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December 31, 2004

Stingy America, Part III

Washington Post reports the White House has announced plans to increase U.S. aid committments to $350m for the Indonesian and other tsunami victims. The move comes after public debate and criticism of the original committment, which the White House had claimed was only an initial donation. The U.S. is now one of the largest donors; earlier, countries including Britain and China had pledged larger sums than the United States.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 03:51 PM | Comments (1)

You Forgot South Korea!

I don't recall anyone having mentioned this in the past month, so I thought I'd update you on what's going on with the Coalition of the Willing. You may have heard that the Government of Japan extended the special law allowing Japanese troops to take part in Iraqi operations; the law initially authorizing the Self-Defense Force's deployment to Iraq had been set to expire this month. The move to extend the deployment comes as Japan reaffirms its special security arrangement with the United States, including extended partnership on missile defense, and as Tokyo has formally declared North Korea and China to be security threats.

Now comes South Korea, which as the Washington Post reports has decided to extend its troops' deployment to Iraq. As with Japan, the Republic of Korea's armed forces will only provide non-combat support for the coalition mission. South Korea's deployment makes it the third-largest member of the coalition by number of troops deployed, behind Britain and the United States. Unlike Tokyo, though, Seoul's relationship with the United States has been rocky. To put it bluntly, the South Koreans don't like this administration all this much, and think that the Bush White House has been too reckless and aggressive in their relations with Pyongyang. (Underscoring this point, earlier in the year the South Korean foreign minister used the same language to describe American behavior as the Chinese foreign minister--a strong diplomatic signal.) South Korean President Roh, however, has worked to improve bilateral ties, and this is apparently part of that goal.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)

The Five Horsemen of the Revolution

Christian Sciene Monitor describes five new GOP senators, whose appearance in the upper chamber could mark the end, or at least a temporary cessation, in the Senate's less-partisan atmosphere and the beginning of a more combative style.

These conservatives are echoes of the heady days of the 1995 GOP Revolution, when the party was ardently conservative and swaggeringly partisan--and most successful at transforming thoughts into deeds. Some of those thoughts have been more long-lasting than others, while others probably have proven to be flawed in the long term. Nevertheless, senators like Tom Coburn (the new senator from Oklahoma) are apt to actually stand up and fight for a balanced budget. Other policy positions may not be so well-reasoned, of course, but still, their idea that senators are there to make good policy instead of get reelected is one that just might catch on.

Of course, the fiscal challenges these new senators and their colleagues will face are different from previous years'. Washington Post reports on the deliberations within the Pentagon over how to trade off funding programs to sustain our operations in Iraq and elsewhere. Among the proposals: Cutting funding for the F-22 and retiring the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy. For what it's worth, I'm sanguine about killing the F-22--an overly-expensive plane designed to beat aircraft that were on the Soviet Union's drawing board--but retiring a carrier is a different matter altogether. As I recall, one of the reasons I voted Bush in 2000 was because I really liked his campaign's views on military transformation. Aircraft carriers can play a role in that because of their flexibility in basing, in addition to their sheer power. Mothballing the Kennedy without having an alternative platform for sea dominance and power projection sounds an awful lot like cannibalizing the fleet.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:35 AM | Comments (3)

The Strongman Always Rings Twice

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

More than a handful of musicals and satires have used the figure of the military strongman or the junta as the target of their jokes. And what a target the president-for-life is, as he struts down the main promenade, his false medals glinting in the sun, his beautiful white uniform free of the grit and grime of his impoverished cities. Satire is most potent when it points out the gap between pretension and reality, and in few other systems are the gaps as wide as in the military dictatorship, which promises peace and prosperity and delivers the opposite. What is always most amusing to the outside observer is the absolute conviction of the despot that he alone can sail the ship of state. Eventually, he dies, or is disposed, or is destroyed, and the ship of state either rights itself or steams along under a newer, crueler captian.

I wonder who finds the spectacle funniest: The outside world or the domestic population. The outside world doesn't suffer the depradations of the regime, but the domestic population will come to understand the tyrant in ways the outside world never does. But both populations--leaving aside, for instance, those in Russia and elsewhere who still respect and admire Stalin--will eventually realize the great hypocrisy at the core of all absolutist regimes.

Part of that hypocrisy, of course, comes in the tyrant's claim to democratic legitimacy when he has anything but. So it is that, according to the New York Times, Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharaf, has decided not to give up his position as head of the military, as he had earlier pledged to do. Musharraf said that "the voice of the majority" had compelled him to renege on his promise, and said that he was essential to the safety of the Pakistani state. Further, he said, his term of office since he ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup in 1999 had been a success: The "spirit of democracy" has been returned to Pakistan.

