December 08, 2004

How to Make People Feel Awkward About Religion

Posted by Belle Waring

Speaking of spirituality designed to get one out of going to church, I offer you the following passage from Stephen Potter’s superlative Lifesmanship. This could very well come in handy if you are ever invited to the sort of English country house where everyone is expected to go to church on Sunday. (I know little about such things, but my reading of Wodehouse leads me to additionally suggest that you not get involved in a church fête of any kind, in any capacity.) Potter:

The man who lets it be known that he is religious is in a strong life position. There is one basic rule. It is: go one better. Fenn went too far. This is his method—in his own words:

To take the most ordinary instance, the simple Sunday churchgoer. “Are you coming to church with us?” my host says. It is a little country church, and my host, Moulton, who has some claims to be a local squire, wants me to come, I know, because he is going to read the lesson. He reads it very well. He enjoys reading it. I heard him practising it to himself immediately after breakfast.

“Yes, why don’t you come to church for once, you old sinner?” Mrs. Moulton will say.

Do not mumble in reply to this: “No, I’m afraid…I’m not awfully good at that sort of thing…my letters…catch post.”

On the contrary, deepen and intensify your voice, lay your hand on her shoulder and say, “Elsa” (calling her by her Christian name for perhaps the first time):

“Elsa, when the painted glass is scattered from the windows, and the roof is opened to the sky, and ordinary simple flowers grow in the crevices of pew and transept—then, and not till then will your church, as I believe, be fit for worship.”

Not only does this reply completely silence opponent; but it will be possible to go out and win ten shillings on the golf course, come back very slightly buzzed from Sunday pre-lunch drinks, and suggest, by your direct and untroubled look, before which their glance may actually shift, that your host and hostess, however innocently, have only been playing at religion.

Potter is a genius, and it seems his books are coming back in print! Now millions more can learn those methods of winning without actually cheating so dear to my heart and to those of fellow Yeovil alums.

October 21, 2004

To blog a mockingbird

Posted by Ted

I recently read a blogger (can’t remember who) wondering aloud about what would have happened if the blogging phenomenon had been around for earlier periods in our history.

Just what history needs: more Mickey Kaus.

(cue dream sequence)

I’m not sure why I have such a viceral loathing of Atticus Finch. Maybe it’s his perpetually sweaty brow. Maybe it’s his voice- low, slow, and phony. Maybe it’s the pale suits. Maybe it’s his hypocrisy; why is a man only scum if he takes advantage of a poor Negro? What’s so elevated about taking advantage of a poor white man? Can some reader help me out? 12:25 PM

Is Atticus Finch Jewish? This Macomb County Herald colum says that his great-grandfather on his mother’s side was a Jew. It also mentions that Finch never once contacted them to correct them when they said he had English ancestry. Does he know who he is? Father Coughlin has more. Developing… 2:40 PM

The Finch kids rolled their tire right onto the Radley’s property last week. Now they’re bothering the Radleys again. But it’s not as bad as I thought. It’s worse!

The Radleys reported seeing an intruder in their cabbage patch last night. Nathan Radley scared off the intruder with a shotgun blast. Witnesses reported seeing a pair of britches caught on the fence, although no britches were found. No suspects have been announced, although the Finch children were allegedly seen in the vicinity by Mrs. Harris.

Sneaking into the cabbage patch? And these are the Finch children? Just imagine! 10:36 AM

FINCH TO THE DEFENSE! Atticus Finch has been appointed to defend Tom Robinson against the charge of attacking and raping Mayella Ewell. He’s arguing that Tom Robinson couldn’t have attacked Mayella Ewell like Bob and Mayella said (choking her with one hand, hitting her with the other) because he badly damaged his left hand in a cotton gin.

But did Tom Robinson really hurt his hand? Boy, Finch’s case would sure fall apart if it wasn’t true! And how, exactly, did Tom Robinson do all of this chopping one-handed? NEW PRO-FINCH SPIN: This big strong guy? He’s a creampuff. Trust me! 10:13 PM

Why did the AL Today spike Thomas “Too Far” Dixon’s column? If they hired him to cover the Robinson trial, what did they think they were going to get? True, his article, “Savage Negroes and the Threat to Our Women” was pretty strong stuff. But I would have printed it! 9:44 AM

Robinson Panic Watch: Some unnamed veteran journalist friends talked to some of the Ewell Kinfolk for Justice and found them much more credible than they expected. (Sorry, Mrs. Roosevelt!) They claim that Tom Robinson performed as a juggler at the Macomb County fair, six months after the alleged cotton gin incident. 11:20 AM

FINCH: BETTER FED BY REDS? Is Atticus Finch accepting food from the Communist Party of Alabama? All signs point to “yes”! (Ed. Like what? The day after his closing statement, Bob Ewell said that he was looking through Finch’s window, and it was full of food! The Reds have shown a lot of interest in this case…) 12:01 PM

