist in 1949, suppose the Nationalist government had worked with the Americans -- China would be the great power in Asia -- not Japan, not Korea, not Hong Kong, not Singapore. Because China isolated itself, development took place on the periphery of Asia first.

***

In 50 years I see China, Korea and Japan at the high-tech end of the value chain. Look at the numbers and quality of the engineers and scientists they produce and you know that this is where the R&D will be done. The Chinese have a space programme, they're going to put a man on the Moon and nobody sold them that technology. We have to face that.

Sick of It All

Jack Grant:

I have been expecting too much of both politicians, and of blogworld.

I did not understand it is one big game of Calvinball, where you not only make up your own rules, but you never use the same rule twice.

And you never, ever, ever apply a rule that is to the disadvantage to your own side, only to the opposition.

Do the math….

Calvinball for all, and to Hell with what is right, in absolute terms or even what is right for the country.

Is it only me and him, or are there more feeling like this in recent weeks?

Chickenbeavers

"People who want to see higher levees and walls around New Orleans should go down there and build them themselves!"

"You want more hospital ships off the Gulf coast right now to treat the poor and displaced? Why don't you go down to the Navy recruiter and sign your sorry ass up?"

Are we still playing the "chickenhawk" game, or are we tired of that one yet? Let's keep playing for one more round, just long enough to give the purveyors of that fallacy one more chance to recognize how the ball looks in the other court.

The "chickenhawk meme" is a rhetorical stick in the spokes that has been flung at every supporter of the war to overthrow Saddam and establish a free Iraq. It's supposed to immediately shut us all up.

It usually looks something like this:

This war is a waste of American lives, so if you think it's right, you should be the one to fight it. Go enlist or shut up.

It's been flung at old ladies and even at war veterans (e.g. Baldilocks) who are told to re-enlist. It's been exposed as a dangerous and illogical trick again and again, but those who are wedded to it won't let it go. It is the rhetorical arm of the anti-war left's cry to bring back the draft, and thus establish a perfect equivalence with Vietnam.

Personally, I think it also ties in with the anti-war left's new focus on military recruiters as the sum of all evil. So many of the men and women who have volunteered for military service in recent years, or who are otherwise doing splendid work in Iraq, are children of anti-Vietnam War protesters of 35 years ago who still haven't gotten over their allergy to anything patriotic or duty-bound. Naturally the parents' wrath flows out in certain predictable channels.

So let's keep playing chickenhawk; let's apply it to another situation. "Don't advocate government actions that will involve sacrifice unless you're also putting yourself directly in the place of those who may be asked to sacrifice."

Don't call for more government action to help the poor people stranded in New Orleans unless you drove down there as soon as you heard the news and personally waded through the sewage and took some of them out of the Superdome and into your home. (Not impossible, some college kids did it).

Don't call for better canal walls and levees in New Orleans unless you are willing to take two years and go down there personally and build them.

Don't call for a more aggressive FEMA unless you've put in a job application there. Don't call for a quicker and more effective use of U.S. military resources in the disaster zone unless you've spent the last two years encouraging healthy young men and women to enlist, and supporting the Defense Department budget.

Looks stupid to me, too, but put up or shut up, chickenbeaver! Hey, your game, not mine.

Carnival of the Etymologies

[A regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors"]

Among the little-noted heroes of the hurricane disaster on the Gulf Coast were ham radio operators.

Contrary to a common belief, ham radio is not an acronym (and thus should not be written HAM, though it often is). It's simply a shorthand way to say "amateur," and it's the same ham that means "overacting performer." The "amateur radio operator" sense is recorded from 1919, and seems to be a direct borrowing of the American English theatrical slang term, which dates from 1882.

Apparently this is a shortening of hamfatter "actor of low grade" (1880), which is said to be taken from an old minstrel show song, "The Ham-fat Man." Some claim this is a song having to do with a second-rate actor, and the allusion is said to be either from ham fat as a make-up remover or the practice among poor actors of using ham rind instead of more expensive oil as a base for their make-up. But if it's the same song reproduced here, it's a straight-up hair-raising blackface piece, and a good reminder of how far Americans have come in their perception of racism and entertainment. "The Ham-fat Man" song dates from 1863. More likely the connection between the song and the idea of "low-grade actor" is via the minstrel shows itself, where it was a popular number, as attested by its appearance in Bret Harte's "The Secret of Telegraph Hill."

Ham meaning "meat of a hog's hind leg used for food" is from Old English hamm, which was not a food item but rather meant "hollow or bend of the knee."

---

Jesse Jackson objects to the use of refugees to describe those fleeing the hurricane's devastation. Refugee first appears in English in 1685, and it first was applied to French Huguenots who migrated to Britain (and other Protestant nations) after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Presumably this was what the Huguenots called themselves, since the word is French refugié, which properly is the past participle of the verb refugier "to take shelter, protect." The word meant "one seeking asylum," till 1914, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home." It was first applied in this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I.

The Latin root of this is refugium "a taking refuge, place to flee back to," a compound of re- "back" and fugere "to flee." This has been traced to the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European base *bheug- "to flee."

If they're not refugees, and if citizens (Jackson's suggested alternative) is insufficiently descriptive, what should they be called? Evacuees, perhaps. But that is more insulting than refugees, especially since the first use of the word evacution in English (c.1400) was the sense of Pliny's Latin evacuare, "to empty the bowels." Evacuate in the sense "to remove inhabitants to safer ground" is attested in English only from 1934.

The root of the Latin word is related to vacuus "empty;" vastus "empty, waste;" and vanus "idle, empty." The Proto-Indo-European root is *eue- "to leave, abandon, give out" (cf. English want and wane; Persian vang "empty, poor").

---

According to those who know such things, the inundation of downtown New Orleans was caused not by the breaking of a levee, but a floodwall. Apparently they are distinct things -- as I read it, a levee is built of earth, whereas the canal wall that gave way was concrete. But the media continues to use them interchangeably.

Levee is first attested in English in 1719, though it is older than that in New Orleans French. In French levée was "raising, lifting, embankment." The notion is of the earth "raised" up in a mound, and the word is literally the feminine past participle of lever "to raise." The English verb levy "act of raising or collecting" is the same French word borrowed 500 years earlier, directly from the Continent, with a Middle English spelling. French levée also was borrowed in 17th century Britain in a sense then current in France, "morning assembly held by a prince or king (upon rising from bed)."

