A brief light piercing through this week’s usual complement of dreary news: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from more than seven years of house arrest.
House arrest was only the latest of the restrictions levied on Suu Kyi. She was separated from her husband and sons for more than two decades—they lived in Britain and if she visited them there was a good chance that she’d have been refused return to Myanmar. The junta even denied her husband permission to visit her when he was dying eleven years ago.
Of course, you never know with dictatorships whether a decision will be reversed in the next five minutes. And you definitely know that this woman isn’t going to veer from the course she’s held for more than 25 years, resisting the military dictators and working to bring democracy to her country.
So it’s not the beginning of the end. But it’s a lovely end to this week in November to think that she’s able to walk around her neighborhood and share a cup of tea with a friend.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
The bishops' strife
Well, I just almost don’t know what to say: it seems three sitting and two retired Anglican bishops are jumping ship because the Church of England has decided to move ahead with ordaining women priests and consecrating women bishops.
Evidently Pope Benedict XVI is happy to welcome them, married though they be, into the fold. After all, he’s been having a bit of pother over the failed cover-up of pedophile priests. Probably five white middle-aged guys who’ve managed monogamy are looking pretty good about now.
According to the Telegraph, the Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, compared the CoE to a chain of “failing coffeeshops” that doesn’t maintain consistent product offerings across its franchises.
“The Church of England has decided that it can make its own mind up about what it can do. There are signs it is forgetting and losing a sense of where it came from,” Burnham is quoted as averring.
According to a statement released by the Fab Five, this range of ecclesiastic products, including new approaches to women, gays & who knows what-all, “is incompatible with the historic vocation of Anglicanism and the tradition of the church for nearly 2,000 years.”
Now, I only know what I read in the papers, & I’m certainly not a theologian, but I find it just choice that leaders of a sect established to satisfy the sexual & dynastic appetites (and fill the coffers) of Henry VIII should suddenly be shocked, utterly shocked, that the church has the unmitigated gall to move into the 21st Century.
These are leaders who recognize the reigning monarch of Britain as the head of their church as God’s representative, & have conveniently neglected to mention that this particular tradition only goes back 500 years.
As near as I can tell, they don’t like the way the match has gone, so they’re picking up their balls & going home.
Or, as the Brits would say, tossing their toys out of the pram.
I don’t know which is sadder: them for being in such a snit or Benedict for being so grateful to have them.
Evidently Pope Benedict XVI is happy to welcome them, married though they be, into the fold. After all, he’s been having a bit of pother over the failed cover-up of pedophile priests. Probably five white middle-aged guys who’ve managed monogamy are looking pretty good about now.
According to the Telegraph, the Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, compared the CoE to a chain of “failing coffeeshops” that doesn’t maintain consistent product offerings across its franchises.
“The Church of England has decided that it can make its own mind up about what it can do. There are signs it is forgetting and losing a sense of where it came from,” Burnham is quoted as averring.
According to a statement released by the Fab Five, this range of ecclesiastic products, including new approaches to women, gays & who knows what-all, “is incompatible with the historic vocation of Anglicanism and the tradition of the church for nearly 2,000 years.”
Now, I only know what I read in the papers, & I’m certainly not a theologian, but I find it just choice that leaders of a sect established to satisfy the sexual & dynastic appetites (and fill the coffers) of Henry VIII should suddenly be shocked, utterly shocked, that the church has the unmitigated gall to move into the 21st Century.
These are leaders who recognize the reigning monarch of Britain as the head of their church as God’s representative, & have conveniently neglected to mention that this particular tradition only goes back 500 years.
As near as I can tell, they don’t like the way the match has gone, so they’re picking up their balls & going home.
Or, as the Brits would say, tossing their toys out of the pram.
I don’t know which is sadder: them for being in such a snit or Benedict for being so grateful to have them.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Eleven eleven eleven
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, an armistice went into effect between the armed forces of the Central Powers and those of the Allied Nations. And thus ended, not with a bang but a whimper, the worst systematic slaughter the world had seen up until that time.