Pakistan is officially a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. President Bush, who famously didn't know Musharraf's name when asked in a pop quiz in 1999, has overlooked the anti-democratic and anti-American actions of elements in the Musharraf regime (for instance, the actions of A.Q. Khan) because Pakistan is convenient to the major battlefields in the war on terror. And so now, because we need a trustworthy ally, we ally with someone who breaks his solemn oaths; because we fear terror, we aid a government whose members supply thoroughly nasty regimes with ghastly weapons; and because we praise democracy and civilian virtues, we work with a president who wears medals on his chest. History repeats itself twice--but this time, is it the tragedy, or the farce?

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

God Hates You Just Because

Here's an article from the Washington Post about the reaction of different faith leaders to the tsunami in South Asia. One Christian website writes that the tsunami affected worst those countries that persecute Christians the most; some Indians think the wave was punishment for the arrest of a Hindu religious leader; and one rabbi writes:

This is an expression of God's great ire with the world. The world is being punished for wrongdoing -- be it people's needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude.

I have to say, if these are the best explanations that theology can come up with, maybe we should leave the explanation of geological events to the geologists.

What's galling about these attempts to discern a will behind the tsunami is that the catastrophe wasn't aimed at anyone in particular. What, after all, do the people of Aceh share with Indians or Thais? What did those few people in Somalia who died do to deserve their deaths?

There is nothing new about these questions, of course, but the answers remain unsatisfactory. It is impossible to reconcile the image of a just and loving deity with a deity who murders to send messages. And only the most tortured theological arguments can explain why it is that because of moral turpitude or lack of charity these people should die and these people should live. I wonder, indeed, why some faithful feel the need to explain these acts by recourse to their deity. Who would want to worship such a god? Better to see the divine in the spontaneous compassion of the millions of people worldwide who have been moved to help the victims of the disaster than in the disaster itself.

And the blindness and special pleading of some of these faithful is even more disgusting. If the tsunami is the vengeance of a god on an unholy people, then what does the rabbi think the near-extinction of the American Indians was? Were they being punished for, in effect, their separation from the rest of the human race? We should hope not. To explain those geological and epidemological events through theology would lead to the construction of a theology as nihilistic as that Russell cynically constructed in the first few paragraphs of "A Free Man's Worship."

Update: Dispatches from the Culture Wars wonders if there is an intelligent design theory waiting to be discovered for tsunamis.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 09:43 AM | Comments (7)

Confessions of a GenXer

"That'll be $67.53," she said. I handed her my TJ Maxx gift card, but I didn't really care how much of the total I had to pay on my own. I had plenty of money, especially after all the Christmas gifts. I think the remainder was thirty-something, but I didn't care. I simply hadned her the plastic debit card, which I knew had more than enough to cover it.

As I stepped out of the store and onto the downtown sidewalk, two men in their 50s were crouching on the pavement, jingling fast food drink cups that had a few coins in them. The sight is neither common nor rare, it just exists. Occassionally I'll stop and offer a dollar, but today I lied and said I had nothing. The truth was that I didn't want to whip out my roll of cash and reveal the two $50 bills.

I made my way to my car - a nice four door Sedan that my parents pretty much paid for - and drove to the parking garage exit where a cheery attendant asked for $3.50. The normal cheap city garage was full, but I didn't mind the more expensive private garage; $3.50 was chump change in my book. I could've walked from my apartment which was less than a mile away, but why bother? Gas is cheap and, like I said, the parking fee was low, at least for me.

This shopping trip was preceded by a nice lunch with ITA brethren Zach, Eric and PunchTheBag, where I doled out $10 for a meal. When the day's errands were over I didn't return to work. Why? I don't have/need a job, at least not until this summer, when I begin my clerkship at the law firm. Granted, I could get a job doing trivial short-term stuff somewhere, but why bother? I don't need the money. So I went home and cleaned my apartment, surfed the internet, and read a few hundred pages from a novel. I was an unproductive citizen doing whatever I felt like doing.

In short, my day was one of luxury, where I did everything I wanted without concern for my safety or material ability to do whatever I wanted. In spite of this (or more likely because of it), I had a headache for most of the day. Each time I spent so much as a penny, or failed to be a productive citizen, my thoughts turned toward southeast Asia and the victims of the tsunami.

The tsumani victims are hard to ignore. Not only have they suffered an unexpected natural disaster of mind-blowing proportions, but even before it struck many of them lived a desolate life that was most often spent acquiring essentials like food, housing and clothing. They weren't completely hopeless, but there's no doubt that a day like mine would be as foreign to some natives as a Martian alien's would be to me. The point is, I knew of their desolation before the disaster, and now it's even more pronounced. This thought never left my mind, and yet I never altered my behavior either. I just thought about it...over and over, without necessarily changing or doing anything.