The French word is a descendant of Latin levare "to raise," from levis "light" in weight. The Proto-Indo-European root of this is *le(n)gwh- "light, easy, agile, nimble," source of Sanskrit laghuh "quick, small;" Greek elakhys "small," elaphros "light;" Old Slavic liguku, Lithuanian lengvas "light;" Old Irish laigiu "smaller, worse;" Gothic leihts, and Old English leoht, source of modern light (adj.).

Among the other words to have entered American English via New Orleans French are some obvious ones, such as Cajun (1868, from dialectic pronunciation of Acadian); poor boy "type of sandwich, made of simple but filling ingredients" (invented in New Orleans in 1921); and lagniappe "dividend, something extra" (1849, a Creole word of uncertain origin, despite many guesses; perhaps ultimately from Spanish la ñapa "the gift").

"We picked up one excellent word -- a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice, limber, expressive, handy word -- 'lagniappe.' They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish -- so they said." [Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi"]

Less obviously from New Orleans are lulu in the colloquial sense of "remarkable person or thing" (first recorded 1886 in a baseball article from New Orleans); cocktail (first attested 1806; most likely from French coquetier "egg-cup;" In New Orleans, c.1795, Antoine Amédée Peychaud, an apothecary and inventor of Peychaud bitters, held Masonic social gatherings at his pharmacy, where he mixed brandy toddies with his own bitters and served them in an egg-cup); muggle "marijuana joint" (1926, of unknown origin); and poontang (c.1910, probably via New Orleans Creole from French putain "prostitute," probably ultimately from a combination of a Dark Ages word for "girl" and a descendant of Latin putidus "stinking").

The adjectival phrase open-and-shut "simple, straightforward" also was first recorded in New Orleans, in 1841.

---

Away from the disaster, gay marriage was back in the news in California.

The "Oxford English Dictionary" gives 1951 as earliest date for gay in the slang adjective meaning "homosexual" (adj.), but this is certainly too late, and the OED seems to be overlooking some pretty clear double entendre usages for a century before that. The "Dictionary of American Slang," for instance, reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Hugh Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. John Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays.

Gay "full of joy or mirth" was in English by 1178, from Old French gai "gay, merry," perhaps from a Frankish source related to Old High German wahi "pretty." The word gay in the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back to 1637. Probably the direct source of the modern word in the homosexual sense is gey cat "homosexual boy," which is attested in N. Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang." The term gey cat (gey is a Scottish variant of gay) was used as far back as 1893 in American English for "young hobo," one who is new on the road and usually in the company of an older tramp, with catamite connotations. But Josiah Flynt ["Tramping With Tramps," 1905] defines gay cat as, "An amateur tramp who works when his begging courage fails him." Gey cats also were said to be tramps who offered sexual services to women.

As for marriage, that word is much more straightforward, entering English by the 13th century from Old French mariage, which is from a Vulgar Latin extended form of classical Latin maritatus, past participle of maritatre "to wed, marry, give in marriage," from maritus "married man, husband." This Latin word is of uncertain origin, but perhaps its ultimate sense is "provided with a *mari," that is, a young woman, if the root is in the Proto-Indo-European base *meri- "young wife," akin to *meryo- "young man" (cf. Sanskrit marya- "young man, suitor").

New Orleans, Let's Roll

Cicero wonders whether in America the bonds of community have weakened -- by which he means real communities of people who share the same space. And while Cicero notes some beautiful stories have risen from the disaster, of average people heroically helping neighbors and strangers, he also wonders whether New Orleans didn't unravel as it did in part because America's social fabric has weakened.

We live in an era where networked communities are on the rise. But there are logical limits to sharing values with people who you don’t rub elbows with, who are far-flung and offline in the event of catastrophe. Whether we know it or not, we’re reliant on our communities who are there in a pinch, in close proximity. Sometimes it’s to borrow a cup of sugar. Other times it’s to have the neighbor watch your kid so you can deal with an emergency. And sometimes the community is essential for dealing with outright catastrophe.

That certainly is true in my case. Many of the people I have been closes to, and even most intimate with, are people I know primarily on the Internet. Most of my oldest friends live in far-flung places.

By contrast, I look at the people I work with, and I couldn't tell you where most of them go home to at the end of the night. And where I go home to, I have a less-than-passing acquaintance with my neighbors. I only know one family by name on my block. Most of the rest are renters. Most come and go in less than a year, but some have been there as long as I have. Yet we nod to one another, and know nothing about each other's lives.

If a catastrophe like the New Orleans hurricane befell my community, I can tell you what would happen: People like us, with cars and plastic money, would be able to get away if we chose to. The old, the obese poor, the sick, and the stubborn would be stuck there and suffer. Some others would stay to guard their movable property or their drug dealing business; some would feel opportunistic and loot the houses like mine.

Cicero again:

Our modern culture rewards buying houses with tall fences that keep communities disjointed. It rewards big screen TVs and TiVo to be entertained on command. It rewards anonymous shopping at Wal-Mart, checking out foreign merchandise from an anonymous cashier. Our modern culture rewards walking around with an iPod, shutting out the people around us. It uses art, cuisine and historical cultures as backdrops for tourist brochures. Our modern culture rewards spending most of our time alone, even when we’re on the phone, chatting on the Internet, or playing networked video games. It rewards a group of teenage girls I saw the other day at a restaurant booth: four girls, all of them on cell phones talking to someone else, while eating their burgers. Alone together.

He seems to be describing a suburban lifestyle. I was raised in a sort of suburb in the 1960s, but I haven't lived in one in a long, long time. Recently Luke and Amy and I visited Amy's co-worker in her new suburban development home -- a classic setting of treeless half-acre lots along loop roads with houses assembled from the same materials in one of four designs. We felt strange and uncomfortable. The place was a paradise for children -- the children were everywhere around us, a gnat-swarm of 8-year-old that swept from yard to yard, pool to kitchen to basement family room. But the adults seemed somehow juvenile, too. They were the same age as us and worked in the same sorts of places, but they seemed to have been trapped in that playpen, too, as though the entire work were built by Fisher Price.

I felt even less sure of their virtues and civility than that of my neighbors. At least among the criminals and the husltlers and the working poor you know the ground rules. They have no illusions about themselves, or about you. But even on a short visit among the suburbs, we felt the tensions tremble under their surface. We felt rifts of the bad decisions people there perhaps had made with their spouses and their neighbor's spouses. I suspect the only "community" there was the common interest of choosing to devote yourself to attaining suburban development living. I wondered, if a New Orleans calamity had befallen the loop road neighborhoods, whether the difference between their disintegration and that of my inner city block would have been no more than the difference between the food capacity in the refrigerators.