From August 1914 until November 1918 around 8.5 million soldiers of the various armies and navies were killed, and another 21 million wounded. Maybe six million civilians were killed and I don’t have figures for further collateral damage.
I’m also not counting the death toll from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, or the Russian Civil War, both of which are related to the conflagration.
World War I was one of those appalling confluences of technology, politics, idiocy and willful refusal by those in positions of power to view the world as it really was and not as they expected or wanted it to be. Among the worst offenders were the military commanders, the generals, the field marshals, the planners & the strategists.
What they essentially ignored was the fact that the invention and implementation of the machine gun gave the tactical advantage to the defensive, and that the frontal charge, even by mobile troops like cavalry, simply couldn’t work against entrenched forces with this new technology.
Every time I revisit this war, in books, in film or TV or on the battlefields, I’m poleaxed all over again at the utter blindness and criminal stubbornness of the professionals whose business it was to send men into battle for a purpose (to win battles, gain territory, destroy enemy armies, ,bring about some change). Because again and again they proved Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, expecting different results.
And, frankly, it’s not like they didn’t see it coming. There were European military observers at many of the battles of the US War Between the States, when the prototypical use of entrenchments and rapid fire indicated things to come. And at the battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, western military observers practically outnumbered the combatants and saw first-hand what happens when infantry charges machine gun emplacements. (Among the observers were Ian Hamilton, later to command the British debacle at Gallipoli; John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force; and Douglas MacArthur. Don’t get me started on MacArthur.)
The First World War is a nightmare of pitched battles and wholesale slaughter, repeated again and again throughout a four-year night. It exhausted nations, natural resources, gene pools and national political and moral fiber. It left a legacy of open wounds, disillusion, broken dreams and broken faith, and I don’t think we’ve fully recovered from it 92 years on.
The problem is, in my view, that we haven’t really learned from it, although we’ve been paying for it all along. Old men were too traumatized by 1914-18 to step up to the plate in 1933 in Manchuria or 1938 in Munich to scotch the snake (which by then was armed with 20 years of improved weaponry, like tanks and tactical fighter-bombers; as well as ideologies that would have wilted the moustaches of Wilhelm II or Franz Josef I). Willfully blind to the realities of Stalin’s rule, western leaders gave away the farm in Eastern Europe, and then gathered to their bosom surviving Nazis to help fight the Cold War. (And, 65 years beyond that, now we have technologies including satellite navigation, handheld missile launchers, dirty bombs, assault rifles and mass communications undreamt of 100 years ago. And nuclear devices.)
And then there’s the situation in the Balkans and Middle East. All the result of or exacerbated by that Great War, and all living on beyond the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.
You notice I’m short on any answers to these situations. Me—I start by remembering.
From August 1914 until November 1918 around 8.5 million soldiers of the various armies and navies were killed, and another 21 million wounded. Maybe six million civilians were killed and I don’t have figures for further collateral damage.
I’m also not counting the death toll from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, or the Russian Civil War, both of which are related to the conflagration.
World War I was one of those appalling confluences of technology, politics, idiocy and willful refusal by those in positions of power to view the world as it really was and not as they expected or wanted it to be. Among the worst offenders were the military commanders, the generals, the field marshals, the planners & the strategists.
What they essentially ignored was the fact that the invention and implementation of the machine gun gave the tactical advantage to the defensive, and that the frontal charge, even by mobile troops like cavalry, simply couldn’t work against entrenched forces with this new technology.
Every time I revisit this war, in books, in film or TV or on the battlefields, I’m poleaxed all over again at the utter blindness and criminal stubbornness of the professionals whose business it was to send men into battle for a purpose (to win battles, gain territory, destroy enemy armies, ,bring about some change). Because again and again they proved Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, expecting different results.
And, frankly, it’s not like they didn’t see it coming. There were European military observers at many of the battles of the US War Between the States, when the prototypical use of entrenchments and rapid fire indicated things to come. And at the battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, western military observers practically outnumbered the combatants and saw first-hand what happens when infantry charges machine gun emplacements. (Among the observers were Ian Hamilton, later to command the British debacle at Gallipoli; John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force; and Douglas MacArthur. Don’t get me started on MacArthur.)