And so here I am, preparing to sleep in my queen size bed in my up-scale, downtown two bedroom apartment which I have all to myself, and I've still done virtually nothing. I've donated some money to the Red Cross, but it was chump change. It was as meaningful as my wasteful decision to drive a few blocks and park in a garage. This is my story, and I am not alone.

Update: John Adams has more.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:34 AM | Comments (5)

A Request for Feedback

Reporter Abe Aamidor of The Indianapolis Star is doing a feature article on the popularity of ABC-TV's "Desperate Housewives." Love it or hate it, the show is popular. Does this show reflect the morals of suburban America, or is it driving them down? Is the show realistic? Or is it just fun? Contact Abe Aamidor at 317-444-6472 or via e-mail at abe.aamidor - at - indystar.com.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:00 AM | Comments (2)

December 30, 2004

Harold Ford

Josh Marshall offers a quote from Rep. Harold Ford (D - Tenn.) on Social Security:

"I do not support changing the Social Security system as has been proposed by President Bush, nor do I support Social Security proposals advanced by the CATO Institute. In fact, both of these proposals have the potential to harm current beneficiaries by paying for the transition costs by issuing debt. Piling on more red ink to the existing federal budget deficit and the national debt will do both long and short term harm to our economy. I do believe that the system needs to be reformed but I do not support changing the Social Security system as President Bush has proposed."

In many posts in the past I've praised Rep. Ford as a rising star in the Democratic Party. He's often seen as a "New Democrat" that could potentially lead the party out of the wilderness. I'm not an expert on Ford's SS stance, but this quote hints at a direction for Ford which brings him more in line with a New Deal philosophy, and I wonder if all the "Third Way" praise he's been receiving is truly justified.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:08 PM | Comments (4)

Drezner steps in

Daniel Drezner, who is on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Global Development's Ranking the Rich, offers in-depth solid data on the stinginess of American aid. He looks at both governmental and private charity, as well as a host of other factors. If you're interested in the subject I recommend you read the whole post, but to summarize the US is below average in donating cash, but the US is among the most generous when you also consider trade, investment, migration, environment, technology, and security.

Update: Some vacationers have the audacity to sunbath as corpses rot and people walk homeless just miles away.

Update 2: Bruce Bartlett and Chuck Simmons offer more numbers on the issue, with the Bartlett piece being a particularly good one.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:21 PM | Comments (3)

Citing Foreign Courts and Other Posnerian Thoughts

Richard Posner discusses whether American courts should cite foreign courts. As a general rule, Judge Posner concludes, the answer is "no," although there are certain reservations to that rule. He gives three reasons: First, foreign judges are not part of the American political structure, and so are neither subject to American accountability, nor do they have any democratic legitimacy in the United States. Second, law is not universal (in the Posnerian analysis), but is a product of local circumstances, and so there's no real theoretical basis for citing foreign courts as authorities. And third, Posner thinks that relying on foreign decisions is merely a convenient way for judges to demonstrate that their decisions are part of an emerging consensus--but judges are selective in which consensus they apply to the United States, and so Posner says that they're merely "figleafing" their own preferences.

More interesting, however, is Posner's piece here on religion and public policy. Posner is atheistic, but he believes that in a democracy, the fact that some policy positions are based upon purely religious doctrines does not invalidate them. Consider abortion: If people are opposed to abortion because they believe that life begins at conception, then should their beliefs have weight in the democratic process? Of course they should, Posner writes:

Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors.

In a response to comments on his first article on the subject, Posner notes that these discussions occupy far too much attention of political theorists:

the sort of political discussion in which political philosophers, law professors, and other intellectuals engage is neither educative nor edifying; I also think it is largely inconsequential, and I am grateful for that fact. I think that what moves people in deciding between candidates and platforms and so on certainly includes facts (such as the collapse of communism--a tremendous fact), as well as a variety of "nonrational" factors, such as whom you like to hang out with--I think that's extremely important in the choice of a political party to affiliate with. When a brilliant philosopher like Rawls gets down to the policy level and talks about abortion and campaign financing and the like, you recognize a perfectly conventional liberal and you begin to wonder whether his philosophy isn't just elaborate window dressing for standard left liberalism.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:59 PM | Comments (5)