Over the years I have become suspicious of what we are building in place of traditional communities. We hear the word ‘community’ a lot, especially in buzz-terms of social networking. But I think a simple definition of a community is that it is a collection of trusted people you can rely on in whatever life throws at you, no matter how bad. And they rely upon you too, regardless of your ‘culture.’ It’s an old concept that is fraying in the face of modernity’s demand that we socialize virtually, even though so many essential bonds are severed in the process.

Again, I think he's right, and I also think he's right, when seeking where that community spirit drained off to, to look in part to the fragmentation and false intimacy of the vitrual worlds.

But the situation in the American past was complex. We've always been a centrifugal society, overall. William Penn tried the social experiment of settling his Quakers in villages, the better to keep them in association, only to find they as quickly dispersed into their landholdings and got as far away from one another as possible. In 1830, deTocqueville noted a tendency of Americans to form cliques, rather than communities:

The Americans, who mingle so readily in their political assemblies and courts of justice, are wont carefully to separate into small distinct circles in order to indulge by themselves in the enjoyments of private life. Each of them willingly acknowledges all his fellow citizens as his equals, but will only receive a very limited number of them as his friends or his guests. This appears to me to be very natural. In proportion as the circle of public society is extended, it may be anticipated that the sphere of private intercourse will be contracted; far from supposing that the members of modern society will ultimately live in common, I am afraid they will end by forming only small coteries.

And from there, my thought turned down a corridor Cicero did not consider in his essay (perhaps he thought of it, too, but there's only so many ways you can go at once in a piece of writing). I thought about the great outcry for the biggest possible federal power to come and rescue the city and its inhabitants.

So many keystrokes have been expended in bitter disputes over which agency or which political power failed to rescue the city, that it took someone like Cicero to even bring up the matter of community and people's reliance on one another. And even then many people will certainly regard his mention of it suspiciously, as though he were trying to shift blame onto the victims and away from whatever mighty agency is under fire from its political enemies.

Yet the idea that an invocation of community would be strange to us, is itself strange. We praise the people who pull together, but regard the fact that they have to do so as another sign that the government let us down.

De Tocqueville foresaw all this, too. He compared America, where a great many people who were powerless on their own joined forces to accomplish something together -- be it improving their towns or relieving their sufferings. They formed associations for the purpose, and associations grew naturally in the fertile soil of self-conscious communities.

In France, he noted, the same things would have been done by an appeal to a few powerful and wealthy aristocrats. The people would have no thought of accomplishing "great undertakings" on their own. He also noted that the French did not mind this in the least, and did not envy, or even understand, the American way of doing things. Indeed, it took de Tocqueville himself some time and effort to get used to it:

The first time I heard in the United States that a hundred thousand men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious engagement, and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides. I at last understood that these hundred thousand Americans, alarmed by the progress of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to patronize temperance.

The French were content that "the more enfeebled and incompetent the citizens become, the more able and active the government ought to be rendered in order that society at large may execute what individuals can no longer accomplish."

"They believe this answers the whole difficulty," de Tocqueville wrote, "but I think they are mistaken."

Does this descrption of popular attitudes sound like Europe today -- with "bureaucrats" in place of "aristocrats" -- as well as France in 1830? The question Cicero seems to ask is, is America today more like Europe than like America in 1830?

De Tocqueville foresaw that the United States government's power would necessarily grow as economies grew more complex, and that this was a self-perpetuating development: "The more [government] stands in the place of associations, the more will individuals, losing the notion of combining together, require its assistance." And that, he said, was a great threat.

Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.

Also in the news today, and likely to be buried beneath hurricane reports, the winning design was chosen for the Flight 93 memorial. Why do we revere the story of that doomed flight? In part, because it reminds us that the ability to form ourselves into a community is not lost. In a few minutes -- literally in the last few minutes of life -- this random collection of Americans formed itself into a community with one purpose. They set out to do the only right thing that remained to be done, however hard it was. And if they did not save themselves, they saved many, many lives elsewhere.

Taking a Break

The Internet brings the world closer, it knits people together. Like the Donner Party brought people together, and the raft of the "Medusa" brought people together.

All this togetherness allows poisonous panderers like the Guardian and Der Spiegel to instantly link up the stupidest, most vitriolic, most prejudiced voices on both sides of the Atlantic to have at it, like putting a bunch of spiders in a mason jar and shaking it up to watch them fight. I can't even read online voices from Europe anymore without wanting to puke. But when I go there, I like people, and they seem to not want to strangle me.

Fucking brilliant! I risk my job and my career for this? Every day? For what? For this? I spend half an hour typing in a passage from a German historian. And then I look at my keyword searches and find that people are coming to this site after typing in "child rape."

As a blogger I can either go online looking for a lead-pipe brawl and get one, or I can try to do something half useful and end up in a lead-pipe brawl anyhow. Usually fighting at a disadvantage in the second case because the other guy got the first shot in when I wasn't expecting it.

I think I'll stick with the dying business of print media, and hope it lasts just one day longer than my career in it. Chewing up trees and sucking in ink to publish a worthless two-bit fishwrap for the handful of senility cases who still read such things -- no, wrong verb: who flip through it looking for coupons and the crossword and a recognizable obituary. I'll keep up the charade that what we do in the big media matters, that people actually read these articles and think about them, that we inform people who have no other way to be informed, and we do it thoughtfully and intelligently.

I'll sit there among co-workers (not all, but most) who have the Common Dreams Web site up on terminals on both sides of me -- a cesspool of all the Bushitler bile that drains down from all the swamps of the left -- and pretend that they're fair and impartial in their news judgment.

Cicero, a blogger who deserves tremendous respect, has an excellent essay today that opens with a paragraph I could have written myself:

I was a single-issue voter in the last election. I voted for President Bush because I felt he was right about Iraq, and more fundamentally, about our security. I overlooked just about everything else that I disliked about his presidency on that single issue.

For a sample of the reactions to Cicero's essay, read down into the comments on this post.

