John Holbo

YouTube provides:

John [and Faith!] Hubley’s 1959, Academy Award-Winning “Moonbird”. I don’t know much about it, except that they obviously constructed an ingenious and charming piece of animation on top of an audio recording of their two young sons, talking and singing.

Here’s a surprisingly progressive, “Brotherhood of Man” (part 1, part 2) educational cartoon from 1946, directed by Robert Cannon. (Scripted by Ring Lardner [jr.!], apparently.)

And another Hubley. “Soothing, instant money” – a classic Bank of America ad. Ironically, I take it this was done just a few years after Hubley was blacklisted for refusing to testify to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. So he had been forced to leave UPA and take work making commercials.

Hubley and Cannon, if you don’t know, are probably best known for their work together at UPA on such classics as “Gerald McBoingBoing” and “Mr. Magoo”.

Here’s a fun, if somewhat uncertainly-sourced story about how Hubley and co-creator Millard Kaufman invented Magoo, from Wikipedia:

The Magoo character was originally conceived as a mean-spirited McCarthy-like reactionary whose mumbling would include as much outrageous misanthropic ranting as the animators could get away with. Kaufman had actually been blacklisted, and Magoo was a form of protest. Hubley was an ex-communist who had participated in the 1941 [Disney] strike. Both he and Kaufman had participated in the blacklist front and perhaps due to the risk of coming under more scrutiny with a hit character, John Hubley, who had created Magoo, handed the series completely over to creative director, Pete Burness. Under Burness, Magoo would win two Oscars for the studio with When Magoo Flew (1955) and Magoo’s Puddle Jumper (1956). Burness scrubbed Magoo of his politicized mean-ness and left only a few strange unempathic comments that made him appear senile or somewhat mad. This however was not entirely out of line with the way McCarthy came to be perceived over that same era.

Megan McArdle replies to my post:

So I’m not sure that this conversation is likely to be productive, since at least one side of it has decided to substitute sarcasm for engagement. But let’s see if we can’t tone down the nastiness a little, and try to have a reasonable discussion.

I agree with the first sentence. And I agree with the second sentence. Moving right along. [click to continue…]

Three weeks ago Megan McArdle was annoyed. Have you ever noticed how health care reform proponents act as though there’s deep wisdom in reminding us that there is going to be rationing one way or another? “This is one of the things that most puzzles me about the health care debate: statements that would strike almost anyone as stupid in the context of any other good suddenly become dazzling insights when they’re applied to hip replacements and otitis media.” I – and others – pointed out that there were problems with McArdle’s use of the word ‘ration’. Without missing a beat, McArdle has moved on to being impressed by the deep wisdom of the thought that (envelope please): there is going to be rationing one way or another. She muses about the ironic circumstance that no one wants to utter the r-word and – long story short – ends by suggesting that reformers are particularly remiss in this regard. They want the fact that there is going to be rationing, one way or another, to be invisible. Have you ever noticed this about health care reform proponents?

Silly reformers. [click to continue…]

I like this Flickr set of album covers reimagined as Pelican paperbacks:

Also, I have an invented a test. First, view this image. Now check under the fold for the answer. [click to continue…]

Here’s something I didn’t post about last week because CT was so intermittent that I just didn’t get around to it. Megan McArdle responded to my critiques of her. Well, responded might be too strong. Reacted. She spends so much time speculating deeply about my apparently quite shallow motives that she doesn’t really get around to considering my argument. [click to continue…]

You are all wondering what Kieran is so damn sorry about (in his characteristically sociological and defensive way.)

Well. Here is a picture of our orbiting server, taken around 1910 A.D. (common era, if you prefer, you atheist.) An estimable flying fortress – sort of a cross between a siege engine and a bat. That’s to keep out spam. (Since siege towers were once called belfries, I deduce that this is a belfry bat.) No doubt it performed excellently in wind-tunnel tests. But, to make a long story short … over the weekend it crashed. And comments were, as it were, ‘crushed’ under the ‘weight’ of all that ‘wood’ and ‘canvas’. (source: Flickr.)

But if that’s what our server looks like, you ask: Whatever does the internet as a whole resemble, eh, riddle me? It is, now that you ask, a sort of ‘City of the Future’, circa 1925:

Now get back to work! All of you!

Dead at 94.

A year ago I was going through a Les Paul phase and posted a nice round-up of YouTube items. It’s fantastic stuff. I suggest you take 10 minutes to remember the father of rock and roll – well, he sort of was. There’s a whole documentary you can watch. I love the idea of idea of this guy with the future of music planted in his head, touring around as Rhubard Red. I love all that corny old stuff with Mary Ford. Corny and elegant and kinda nerd-brainy, and beloved by geniuses for what he let them do. Les Paul. Not a bad life.

