Tropics of Cancer

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Wing Effect, or Mass Commander

As an avid gamer, I have been upset by the shift of good RPGs from the PC to X-Box and other consoles.  The latest entry to debut on console before PC is Mass Effect, feted everywhere as BioWare's latest home run.  People go on and on about how Mass Effect revolutionizes storytelling, because a character makes decisions that affect that later plot.  (You can see the effect, if you have about 200 spare hours, by watching TydelM's YouTube channel, where he has the game-play videos up.)  But I can't help thinking: does anyone remember a little game called Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom?  That's just a little game that featured Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell.  Which means, basically, that the long-awaited Star Trek/Star Wars crossover has taken place.  At least by proxy.

A Return to Normal Space

It is common knowledge that time does not function the same way in three dimensions as it does in hyperspace.  The problem began when Cornelius, our laboratory assistant/life companion, spilled his evening Diet Mr. Pibb into our supercolliding superconductor, forcing Topics out of normal space time and into a hyperdimensional rift.  While it only took the staff a few seconds to realize the error and apply an orthogonal variation of the Minkowski tensor, but that turned out to have taken several months upon return to the mortal coil.

So, Tropics descended back to the plane of mass and energy, and promptly went to the airport.  Upon arrival, it noticed the introduction of Smart Cards to JFK.  These are little cards that store biometric data and are meant to speed one's way through airport security.  Now, it is well-known that Tropics supports mass, involuntary tagging of everyone who cannot beat us at arm-wrestling (and voluntary tagging for those who can), but the biometric scanners strangely resembled suicide booths.

The second, and perhaps more critical, observation that we must make is that McDonald's is finally in the education business.  A marketplace of educational qualifications is crucial, especially so McDonald's can out-compete the US' resident educational fast-food shack.

Unironically, Salon makes it easy for me to articulate what I don't like about Oprah

It's true, we had a lovely relationship for ages, but finally it was time to move on.  Oprah just wasn't the woman for me any longer.  I was the one who ended things, but she just couldn't seem to accept that I didn't feel the same way anymore.  So then the late-night phone calls began; eventually they led to a restraining order.  But at the end of the day, it's nice to have someone give you a reason for your breakup.  So I must thank Peter Birkenhead, over at Salon, for giving me new reasons to dislike my ex.

Look how deftly he deconstructs Oprah's paradigm of self-actualization:

For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented.

A Crazy Day for Page 2

Don't look now, but ESPN's Page 2 is having one of it's best days in a long time.  First, there's Robert Lipsyte's scathing indictment of jock culture, and then Greg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback (from which I quoted his exchange with "Julie.")  Both worth the read.

For Julie

This is how we all go through life:

I Hate Julie! For Northeast dwellers like me, holiday travel season brings calls to Amtrak, and that means talking to "Julie," the infuriating, sickly sweet automated voice of the nation's tax-subsidized rail carrier. "Julie" pretends to be your friend, but you must listen to her read long stretches of boilerplate before she'll let you speak to a real human being – and Amtrak insults your intelligence by making you say "agent, agent, agent, agent, agent, agent, agent," over and over before "Julie" finally intones, "Would you like to speak to an agent?" Has even one single traveler ever actually used "Julie" to book a train ticket? Here is TMQ's 2006 desultory conversation with "Julie" – bearing in mind that Congress expropriates money from your pocket to pay for her:

JULIE: I'll be able to help you. Let's get started.

ME: Ontologically, I cannot start unless I know where I must end.

JULIE: Sorry. I didn't understand.

ME: Obviously you didn't go to college.

JULIE: Are you interested in a one-way or round trip?

ME: We are all on a one-way trip.

JULIE: Sorry. Could you repeat that?

ME: Julie, I would like you to take me places I have never been.

JULIE: No problem. If you decide you want to return, we can take care of that later.

ME. I'd like two tickets to paradise.

JULIE: What city would you like to start from?

ME: Sumer. That is where human civilization started.

JULIE: I think you said, "Seattle train station."

Later

JULIE: You need to say what kind of people will be traveling.

ME: It's me -- the passenger is worldly, debonair, irresistible to women, vaguely noir-ish in an impermanent, contingent sort of way.

JULIE: I'm having trouble understanding you.

ME: Why don't we meet for a drink in the lounge car and I'll explain.