You know, for the first decade or so I was in journalism, I didn't vote. I didn't think journalists ought to vote, because to do so commits you, in some small personal way, to a candidate or a party. And journalists have too much ability to game the political landscape. Oh, what I was really saying was I didn't think I ought to vote as a journalist. Maybe some people could do it and not lose their dispassionate eye on reality, even incrementally. But I knew I couldn't. "Dispassionate" is not a natural mode for me. And most people I worked with couldn't, either, frankly, but they didn't choose to remain apolitical and I didn't try to convert them.

I sought to take no thought of party politics when I wrote, and especially when I was an editorial writer. As my motto, when writing, I always tried to keep in mind my "Three Cs" -- the Constitution, compassion, and the third one stood for "Chester County," the name of the place in Pennsylvania where I lived and worked.

When I moved away from active writing and reporting and onto the copy desk, I thought it was fair to get a registration and begin voting. At the time, I joined the Republican Party. Not because I had an inherent sympathy for it -- exactly the opposite. The place I lived was so thoroughly Republican that Democrats never even came close to getting elected. Their candidates were a pack of unelectable stumblebums. But GOP spring primaries often erupted into wars between the secular or moderate Republicans and the firebrands of the right. That's where the political future took shape, and that's where I wanted to make a difference. When national and state elections rolled around in the fall, I usually voted for the Democrats.

I voted for Clinton in '92 and Dole in '96 (I knew he wouldn't win, but I thought he deserved some respect, so basically I padded his total by one). In 2000, I voted for Gore, with utter lack of enthusiasm. But I thought Bush would be a disaster. In fact, until the day of the election I was set to pull a lever for Nader, in pure anti-party middle-finger protest, but my then-girlfriend, a very wise woman, talked me out of it.

Four years later, with even more contempt for the parties, I went down to the local trade school and cast a vote for Bush, the man I despised in 2000 -- no, not for Bush, but for "Anyone But Anyone But Bush." A vote for "wiping that smug smile off Michael Moore."

How can you take seriously a party that thinks it's a good idea to constantly mock the intelligence of the one guy who's been outsmarting them for years on end? What's the point of calling him a chimp when all the while you're doing it, he's making a monkey of you?

The Democrats in 2004 -- again -- failed to put forth a candidate credible to me. Their "anyone but Bush" campaign had to assume a human form, temporarily, at some point, and the soul-less opportunist Kerry grabbed for the job, so he got it. But on the issue that mattered to me, Iraq, he did nothing but criticize everything done so far, and offer to do nothing realistically different in the future from what had been proposed by the sitting administration.

So, absent a truly different plan ("do the same thing, only better" is not a plan), the election became, as the Democrats and the rest of the left tirelessly told me, a referendum on the whole idea of the war itself. Very well, if that was how they promised to read it, that's how I voted it. Happy? Me neither.

Since then, I've been defending my vote, pulling for the Iraqis and the Americans working with them, trying to slap some sense into what's left of the sane Democracy, and trying to staunch idiotic anti-American rhetoric that floods the Internet. I've been doing all that so often and so long that it takes something like the clusterfuck in New Orleans to remind me that I suspected all along a Bush administration would be like that. Just like in Iraq: Even when it's doing the right thing, even when the people -- the citizens, the military folks -- want to make it work, the hollowness at the top and the boardroom mentality breathe a paralyzing spell of failure on the project.

Cicero is right:

So now begins a new political era. People will reasonably ask if our commitment to Iraq comes at the expense of security at home. They will ask if the Bush Administration's efforts at protecting the homeland are credible, using Katrina as a litmus test. These questions are fair, and reasonable. President Bush's entire political strategy is being tested. Effectively, we got nuked. And now we see the response.

I almost wish it were possible to tread alternative historical paths, as in science fiction or in computer games (but not in Frost poems). Start the tape of history from Feb. 1, 2000, and put Dennis Kucinich in the White House, or Howard Dean in 2004. Just let it roll for four years, and see where the world winds up. As long as you can rub it out and hit "reset" and do something else.

My instinct about myself in the '80s was quite right. Once having slipped into politics, I'm stuck with them. It's personal now. And every day I work side by side with the other side. And I hear them talk out loud as though everyone in a newsroom is a "Common Dreams" reader (really, the odds are on their side in that). Their casual and public conversations are full of their mental image of "the other." They set it up like a straw monster to slay over and over, and then slap themselves on the back for it.

[In what is supposed to be a "Deliverance"/Red State accent]: "Rebuild New Orleans? Hell, no! Why they got a thing called the French Quarter down there. Ought to be called the Freedom Quarter, huh-huh; or the 'Mercan Quarter. Huh-huh."

Who the fuck do they know who talks like that? Yeah, I know. Go to the Internet, surely you can find someone who does. And if you coccoon yourself in the world of "Common Dreams" or "the Guardian," hey, presto, everybody on the other side talks like that.

Too late to kill the Internet. What hath Gore wrought?

Warmth from Germany

Scolded here;

German aid money delivered to American aid agencies would surely be welcome on the other side of the Atlantic. But apparently, people over here believe that the Americans over there don't really need help. Strange. The same people who normally spend their time pointing their holier-than-thou fingers at the ghettos and slums in the US, the same ones who describe America as an out-of-control capitalist monster, are now, when the Americans could really use a bit of help, oddly quiet.

Apparently the Americans had it coming: "The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina -- in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures -- can visit on his country." Who wrote this? None other than Jürgen Trittin, Germany's minister of the environment.

At a moment when the dead on the Gulf Coast are still being counted, the German minister of the environment could think of nothing better to do than -- in an essay published Tuesday in the center-left daily Frankfurter Rundschau -- to blame the US itself for the catastrophe. The piece is 493 words long, and not a single one of them is wasted to express any sort of sympathy for the victims of the storm. The worst of it is that Trittin isn't alone with his cold, malicious tenor. The coverage from much of the German media tends in the same direction: If Bush had only listened to Uncle Trittin and signed the Kyoto Protocol, then this never would have happened.

But even more already flowing here:

Instead of wasting the last oil, causing deaths all over the world by increased hurricanes and flooding, instead of praying to middle-aged-gods and instead of dividing the world by the right and left, good and bad, why don't you sell your SUVs and try to intellectually enter the 21st century.

... and ...

Like the Germans, you should learn from your mistakes and stop acting so arrogantly. But all you care about is your ability to eat, drink and drive your big cars. You should try to sort out your own problems before you invade other countries and kill innocent people. Why not take some of your military budget and help your people?

Global Warming Warning?

Der Spiegel offers this article from Salon, thereby avoiding all the Salon subscriptino nonsense.