The First World War is a nightmare of pitched battles and wholesale slaughter, repeated again and again throughout a four-year night. It exhausted nations, natural resources, gene pools and national political and moral fiber. It left a legacy of open wounds, disillusion, broken dreams and broken faith, and I don’t think we’ve fully recovered from it 92 years on.
The problem is, in my view, that we haven’t really learned from it, although we’ve been paying for it all along. Old men were too traumatized by 1914-18 to step up to the plate in 1933 in Manchuria or 1938 in Munich to scotch the snake (which by then was armed with 20 years of improved weaponry, like tanks and tactical fighter-bombers; as well as ideologies that would have wilted the moustaches of Wilhelm II or Franz Josef I). Willfully blind to the realities of Stalin’s rule, western leaders gave away the farm in Eastern Europe, and then gathered to their bosom surviving Nazis to help fight the Cold War. (And, 65 years beyond that, now we have technologies including satellite navigation, handheld missile launchers, dirty bombs, assault rifles and mass communications undreamt of 100 years ago. And nuclear devices.)
And then there’s the situation in the Balkans and Middle East. All the result of or exacerbated by that Great War, and all living on beyond the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.
You notice I’m short on any answers to these situations. Me—I start by remembering.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
How's your drink?
I’m so glad I’m no longer in Washington state. In the space of a week Evergreen voters rejected two ballot measures that would have removed the state government’s monopoly on the sale of liquor to the public, & the State Liquor Board has banned the sale of alcoholic energy drinks.
I don’t get either—except that they’re both indicators that the population that considers themselves the vortex of intellectual activity also clearly thinks that Government Knows Best, & that the intellectual achievers are too stupid to make rational choices about booze.
But the energy drink thing just doesn’t make sense. Apparently if you want to buy a Red Bull & vodka you’re jake; or if you order up a Colt 45, no problem; if you want a caffeinated alcopop you’ll have to go to Idaho.
Really—you just can't make this stuff up.
I don’t get either—except that they’re both indicators that the population that considers themselves the vortex of intellectual activity also clearly thinks that Government Knows Best, & that the intellectual achievers are too stupid to make rational choices about booze.
But the energy drink thing just doesn’t make sense. Apparently if you want to buy a Red Bull & vodka you’re jake; or if you order up a Colt 45, no problem; if you want a caffeinated alcopop you’ll have to go to Idaho.
Really—you just can't make this stuff up.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The hamster connection
Scott Adams has once again slammed his analytic hammer on the goutish toe of modern business: hamster-brained sociopaths in corporate management are necessary to the health of the economy.
Not for the corporations they suck the life out of, but for making life in the collective so futile & so miserable that the best & brightest employees realize that they’ve hit what Adams calls the “manure ceiling” & they leave in droves.
I really can’t improve on his analysis.
Not for the corporations they suck the life out of, but for making life in the collective so futile & so miserable that the best & brightest employees realize that they’ve hit what Adams calls the “manure ceiling” & they leave in droves.
I really can’t improve on his analysis.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Coming soon to a table near you
From the WSJ I have just learnt about the cherpumple as a prospect for holiday meals. Not only is it too much dessert, it’s too much information.
In case your clicking finger is broken, a cherpumple is three whole pies—cherry, pumpkin & apple—baked into three cake layers—white, yellow & spice, respectively. Then it’s glued together with cream cheese frosting.
This is just plain wrong on so many levels. For one thing, pumpkin pie is slimy & disgusting all on its own. I’ve made it a couple of times for holiday dinners, but I’ve never been able to gag down more than a single forkful.
I think my chief objection—aside from the sheer excess—is the amount of work involved. Even though the cherpumple inventor uses frozen pies & cake mixes, you have bake the pies, then wrangle them into their respective cake layers & bake again.
Plus, apparently it’s a crap shoot as to whether the thing is actually baked through.