The Shadow Internet

Wired reports on the hierarchy of content pirates, the people who know how to find the top-quality pre-release copies of Hollywood films and new albums. It's an interesting look at this otherwise closed world, with its disguised servers, elaborate rules, amazing quality control procedures, and highly competitive spirit. One almost wonders how the industry and the FBI expect to shut it down. True, there are only a handful of people who are responsible for the vast majority of films and mp3s available online; but on the other hand, their techniques are not so esoteric as to be unduplicatable.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

The Hejab as Disguise

Washington Post describes why young Iraqi women are wearing the traditional Muslim head scarf, the hejab. They feel threatened by the insurgents, who are said to kill women who go about unveiled. These days, even Christians--who make up as much as a tenth of Baghdad's population--say they have to put on the scarf. Hearteningly, some of the women the Post talks with say they fear the insurgents want to turn Iraq into the Taliban's Afghanistan--this is heartening because the women do not want that, and because everyone knows what that will entail. But it is also heartrending, because they know what these homegrown fundamentalists want, and they are giving it to them. I can't blame them for that, but stories like these keep accumulating.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

A Request for Feedback

Reporter Abe Aamidor of The Indianapolis Star is doing a feature article on the popularity of ABC-TV's "Desperate Housewives." Love it or hate it, the show is popular. Does this show reflect the morals of suburban America, or is it driving them down? Is the show realistic? Or is it just fun? Contact Abe Aamidor at 317-444-6472 or via e-mail at abe.aamidor - at - indystar.com.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

2004: The Good News

Radley Balko compiles the good news of 2004, and there's a whole lot of it. It's a nice read to brighten your day.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2004

Keith Olbermann is the Worst

Just listened to Olbermann's lead-in to the Tsunami disaster on his Countdown show. I don't have the exact quote but he was comparing the U.S. government aid dollars for this disaster as being below the amount designated for the Presidential Inauguration.

Don't tell me El Keitho isn't biased. So the Inaugural Party was the only benchmark he could think of? Yeah right.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 08:08 PM | Comments (9)

Tsunami and California

I googled those two words to see if the media was relating the South Asia disaster to the California coastline. The San Francisco Chronicle has its report. Here's some practical advice for beachcombers:

Whatever triggers a future tsunami, Californians need to remember at least one thing, says Richard Eisner, coastal administrative chief for the state Office of Emergency Services:

"If you are on the beach and feel an earthquake that lasts more than 15 to 20 seconds, and you have difficulty standing, you should immediately evacuate to high ground. Don't wait for notification (of a tsunami) because you might have only 10 to 15 minutes (before the tsunami strikes)."

How high should you run? "I don't want to be a smart-ass," Eisner replied, "but you go as high as you can and as far as you can. We don't know how high these waves can be." Research suggests they might exceed 40 feet, he added, but "we won't know" until then.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 01:58 PM | Comments (1)

The Death of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement

Reuters reports on how Argentina and Brazil scuttled FTAA talks. By now, the Bush administration had hoped, we'd all be one happy hemispheric family, trading with each other with reduced tariffs and expedited procedures. But the left-leaning governments in Brasilia and Buenos Aires, concerned that such an economic deal would be a virtual annexation of their countries, blocked the deal, instead trying to negotiate an agreement with the EU. That deal also failed. Now, Reuters says, the goal is for an FTAA-lite, to be set up by 2006.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:32 PM | Comments (7)

Stingy Americans Redux

The New York Times reports that the UN official who reportedly said the U.S. and other countries were being "stingy" in their giving to the victims of the tsunami says that he's been misquoted, and that he was really referring to the giving of the West over the past few years for general development funds.

However, let's not forget that the aid that the U.S. and other countries have thus far announced is really pretty trivial compared with the scope of the disaster. This article estimates that the island nation of the Maldives may have sustained damages greater than 100% of its gross national product. And as the death toll across the region seems set to grow to more than 100,000, the rebuilding cost is certain to run into the billions of dollars.

Update: At the Becker-Posner blog, Posner argues most aid is unproductive because the source of poverty isn't lack of capital but poor governance. This may be, but the goal of development policy isn't just to make people richer, but to make them richer than they otherwise would be. And limiting the discussion of health's effects on economic wellbeing to a single disease (HIV/AIDS) is an unrealistic and improper model that overlooks how endemic diseases can affect productivity.

Update 2: Christian Science Monitor writes that India's government is so far refusing international aid.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:16 PM | Comments (2)

The Giant Sucking Sound

Ironically, the giant sucking sound Ross Perot talked about really exists--but it's the sound of the U.S. economy sucking up money, goods and workers from other economies.

It's not that Washington is run by a cabal bent on stripping the Third World of its resources, nor that we are approaching the final crisis of capitalism. Mainly, it's that the immense wealth, productivity and openness of First World economies, including the United States, attracts resources from the Third World in what should be an almost eleemosynary relationship.