Katrina is just the latest in a rash of powerful hurricanes that have been pummeling the Atlantic in recent years, including a record-breaking 33 between 1995 and 1999. It's made many wonder if global warming is bringing the wrath of the planet down upon all our heads. Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied historical records of hurricanes around the globe, said the answer is yes and no.

In a recent paper, "Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years," published in the science journal Nature, Emanuel found that as sea temperatures rise, the duration and intensity of hurricanes are going up, too.

The article is frankly a bit confusing. The top of it seems to be an explanation of how global warming makes for more and bigger hurricanes. But after you read past that, it becomes clear the scientist is talking about what's going to happen if the warming trend continues: "So, as global warming increases, expect hurricanes to get stronger."

And in the article's back nine, Emanuel explains that there's a natural cycle at work here.

However, that doesn't mean, as some perceive, that there are actually more of them lately. "When we looked at the historical record, we found that the frequency of storms globally hasn't really changed at all," Emanuel said. "It's about 90 per year, plus or minus 10. The frequency globally appears to be steady."

The recent hurricanes in the Atlantic, Emanuel explained, represent a natural fluctuation. Every 20 to 30 years, since records started being kept in the 19th century, there have been big shifts in the frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic. "For example, in the 1940s and '50s, there were very busy years, whereas the 1970s and '80s were very quiet years," he said. "And we've had a big upswing in the Atlantic beginning in about 1995. That's all natural."

The reason violent Atlantic hurricanes like Katrina may strike people as unnatural, and cause them to blame the CO2 pouring out of their neighbors' Hummers, is not because of their frequency but their destruction to people and places.

"This natural fluctuation occurs in a social environment where there is a huge shift in demographic trends, and this makes a big difference in people's perception," Emanuel said. "In the 1940s and '50s, there were lots of hurricanes in Florida, but there weren't lots of people there. So now that we're having this upswing again, it's being perceived very differently" -- for the simple fact that there is a lot more stuff to be ruined.

And by the time you get to the very tail of it, Emanuel is saying, "But it doesn't have much to do with global warming." Gee, you'd never guess that was coming from the way Salon started it.

To Emanuel, Katrina is not an unusual hurricane. "Not that many hurricanes get that powerful, but we've had hurricanes like Katrina before," he said. "Camille was about the same strength. Andrew was about the same strength. Katrina was just unfortunate, because it happened to hit a very densely populated area."

Oh, well. At least you can still blame the housing industry and corporate lobbyists for it. That should make everyone at Salon feel a whole lot better.

Ultimately, Emanuel said, it's not a vengeful Mother Nature but man's politics that are to blame for the destruction. As long as people insist on erecting homes and businesses, aided by low insurance rates and business lobbyists, in vulnerable areas like the Gulf Coast, there's little scientists can do to prevent the havoc.

See? It's all still Shrubbie McChimplerburton's fault.

Sort of like they told us America was going to fail in Iraq because:

1. Saddam's army was too strong.
2. Saddam would use nukes on us.
3. The Iranians would invade.
4. The Kurds would fight the Turks.
5. There would be millions of refugees.
6. There would be massive epidemics.
7. The oil wells would burn.
8. There would never be an attempt at democracy.
9. The people wouldn't vote in elections.
10. We can't disband the Iraqi army.
11. We can't not disband the Iraqi Army.

And now, when Saddam's army has been swept aside like cobwebs, the dictator languishes in jail, the cry now is about lack of WMD, a new army slowly is rising up, and Iraqis are fixing their unburned oil wells and debating the future shape of their constitution in a democratically elected assembly, these folks want to stand up and shout we told you so!

There Began a Time Without Masks

I'm hesitant to post any more of this. In the last decade, there has been a bursting open of literature and critical studies in Germany of the experience of average German citizens in the destruction of their homeland during the Second World War. It's not as though the German guilt has magically lifted, but certain brave and purposeful writers have forced past it, put it aside just far enough to consider the experience of the individual human being in that awful time. Sebald, Grass -- writers as hostile to Nazism as any you can name -- have gone into this necessary work.

And I suppose I have read enough of it now to be able to read the documents as simple human experiences -- like the tale of a Georgia family in the face of Sherman's March or a Hiroshima resident on that one August morning. They can be disconnected from the larger matter of collective guilt for the length of the examination, to ask and answer the question, "how did people behave during this experience?"

But I've learned that you still can't introduce this matter online without the comments instantly veering into questions of guilt and military justification. And more often than not I'll be called a Nazi apologist, or accused of violating the "no Hitler" rule in modern political discourse. So be it. I'm not talking about the present, or the political past. I am interested, journalistically, in the matter of how men and women behave under intense pressure. That is aside from my historical interest in conflicts and international relations.

I've already mentioned Nossack's "Der Untergang," a reflection written just months after the firebombing of Hamburg in 1943 (in which Nossack and his wife lost everything). Here is what he says (translated ably by Joel Agee) about refugees. It's a warning. Some things will be different -- the difference between Germany and America, between a deliberate military campaign of destruction and a blind natural calamity.

But read it, if you care to, with an eye for what may be the same, and what may lie ahead as the United States somehow arranges itself as a spare bedroom for a city of half a million.

Already during the night and at daybreak the first refugees had arrived. Some of them barefoot and in their nightshirts, just as they had leapt from their beds and run into the streets. They brought with them an uncanny silence. No one dared to question these mute figures seated by the edge of the road. Just wanting to offer them help seemed too loud an action. Then trucks arrived. The people on top of them were crouched and remote. Where are we going? Why are we stopping? Why don't you let us sleep some more? Their hands clutched bundles of incomprehensible belongings like a final weight that kept them on the ground. No lamenting anywhere, no tears. Without a word they stepped off and let themselves be led away. Only a small ugly dog leapt cheerfully off its mistress's lap and ran yapping to the nearest tree.

The people giving them shelter tried to be just as quiet and sparing in words. It must be said that the population's readiness to help was genuine beyond expectation. And not just near the city, but even further away. Not until reaching southern Germany did the refugees encounter open reluctance; at least that was the general rumor. But it may be that the people of Hamburg just didn't understand the different way of life there. I infer this from the sarcastic bitterness with which those who returned ridiculed the food, the living conditions, and the alien faith of the southerners.