Then you have to assemble it with “three tall tubs of cream cheese frosting” & hope to God it doesn’t collapse on you or slide off in three different directions. I mean—cakes are supposed to be light; imagine what the layers are like with a pie in each of them? We’re not talking about the ground-up Styrofoam crème-like filling in a Hostess Sno Ball here.
The article says all this folderol can take up to three days.
& when you’re done with all that, what have you got? Something at least 83% of your friends aren’t going to touch with a barge pole, much less a fork.
With the holiday season fast approaching, here's a hope: that you don’t have anyone in your life who’d put a cherpumple on the table in the expectation you’ll eat it.
In case your clicking finger is broken, a cherpumple is three whole pies—cherry, pumpkin & apple—baked into three cake layers—white, yellow & spice, respectively. Then it’s glued together with cream cheese frosting.
This is just plain wrong on so many levels. For one thing, pumpkin pie is slimy & disgusting all on its own. I’ve made it a couple of times for holiday dinners, but I’ve never been able to gag down more than a single forkful.
I think my chief objection—aside from the sheer excess—is the amount of work involved. Even though the cherpumple inventor uses frozen pies & cake mixes, you have bake the pies, then wrangle them into their respective cake layers & bake again.
Plus, apparently it’s a crap shoot as to whether the thing is actually baked through.
Then you have to assemble it with “three tall tubs of cream cheese frosting” & hope to God it doesn’t collapse on you or slide off in three different directions. I mean—cakes are supposed to be light; imagine what the layers are like with a pie in each of them? We’re not talking about the ground-up Styrofoam crème-like filling in a Hostess Sno Ball here.
The article says all this folderol can take up to three days.
& when you’re done with all that, what have you got? Something at least 83% of your friends aren’t going to touch with a barge pole, much less a fork.
With the holiday season fast approaching, here's a hope: that you don’t have anyone in your life who’d put a cherpumple on the table in the expectation you’ll eat it.
Friday, November 5, 2010
This little light
Romita Patel, my physical therapist, informed me that today is Diwali, the Hindu holiday also referred to as the festival of lights.
Although there appear to be several legends associated with the tradition of Diwali, they mostly revolve around the triumph of righteousness over evil, of light over darkness. Thus it’s appropriate that the focus should be on lights—oil lamps, candles and (so I hear) neon lights among the nouveau riche.
Diwali marks the end of a month of prep; Romita tells me there’s been a lot of dancing at temples, and tonight big family meals with emphasis on Indian sweets.
(Tonight is also Bonfire Night in the UK, when Britons burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, symbolically destroying Roman Catholics. This marks the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, and--while historical—isn’t nearly as felicitous as Diwali.)
I’m joining in the celebration in my own, small way: hauling out a couple dozen candles to light and contemplate through the evening.
A happy and prosperous Diwali to you. And God bless us, everyone.
Although there appear to be several legends associated with the tradition of Diwali, they mostly revolve around the triumph of righteousness over evil, of light over darkness. Thus it’s appropriate that the focus should be on lights—oil lamps, candles and (so I hear) neon lights among the nouveau riche.
Diwali marks the end of a month of prep; Romita tells me there’s been a lot of dancing at temples, and tonight big family meals with emphasis on Indian sweets.
(Tonight is also Bonfire Night in the UK, when Britons burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, symbolically destroying Roman Catholics. This marks the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, and--while historical—isn’t nearly as felicitous as Diwali.)
I’m joining in the celebration in my own, small way: hauling out a couple dozen candles to light and contemplate through the evening.
A happy and prosperous Diwali to you. And God bless us, everyone.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Caught in the Net
New firestorm in the blogosphere. It seems some otherwise obscure print/Web Zine called Cooks Source allegedly lifted a discussion of how apple pie recipes changed from the 14th to the 17th centuries, posted in 2005 by Monica Gaudio on the Gode Cookery website. When a friend notified Gaudio that she’d been plagiarized, not by a college student or a blogger but by an actual, supposedly professional publication, she contacted Cooks Source for an apology and token damages of $130 to the Columbia School of Journalism.