Discussion is perking along in my McArdle on rationing thread. For the record: she articulates her general case against national health care here, then follows up here. I think it all adds up to a nice illustration of the point I was making in this post (I wish I had made it more clearly, to judge from comments.) McArdle’s opposition to national healthcare is based entirely on slippery slope arguments, arguments from unintended consequences, and suspicions that those who are proposing national health care really want different things than they say they do. Now, this is reasonable. But only up to a point. Because at some point we need something more, but McArdle is quite strident in her insistence that what she has said is enough.

What does she leave out? Arguing only in the ways she does leaves it unclear what she would think about national health care reform if it worked. And the reason it is important to know that is that we really have to know what McArdle’s values really are – her ideals. Let me show how it goes. [click to continue…]

Megan McArdle has a post up grousing about how ‘but we have rationing already’ arguments are facile. Pardon me for not seeing her point (although I am willing to concede there may be overuse of the term, as we shall see). Let’s say the rationing in question is some guaranteed minimum coverage (public option). Obviously minimum is not maximum. That’s what people mean when they call it ‘rationing’, and that’s an ok use of the word. But lets start by noting that, paradigmatically, rationing needs two elements: it provides a minimum for everyone in a group by forbidding anyone from getting more than a certain maximum. Rationing means using the latter mechanism to ensure the former result. In that sense, the proper thing to say is that the guaranteed minimum coverage doesn’t really involve rationing.

Suppose, instead, we were talking about a guaranteed minimum income (as was proposed in the 70’s, and as such free market luminaries as Milton Friedman thought made a certain amount of economic sense, if memory serves.) Lots of folks would be opposed to guaranteed minimum income today (to put it mildly), but would anyone say a guaranteed minimum income was bad economics because it would amount to ‘rationing of the money supply”? And fiat rationing (as McArdle says) is inefficient. I don’t think economists would see this as a problem. Why not? Because there is no reason why the volume of money overall should be a function of – critically constrained by – some minimal income provision. That’s just not how the money supply would be determined: there wouldn’t be some iron economic law that there couldn’t be more money than everyone times the minimum. [click to continue…]

Following up our earlier reflections on genteel naming conventions, explored and expressed in the medium of webcomics: we note that this may be the greatest American Elf ever. However, there remains a question as to the absolute propriety of James Kochalka hereby ruining his older son’s chance ever to be President. (Then again, it’s a crap job.)

But you know what really makes me really proud? Not that I can write posts like this one, oh no. Rather, the Kochalka child in question has just invented a character named Mean Guy, who really does look quite mean. But my kid totally invented Mean Girl two years ago. Same look. And she has a rich, satisfying mythos to go with. Thus do I achieve through my children. (But I have a suspicion Eli Kochalka is better at video games than my daughter. She cannot steer a MarioKart to save her life, ye gods.)

Here’s a thought I’ve been meaning to write up for a while. This post has inspired me. Your opponent says healthcare reform will put us on the slippery slope to socialist soylent green serfdom. You reply by acknowledging the objection, in outline: ‘You’re worried Obama/liberals want something different from what they are willing to ask for, for fear that they would lose public support. You are also worried that what is being proposed may have bad, unintended consequences.’ (See if you can lock your interlocutor in on these two points. Which shouldn’t be hard. Now move on to step two.) ‘Fine. Suppose you’re right. Suppose they are lying, or half-lying. They don’t want the moderate stuff they say they want at all. They want something radical, or at least something more.’ (See if you can get agreement to that.) Also: ‘you are right. Something this big and sausage-like sure could work out badly in practice; that’s something to worry about.’ (Now you spring the trap.) ‘But suppose someone said these things and meant them. Suppose Obama were just the liberal he presents himself as. Call this guy Bizarro Obama if you want to emphasize that you aren’t fooled for a second into believing our Obama is this guy. Fine. Would you have any objection to Bizarro Obama – the actually just moderately liberal one? Also: suppose the policy worked more or less as proposed. Not perfectly. But suppose it didn’t just totally blow up. I know, I know, you don’t believe this policy will work. That’s fine. But suppose it did. Would you have a problem with that. If so, what’s the problem.’

Call these: sticky slope arguments – or – the argument from intended consequences. I think you see where I’m going with these names, and maybe you see as well why leading your opponent down this path might leave your opponent a bit deflated, rhetorically. Which might then be an opener for saner debate. [click to continue…]

In suggesting that ‘Horatio Wheatbender Filibuster’ would be a good name for an antique Senator, I was – I now realize (no doubt I was being subconsciously guided all the while) – nearly obedient to the dictates of The Book of Genteel Wherewithal.

‘Horatio’ is a Greek or Roman name that almost rhymes with ‘You’re boring us’. Check. And ‘bent wheat’ was, no doubt, the sort of thing 19th Century and earlier peoples put in baby food, to make sure the baby didn’t eat too much. I left out the hardship suffered by mariners. (Let’s add it in: Horatio Wheatbender Tunnybotham Filibuster.) And ‘filibuster’ is close to ‘noise made in anger’. I give myself 4 out of 5 stars for effort.