But even where we were, the good relations changed in the course of a week. I am not speaking of cases where the refugees encroached on their hosts or made outrageous demands. There were those, to be sure, but many took this position: We have lost everything, now please give us half of what you have! and laid their hands in their laps. And on the opposite side there were enough people who thought: It's not our fault, so what business is it of ours? And when they gave anything, it was out of fear. This pitiful fact -- that those who were spared felt envied from the beginning -- may very well have lit and then fanned the spark of envy in the refugees. And though this may be hard to believe, a point was reached when the refugees were begrudged the few new things they had received as gifts or as allocations from the State. Or else -- but it is only now that I ask this question -- could there have been a deeper reason? Did those who had been forced to hazard the leap into nothingness become objects of envy because they had already gone through the ordeal that was awaiting everyone else?

There began a time without masks; the familiar disguises dropped off of their own accord, as had occurred to the two pine trees during the night. Greed and fear exposed themselves without shame and suppressed all tender feeling. We all had to recognize during those weeks that the scales we had used for weighing were no longer accurate. Those nearest to us or those whom we called friends either kept complete silence or evaded their duty with a few shabby words about the hard times that made it impossible for them to help. The concept of kinship completely broke down. Ask a hundred people today, regardless of their class and whether they suffered losses or not, ninety-nine will answer with a dismissive grimace: Better a stranger than a relative! It is a fact, so let it be stated as such, without bitterness and without drawing hasty conclusions. Instead, let us hold to the heartening experience of seeing those who had been most distant, sometimes the most fleeting acquaintances, or business associates, step into the breach without hesitation and with such kindness that one is shamed into asking oneself whether one would have done the same if the situation were reversed.

But even the most generous hand can become tired of giving, and it is even more difficult to learn to let oneself be the recipient of gifts and to receive, always and only to receive, without thereby losing one's freedom. But does this sufficiently explain why such discord arose so quickly? No, I believe, rather, that people expected something entirely different of each other, something of which they were not capable. Who can blame the helpers for being disappointed when they had to realize that what they had offered -- shelter, food, and clothing -- basically didn't make any difference at all? Perhaps something like pleasure flitted across the recipients' faces, but it didn't linger. They would walk through the strange rooms, touch an object, hold it, and look at it absently. The host would follow them with his eyes and expect some statement like: We, too, once had something like this -- and perhaps then he would have given it to them. But instead, the stranger would put it aside, and the unspoken question would fill the room: What is the use of still having such things? It would have been easier to assuage loud lamentation. It is very probable that such laments were expected, or at least a forced self-composure indicative of suppressed tears. Those who were known to have experienced unimaginably frightful hours, who had run through fire with their clothes burning, stumbling over charred corpses; before whose eyes and in whose arms children had suffocated; who had seen their houses collapsing right after their father or husband had gone back inside to save something or other; all those who had spent months hoping for news from the missing and who at the very least had lost all their possessions in a matter of minutes -- why didn't they cry and lament? And why this indifferent tone of voice when they spoke of what they had left behind, their dispassionate manner of talking, as if telling about a terrible event from prehistoric times that would be impossible today, that is almost forgotten except for the shockwaves that still faintly agitate our dreams? And then this muffled voice, impervious to daylight, and so timid, the way one speaks at night, outside, when one doesn't know where there might be an ear secretly listening.

And what did the victims expect when they seemed to accept all the good that was done to them merely to please the givers? The instinct of the helpers rebelled; not only because their gift was robbed of its value, but because they themselves were robbed of all security and began to have doubts about their own possessions.

I now dare to give an answer to that question. We expected someone to call out to us: Wake up! It was just a bad dream! But we couldn't ask for that, the nightmare closed our mouths to the point of suffocation. And how could anyone have awakened us?

Oh, Boy, Green Day

This just in: GREEN DAY added to the star-studded line-up for next week's Hurricane Katrina relief concert.

Oh joy! That should put the spring back in America's step. That should give the downtrodden victims of the natural disaster a reason to look up in hope to the future. That should help heal the wounds of a national fabric tattered by riots and looting.

Why, how can you not come away with a smilt and a sunny attitude after hearing lyrics like this?

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new mania.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America.

...

Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

Er, well, OK, so their big radio hit is not exactly a paean to the spirit of the common people who will pull themselves through the crisis even as their government agencies struggle.

But hey, that's just one song off an album. For raising your spirits, how about this? [Cue the next track]

Everyone is so full of shit
Born and raised by hypocrites
Hearts recycled but never saved
From the cradle to the grave
We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the middle east
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of suburbia
Land of make believe

No, no, OK, not that one. Wait, there must be some ray of hope in here somewhere ...

Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame (Hey!)
The shame
The ones who died without a name

Whoops, that definitely won't do. Keep going ...

Zieg Heil to the president gasman
Bombs away is your punishment
Pulverize the Eiffel towers
Who criticize your government
Bang bang goes the broken glass and
Kill all the fags that don't agree
Trials by fire, setting fire
Is not a way that's meant for me
Just cause, just cause, because we're outlaws yeah!

Ah, um, we, that might do for a benefit ball for rioters and looters, but, here try this one ...

My name is Jimmy and you better not wear it out
Suicide commando that your momma talked about
King of the forty theives
And I'm here to represent
That needle in the vein of the establishment

...

I really hate to say it but I told you so
So shut your mouth before I shoot you down old boy
Welcome to the club and give me some blood
And the resident leader at the lost and found

Oh, dear, bad to worse. There must be something that pushed these guys to the top of the artists' list for a concert in the wake of the greatest natural disaster the country has ever faced. When people need to rally broken spirits, they turn to works like Beethoven's Ninth. There must be something that at least aspires to that in this band's playlist:

Where have all the bastards gone?
The underbelly stacks up ten high
The dummy failed the crash test
Collecting unemployment checks
Like a flunkie along for the ride

Where have all the riots gone
As the city's motto gets pulverized?
What's in love is now in debt
On your birth certificate
So strike the fucking match to light this fuse!

...

Well nobody cares
Well nobody cares
Does anyone care if nobody cares?

...

A clean-cut All-American,
Really ain't so clean.
His royal auditorium,
Is a murder scene.

[silence]

Um, hey, Green Day, why don't you take a pass on this concert. Your vocal chords must be all tired after that big MTV show.

Eternal Chickenhawk

It's here to stay. All the excellent retorts and responses to it rolled in one ear and out the other. The Chickenhawk Meme will be part of the liberal-left political shriek for the rest of our political lives. It will confirm them as a permanent minoritarian faction that never wants to be taken seriously as potential leaders of the world's policeman-by-default.

