the art of writing is discovering what you believe
Mostly, that my eye was not as sharp as it could have been. The old adage “if your pictures aren’t any good, you’re not close enough” applies to a lot of my old stuff.
I’m happier with the BandW work I did, so far.
One of my neighbors has “Make bread” listed as one of her 43 things and I realized when I read it that I have been remiss in posting some bread recipes I’ve used.
I mentioned sourdough starter a while back. I’m now on my third one of these, since the first got contaminated and the second one never really took. I used it the other night to make a couple of loaves of sourdough baguettes and they are among the best bread I have ever made.
Flour, water, sugar, salt, yeast: who knew you could combine these things in so many ways?
Need help?
The warbloggers persist in claiming that their efforts as members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders or 82nd Chairborne are valued contributions, meaningful sacrifices in the Global War Against Whatever it is This Week.
This nugget nailed it for me:
Crooked Timber » » STFU Syndrome:
I’m going to quote something I mailed to Jim Henley yesterday, that occurred to me in the course of some family reminiscing:
Talking with Mom and Dad about their personal histories led me to this association: what the war party bloggers have done is recreate the experience of being a child in World War II. They write patriotic essays and make patriotic collages, and get pats on the head and congratulations from the authorities. They watch diligently for the mutant, I mean, for the subversive among us, and help maintain the proper atmosphere of combined courage and vigilance. They are not expected to manage the family books, nor invited into discussion of the nitty-gritty, and it seldom occurs to them that there’s even a possibility there – that’s for the grown-ups, and rightly so.
It’s beyond irony for one of the leaders of the 101st to label himself captain, as a reminder of his obsessive Star Trek fandom or for another quote Lt Sulu — and use the character’s first name.
Do they really wonder why they’re assumed to be failed adults, living in their Mom’s basements?
I took a look at this but nothing I’m doing here even shows up on the Google Trends radar.
He claimed America was the loser when he received his life sentence: but look at it another way. Does anyone else see the administration resembling the Taliban or Saddam’s terror state rather than Republic of the Founding Fathers? Pervasive surveillance, extra-legal jails, torture, reclassification of previously de-classified documents, and above all secrecy: are these American values or the sort of thing that WWII and the Cold War were supposed to have defeated?
How far are we willing to go in the name of “security?” And how do we get back, if we can?
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Then as Big-Budget Disaster Movie?
One of Philip K. Dick‘s favorite tropes (one that he recycled repetitively, sometimes effectively, often tediously) involved the premise that the losing side in a war actually wins by provoking the winning side to adopt the losing side’s values and ideology.
I keep thinking about that as the secret history of the Bush administration unreels. This morning an NPR reporter described the recent developments in the NSA phone data-mining operation, saying, “The furor is causing more problems for Michael Hayden” — But I heard, “The Führer is causing more problems. . . .” No, George Bush is not a new Hitler — but we can’t afford to refuse to acknowledge and name certain characteristics that the Bush regime shares with governments against which the U.S.A. has waged war in the name of freedom and human rights. We do not win a “War Against Terror” by sacrificing the ideals to which the U.S.A. aspires on the altar of an illusory, idolatrous “Security.”
In the weeks between now and the Fourth of July, I will re-read the Declaration of Independence once or twice, checking the description of the grievances that the founders charged against King George. “King George. . . .”
Reading Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, he is connecting some dots I hadn’t seen linked before.
My knowledge of English history is pretty thin, especially 17th century and earlier. So I would not have worked out that the Red state/Blue state divide and it’s corollaries — Dixie/Old Confederacy vs Yankee North, secular vs religious — can be traced back to the English Civil War and the overthrow of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, and the ensuing Restoration.
But Phillips makes the case that there were North/South hostilities at the time of the founding of the United States and they have never really gone away. They seem to be rooted in the makeup of the United Kingdom, with England on one side and Scotland and Ireland — the ancestral home of many Southerners — on the other. In fact, men from the Northern colonies fought on the Parliamentarian sides of the English Civil War. Virginia supported the Royalist side, welcoming Cavalier emigrés and evicting its Puritans. One battle was fought on US soil in 1655 with the Puritan side defeating the Royalists at the Battle of Great Severn.
There was also talk of secession by the Northeastern states long before the Confederacy made its move. The divisions persist to this day, according to Phillips, and underlie the current political landscape, with religion/faith the most visible aspect of them.
There’s the old knee-slapper about the guy looking for his keys under a streetlight, even though he lost them in a dark alley. When asked why he doesn’t look in the alley, he replies, “Well, the light’s better here.”
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:
There’s a pretty high bar on news that makes former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith look like an even bigger jackass.
But this may meet the standard. According to this Periscope report in Newsweek, just after 9/11, as administration officials were debating where to launch the war on terror, Feith came up with an idea that showed he was really thinking outside the box.
The first attacks, he apparently wrote, should come in South America. Such attacks would have the advantage of being “a surprise to the terrorists.”
Feith and his advisors “argued that an attack on terrorists in South America — for example, a remote region on the border of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where intelligence reports said Iranian-backed Hizbullah had a presence — would have ripple effects on other terrorist operations.”
I don’t usually find much common ground with Feith. But I think he’s right that such an attack would have come as quite a surprise to the terrorists. But why stop there? They probably would have been even more dumbfounded if we’d blown up one of our ships in our initial round of retaliation, or perhaps bombed Portugal.
All jokes aside, consider that this fool was a key architect of our policies in fighting terrorism.
Tommy Franks, for all his mistakes, took the measure of this guy pretty well.
To borrow a nugget Brad Delong has written repeatedly, we’ll stop referring to this administration as “Orwellian” when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual.
USATODAY.com – NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls:
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
But that means they’re sampling small sets, right? This isn’t a dragnet, is it?
USATODAY.com – Questions and answers about the NSA phone record collection program:
Q: Does the NSA’s domestic program mean that my calling records have been secretly collected?
A: In all likelihood, yes. The NSA collected the records of billions of domestic calls. Those include calls from home phones and wireless phones.
On a completely unrelated note, I got my passport photos made today and expect to have my renewal off in tomorrow’s mail.
1. The economics of prostitution. The best way to limit prostitution is to raise male wages, thereby increasing the return to becoming a wife.
I haven’t followed the link, but I have to wonder why male wages? Why not put a floor under all wages? Is being a wife the best option for women?
Really?