At the end of his presentation, he allowed questions. The first supplicant approached the microphone and hopefully inquired, “Mr. Buckley, what do you think about Rush Limbaugh?” This was during the time when Rush was still something of a rising star. His rhetoric was bombastic, hard-edged, and wickedly funny. Members of the audience shifted forward in their seats expectantly as Buckley answered by telling the following story.
There were two Spaniards sitting in a bar. One asked the other, “What do you think about General Franco?” Instead of answering, the man gestured for his friend to follow him outside. Once on the sidewalk, he motioned for the friend to follow him to his car. They got in the car and drove to a forest. Deep in the woods, he parked the car and beckoned the friend to hike with him down to a lake. At the edge of the lake, he pointed to a boat which they boarded. He grabbed the oars and rowed to the center of the lake. Finally, he sat still, looked his friend in the eyes and paused for a moment. “I like him.” Buckley told the story so brilliantly and created so much suspense, the denouement brought the house down amid gales of laughter and happy applause.
I have to admit it’s funny. But I don’t actually get it. Why does the Spaniard have to drag the guy all the way out into the lake? I guess it’s supposed to be a ‘the leftist made me do it’ thing. But the joke seems to be at pains to refute that reading. Since, after all, how could a leftist force you to like someone?
I just watched Pan’s Labyrinth. I liked it. Belle and I debated whether it had a happy or a sad ending. I think it had a happy ending. But I find it hard to believe that, if you asked someone whether it had a happy or sad ending, they would haul you out into the middle of a damn lake and tell you it had a sad ending because [PLOT SPOILER] [click to continue…]
Dean Barnett, after digging up ranty stuff in a Kos comment box, then noting the post itself was mild-mannered:
With the Yearly Kos about to convene, I think it’s important to note what the Daily Kos is and, more importantly, what it isn’t. Markos Moulitsas and his front-pagers had nothing to do with these comments. He and they have grown much too smart to engage in such public displays of idiocy. But Markos doesn’t lead the Daily Kos; he sits atop it.
An interesting standard: blogs are to be judged exclusively by their comment boxes.
This seems like a useful snippet for someone to have, for talking points purposes, if they are getting interviewed about the whole ‘Kos Hate Site’ thing. Prominent right-wing blogger admits Kos postings are, on the whole, even-keeled – as befits the site’s prominence. After all, surely right-wing blogs generate their share of angry comment box froth? Barnett is judicious, possibly to a fault:
the right has its sliver of kooks and misfits who jam every event into a one-size-fits-all-events ideological prism
In other news, I was discussing TV and film with a student and it emerged that, since he hadn’t been born yet when The Simpsons started running, naturally he thinks of The Simpsons as a thing that has just always been there. A comedy equivalent of electricity and hot running water, if you will. Curious. (By the by, Amazon has seasons 1-10marked down 55%. If you are like me, you snap that sort of thing up.)
Josh Marshall: “The whole letter is written in a hyper-specific sort of pseudo-constitutional claptrapese to disguise the fact that what’s being said is complete nonsense.”
I think we should save that neologism for later use. It should be pronounced to emphasize etymologic ambiguity, as one might sing:
“It flew through the air with the greatest of ease/The daring young meme in the fine claptrapese.”
I present you with this week’s reason for thinking I read too many Legion of Super Heroes comics. I’m reading Crangle and Suppes, Language and Learning for Robots. (It’s part of the super popular ‘for robots’ series. My favorite being Wine Tasting For Robots.)
Anyway:
This book reports research that the authors have been doing together for the past decade on instructible robots …
In this book we explore the following two specific questions. What does it take for a robot to understand instructions expressed in a natural language such as English? What further challenges arise when the robot must learn from that instruction? The work we present falls naturally into three parts: theory, language performance, and learning. We briefly summarize each of these parts.
Part I on theory consists of four chapters. The first one sets forth our general ideas about instructible robots and how they are different from robots that operate autonomously. (xv)
Yes, but why do they have to be indestructible, I was asking myself?
I actually continued on like this for some time. You see, I had me a brief little thought about how it was probably going to turn out that they had some very abstract story about what a robot could learn, given an infinite amount of time. And somewhere along the line someone decided ‘indestructible robot’ was cute shorthand for this ideal limit; and I just never got the memo. Anyway. I think I need to get some sleep.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose the price of gold using the same methods with which you or I would choose PowerBall ticket numbers. If that doesn’t frighten and outrage you, I don’t know what will.
The author also reports that the George F. Will column in question, “made me spring out of my chair and pace around in abject disbelief and not a little anger.”
Thank goodness there’s no policy flippancy in the White House these days, otherwise urgent, perambulatory scowling at the olds, as we might call them, might look like aversion of one’s gaze from the news.