It's so mainstream that even The Washington Post lobs it gratuitously into an article about conservatives (an article which, it should be noted, fairly drips with sneer and condescention -- "they can tell jokes, too! Who knew?").

Kristol's zeal for battle is truly inspiring. In fact, it inspired me to think: Maybe he should join the fight. He could emulate Theodore Roosevelt, who proved his zeal for the Spanish-American War by quitting his cushy desk job and organizing his own regiment to fight in Cuba. It was called the Rough Riders. Kristol's regiment could include other war-hawk opinion slingers in the Murdoch empire, guys like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. He could call it the Tough Talkers.

But enough of that. We're not here to discuss Iraq.

Hurricane Katrina Flood Aid

It's time to start giving, folks. You've all seen the images

My recommendation is Mennonite Disaster Service, which, if my guess is right, probably will end up doing a lot of the quiet but necessary work in the impoverished regions of rural Mississippi.

Not that any devastated region deserves aid more than another, and not that I expect our giving will be insufficient to keep all the aid groups running smoothly.

But I do know the Mennonite effort up close and personal (this is the domestic arm of Mennonite Central Committee, which works in relief overseas), and many of you do not. And many people are wary of giving to a charity they don't at once recognize. So, take this as an endorsement of MDS' work.

If you want to look for more charities doing hurricane work, there's a good list of them here, and a whole lot of blogging people have recommended their choices for donations here.

You know, in the world of small things, I hate that this tragedy has to have the name Katrina. That was the name of a friend and former lover who spent much time in New Orleans and did a lot of good work in that city and for that city. If this must have a human name, why not call it something more approriate to the legacy of the city it has taken from us, at least till we build her back up again. Why not call it "Hurricane Ben Butler"?

Carnival of the Etymologies

[A regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors"]

Warning: Profanity Below

The crushing force of Hurricane Katrina dominated this week's news. Spinning ashore, winds knifing through houses and piers, ripping levees apart, she resembled nothing so much as a Catherine wheel, the old torture device upon which victims were splayed, bones broken, and left in agony to die. It supposedly is named for St. Catherine of Alexandria, legendary virgin martyr from the time of Maximinus, who was tormented on one (a spiked version).

Katrina is the German form of English Catherine, both the names deriving from Medieval Latin Katerina, which was shortened from ancient Greek Aikaterina. The ultimate meaning of this is uncertain. One intriguing theory connects it with Greek aikia "torture," but that is not widely accepted. Another theory traces the name to Egyptian Coptic, but I have not yet seen what exact word is proposed as the source.

The -h- in the English form was introduced in the 16th century, a folk etymology from Greek katheros "pure." The initial Greek vowel is preserved in Russian Ekaterina.

---

Hurricane is a partially deformed word from the West Indies, via Spanish and Portuguese. The original language probably was Arawakan, and the word was picked up in Spanish as huracan (Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, "Historia General y Natural de las Indias," 1547-9) and furacan (in the works of Pedro Mártir De Anghiera, chaplain to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and historian of Spanish explorations).

Evidently there was some confusion of initial h- and f- in Spanish in these years. The great conquistador is known in contemporary records as both Hernando and Fernando Cortés. He seems to have mostly signed his name with an F-.

The Portuguese version of the word was furacão.

This word first appears in English in 1555 in Richard Eden's "Decades of the New World." He writes:

These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones ...) they caule furacanes.

Eden also mentions "violent and furious furacanes that plucked vppe greate trees." And in the same book, here translating Oviedo and using his form of the word, Eden wrote, "Great tempestes which they caule Furacanas or Haurachanas .. overthrowe many howses and great trees."

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary records some 39 different spellings of hurricane, mostly from the late 16th century, including forcane, herrycano, harrycain, and hurlecane. Some of these betray attempts to shape the word to fit existing English words. Hurricane became frequent from 1650, and was the established form after 1688.

Shakespeare used hurricano, with the standard English version of a Spanish word ending. But he used it ("King Lear," "Troilus and Cressida") in reference to waterspouts. Perhaps he was influenced in this by the Greek tiphon, which was associated with hurricane by Eden and others, but which in Greek often meant "whirlwind."

---

Meanwhile, as most American eyes were fixed on the tragedy in New Orleans and the Gulf coast, a typhoon was taking aim at Taiwan.

The Pacific equivalent of a hurricane, typhoon, presents a much more complicated etymological case. The modern word represents a coincidence and convergence of at least two unrelated words of similar sound and sense. Eden in 1555 mentioned Greek Tiphon as a synonym of hurricane. But the Greek typhon generally meant "whirlwind," and often was personified as a giant, father of the winds. Its source perhaps was typhein "to smoke."

Typhoon meaning "cyclone, violent hurricane of India or the China Seas" is first recorded 1588, in T. Hickock's translation of an account in Italian of a voyage to the East Indies by Cæsar Frederick, a merchant of Venice ["Wherein are contained very pleasant and rare matters, with the customes and rites of those countries. Also, heerein are discovered the merchandises and commodities of those countreyes, as well the aboundaunce of goulde and siluer, as spices, drugges, pearles, and other jewelles. Written at sea in the Hercules of London: comming from Turkie, the 25. of March. 1588. For the profitabvle instruction of merchants and all other trauellers for their better direction and knowledge of those countreyes."]

Hickock's translation contains this:

"I went a board of the Shippe of Bengala, at which time it was the yeere of Touffon."

It seems likely that Hickock, and probably Frederick, had the Greek word in mind. But the East Indian word they were transcribing probably was Chinese (Cantonese) tai fung "a great wind," from tu "big" and feng "wind;" this was the name given to violent cyclonic storms in the China seas.

A third possibility is that Frederick's word was from, or influenced by, tufan, a word in Arabic, Persian, and Hindi meaning "big cyclonic storm" (and the source of Portuguese tufao), which itself may be from Greek typhon but commonly is said to be a noun of action from Arabic tafa "to turn round."

Three unrelated languages independently may have arrived at the same two-syllable sound, to mean roughly the same thing.

---

"The 40 Year Old Virgin" was one of the most popular movies this past week.

The noun virgin is recorded in English from c.1200. Its original sense was a religious one, "unmarried or chaste woman noted for religious piety and having a position of reverence in the Church." Its source is Latin virginem (nominative virgo) which, in pre-Christian times merely meant "maiden, unwedded girl or woman," and also was used as an adjective, meaning "fresh, unused."

