Category: Words

Jargon, Blather, Hot Air

I’ve been reading Big Lies. It angers me. I tried to get a friend to read it, but she said I’d have to read Treason first. And let’s be honest here: Conason is a political hack, and “Big Lies” is obviously, clearly, and totally partisan. But Coulter is bullshit. Conason says, in effect, “I don’t mean to imply that all Democrats have served their country honorably. I am pointing out that the stereotype of the unpatriotic left is complete hogwash; at least as many Democrats as Republicans have served in the military, and much of the right was as afraid as the left to actually go to war in Vietnam: Dubya, Limbaugh, and Lott all bailed.” Coulter, on the other hand, says things like “There are no good Democrats” and “Liberals hate America.”

I am a liberal and I love America, OK? Maybe we’re going to have to start calling it progressive, but let’s think for just a minute about what it means to be liberal: not breathing coal-dust, not having your arms cut off by machinery, not working 80 hours a week for pennies a day, going to an emergency room and knowing you’ll be treated even if you don’t have proof of insurance. Promoting those values abroad. Promoting international diplomacy over international bloodshed. You can thank liberals, progressives, and pinkos for that kind of thing. The New Deal. Voting rights. Public education.

Media bias? My ass. Look at the real stats. CNN is moderate, everyone else is right, and the only radio that’s left of center is Pacifica, which is carried by three or four college stations in California and maybe Athens Georgia.

Yeah, unions get ossified, yeah, the academic theorists are absurd. Chomsky needs to shut the fuck up. But don’t say “liberal” means “traitor.” Don’t say “you hate America, freedom, and humanity” just because I try to put myself in my enemy’s shoes, try to understand where they come from and why they do the things they do, just because I acknowledge that my nation is not perfect.

Do you love your parents? Do you recognize that maybe they were wrong once or twice? Do you think maybe you could stand to acknowledge the faults in yourself and your nation before you begin tearing down others?

I acknowledge the role of the US government in destabilizing and toppling the Chilean government on 9/11/73. I acknowledge the role of the US government in the deaths of thousands of innocent or guilty civilians across the globe. I am aware that the US sponsored the Taliban, promoted jihad and fundamentalist rage at the Communist infidels. The US has, in the name of freedom, imprisoned many, just as churches have, in the name of the prince of peace, killed. That doesn’t mean that the US, or the churches, are bad things– merely that they have failed at one time or another.

Failures on the part of the US don’t make Allende a good president, or the Sandinistas saints. Intransigence on the part of the IDF doesn’t make the PLO right, either. US manipulation in the civil wars in Afghanistan during the 70s doesn’t mean that when Al Quada attacked, anyone deserved it. Nobody deserves that.

No, it’s not fair to say “they had it coming.” But then again, neither did Nicaragua. Neither did Chile. Saddam had it coming. Even then, after a certain point, that’s not what matters. We knew something was coming, whether we ‘had it coming’ or not. The Sandinistas knew, Allende knew, we all knew, when we did what we did, that we were playing with something we couldn’t control. And the US diplomats and spies and development agencies, when they fiddled with the geopolitical morass of the Middle East, knew that they were fiddling with a system too complex for anyone to control. They did what they thought was best at the time they did it, and that’s all that anyone can do.

Lileks accuses people like me of disliking ‘moral clarity,’ and there, I guess he may be right: moral clarity is often a sign that you have made a gross simplification, rash judgement, or transparent justification for something that isn’t nearly as simple as all that.

Look at your gallery of bizarre foods, James. Listen to the political tapes of Thurmond weighing in against the negro race in his swimming pools. Fifty years from now, how much of what we have said and done will be completely incomprehensible?

Assorted Update

I find I’ve been blogging and exercising less, and interacting with humans more, recently. Probably a good thing, despite the imperceptible loss of muscle tone. So, assorted links: Software development life cycle diagram. For anyone in software, it rings all too true.

NationMaster stats toy. Awesome power!

Now, I’d like to comment on Rasmussen’s note that many religious people do indeed object to non-Christian teachers, and that’s why they have religious schools. My reaction of course is “exactly!” If you have a particular religious agenda (No non-Christians in role-model positions, say) then you should have a religious school, not a legislative movement to impose your religious views on the secular majority.

Now, is there an empirically demonstrable danger to safety and well-being that stems from having homosexuals employed by our state school systems? I doubt it. Iain Murray looks into it further and comes to no conclusion at all.

Road Names

Here in Taxachussets, some things are called funny names.

For example, they say “massave” to designate Massachussets Avenue. And “commave” for Commonwealth Avenue. Some people say “dotave” for Dorchester Avenue. And some say “memdrive” for Memorial Drive. I do, and Ryan does. Megan and Antonia insist, however, that noooobody says Mem Drive to mean Memorial Drive.

But what do they know? They’re so vehemently cantabridgian they say “downtown” to designate anything east of the river, whether that’s Beacon, Brookline, or Brighton.

….

Speaking of big words, Toby Cecchini has a book coming out called “Cosmopolitan” that uses a lot of big words. It’s about being a star bartender– he worked at the Odeon and took a rather obscure cocktail named the Cosmopolitan and revised it slightly, and then watched it become very very popular, and burn out, and turn way too sweet, and now he’s embarrassed by it. (He likes it 5 parts citron vodka, 5 parts triple sec, 4 parts fresh lime juice (the fresh juice is key– Rose’s is waaay too sweet, and I should know, I love the stuff), and just enough cranberry to color it.) But mostly the book is about what it’s like to be somewhere at the intersection of servant, pimp, pusher, and artist.

He doesn’t quite hold his tone as well as he should, and is no good excuse for his use of the word “salubrious,” and even of his (multiple) uses of the word “matinal.” Nonetheless, he does a good job of showing off a liberal arts education which presumably he hasn’t used much behind the bar. And he also shows off a lot of fantastic insight into why the food industry is amazing, cool, and not for anyone who can avoid it. I’ve often fantasized about being a bartender, but then again, I’ve often fantasized about being a race car driver or an astronaut, and neither of those are likely to happen either. I enjoy playing bartender at parties like I enjoy playing race car driver in games, or space cadet at work, but that doesn’t make a career out of it.

Steven Levitt

Really neat NYT profile of Steven Levitt, economics supastar. They say, and he says, he’s not the best at math, econometrics, theory, taxes, inflation, or any of those things, but that he asks the best questions, and puts the tools of economics to better use, than anyone else.

It makes you wonder about the nature of success and the abilities and drives of it: economics success for so long has been about long hours of data-crunching, rather than application of insight. So when you take insight to the field, even when combined with slightly less of the nuts-and-bolds stuff, it really makes a great change and opens up new views of the world.

I’m not the best technical writer in the world. I certainly don’t have the attention to detail that the guys from Sun do: I fall asleep faced with the word lists, the style rules, the translation preparations, the charts and tables. I feel that I have a more creative role in our cooperative projects. Although they have more technical expertise, we all (as far as I can tell) regard each other as equals.