“Jim Lewis has a piece”:http://www.slate.com/id/2106598/ on _Slate_ about the photographer “Jacques Henri Lartigue”:http://www.lartigue.org/, who is famous for candid shots of “fashionable French people”:http://www.slate.com/id/2106614/ in the early 1900s. The stock story about Lartigue was that he “achieved late-life fame as one of the first masters of the medium, an unschooled amateur who achieved genius entirely by naive instinct.” But there’s plenty of evidence that, in fact, this is rubbish:

His father was a camera buff, and the son was given every possible advantage: the newest equipment, lots of leisure time, and a thorough education in the ways of the medium. Moreover, it was an era when amateur photography was all the rage, when magazines and books were full of instruction, debate, and example.

Still, Lartigue presented his work as the innocent expression of a wonderstruck boy amateur, and MoMA was happy to promote it as such.

I recently came across a nice discussion of this phenomenon in Alan Bennett’s superb Writing Home:

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Imagine that one day, a big bloke with wings taps you on the shoulder. It’s OK, he says, Brian sent me. To offer you this potential wager, on behalf of God, who has more or less given up on the human race except as a subject for philosophy conundrums.

In the envelope in my left hand, he says, I have a number, called X. At some point in the recent past, X was drawn by God from a uniform distribution over the real numbers from 0 to 1 inclusive. You can have a look at it if you like.

In my right hand, he says, I have a mobile telephone which will allow me to receive a message from God with another number, Y, which will also be drawn by God from a uniform distribution on the line 0 to 1 inclusive.

The wager is this; if you accept the wager, and X and Y are equal, then every human being currently alive on the planet earth will be horribly tortured for the next ninety million trillion years and then killed. If you accept the wager but X and Y are not equal, then a small, relatively undeserving child somewhere, will be given a lollipop.

So, do you take the wager or not?

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I think the Instapundit must still read Andrew Sullivan’s site. Does he just skip the parts about how our venture in Iraq is a total disaster? (Honesty compels me to mention that I was a supporter of this invasion, and so am either a) uniquely qualified to pronounce on its disastrousness or b) a certified idiot who should be mumbling apologies at all my anti-this-war-now brethren rather than parading my original bad judgment as a badge of honor. You decide.) I mean, the US military can’t guarantee security in the Green Zone?

At a briefing earlier this month, a high-ranking US officer in charge of the zone’s perimeter said he had insufficient soldiers to prevent intruders penetrating the compound’s defences.

The US major said it was possible weapons or explosives had already been stashed in the zone, and warned people to move in pairs for their own safety. The Green Zone, in Baghdad’s centre, is one of the most fortified US installations in Iraq. Until now, militants have not been able to penetrate it.

I’m very sorry to say this, but we are f%$#ed. I don’t mean particularly to pick on the Instapundit, but he is both a big name and representative. Where is the pro-war blogosphere on this? Is it really all about the pseudo-kerning? Can Hugh Hewitt honestly not think of anything, anything at all the US Congress might better do with its time than hold hearings on “Rathergate”? This is becoming surreal. John comes home from work, not having had time to read the news yet, and asks me over dinner, “what happened in the world today?” Admittedly, I do say, “those memos were fake.” But mostly I say things like, “lots and lots of people got killed in Iraq today and things are looking very very bad.” From Christopher Allbritton:

I don’t know if I can really put into words just how bad it is here some days. Yesterday was horrible — just horrible. While most reports show Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra as “no-go” areas, practically the entire Western part of the country is controlled by insurgents, with pockets of U.S. power formed by the garrisons outside the towns. Insurgents move freely throughout the country and the violence continues to grow.

I wish I could point to a solution, but I don’t see one. People continue to email me, telling me to report the “truth” of all the good things that are going on in Iraq. I’m not seeing a one. A buddy of mine is stationed here and they’re fixing up a park on a major street. Gen. Chiarelli was very proud of this accomplishment, and he stressed this to me when I interviewed him for the TIME story. But Baghdadis couldn’t care less. They don’t want city beautification projects; they want electricity, clean water and, most of all, an end to the violence….
In the context of all this, reporting on a half-assed refurbished school or two seems a bit childish and naive, the equivalent of telling a happy story to comfort a scared child. Anyone who asks me to tell the “real” story of Iraq — implying all the bad things are just media hype — should refer to this post. I just told you the real story: What was once a hell wrought by Saddam is now one of America’s making.