But the relationship is less beneficial for poorer countries when the workers who are being drawn to the First World are nurses and doctors. A Sebastian Mallaby column from last month in the Washington Post discusses the issue in some detail. African nurses, trained by their governments to serve the pressing basic health care needs of developed countries, are coming to the U.S. and Europe to take care of our aging populations. "It's hard to weigh the issues here: the right of individuals to seek a better life by emigrating and the poverty trap that they entrench by doing so," Mallaby writes.

There were interesting responses to Mallaby's article in the letters page of the Post. One correspondent wrote "I am a registered nurse, and most of the African nurses I know are go-getters who are furthering their studies and skill levels. They want to get ahead, and they know that won't happen in their homelands. No amount of subsidy from the United States would keep them in their countries." Other writers noted the squalid working conditions of African health workers--which can be not just uncomfortable, but dangerous: The New York Times writes that in Malawi, a quarter of health workers have AIDS.

Part of the problem is the inefficient nature of First World health care industries, which spend huge sums on convalescent care for the elderly and whose populations are increasingly afflicted by lifestyle diseases that will require even more nursing attention in the future. And medical productivity seems to lag behind that of the rest of the economy--that, or medicine is a luxury good: Rich nations seem to transform themselves into nations of hypochondriacs, seeking treatments for previously unremarkable or nonthreatening diseases. (Less cynically, of course, the very fact of wealth and stability changes the health care challenges a country faces. Few people in war-torn famine-ridden countries live long enough to die of cancer or heart disease.)

In health care, then, as in food production, the First World's economic relationship with the Third really does seem to have harmful effects. Without nurses and doctors, for instance, how are developing countries supposed to fight malaria and TB--much less the more complicated treatment regimes that are required to arrest the spread of AIDS? And African countries face health care problems that the First World has all but forgotten about: the Times writes that 1 in 89 births in Malawi results in the death of the mother. A comment in the Times from an African nurse now living in Britain (which attracts more African health professionals than the U.S.) is revealing. "Here, you go into wards, they're spic and span, like hotels," she said admiringly. And this, said of the National Health.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:19 AM | Comments (2)

Early Warning System?

Did the animals know a tsunami was on the way? Given how my dogs have reacted to storm fronts hours before they hit, it wouldn't surprise me.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

Stingy Americans?

There's been a lot of spilled ink after UN Undersecretary Jan Egeland called the US "stingy" with its relief to Asia's tsunami effort. The comments highlight a common problem when examining American charity - Americans do not always rely on the government, like our European counterparts, to take part in charity. Indeed this libertarian-based compassion is a hallmark of the American system. For an example look no further than Amazon's partnership with the American Red Cross, which has raised over $1,129,482.00 in personal donations as of this posting, and it's still climbing rapidly. That's over six times the amount the entire French government donated, which has only pledged $170,000. And that's only one charitable organization among thousands.

There are risks in playing this numbers game. It can easily devolve into a game of pride and boasting: "See how much we gave," which is of course both un-Biblical and unproductive. But there's simply no other way to examine claims that Americans are "stingy."

Part of what irks me is the broad, sweeping generalizations. But more than anything, they're just wrong. There's really no way for anyone to read the hearts and minds of Americans, we can only examine their actions. In 2000, 27.8 percent of Americans who filed itemized tax returns gave to charity. In aggregate, Americans donated 1.63 percent of income. Former President Bush also noted that 60% of international food bank inventory comes from the United States alone, a fact rarely included in national charity numbers. Indeed, the current president has earmarked $15 billion of American tax money to aid African nations in their struggle to fight HIV/AIDS. That's in billions.

Looking at American generosity through our government makes it clear that America is far from stingy. But look at generosity as a whole - including the efforts Americans make on their own - and the "stingy" claim looks downright ridiculous.

Update: Tim Blair verifies the shockingly low French aid.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:55 AM | Comments (7)

Cool Picture

Sodium lights in downtown Billings glow orange in contrast to a frost-covered ponderosa pine tree on the Rimrocks overlooking the city early Monday. Icy fog and a cold wind combined to cover the north side of the trees with frost that contrasts brightly when illuminated with a strobe light.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:18 AM | Comments (1)

Recess Appointments

In the battles over President Bush's judicial nominations, much has been said about using the so-called nuclear option to by-pass Democratic filibusters. But the president also has the power to place nominees on the bench immediately, regardless of the Senate by making recess appointments to fill judicial vacancies - including to the US Supreme Court.