JULIE: I'd better connect you to an agent.

Wikipedia is Factual

I didn't know any of the following facts:

Over the years Bubbles moved out of the limelight living at the Neverland Ranch. However, in 2003 after Martin Bashir made the infamous Living with Michael Jackson documentary several outtakes discussed and filmed Bubbles at the ranch living at the residence. Bubbles wore a diaper and used Jackson's private toilet. The jury in Jackson's 2005 child molestation case were shown excerpts of the documentary in which Bashir interviews Jackson about the chimpanzee's being employed around the ranch and doing work such as dusting and cleaning of windows and toilets. Jackson explained: "They (chimpanzees) are very smart". Jackson then stated that, "Their DNA is identical to humans when you look under a microscope." The statement is not scientifically accurate. Actor Corey Feldman, a friend of Jackson's, said, "I met Bubbles and all kinds of chimps." Also at the trial former maids and Bubbles ex-personal assistant confirmed he was eventually sent away from the ranch to a care facility after he became violent with increasing age and even bit several people. A younger chimp named "Max" now lives with Michael Jackson.

In 1988 Jeff Koons made Michael Jackson and Bubbles, the world's largest ceramic, a life-size gold-leaf plated statue of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles. The piece measures 106.7 x 179.1 x 82.6 cm (42 x 70.5 x 32.5 in) and is described as a mix of pop culture and high art. The sculpture shows Michael Jackson reclining with his arm around Bubbles. It is the most valuable sculpture by a living artist. In 1991 it was sold to an anonymous buyer at Sotheby's in New York City as Lot 7655 for $5,600,000, trebling Koons' previous sale record.

These bits of stardust are the stuff of knowledge.

LD50

Did you know that the LD50 for Grain Alcohol is 7.06 g/kg for aged rats?

Sigh....

I am all for the democratic take-over of Congress, except for the degree to which it means that the Dems will be left holding the Republican bag.  But do we really need the sexist analysis of Pelosi's fashion?

Armani stands as a kind of professional armor. It is protective but soft. Tailored but with a drape. It is the style of business dress that in the 1980s famously feminized menswear and brought masculine confidence to women's wear. An Armani suit, for a woman, is a tool for playing with the boys without pretending to be one.

Sigh....

Mhahahaha

Take that, Cameron Crazies:

Duke's student fan section, which has been allowed to stand on floor space behind press row for decades, is being forced to retreat to the bleachers in Cameron Indoor Stadium in the interests of fire safety.

And Mike Kryzywyszyskysi, do you want some cheese with your whine?

"Where were [the fire marshals] for the last 50 years?" he told the Durham Herald Sun. "It's like, 'Did we do something wrong? And if that is the case, then how might we be able to solve it without hurting the students?' They're on the team, too. They should be as close to the court as possible."

Two bitters in one dish

They stood possessed by the same thought, ugly enough, even as an assumption:  that a union between them, had such been possible, would have meant a terrible intensification of unfitness-- two bitters in one dish.
                                                                                    --Jude the Obscure

UMD 13, Clemson 12

"Finally, a place at the table."

UMD pulls off the upset and will be vaulted into the Top 25 in all likelihood.  The reversal of the safety call on the Clemson 6-inch line was one of the most ridiculous reversals I've seen.  Instant replay: crappy.  But who's complaining?  This is what fall's all about.

Dreams of unreason

Objectivity has its home in the waking life; dreams welcome unreason.

                                                                          -- Ian Hacking, "Dreams in Place," in Historical Ontology

Tonight's TV List

Things I'm watching tonight:

• Deep Blue Sea
• A Discovery-HD Program on Nellis Air Force Base
• The World Series of Poker
• Court TV's "Forensic Files"
• E!'s "The Soup"
• American Chopper
• Jumpin' Jack Flash (Yes, the one with Whoopi Goldberg)

So far, enjoying The Soup the most tonight.

Look at Stephen Colbert take on the thorny field of topology

No, it's not the Seven Bridges of Konisberg problem, nor is it knot theory.  It's Stephen Colbert taking on the whole, grand field of topology.  Sphere eversion will never be the same.