Hello? Does Macomb County want to look at Jean Louise Finch parading around in a ham costume that Josephine Baker would be embarrassed to wear? Sources say that during the pageant, she lost her dress- and her shoes! What kind of a child loses her shoes?… P.S.: Could she be what these pictures suggest—a bit vain, selfish and opportunistic? She is a Finch, after all! … P.P.S.:The Negroes will love it, of course. But Finch already has their support. Maybe he’s energizing his base! 11:35 PM

October 19, 2004

The imperial presidency

Posted by Henry

Teresa Nielsen Hayden makes a very interesting aside in a long post about how GWB’s way of dealing with criticism reminds her of vituperative slushpile authors with middle-management backgrounds.

You know how topical jokes are generally formed by adapting earlier groups of cognate jokes? I’ve been looking into the current batch of GWB jokes, and find that many of the jokes from which they’re drawn were originally about Stalin. But I digress.

This seems to me quite telling. Mark Schmitt makes a good case for GWB as a “bad CEO,” but the administration’s refusal to brook criticism and wilful contempt for “reality” seems more grotesque and dangerous than that. It verges on what the French call ubuisme (from Alfred Jarry’s Pere Ubu). When I read Ron Suskind’s article on the administration, I couldn’t stop thinking of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s book on the last days of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, The Emperor.

It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor’s great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor’s lap and pee on dignitaries’ shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years.

October 06, 2004

That's better

Posted by Ted

I missed about half of the VP debate, but Something Awful has some of the best commentary that I’ve seen. Excerpts:

* Cheney lost some credibility by countering Halliburton accusations with, “the nonpartisan website Sexbarn.org has all the information discrediting those rumors.” Actually, Sexbarn.org turned partisan about the same time they added the alpaca gallery and video section.
  • Both candidates struggled with Gwen’s question, “if you could be any flavor of ice cream in the whole wide world, what flavor would you be?”
  • When told not to mention John Kerry’s name in his response, Edwards mentioned it twice. Legend has it that if you say John Kerry’s name three times, he will appear and kill you with his hook hand. Gwen scolded Edwards for trying to invoke evil spirits.

October 03, 2004

In TDS news

Posted by Eszter

There are always comments on The Daily Show that I want to blog, but then never get around to doing so. I did want to make sure to mention this one though, from last Wednesday (Sept 29), since it’s blog related. Jon Stewart was talking to Ed Helms about the next day’s presidential debates. Helms read out the notes he would be using to report on the debates, that is, he had already written them up a day before the debates.

Stewart: “What if any actual news happens?”
Helms: “That’s what bloggers are for.”

A propos TDS, America (The Book) is absolutely hilarious! I highly recommend it. I didn’t realize it was written in the form of a textbook. It’s got lots of little inserts, quotes on the sidebar and illustrations like most American textbooks good for those with attention problems. Not that you’ll have any such problems while reading this book (unless you’re trying to multitask and do something else at the same time in which case the other activity will get none of your attention). I don’t know if reading anything has ever made me laugh out loud as much as reading this book has.

September 14, 2004

Go Figure

Posted by Belle Waring

Truly great stupid questions never die:

By far the most outlandish proposal, and one of the most recurrent, was the idea to use a nuclear warhead to blow a hurricane out of the water. “Hurricanes are bad enough without being radioactive,” Willoughby [a research professor with the International Hurricane Center] said. “Put that genie back in the bottle. Nuclear weapons are more dangerous than hurricanes.”

Some people just aren’t any fun. If only Giblets were in charge of the NOAA we’d see a lot more decisive action, I can tell you that.

July 26, 2004

Pete and Dud

Posted by Harry

I half-assume that most of you listen to BBC7 all the time, but that can’t be right. In its infancy The Economist very kindly referred to it as middle-brow, but I know that’s not true because my tastes are firmly lower-middle-brow, and it could have been programmed just for me. So for those of you who missed it, I have to belatedly alert you to a collection of the funniest sketches of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (sroll down the page), both, alas, no longer with us. Americans, in particular, who might be forgiven for believing that Dudley Moore was a talentless moron, will find conclusive evidence to the contrary. The rest of us can just wonder what on earth happened.

July 25, 2004

The story behind red alert

Posted by Eszter

This short film by zefrank seemed to make it to some corners of the blogosphere in March, but I don’t think it got the type of exposure it deserves. Go behind-the-scenes to learn about the making of the yellow-orange-red alert system (Tinky Winky reference and all!:). Warning, only visit the rest of the site if you have plenty of time to spare!

June 29, 2004

Line of the week

Posted by Henry

The line of the week comes from Scott McLemee; I’ve put it beneath the fold to avoid trampling on the sensibilities of especially delicate CT readers.