Could we please have a national debate about this war?

UPDATE: In Hewitt’s defense, I wrote this last night. Now there is one sentence on his blog about Iraq. Of course, it points to this post explaining how all the casualties the US suffered this month were the right sort of casualties, the kind that indicate how little the situation in Iraq is descending into chaos.

SECOND UPDATE: Henry rightly pointed me to these posts by Orin Kerr, Volokh conspirator, who is bucking this trend.

THIRD UPDATE: if, like some commenters, you want to hear at length about how I was totally wrong on Iraq, and what I should have thought instead, then you can read about it here.

Having been distracted by wonkish obsessions like current account deficits, fiscal bankruptcy and the situation in Iraq, Indonesia and other unimportant countries[1], I haven’t been able to keep up with the US election campaign as closely as I would like. But, following a quick tour of the press and the blogosphere, I’ve come up with the following shorter[2] (© D^2)version for others who may be in a similar position.

The crucial issue is to determine which candidate has the better record on Vietnam, and will therefore make the better president. As I understand it:

* Kerry fought in Vietnam, but then came back and denounced the war
* Bush didn’t fight, but supported the war
* There are a lot of memos

That seems to be all I need to know[3]. Have I missed anything important?

fn1. Such as Australia, which is also holding an election.

fn2. Thanks to commenter Luis over at my blog for tech support on the copyright symbol. Now if I could just do a copyleft symbol! DD points out that it’s been released to the public domain, but I still like to acknowledge him.

fn3. Or would be, if I had a vote in the election that will actually determine Australian policy on most issues, rather than our local exercise in democracy.

Johnny Ramone died in his sleep last night. Ben Weasel, one of my favorite punk rockers, has a tribute to the late, great pioneer.

Johnny Ramone was never recognized as a revolutionary guitarist. Chuck Berry gave us rock and roll guitar playing. Hendrix showed us what the instrument was capable of in the hands of somebody with the ambition, vision and tenacity to bend it to his will. But what Johnny Ramone contributed to rock and roll guitar playing was just as important – maybe even more important – because he took the instrument away from the rock gods and handed it back to the rest of us. Johnny turned the guitar back into a brutal, primal, stunningly effective tool. He proved that you didn’t need to be a virtuoso to be a great guitarist. He reminded the world that rock and roll was supposed to be fun.

Here is another tidbit in the CBS memo saga, but with a different twist: a case of mistaken identity.

My name is Robert Strong, and I am indeed a college professor. I am not, however, the Robert Strong who spoke to CBS. I never met Killian, I never lived in Texas, and I never served in that state’s Air National Guard. But on the Internet none of this matters.

Ever since the 60 Minutes broadcast, I have been getting angry e-mails from Bush supporters who are sure that I am a key player in a vast left-wing conspiracy bent on diminishing the president’s not extraordinary record of military service.

How did I become the enemy du jour of all those spiteful Republicans? I guess it has something to do with Google. Last week, if you typed the words Professor Robert Strong in the popular search engine, a webpage that happens to be about me appeared at the top of the list. For those who have been filling my e-mail inbox with vicious vitriol, that was apparently evidence enough. CBS says that its Bush-bashing documents have been authenticated by Strong; Google tells everyone on the Internet that I am Professor Strong. That’s it. I am guilty as Googled.

At first, I found all of this a bit funny. Here I was in the midst of my 15 minutes of fame, and it was just a case of mistaken identity. But the more e-mails I read, the less amused I became. The meat they contain is more raw and distasteful than any spam I have ever encountered.

Read the full article for more. (Access to the article does require registration, I’m afraid.)

Since I don’t often agree with Paul Wolfowitz, it’s worth mentioning it when I do, particularly when he comments on an issue close to home. His opinion piece in todays NYT denounces the bringing of criminal defamation charges against the editor of leading Indonesian magazine Tempo for a piece criticising a powerful businessman[1].