Iraq, or how I learned to cripple a superpower

It's easy to let the story slip by, considering how many other things have been happening, but things have gotten really, really bad in Iraq.  The scariest snippet:

Further demonstrating the growing fragmentation in Iraq, a bloc of Sunni insurgent groups marked the anniversary [of the Iraqi government's referendum on the US backed constitution] by declaring a separate Islamic republic in Iraq, stretching from the western province of Anbar to Baghdad, Kirkuk and other parts of the north. The announcement was made by a spokesman for the Mujaheddin Shura Council, an umbrella organization of insurgent groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, and aired by al-Jazeera satellite television.

Let's be blunt: invading Iraq was a terribly silly thing to do, the liberal-humanist (and suddenly conservative) case posed by Chris Hitchens notwithstanding.  It was silly because the administration so hopelessly bungled pre-war planning (not intelligence, mind you, but reconstruction planning) and the actual follow-through in the first few months that we've been headed for this since then.

For the record, here's how Iraq should have been stabilized: instead of farming 80 Billion out to Halliburton so it could serve $8 hot dogs in the green zone canteen, pump the money into the army corps of engineers (let's not think about Katrina for the moment, hmmm?)  The day after the statue of Saddam falls, send out a general call through religious and community leaders that any able-bodied man who wants a job can have one.  Then, you put Iraqis to work building bridges, cleaning up streets, whatever.  Oh, and you have enough boots on the ground to have an effective, enforceable martial law from the get-go.  Yes, it will be expensive; and yes, it will take a long time, but we've been there for how long now?

Who ever said that football teams from Florida are undisciplined?

Most of my Saturdays in the fall are occupied watching college football.  I try to shower on Friday night, and make coffee and breakfast ahead of time, because out here on the west coast the morning shows start as early at 7 AM, and the games begin at 9.  I usually flip between 3 or 4 games at once, but somehow I missed this wonderful example of everything that is wrong with (1)College Football, and (2)Teams from Florida.  Witness a pointless melee in all its glory:

[Update:] 31 players are to be suspended.

Want tenure?

Would you like tenure at a Research I university?  Would you like to have people squint slightly at cocktail parties when you tell them what you do, sure that while they've heard the words you said before, they've never heard them in that order, and that you aren't worth talking to because you don't make 6 figures?  Would you like to be accused of being self-absorbed, egotistical, and condescending when not being called a nerd and cave-dweller for something you're passionate about?  Do you want to fantasize about the Harvard Society of Fellows, All Soul's College, the Insitute for Advanced Study, or even the College de France while teaching at a community college and wallowing in your own failed mediocrity?  (Yes, you can fail to even be mediocre!)  If so, a life of tenure might be right for you. 

At any rate, here's the problem that you must solve, according to Philip Abrams:

The problem of agency is the problem of finding a way of accounting for human experience which recognizes simultaneously and in equal measure that history and society are made by constant and more or less purposeful individual actions and that individual action, however purposeful, is made by history and society.  How do we, as active subjects make a world of objects which then, as it were, become subjects making us their objects?  It is the problem of individual and society, consciousness and being, action and structure; a problem to which the voices of everyday life speak as loudly as those of scholars.  It is easily and endlessly formulated but, it seem, stupefyingly difficult to resolve.  People make their own history--but only under definite circumstances and conditions: we act through a world of rules which our action creates, breaks and renews--we are creatures of rules, the rules are our creations: we make our world--the world confronts us as an implacable and autonomous system of social facts.

Go!

St. Augustine before bed

A snippet of Augustine's Confessions on my bed stand (yes, I keep it there, but only to beat my monkey lab assistant.  I was hitting him as usual for screwing up the nightly supercomputer runs, but the book fell open to the following.  Fate?  You decide.):

That is what I used to say, and these winds blew first one way, then the other, pushing my heart to and fro.  Times passed by.  I 'delayed turning to the Lord' and postponed 'from day to day' finding life in you.  I did not postpone the fact that every day I was dying within myself.  I longed for the happy life, but was afraid of the place where it has its seat, and fled from it at the same time as I was seeking for it.  I thought I would become very miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of [the world].

Goodbye to All That

The seasons are changing here.  It rained for the first time in months the other day.  It's nice to walk around the morning after a rainstorm because plants that looked like they were on the edge of death, like they would crumble in your hands if you touched them, sprout little buds.