I’d like to think my article will encourage someone out there to advance the frontiers of Motherfucker scholarship.

See the original for full context.

June 07, 2004

Fellatrix superiore

Posted by Chris

Eszter’s post has put me in mind of the excellent Financial Times preview of the latin oration on the (hypothetical) occasion of Bill Clinton assuming the Chancellorship of Oxford University:

Sed Eheu! Magnum disastrum suscepit sua maxima culpa. Per noctem, Novembre MCMLXXXXV Alia Occidentalis Domus Albus laborante, sibi pizza donata est a Monica Lewinsky, puella pulchrissima, sensuosa californicante, fellatrix superiore.

‘Non coitus est cum hac femina,’ dixit. Sed, per laborem longus et penetrante Kennethi Starri, procurator independentus, et senatoribus Republicanis agitates, testimonia inculpata; togam maculatam, cigarrus grandus, revelata sunt. Domus Representatis imperator Clinton defenestrare tentavit. Senatus, 50-50 divisa est, absolvit.

The full text is here .

May 24, 2004

Ooops

Posted by Eszter

Remember our discussion of the Erdõs number and the eBay bid that followed? The Chronicle is on the story, sort of. There is not one word about humor in that whole piece.. or that it all started out with a light-hearted discussion on blogs. Talk about taking a story out of context. I realize Bill may have posted the bid in all seriousness, but I think a better coverage would have included a mention of how it all came about, which is perfectly clear from his initial post. One interesting point gets no mention in the piece: John’s suggestion that offering co-authorship for free and no labor may be an even better deal for those with a high Erdõs number. (He meant it as a joke! I better add that again before John gets accused of wanting to undercut the system.) I guess in the context of The Chronicle piece that’s less scandelous.. and thus not worthy of coverage. I think I’ll go read The Onion now. [Thanks to my friend Gabriel for pointing me to The Chronicle piece.]

UPDATE: Read about Bill Tozier’s reactions here. Also, to clarify, the article does say in the beginning “The auction began as a bit of fun,” but if you read the whole piece, that part is soon forgotten.

April 30, 2004

If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job

Posted by Henry

From tomorrow’s FT

Six US army soldiers are facing courts-martial for abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees - activities uncovered during an investigation that also found widespread abuses at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, according to US military officials. The alleged abuses, made public by CBS News, included soldiers forcing prisoners to simulate sex with each other and to pose naked with American men and women in military uniforms. In photographs obtained by the CBS News programme 60 Minutes, Iraqi prisoners are shown stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English. In another, a detainee is shown with wires attached to his body in an attempt to convince him he might be electrocuted. In almost all photos, CBS said, the US soldiers are laughing, posing, or giving thumbs-up signs.

In an interview with CBS, Staff Sgt Chip Frederick, an army reservist and one of the soldiers charged, said he would not plead guilty … “We had no support, no training whatsoever, and I kept asking my chain of command for certain things … like rules and regulations. And it just wasn’t happening.”

The army’s investigation reportedly shows that military investigators asked untrained reservists to prepare inmates for interrogation, but offered little guidance. Because of the success rate of “breaking” prisoners prepared by the unit now under investigation, they were encouraged to continue their practices, Sgt Frederick said.

This really sounds pretty dreadful. It’s not My Lae, and it’s not on the same plane as what went on under Saddam Hussein. But it’s symptomatic of a more general moral deadening that’s taking place - a willingness to countenance the threat of torture, the turning over of people to third countries for torturing, and the employment of physical brutality in the ‘war on terrorism.’ People know this is happening - both the Washington Post and the Economist have run stories on this. But there’s no US debate about it that I can see; the stories sank like lead balloons. Even the Maher Arar case seems not to have had any impact in the US beyond a few bloggers, and a scattering of news stories in the back pages. There’s a lot of knee-jerk anti-Americanism among the left, especially in Europe, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the many good (and sometimes utterly wonderful) things that the US has done in the rest of the world. Equally, there seems to be a persistent unwillingness among many Americans to acknowledge the ugly things that are being done in the name of their national security. Perhaps this story - and the actions being taken to punish those who were directly responsible - will help change this. But I don’t have much confidence that it will.

April 13, 2004

More in search engines news

Posted by Eszter

With all the comments I make about search engines, I can’t help but link to this article about a new Yahoo feature.;-)

Hoping it will push them to the top of an increasingly competitive market, Internet portal Yahoo has added soul-search capabilities to its expanding line of search tools, company executives announced Monday.


. . .

April 01, 2004

In IT news

Posted by Eszter

After noting yesterday that “Diebold electronic voting machines are a danger to our democracy”, it makes all the sense in the world that Avi Rubin would announce today that he is joining Diebold to become its Chief Security Officer. Well, it makes all the sense in the world as long as that announcement came today of all days.;-)

More news of interest thanks to Freedom To Tinker.