Here’s a story in the Australian which makes it clear that the businessman in question is of the class who would be described, here in Australia, as colourful.

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An article over at Harry’s Place gives what I think is probably the most eloquent version of the pro-(that)-war-(then) Left’s take on current events in Iraq. My main point of disagreement would be that I don’t think we’re making matters better by staying there (I also think that it’s probably a mistake to regard the anti-US forces as monolithic and undifferentiated “terrorists”). But it makes a number of good points which need to be taken seriously.

Following up on my “review”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002484.html of “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582344167/henryfarrell-20 last week, there’s a very nice piece on the book at “N+1”:http://www.nplusonemag.com/strange.html, which has a lot more to say about the book’s “levelling streak” than I could fit in a blogpost.

I know about N+1 thanks to a conversation with Scott McLemee, who does a very interesting article on ‘big processes’ sociologist “Michael Mann”:http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i04/04a01001.htm for the Chronicle. There’s a short critical quote from David Laitin, a Stanford political scientist – this reflects a long standing argument (Laitin is “no great fan”:http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/Expand/ingenta?pub=infobike://sage/j292/2003/00000031/00000001/art00006 of the kinds of research that Mann and others like him are interested in).

Finally, “Cosma Shalizi”:http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/247.html makes it into _Physical Review Letters_, which I understand from my colleagues in the hard sciences is a pretty big deal. Congratulations.

“Matt Yglesias”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#004032 says that there’s “no content to the Bush democracy agenda,” and that it’s “just a rhetorical flourish.” I don’t think that this is quite accurate – the real problem is that the Bush democracy agenda wasn’t intended to promote the worldwide spread of democracy as an end-goal; democracy was supposed to be an intermediate means towards a fix for America’s security problems in the Middle East. As “Josh Marshall”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html pointed out last year, the rationale was that democracy in Iraq would lead to the eventual creation of “a string of democratic, pro-Western governments (Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) stretching across the historical heartland of Islam.” In short, this was democracy promotion as _Realpolitik_ by other means. Thus, there’s no real inconsistency in principle with the toleration and indeed occasional encouragement of human rights abuses and autocracy in those parts of the world where US security interests wouldn’t be furthered by democratic reform. The problem, it seems to me, wasn’t so much the incoherence of the objectives (which were coherent, if wrong-headed) as the lack of any fundamental commitment to democracy _as such_, the unwillingness to use means of democracy promotion that might have had increased international legitimacy because they limited US power, and, of course, the profound and near-total incompetence with which the US pursued its goals.

I just wanted to wish people a Happy New Year. I am not going to say anything profound, just post text from an email that was forwarded to me a few days ago (below the fold). Of course, depending on your perspective, some of those lines could be considered pretty profound.

Otherwise, you can head over to the Unsealed Room to read up on the amusing circumstances of Madonna’s/Esther’s[1] visit to Israel (e.g. please, no Jewish photographers, wouldn’t want Jews to violate the High Holy Days).

fn1. I’d just like to add that I’m really glad she went with the English spelling so as not to upset my Google rankings.:)

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WIthout much fanfare, the US recorded its largest ever current account deficit in the June quarter, $166 billion. The NYT gave the story a fairly prominent run in the business pages , but the Washington Post ignored it altogether as far as I could see, and CBS Market Watch buried it in small print[1].

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I recently went to see a speech and Q&A session by Marty Peterson, deputy executive director of the CIA. Some notes:

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If “Matt Yglesias”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/blogosphere_tri.html is going to use philosophical technical jargon in political debates, he could at least try to be pedantic about it.

bq. After CBS ran the story, the conservative side of the ‘sphere came up with dozens of purported debunkings of their authenticity, almost all of which turned out to be more purported than debunking. Then after a few days of back-and-forth, traditional reporters at The Washington Post came out with a more careful, more accurate, more actually-debunking story. The folks at PowerLine and LGF are, at best, Gettier cases, they didn’t do any of the actual debunking. Instead, it was done by reporters working for major papers.

But these aren’t really Gettier cases, because Gettier cases are instances of *justified* true belief that aren’t knowledge, while the beliefs of the folks at Powerline and LGF were *unjustified* false beliefs.

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