I always liked the sound of rain.  I remember when I was a child opening my window on warm summer nights to listen to the rain as I fell asleep.  It rains here in the fall and winter, so you have to pile blankets on your bed, but the sound of rain is still just as peaceful.  I used to imagine that the rain was whispering secrets to me.

Iraq, or how to screw up being an imperial viceroy

There's an excellent article in the WaPo today, part of a series on the "Emerald City," which explores the utter, terrible fiasco that was the reconstruction of Iraq.  The take-home is that the US Government went with political appointees instead of technocrats to administer Iraq, with predictably FUBAR results.  My favorite passage contrasts the public health technocrat with his Bush-approved replacement:

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

I'm buying this guy's book when it comes out.

It is nice to be loved

The Tropics staff--which consists of myself and my research assistant Cornelius--is always gratified to have attention.  In fact, if you're not reading this, Cornelius, like a fairy, loses his wings.  Which will make it damn hard for him to fly back to the Tropics mountainside redoubt with my lunch.  So you'd better read.  Anyway, people come to this site for lots of reasons, but I am particularly gratified for the following.  I'll let the markup speak for itself:

www.answers.com/why do they call it the tropic of cancer

We are happy to help.  The reason that they call it the "Tropic of Cancer" is because, of course, the waters and land between 23 26'22" latitude and the equator are heavily saturated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, which will give you cancer.

Watch George Will construct a moral narrative!

Ahhh, George Will, master of the preening, condescending conservative intelligentsia!  You had me at hello, you Ivy-League and Oxbridge educated former philosophy professor with a Coke-Bottle stare!  (I know you shadow your time as an agricultural laborer in Kansas, so I don't worry to much about charges of elitism.)  Just when I thought that I couldn't love you any more deeply, just when I fantasized about late-night trysts in Madam's Organ in DC, you had to prove to me how wonderful you really are, by constructing a moral narrative about Wal-Mart in the WaPo today.

I know you better than you know yourself, George, but for the benefit of Tropics readers, let me tell them a little about the ground rules of the moral narrative, especially when applied to politics.  (1)Democrats are a monolithic ideological organization, so their intellectual contradictions can be exposed as deep, irrational paradoxes.  (2)It's best when the drama exposes a tragic betrayal of principles that only you recognized.  (3)As in any drama, there are roles to play.  There are heroes, villains, and dupes.  These roles must be assigned.  (4)All these rules must point inevitably to a better way.  Your way, George.

So, without further adieu, let's get down to this article.  The first rule is that "liberalism" needs to be characterized by a monolithic ideology.  Check:

Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce -- yes, announce -- that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by . . . liberals.

To have my views articulated so closely by someone else can't be anything but love!  I can't believe that you summed up my views so closely.  Those damned masses!  Those people who scan the market before them like sovereigns, choosing from infinite options to select the one that is universally best!  Oh, how I wish I could supervise them.  I've always wanted a name tag and a baton!  And of course, this is what all liberals believe.  Truly!

The second rule is that there needs to be a tragic betrayal of principles.  Check here, too, because of course what's going on is the liberal betrayal of poor black people:

This suburb, contiguous with Chicago's western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city, and more than 90 percent of the store's customers are African American.

One of whom, a woman pushing a shopping cart with a stoical 3-year-old along for the ride, has a chip on her shoulder about the size of this 141,000-square-foot Wal-Mart. She applied for a job when the store opened in January and was turned down because, she said, the person doing the hiring "had an attitude." So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and directs his attention to the low prices of the DVDs on the rack next to her.

George, this passage is particularly masterful because you didn't even sneak in a little condescension of your own with the line about the hiring person "having an attitude."  There is no need to talk about how you need to provide some carping reason why there was something wrong with what the woman did to prevent her from being hired.  You don't need that, because of course this is about how liberals are trying to hurt black people by making them pay more money.

Our third rule is that there must be roles played.  Of course the hero is Wal-Mart itself.  It is fighting the good fight, trying to make a buck and provide low prices; thus, everyone wins!

Wal-Mart, the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy, has almost as many employees (1.3 million) as the U.S. military has uniformed personnel.