Instead, she received an email purportedly from CS editor Judith Griggs basically telling her to get over herself, be grateful that her work was deemed worthy of publication by the mag and maybe she could consider how CS improved the piece by editing it. (Gaudio’s post obviously includes text taken from original sources, so it has what we would consider stylistic and spelling inconsistencies. Griggs apparently didn’t actually read enough of the article to twig to that before slapping it into the October issue.)
Besides, Griggs goes on, “[H]onestly, Monica, the web is considered ‘public domain’ and you should be happy we just didn't ‘lift’ your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence [sic] and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.”
Basically, then, it’s not really plagiarism if it’s stolen from the Web, because “if it’s out there, it’s available to everyone, innit?” Like downloading MP3 files or bootleg videos. Or copying and pasting entire pages from an online cooking magazine.
And, besides—all CS writers are ecstatic to work for them for free.
What’s interesting about this—aside from Griggs’s whacked-out view of copyright violations (she stole the entire article, which is copyrightable, not just a recipe, which is not; at least a list of ingredients is not) and her apparent belief that writers don’t really own their work, not like publishers—is the immediate marshaling of Web resources to excoriate her.
The magazine’s actual Facebook page (to which http://www.cookssource.com/ no longer links) has a gazillion comments, most (that I see) not happy about Griggs’s arrogance. But there’s a very close lookalike Facebook page, with scores more criticism. (I can only tell the difference by the taglines: the official one reads “See the Chef/Source Collaboration on the Discussion Page”; the faux one, “We invented food.”) Seems like your average Netizen can figure out which line Griggs took a flying leap over, although she's having some trouble with it.
There’s “official” media coverage, too—LA Times, Washington Post, NY Times, etc. So far Griggs has avoided responding to anyone (except the fausse Griggs on the faux Facebook page), and the CS website has essentially gone static. Probably huddled with her lawyers trying to come up with a spin that’ll get her out of the public pickle and persuade investors that her head’s not as far up her derrière as she’s made it appear.
Now that’ll be something to watch.
Oh, and Judi? My work is copyrighted and not available to you at any price. Put that in your saucepan and cook it.
Instead, she received an email purportedly from CS editor Judith Griggs basically telling her to get over herself, be grateful that her work was deemed worthy of publication by the mag and maybe she could consider how CS improved the piece by editing it. (Gaudio’s post obviously includes text taken from original sources, so it has what we would consider stylistic and spelling inconsistencies. Griggs apparently didn’t actually read enough of the article to twig to that before slapping it into the October issue.)
Besides, Griggs goes on, “[H]onestly, Monica, the web is considered ‘public domain’ and you should be happy we just didn't ‘lift’ your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence [sic] and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.”
Basically, then, it’s not really plagiarism if it’s stolen from the Web, because “if it’s out there, it’s available to everyone, innit?” Like downloading MP3 files or bootleg videos. Or copying and pasting entire pages from an online cooking magazine.
And, besides—all CS writers are ecstatic to work for them for free.
What’s interesting about this—aside from Griggs’s whacked-out view of copyright violations (she stole the entire article, which is copyrightable, not just a recipe, which is not; at least a list of ingredients is not) and her apparent belief that writers don’t really own their work, not like publishers—is the immediate marshaling of Web resources to excoriate her.
The magazine’s actual Facebook page (to which http://www.cookssource.com/ no longer links) has a gazillion comments, most (that I see) not happy about Griggs’s arrogance. But there’s a very close lookalike Facebook page, with scores more criticism. (I can only tell the difference by the taglines: the official one reads “See the Chef/Source Collaboration on the Discussion Page”; the faux one, “We invented food.”) Seems like your average Netizen can figure out which line Griggs took a flying leap over, although she's having some trouble with it.