I wouldn’t make fun, except he put in that bit about springing and pacing.
UPDATE: And the author responds – to Kevin Drum, not to me. If you hate FDRblogging so much, “why don’t you write a post telling Democrats to stop raising the specter of Herbert Hoover at the drop of a hat?”
It is debatable whether paganism is a religion, per say.
I’m not sure whether he misspelled ‘per se’ or was, rather, reaching for ‘so to speak’, as one might grope for the bottle.
The piece reminded me of Kieran’s post about how ‘atheism’ was, originally, a charge lodged against Christians. It’s interesting to find predicates that have wandered so comprehensively.
The crux of the matter is that ordinary people think that if there’s a sick person, and you’re in a position to help the sick person, that you ought to help the sick person.
Insurance companies strengthen this commonsense moral obligation by actually entering into contracts – you pay them, each and every pay period, so that when you’re sick, they’ll help you. But insurance companies are largely in the business of devising excuses to avoid helping you when you’re in need. They employ people wake up every morning, drive to the office, and work all day denying sick people health care. The labors of these individuals line the pockets of the companies’ executives. Most people find this repugnant. Bloodsucking vampires and flesh-eating zombies have the excuse of being driven by insatiable urges. Insurance companies have free will and just choose to do bad things because they’re greedy.
From school vouchers to stem cell research to racial preferences to torture, the American right bubbles with debate and disagreement, while the left, for all its talk about “diversity,” rarely seems to show any. As National Review’s Jonah Goldberg points out, that may be because “liberals define diversity by skin color and sex, not by ideas, which makes it difficult to have really good arguments.”
This from a Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed. The thread that runs through these ‘the left doesn’t even know what debate is’ pieces (they pop up every couple months, lo the last several years) is that the authors consistently fail to exhibit any awareness of what debate is. The fact that the Republican base is fragmented and tearing itself apart in various ways is not ‘debate’, per se. Jacoby specifically cites the fact that the Republican party contains both John McCain and Tom “build a wall on the Canadian border” Tancredo as evidence of debate on immigration. I’m supposed to be impressed that the Republicans have a guy who wants to wall off Canada? Not to mention: turning the fact that Republicans can’t agree that torture is wrong into an intellectual virtue is a lame attempt to lipstick the pig. We’re supposed to take the fact that one of the two major parties is addicted to chest-thumping about ticking timebomb scenarios as evidence of its comparative intellectual vibrancy? Why? [click to continue…]
Write a haiku, win a free John Crowley novel! The Overlook Press is reissuing Crowley’s entire Aegypt cycle in paperback, which is convenient because the damn things have been sort of out-of-print and expensive. (So I hope my haiku wins, even though it wasn’t very good.)
So I’m reading Belle’s copy of Marie Claire (June, 2007). There’s a short Q&A with Republican Presidential hopeful, Tom Tancredo (p. 216). He’s all about the immigration stuff. Example:
Q: Would you build a wall along the Canadian border, too?
A: Yes. If you don’t build strong borders, you’ve gained nothing.
I like Richard Rorty, but will say a bit in defense of the negative line taken by Damon Linker in his TNR piece. Well, actually, I don’t have access, so I haven’t read it. I’ll respond to the bits available at Matthew Yglesias site, which dovetail nicely with thoughts I’ve had about Rorty’s liberal politics, quite independently of anything Linker says or thinks. [click to continue…]
Example: Scott Kaufman contributes, in civil fashion, to a thread at Jesus’ General – and as a result, he is defamed to his entire local academic community as a white supremacist! One of the General’s commenters – Ghost of Adolph Rupp, a.k.a. ‘John Casper’ – took it upon himself to email a bunch of people at UC Irvine (Scott’s department head, dean, various politicians across the whole state, I gather) as a generous public service.
Scott K. is innocent as charged. But that isn’t to say these allegations can’t be career-threatening, eh? (Stay classy, John Casper!)
You can read about the whole sordid saga at Scott’s blog – starting here. (A post explaining the fight that caused the fight that caused this problem.) The latest development, depressing but relatively inconsequential compared to the defamatory emails, is that Patriotboy (Jesus’ General) ain’t exactly coming up heaped in glory. Go read, if you care to. I guess the main post, reporting the first wave of emails accusing Scott of ‘refined white supremacy’, is here.
So Scott’s life is officially a mess. So if you are a friend, drop a comment, extend him your support and best wishes that an idiot hasn’t managed to wreck his career in vile and irresponsible fashion. I have the flu and am going straight to bed, probably will not be contributing to any discussion for the next 14 hours or so. So no fighting, if you please.
marked down 55%. If you are like me, you snap that sort of thing up.)