And there must be stooges.  In this case, it is the elite dupes of the Democratic party, senseless from the overdrive of one too many lattes:

The big-hearted progressives on Chicago's City Council, evidently unconcerned that the city gets zero sales tax revenue from a half-billion dollars that Chicago residents spend in the 42 suburban Wal-Marts, have passed a bill that, by dictating wages and benefits, would keep Wal-Marts from locating in the city.

Those poor Democrats!  If only, like Richard Daly, they could see!  But of course, would there even be drama without a villain?  It's the sclerotic, ossified unions, of course!

But because unions are strong in many grocery stores trying to compete with Wal-Mart, unions are yanking on the Democratic Party's leash, demanding laws to force Wal-Mart to pay wages and benefits higher than those that already are high enough to attract 77 times as many applicants than there were jobs at this store.

So what is the better way, Georgie-oh?  (Oops, you told me never to use our "together name" in public...)  You're a little more subtle about it, but it's all in the phrase "consumer sovereignty."  Let me try to reconstruct: markets are neutral arbiters of consumer preferences.  Jobs and their wages are dictated purely by the forces of supply and demand, and the absolute role of government is to get the hell out of the way of these forces, which are natural, naturally.

Now, I know there are probably some soft liberals out there who might take issue with your moral narrative.  They might dispute you on empirical terms, citing the many ways in which Wal-Mart exploits workers all along its logistical chain, depresses wages, crushes unionizing, or costs the government money by foisting health care onto it.  Or those pesky liberals might argue about your straw-man argument about class, suggesting that they do have the best interests of the poor and downtrodden at heart and that you've probably never had to work any place remotely like WalMart.  Or they might even--the gall!--dispute you on philosophical terms, arguing, for example, that the assertion that markets are natural is a joke, and that they have this ugly tendency--under the guise of "consumer sovereignty"--to destroy the meaningful fabric of society.

But George, I see your argument for what it really is: common sense talked straight-commonly to the common man, who sensibly shops at Wal-Mart.  I love you, George.

This is why the Orioles are a laughing-stock

It is hard to be from Baltimore.  Particularly because we have a famously terrible baseball team, it's a great day when you have to read the following lede in MLB.com's home team summary of the game against Boston:

Like a lunar eclipse, a Baltimore win over Boston can only happen under precise astronomical conditions.

Sigh....

The hippo reveals his stripes

Now is the time to start being afraid...:

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

Fads and Youtube

Only those who have been desperately hiding under a rock waiting for the thunderstorms in their souls to stop have missed the story of LonleyGirl, that faux-art reality mash-up from YouTube.  It's now hit the NYT for several hours on the front page, and seems to have achieved widespread guerrilla publicity.  All well and good, but I could certainly do without the following pretentiousness from the "creators":

Right now, the biggest mystery of Lonelygirl15 is “who is she?” We think this is an oversimplification. Lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone. She is no more real or fictitious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us.

Yes.  And nobody's slathering over the viewership produced by an ultra-low-budget production.  Nobody is thinking of this as a new business model.

Not something you'd expect

At the risk of becoming exclusively a football blog: a backup punter for Northern Colorado (gotta love the "directional" schools) stabbed the starting punter in the leg.

Mitch Cozad, a sophomore from Wheatland, Wyo., allegedly attacked starting punter Rafael Mendoza in a parking lot in Evans on Monday night, Evans police Lt. Gary Kessler said.

Sorry I've been away

I was having my teeth pulled in a bloody, medieval procedure.  A weekend of vicodin is sadly not conducive to my usual witty commentary.  As an apology, please look at this picture of an oddly jacked NFL Referee:

Caught in a spider's web

An incredible amount of information passes through the Tropics underground lair.  Located below NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, the ECHELON-based supercomputers that process all the world's culture for possible Tropics analysis sometimes back up.  Thus it was that only today that my intelligent chimpanzee office assistant gave me the data output that Duke University Football fighting Blue Devils were upset by the Division 1-AA Richmond Spiders.  Not only was an ACC football team--one of the marquee football conferences in the country--upset by a 1-AA, they were shut out.

Why pragmatists are fun

My exam prep adventures take me today throught he work of Charles Sanders Pierce.  Ahh, what fun!

It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula witout meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will someitmes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and comdemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty.

I can't imagine who this might apply to:

I was in Crawford and I said I was looking for a book to read and Laura said you oughtta try Camus, I also read three Shakespeares.