Look Like Flies

You’ve met The Girls From Planet 5. Now meet … [click to continue…]

I learned a new word today: periplum! From wikipedia: [click to continue…]

When a man gets to be around 40 – maybe a bit older – he starts to look back on life and wonder: what thing have I done for which I will be remembered? The next thing he does is start a webcomic. Maybe sell a few t-shirts, other Cafe Press-type stuff. Which brings us to:

No, really. I honestly don’t know whether it’s a comic or not. It’s an illustrated childrens book for adults, maybe. I’m planning to serialize it on Flickr. Here’s the set. Subscribe to the RSS feed! I decided to start things out by posting the first 21 pages. I’ll be adding a page a day, weekdays. (Not like there’s a story or anything, but it rhymes.)

Then it will become wildly popular. (Step 3: Profit!) Maybe I’ll be able to find a publisher, eh?

The only other really good idea I’ve had lately is … Bob, can we just show them the picture? [click to continue…]

Jonah Goldberg responding to a paragraph by Will Wilkinson:

As it happens, American drug prohibition and sentencing policies hit poor black men the hardest, devastating already disadvantaged black families and communities—a tragic, mocking contrast to the achievement of Obama’s election. Militarized police departments across the nation month after month kick down the wrong doors, terrify innocent families, shoot lawful citizens, and often kill the family dog.

I’m not casting doubt on the statistics they cite or the sincerity of the arguments (I’ve argued with too many liberatarians and legalizers about drugs to doubt their sincerity on the issue, statistics are another matter). But something has always bothered me about the drug war is racist argument which, in fairness, Will only suggests above.

It seems so, well, unlibertarian — at least in one respect. Sure, as an argument against the unintended consequences of what they consider to be a bad policy, the disproportionate affect on blacks works just fine.

But as an argument from proud individualists it seems a bit off. It seems to me that the classical liberal is supposed to see people as autonomous and sovereign moral actors, not identity politics groups.

Gideon Rachman identifies a hitherto unknown apparatus of Britain’s bureaucracy.

However, I have now discovered a genuine government department with a title straight out of Dickens – it is the Department of Sensitive Words. This excellent institution has been brought to my attention by a man who is trying to establish a think-tank and to use the word “Institute” in its title. Since my friend is still involved in sensitive negotiations with the Department of Sensitive Words, I have promised not to reveal his identity. The problem is that Companies House deems certain words as “sensitive” because they are thought to convey an impression of authority or trustworthiness. Institute is one such word; British is another. If you want to use a word like this you have to get special permission from a sub-unit of Companies House – the Department of Sensitive Words, which is based in Swansea. In true Dickensian style, this is not an easy process. Companies House does provide a few guidelines on sensitivity on its web-site (its chapter three). But there is no form you can fill in and no obvious criteria to fulfill. But this is probably for the best. You don’t want any old person calling themselves “British” or “Institute”.

This is an excellent idea, and one which should have been implemented in the US decades ago. From Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (Amazon, Powells)

In 1962,the executive committee of the board of trustees recommended that [the American Enterprise Association] change its name to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, so that it would no longer be confused with a “trade association” lobbying on behalf of business: the new name would “more accurately describe the nature and legal status of the organization.” An “association” sounded like the Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers – an institute, on the other hand, was austere, noble and pure.

Heaven forfend that the American Enterprise Institute would ever be confused with a group of people shilling on behalf of business.

More generally, there is a real problem in a political system where an organization with a grand title such as Americans for Fairness, Liberty and Free Choice in the Workplace (this is an invented organization using some of the usual buzzwords – I imagine that lobbyists automate the process of name creation with a sekrit perl script) typically consists of nothing more than a few reams of letterhead and a time-share arrangement over some law office’s fax machine. Not only will consumers will end up confused by the profusion of astroturf groups, but the generation of such confusion is precisely the purpose. It is just this kind of market failure that governments are supposed to address.

Hence my modest proposal – that the Obama administration set up a similar office, with sweeping authority and immediate effect. I can see that libertarians might possibly get upset, but they really shouldn’t. After all, they suffer more than most from the market failure in question. The term ‘libertarian’ has been heavily debased over the last few years by groups and individuals who describe themselves as libertarians, but are committed to state torture of suspected bad guys, semi-ubiquitous surveillance of electronic communications and the like. One of the first tasks that the US Inter-Agency Task Force on Sensitive Words might set itself would be to institute a proper set of standards to police self-described libertarians, clearly distinguishing between libertarians themselves (the real thing), schmibertarians (those tacitly in favour of torture and surveillance), glibertarians (those who prefer not to think about political commitments that extend beyond a cheery embrace of Econ 101 as teh awesome) and Gibletarians (I WANT SLOW THROTTLING AND I WANT IT NOOWWWW). I can’t see how this wouldn’t improve our public discourse.