Yglesias and Drum had a back-and-forth about the constitutionality, morals and manners of the filibuster. I think more hay should be made of the fact that ‘filibuster’ does not, as one might expect, derive from the name of some thoroughly American, corn-stuffed, long-winded Senator from a nigh-unpopulated state. (‘The Senate now recognizes the honorable Horatio Wheatbender Filibuster, from the great state of …’) No, as wikipedia explains: “The term filibuster was first used in 1851. It was derived from the Spanish filibustero meaning pirate or freebooter. This term had in turn evolved from the French word flibustier, which itself evolved from the Dutch vrijbuiter (freebooter). This term was applied at the time to American adventurers, mostly from Southern states, who sought to overthrow the governments of Central American states, and was transferred to the users of the filibuster, seen as a tactic for pirating or hijacking debate.”

I think it’s remarkable that the name basically derives from a word for a crime. So I think the thing to do is tar the Republicans as soft on piracy. Basically.

On the other hand, here are some further literary notes on the wanderings of this word. El Filibusterismo is a famous novel by José Rizal, a 19th Century literary hero of the Philippines.

Here’s another quote from Wikipedia. Rizal explains what it means.

Rizal had to define the word filibustero to his German friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, who did not understand his use of the word in Noli Me Tangere [Rizal’s first novel]. In a letter, Rizal explained: “The word filibustero is little known in the Philippines. The masses do not know it yet. I heard it for the first time in 1872 when the tragic executions (of the Gomburza) took place. I still remember the panic that this word created. Our father forbade us to utter it, as well as the words Cavite, Jose Burgos (one of the executed priests), etc. The Manila newspapers and the Spaniards apply this word to one whom they want to make a revolutionary suspect. The Filipinos belonging to the educated class fear the reach of the word. It does not have the meaning of freebooters; it rather means a dangerous patriot who will soon be hanged or well, a presumptuous man.” By the end of the nineteenth century, the word filibustero had acquired the meaning “subversive” in the Philippines, hence the book is about subversion.

This is subversion with a positive connotation. I am sure we can all agree that sometimes this or that existing political order needs a spot of undermining. Still, it is at least a mild paradox that, in the U.S. Senate, subversion – the filibuster – is, technically, part of the established order of things. (Like in that Powerpuff Girls episode, “Bought and Scold” in which Princess gets her dad to buy the whole town, then makes crime legal.) Ah well.

Now, on to self-promotion. As you may be aware I just published an intro to Plato book, which (joy of joys!) you can read and download for free here (free! free!) I mention this in part just to beat the point to death, but in part to inform you that – although apparently Reason & Persuasion: Three Dialogues by Plato went from not-yet-released to temporarily out-of-stock on Amazon, without pausing to be actually purchasable, they actually had 15 or so copies. They just all sold. More are on the way. (Hey, it’s not quite Harry Potter, but I do have friends and family y’know.) What I am saying is: if you buy it, it will come. Pretty soon, too. And there’s something else as well. I would like people to be able to adopt it for course use. My publisher is the Asian branch of Pearson, so – if you are in North America – you might think it’s just too much hassle to get that in your bookstore, if even Amazon can’t seem to manage it. Well, email me. I talked to my publisher about the situation. There are stacks of books. If people want them, there ought to be a way to swing it. (I know, that’s probably not you. Still, it would pain me if anyone out there actually wanted to buy my book but reasoned that it was trans-pacifically unavailable.)

In other self-promotion news: if Plato isn’t your cup of tea, then maybe you would like this J&B post about the sexy sexy fonts of Squid and Owl. I think fonts are very sexy.

On the whole, a great book. A real pleasure to read. I’ve never read Scialabba’s stuff before (or I haven’t noticed his byline, to remember it). My loss. But better late than never.

What’s so great about Scialabba? Temperamentally, there is his gratifyingly steady exhibition of generous severity to his subjects. (I can’t imagine anyone could object to being drubbed so fairly. With the possible exception of Christopher Hitchens.) Stylistically, there is his facility for cramming breadth into small literary packets, without recourse to cheap space-saving devices. Intellectually, there is his forthright evenhandedness—his awareness of what other people think—that never forgets, or neglects to mention, what he thinks. (Everyone else is praising George as well, so I won’t lay it on thick. But no kidding. Good stuff.)

Full disclosure: I left my copy of his book in Maryland – but only after reading it completely – then wrote this post in New York, from stuff on his website, with the TV blaring in the background. And now I’m in Singapore, polishing up a little.

What are intellectuals good for?

The cover seems to suggest the answer might be: nothing. Nothing good. ‘We fool you,’ announce the symbol-manipulating professionals, snug between those who rule and those who shoot. But no. The correct answer is: several things, surely. Two, for starters. [click to continue…]