There’s “official” media coverage, too—LA Times, Washington Post, NY Times, etc. So far Griggs has avoided responding to anyone (except the fausse Griggs on the faux Facebook page), and the CS website has essentially gone static. Probably huddled with her lawyers trying to come up with a spin that’ll get her out of the public pickle and persuade investors that her head’s not as far up her derrière as she’s made it appear.
Now that’ll be something to watch.
Oh, and Judi? My work is copyrighted and not available to you at any price. Put that in your saucepan and cook it.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
They're baaaack...
As you might imagine, I’m dismayed by the outcome of the national elections. The ’Pubs were sullen & strident as the minority in Congress, concentrating on blocking any legislation that might move the country out of this greed-induced economic depression. Now they’re predictably claiming a mandate to trample on everything that slipped through their claws in the past two years.
The tone has been set by House Speaker-presumptive John Boehner, who essentially took out his willie & waved it in wide arcs while trumpeting that there’ll be no compromise with the President…on anything.
I knew this was getting ugly when in the past couple of days I saw the “Chinese Professor” ad, by some group calling itself “Citizens Against Government Waste”. Their site, which I’ll let you find for yourself, claims they’re non-partisan, but this racist Commies-are-set-to-enslave-us message has to come from the vicinity of those wonderful folks who brought us Sarah Palin & bad imitation powdered wigs.
So it doesn’t bode well for civility in any area of government or public life for the next two years.
The tone has been set by House Speaker-presumptive John Boehner, who essentially took out his willie & waved it in wide arcs while trumpeting that there’ll be no compromise with the President…on anything.
I knew this was getting ugly when in the past couple of days I saw the “Chinese Professor” ad, by some group calling itself “Citizens Against Government Waste”. Their site, which I’ll let you find for yourself, claims they’re non-partisan, but this racist Commies-are-set-to-enslave-us message has to come from the vicinity of those wonderful folks who brought us Sarah Palin & bad imitation powdered wigs.
So it doesn’t bode well for civility in any area of government or public life for the next two years.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Crossing the bar
My relief and happiness that my friend Leilah came through surgery and has a positive initial prognosis has been tempered by receiving word that a friend from the UK died last Thursday.
Winston François was a wonderfully kind and generous man. I worked with him in sales support at Newbridge/Alcatel from 1998 to 2001. I never saw him in a flap nor did I ever hear him diss anyone—even when dissing was entirely called for.
I could go to Win for questions about customers or technologies and he always made time for me. He also cleared the way for me to speak with other technical staff.
When I first went over there in August of 1998 to go through the formal interview process, Win spent an evening taking me round estate agent offices in Reading to get an idea of what was available to rent. When I said the approach on this side of the pond was to go to an agency/landlord and state my requirements and ask what they have that meets it, he advised me (accurately, as it turns out) that over there you walk into an agent’s and ask, “Whatta ya got?”
I also remember him calming me down after one frustrating incident, telling me, “Horses for courses, [Bas Bleu], horses for courses.”
Win had a wife and five daughters. He built a conservatory onto their house by himself. He was one of the first to welcome me to the UK and one of the last to see me off. He was a terrific friend and I believe the world is darker for not having this smile in it any more.
Winston François was a wonderfully kind and generous man. I worked with him in sales support at Newbridge/Alcatel from 1998 to 2001. I never saw him in a flap nor did I ever hear him diss anyone—even when dissing was entirely called for.
I could go to Win for questions about customers or technologies and he always made time for me. He also cleared the way for me to speak with other technical staff.
When I first went over there in August of 1998 to go through the formal interview process, Win spent an evening taking me round estate agent offices in Reading to get an idea of what was available to rent. When I said the approach on this side of the pond was to go to an agency/landlord and state my requirements and ask what they have that meets it, he advised me (accurately, as it turns out) that over there you walk into an agent’s and ask, “Whatta ya got?”
I also remember him calming me down after one frustrating incident, telling me, “Horses for courses, [Bas Bleu], horses for courses.”
Win had a wife and five daughters. He built a conservatory onto their house by himself. He was one of the first to welcome me to the UK and one of the last to see me off. He was a terrific friend and I believe the world is darker for not having this smile in it any more.
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