The President's Recess Appointment Power is found in Article II, Section 2 and is challenged in just about every Presidential term or administration. In April 2003 President Bush nominated Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor, Jr. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. A minority of Senators prevented an up-or-down vote for the nomination; the 53-44 vote in favor of limiting debate was short of a super-majority of 60 Senators that the Senate Rules require. With the nomination in limbo, the President used his recess appointment power to seat Attorney General Pryor on the court until the first session of the 109th Congress end in late 2005.

In May 2004, the Sierra Club - which had opposed the Pryor nomination - moved the court to disqualify Judge Pryor from a Clean Air Act case. The Sierra Club argued that Judge Pryor's appointment was unlawful because recess appointments can be made only during the recess between sessions of Congress, and Judge Pryor was appointed during a recesss within a session. (It also contended that recess appointments of an Article II judge is not permissible at any time.)

The Recess Appointment Clause of Article II, Section 2 gives the President the power "to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session." According to the Sierra Club, the Framers used the term "adjournment" when referring to a break within a "Session of Congress" and deliberately avoided that term in the Recess Appointment Clause.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2004

Christianity's changing face

According to a new poll by YouGov, a research company using online panels, only 44 percent of Britons believe in God, compared to a Gallup poll survey in 1968 which found that 77 percent believed in God. More than a third of "young people" describe themselves as either agnostics or atheists. A break down of the numbers can be seen on this graphic. Christians continue to flock to developing countries on missionary trips, but Christianity is booming in those countries. Indeed, many researchers argue that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world and it will soon become the world's largest faith. Perhaps it's time for missionaries to focus their attention on Europe.

When historians go to record human history over the last century, the rise and fall of communism and the expansion of American and capitalistic ideals may well be the dominant theme. But the explosion of Christianity is one fact that probably deserves a place in the record, but it seems to have occurred without many people in the West noticing.

In a landmark book published in 2002, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Phillip Jenkins tells the story of the West's inner struggles with social and theological issues, all while a Bible-based believing Christian explosion occurs in other parts of the world on a level not seen in centuries. Indeed, Jenkins makes the case that Christianity is the world's fastest growing religion and that its impact cannot be overstated.

Within the next twenty-five years the population of the world's Christians is expected to grow to 2.6 billion (making Christianity by far the world's largest faith). Stop and consider that: it will grow to 2.6 billion. From 1934-1994, the number of Christians in the world increased by 1300 percent (from 40 million to 540 million in the last 60 years), while the world's population grew only 400 percent.

But this growth has largely taken place in the Southern hemisphere and in Asia, outside the radar of most Western media. Of the approximately two billion Christians alive today (one-third of the planetary population), 560 million live in Europe and 260 in North America, for a total of 820 million. The combined number of Christians in Latin America (480 million), Africa (360 million), and Asia (313 million) is 1.15 billion. On a percentage basis, then, almost 60 percent of Christians in the world today live in the Third World. Jenkins forecasts that of the expected 2.6 billion Christians in the year 2025, 67 percent will live in Africa (633 million), Asia (640 million), or Latin America (460 million). Jenkins emphasizes that by 2050 only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. As Jenkins states: "Soon the phrase 'a White Christian' may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as 'a Swedish Buddhist.' Such people can exist, but a slight eccentricity is implied."

In Communist China, in the face of sometimes terrifying Government opposition, people are committing themselves to a spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ at a rate averaging about 28,000 new converts a day. A staggering 80 million Chinese are committed Christians, with some researchers putting the figure closer to 100 million. In Africa, the number who follow Christ has risen from 3% in 1900 to a present figure of 45%.

Part of the problem with our inability to come to grips with Christianity's growth, I think, is rooted in a suspicion that this growth is in rural areas. With the spread of modernization and urbanization, we think, Christianity's numbers will come back down to earth. But on the contrary urbanization has actually almost always led to an increase in Christian activity.

This shift in "Christianity's heart" will have an enormous effect the faith, as well as geopolitical affairs as Christian/Muslim tensions mount.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:21 PM | Comments (12)

Who's Who of 2004

Here's a comprehensive list from Google of the top searches of 2004:

1. britney spears
   
2. paris hilton
   
3. christina aguilera
   
4. pamela anderson
   
5. chat
   
6. games
   
7. carmen electra
   
8. orlando bloom
   
9. harry potter
   
10. mp3

According to Lycos, which nobody actually uses, these were the top searches of 2004, with their rank from the previous year in parentheses.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:50 AM | Comments (4)

To whom does he owe thanks?