Thus the English word in its modern sense has recovered the meanings of the original Latin word. The meaning "young woman in a state of inviolate chastity" is recorded in English from from c.1310; and the adjective is about as old.

Virgin also has been applied since c.1330 to a chaste man.

The Latin word's origins are not entirely certain. Linguists believe the word probably is related to virga "young shoot." For sense evolution, they compare Greek talis "a marriageable girl," which is cognate with Latin talea "rod, stick, bar."

Ancient Greek parthenos "virgin" also is of unknown origin. It bequeathed its name to the famous temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens, the Parthenon, which is literally "the temple of the virgin (goddess)."

Virginia, the American state, was named as a colony for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. But the female proper name Virginia is Roman, from the Latin feminine of Virginius, earlier Verginius, which is probably related to Vergilius "Virgil," and may not have anything to do with virginity at all.

---

Hamsters were in the news this week. According to this story, an enterprising teenager from Somerset, England, invented a hamster-powered mobile phone charger as a science project, attaching a generator to his hamster's exercise wheel and connecting it to his phone charger.

Hamster turns up first in English in 1607 as a new name for what had been called the German rat. The name comes from German Hamster, in Middle High German hamastra, which probably was borrowed from Old Church Slavonic chomestoru "hamster" -- the animal is native to southeastern Europe. The Slavic word is perhaps a blend of Russian chomiak and Lithuanian staras, both meaning "hamster."

---

Che Guevara's relatives want a cut of the merchandizing of the revolutionary "hero's" image.

To merchandize, as a verb, is recorded from 1382. Earlier it was a noun, meaning "commodities of commerce." It comes from Anglo-French marchaundise, from marchaunt (source of merchant; in French it has become marchand).

This come up through common Roman speech from the old Latin verb mercari "to trade," which also yielded market. This comes from an Italic root *merk-, which is possibly from Etruscan and seems to refer to various aspects of economics. Another likely descendant of this ancient root is Mercury, the name of the Roman god (Latin Mercurius), originally a god of tradesmen and thieves.

---

One of the great success stories to emerge from post-Saddam Iraq is the restoration of the southern marshes, whose destruction was a terrible ecological catastrophe. This bit of good news actually broke into the international news cycle, briefly, this week.

Marsh is Old English mersc or merisc, from a prehistoric West Germanic *marisko (source of Dutch mars, German Marsch). Linguists speculate that it ultimately is from a Germanic form of the common Proto-Indo-European root *mori-/*mari "sea" (source of Latin mare, Russian more, Welsh mor "sea," English mere, German Meer "sea").

---

When I read this article, I thought, maybe now is the time. Time to tackle the F-Word.

Fuck is a difficult word to trace, in part because it was taboo to the editors of the original Oxford English Dictionary when the "F" volume was compiled, 1893-97. OED hardly was alone in this. Johnson excluded the word, and fuck wasn't in a single English language dictionary from 1795 to 1965.

Its written form only attested from the early 16th century. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) cites 1503, in the past participle form fukkit; the earliest appearance of current spelling is from 1535: "Bischops ... may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit" [Sir David Lyndesay, "Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits"].

But presumably it is a much more ancient word than that, simply one that wasn't likely to be written in the kind of texts that have survived from Old English and Middle English.

The etymologist Carl Darling Buck cites a proper name, John le Fucker, which turns up on a county roll from 1278. Fuck also apparently is hinted at in a scurrilous 15th century poem, titled "Flen flyys," written in bastard Latin and Middle English. The relevant line reads:

Non sunt in celi
quia fuccant uuiuys of heli

"They [the monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely." Fuccant is pseudo-Latin, and in the original it is written in cipher.

The earliest examples of fuck otherwise are from Scottish, which suggests a Scandinavian origin, perhaps from a word akin to (obsolete?) Norwegian dialect fukka "copulate," or Swedish dialect focka "copulate, strike, push," and fock "penis." Another theory traces it to Middle English fkye, fike "move restlessly, fidget," which also meant "dally, flirt," and probably is from a general North Sea Germanic word, cf. Middle Dutch fokken, German ficken "fuck," earlier "make quick movements to and fro, flick," still earlier "itch, scratch;" the vulgar sense attested from the 16th century.

This would parallel in sense the usual Middle English slang term for "have sexual intercourse," swive, from Old English swifan "to move lightly over, sweep" (related to swivel). This was Chaucer's word:

And hadde a wyf that heeld for contenance
A shoppe, and swyved for hir sustenance.
["The Cook's Tale"]

The formal Anglo-Saxon word was hæman, from ham "dwelling, home," with a sense of "take home, co-habit."

French foutre and Italian fottere look like the Eng. word but are unrelated, derived rather from Latin futuere, which perhaps is from the Proto-Indo-European base *bhau(t)- "knock, strike off," extended via a figurative use "from the sexual application of violent action" [Shipley; cf. the sexual slang use of bang, etc.].

Popular and Internet derivations of fuck from acronyms (and the "pluck yew" fable) are merely ingenious trifling. For the unkillable urban legend that this word is an acronym of some sort (an Internet fiction traceable to 1995) see here, and also here.

Fuck was outlawed in print in England (by the Obscene Publications Act, 1857) and the U.S. (by the Comstock Act, 1873). The word may have been shunned in print, but it continued in conversation, especially among soldiers during World War I.

"It became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express this emotion was to omit this word. Thus if a sergeant said, 'Get your ----ing rifles!' it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said 'Get your rifles!' there was an immediate implication of urgency and danger." [John Brophy, "Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914-1918," pub. 1930]

The legal barriers broke down in the 20th century, with the "Ulysses" decision (U.S., 1933) and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (U.S., 1959; U.K., 1960). "The Penguin Dictionary" broke the dictionary taboo in the latter year. Houghton Mifflin followed, in 1969, with "The American Heritage Dictionary," but it also published a "Clean Green" edition without the word, to assure itself access to the lucrative public high school market.

The abbreviation F (or eff) probably began as euphemistic, but by 1943 it was being used as a cuss word, too. In 1948, the publishers of "The Naked and the Dead" persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphemism fug instead. When Mailer later was introduced to Dorothy Parker, she greeted him with, "So you're the man who can't spell 'fuck' " [The quip sometimes is attributed to Tallulah Bankhead]. Hemingway used muck in "For whom the Bell Tolls" (1940).

The major breakthrough in publication was James Jones' "From Here to Eternity" (1950), with 50 fucks (down from 258 in the original manuscript).