[Note to readers: We are having a caching problem which we are trying to fix. If you see this as the top post on the front page (it shouldn’t be) try http://crookedtimber.org rather than http://www.crookedtimber.org .]

I realize that beaver management jokes are so a fortnight ago. Nevertheless, my wife – because she loves me – bought me a book on the subject. [click to continue…]

I’m back from a week on Bali, where we felt as relaxed and removed from the cares of life as a Japanese Batman. [click to continue…]

(readers who don’t have children of a certain age shouldn’t worry if they don’t understand this post).

The Little Professor points us to the forthcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

She then suggests some additional titles. I can’t believe she left out War and Peace and Zombies, however. Now 50% longer! And you’d have these great contrasts between the command styles of the Prussian and French and Russian and zombie generals. (Writes itself.)

But Marvel comics is ahead of the literary curve, as always, with Marvel Zombies. They specifically explore one possibility that Miriam sees as needing careful treatment: what if a vampire became a zombie? A vambie! (In related news: witchaloks!)

UPDATE: Come to think of it, this old literary mash-up post – continued here – is even funnier than zombies. In all modesty.

The Milky Way Transit Authority.

(Via Elaine.)

On X-Mas I gave good ol’ PZ a visit. He had up a quote from Rick Warren:

I believed that evolution and the account of the Bible about creation could exist along side of each other very well. I just didn’t see what the big argument was all about. I had some friends who had been studying the Bible much longer than I had who saw it differently…Eventually, I came to the conclusion, through my study of the Bible and science, that the two positions of evolution and creation just could not fit together. There are some real problems with the idea that God created through evolution… My prayer is that you will have this same experience!

The Bible’s picture is that dinosaurs and man lived together on the earth, an earth that was filled with vegetation and beauty…man and dinosaurs lived at the same time…From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs.

After that, I decided to give my X-Mas presents the attention they richly deserved. The adverb that describes the way my mother-in-law shopped for me is ‘awesomely’. [click to continue…]

I know, I know: it’s been two days since my last Haeckel post. Well, worry no longer! My X-Mas cards got a link from the University of Chicago Press! They just put out a new biography of Haeckel that is, I gather, more of a general intellectual history of the reception of evolutionary theory in the second half of the 19th Century, doubling as an attempt to burnish a somewhat tarnished reputation: The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought [amazon]. Here’s a TLS review – or rather, a longer version of one – that is, effectively, a thumbnail biography in itself.

All well and good, you agree: but surely there is more to life than German X-Mas jellyfish imagery? Yes, indeed! ASIFA has posted a wonderful series of Einar Norelius illustrations from a 1929 Bland Tomtar Och Troll (a Swedish x-mas annual of fairy and folktales). For example, here’s some sort of Aquatomten admiring a bunch of jellyfish. (Or maybe the guy’s just drowning.)

You see: there’s also Swedish X-Mas jellyfish imagery. So I added another card image to my flickr set, to add variety. (Not my best work, admittedly. But I only have so much 100-year old Swedish holiday card stock in my ephemera file.)

Jacob Levy has a very interesting bloggingheads exchange with Will Wilkinson. At least it’s interesting if you want to understand what the hell just happened up in Canada, politically. That whole ‘didn’t the queen shut down parliament, or something?’ thing. If that interests you.

Next: there has been some indignation in response to Gerecht’s piece in the NY Times, defending torture and extraordinary rendition. Yglesias starts like so: “Because Reuel Marc Gerecht adheres to an appalling and cruel ethical system and the people who decide what runs on major newspaper op-ed pages have no ethics whatsoever …” [click to continue…]

It’s a Flickr set. Plus I set up a CafePress thingy.

I started some of this last year: “And so in the end it was the littlest shoggoth of all who guided Santa’s sleigh that night.” Made some printables and gift tags They’re still there, if you want ‘em. But if you want to do anything with the images, downloading the images from Flickr is probably simplest. I put them up under a CC license.

This took way too long.