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya claims he is responsible for President Bush's reelection. During Qaddafi's first television interview since the United Nations emargo on his country was lifted he said, "We know that with this withdrawal, we contributed by 50 percent to his electoral campaign."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:39 AM | Comments (2)

Design

There's an interesting back and forth among some heavy-hitters about intelligent design. Hugh Hewitt kicks it off here with a look at how it's presented in schools. Rand Simberg and Prof. Volokh respond.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:47 AM | Comments (1)

December 27, 2004

Asteroid Concerns

The tsunami which recently hit Southeast Asia underscores the importance of taking natural disasters seriously, even when the risk may seem minimal. Now we learn that a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) is calculated to pass near the Earth in April 2029 with a 1 in 37 chance of hitting earth. Scientists estimate that it measures over 1,300 feet (400-meters) in diameter. Clark Chapman, an asteroid expert at Southwest Research Institute, says, "In all likelihood, in the next few days or weeks, the impact probability will retreat toward zero, and there's no particular reason to alarm people. After all, the potential threat is a quarter-century away. But given the treatment of NEAs in the past, I'm still surprised that a 1-in-40 chance of a country-destroying impact hasn't been noticed by the media."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:10 PM | Comments (1)

December 26, 2004

A. Q. Khan and the Laboratory of Horrors

New York Times has a must-read article on Pakistan, proliferation and the doings of A. Q. Khan, the man who sold Libya--and maybe Iran and North Korea--the Bomb. Khan, wanted for questioning by both the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, and no outside investigators have been allowed to speak with him. Among Khan's proliferation activities: Selling Libya centrifuges that could have been used to create fissile material--enough centrifuges that the Khadafy regime could have built ten nuclear bombs a year. As a "deal-sweetener," Khan threw in, gratis, a set of plans for the nuclear weapons.

I've written before that states are the nexus of nuclear proliferation. This is implicitly a major part of the Bush Doctrine, if that doctrine is still in force: Iraq, if it had been building nuclear weapons, might have given them to terrorists or--more likely--become a target for nuclear theft or subterfuge. But this new proliferation isn't like the old kind, where functioning governments would give nuclear secrets to each other (as happened when the French and Israelis collaborated, off and on, on their nuclear projects, or when the British gave the Americans their research on nuclear explosions early in the Second World War). Instead, this proliferation uses state organs, but is occasionally at odds with the aims of the host state, and is not subject to the same sort of scrutiny.

The analogy that best seems to describe this new proliferation is of a virus. Proliferators are not themselves states, but they invade state bureaucracies and laboratories and then spread the knowledge and materiel from one host to the next. And like a virus, the remedies that worked against one form of proliferation won't alwasy work against another: The Times piece seems to make clear that the Bush administration isn't just being stubborn when it says that the IAEA has major problems (although I think that the balance of opinion among experts is that the campaign to oust IAEA chief Baradei is vengeance, nothing more). On the other hand, the reporters also recount how the CIA twice prevented Danish authorities from arresting Khan.

If the proliferation virus becomes an epidemic, then we will be in a very difficult place. Deterrence requires a handful, or at best two, rational actors to work. It is arguable that such a situation never existed even during the Cold War; the Soviets, for instance, didn't believe in MAD, and neither did many Reagan Republicans. But it becomes less and less likely that MAD or a similar Mexican standoff can maintain itself as a stable equilibrium as more countries develop nuclear weapons--especially because those countries who will get nukes from this new wave of proliferation will be precisely those who lack the command-and-control sophistication that allowed the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and the other nuclear great powers to avoid most accidents. (Other factors come into play, too, like the geographical proximity of such potential nuclear powers as Taiwan and North Korea to their likely adversaries.)

In short, this is a real problem, not just a cause for outrage. (And against whom should the outrage be directed, anyway?) As we consider Social Security and the mores of "Merry Christmas," let's not forget that the nuclear genie is only partway back in the bottle, and a lot of hands are grasping for the lamp.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

Tsunami Strikes Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand

A giant wave has killed at least six thousand--and probably many more--in southeast Asia. The wave, triggered by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake that occurred near the Indonesian island of Sumatra, traveled far and fast, devastating coastal areas--including fishing villages and tourist resorts.

Update: A firsthand report from the Washington Post.

Update: An overview from the NYT, which estimates the total dead at more than 8,000; other sources have stated that the total could be more than 10,000.

Let's put this in perspective in two ways. First, unlike weather both in Earth's atmosphere and the Sun's, we know very little about how to predict earthquakes. Thus, although we can track hurricanes and tornadoes and even predict their course with a high degree of accuracy, allowing for the evacuation of affected areas, and although we can even make vague predictions about sunspot activity, it's much, much harder for experts to say when and where an earthquake will occur, and how strong it will be. The complications of geography, both physical and human, make earthquake prediction even more difficult--as we've just seen, a strong earthquake in Indonesia can kill thousands of people in Sri Lanka and India.

Second, the earthquake shows how difficult it is for us to calculate the risks and rewards of any remote event. Posner's latest book--which I haven't yet read--deals with this; but it's clear that if an earthquake like this only happens once in an indeterminate but high number of years, factoring those distant risks into our calculations is going to be all-but-impossible. And yet, failing to take these risks into account causes a misdistribution of resources. Moreover, shocks like this skew--irrationally--how people will behave in the future: Anybody up for a vacation in Sri Lanka?

Finally, I have a question which sounds uncaring at the moment but which is important nonetheless: What about the shipping that has to pass through the Strait of Malacca? Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shipping goes through the bottleneck every day, including fuel shipments for the industrial centers of Asia--how has this been affected by the great wave and its effects? The earthquake's most visible victims--the residents of the coastal areas--are not the only people who will be directly impacted by the event.

Update: Unsurprisingly, the BBC has a fine package on how the tsunami has affected Asia, including countries like Burma and the Maldives that haven't gotten much attention elsewhere. The BBC also notes that Somalia has been affected by the wave, too.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:45 AM | Comments (2)

PASWO Blogging

I've been meaning to introduce this acronym for some time. PASWO means "point at something with outrage," and it comes from this Positive Liberty post where Jason Kuznicki describes the difference between PASWO blogging and substantive blogging.

I've been paring away my RSS feeds on Bloglines for about a month now, and among the first feeds to be unsubscribed were those blogs that had degenerated into little more than PASWO sources. I'm competent to come up with my own sources of outrage, and filling my brainspace with such poison is pretty much the opposite of how I want to spend my life. It's true that some PASWO writers--Mencken comes to mind--are just brilliant, and reading their attacks can be fun. Vituperation, done well, can be served hot or cold and be just as tasty. But spleen is not a main course, and a dash of bile goes a long way. In the New Year, let's resolve to end PASWO blogging for good.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:28 AM | Comments (3)

The Words We Choose

Maybe I'm sensitive to this issue in all its essential elements, but this David Broder column in the Washington Post seems to be almost comically old-fashioned, the way that bicycles with one big wheel and one small one are. Broder discusses the career of Oregon politician Vera Katz, who is retiring from her position as mayor of Portland.

Katz has had a distinguished career over the decades, becoming speaker of the Oregon legislature before turning to municipal government. But the word Broder chooses to describe Katz is "feisty." Well, as long as we're reducing people to stereotypes, let me just say that Broder writes very well for his age.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Where the Buck Stops

Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, has a new opinion piece at FOXNews.com exploring Rumsfeld's recent criticisms from the right. He notes that conservatives (some might call them paleocons) such as Robert Novak, William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, and Tucker Carlson are "expressing grave concerns about a long-term U.S. commitment to reshape Iraqi society. They are skeptical of plans to remake the Greater Middle East."

This is nothing new really, but what is noteworthy, and has been discussed for the last couple weeks, is the criticism from so-called neoconservatives such as William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. "Rather than admit that their theories are broken, neoconservatives have turned instead to criticizing the way Rumsfeld has gone about implementing their grand plans."

Say what you will about the initial decision to go to war in Iraq, but it seems that those now calling for Rumsfeld's neck are using him as a scapegoat and shield for criticisms of the underlying policy itself. Now reconsidering the tactics and strategy to reshape the Middle East through a new Iraq, many leading neoconservatives are calling for more troops, permanent bases, and a decades-long presence. In essence, they blame Rumsfeld for doing too little and doing it poorly. "Like a compulsive gambler desperate to recover his losses, neoconservative talking heads stare at the setbacks in Iraq and conclude not that theirs was a bad bet, but rather that more should be wagered."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:53 AM | Comments (3)

December 25, 2004

Looking for that Special Someone?

Looks like one way to do it is become the host of a game show set in a remote area where you are a god-like figure who is able to grant food and other favors to the contestants. It's old news to those who keep up with celebrity gossip, but Jeff Probst--the host of Survivor--has confirmed months-old rumors that he's been dating Survivor: Vanuatu contestant Julie Berry.

One quote by Jeff might bring hope to those of us still searching for our soulmates...

"The funniest thing is people used to always say, 'you'll know [when you find the right one],' and I'd think, 'Oh, shut it! Let me tell ya, I've been around long enough, I don't know.' And then suddenly one day, I knew. Now I am one of those irritating people that is now saying, 'you'll know.'"

Posted by Eric Seymour at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)

Primary Source

"This is how the birth of Jesus came about: His mother was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

"But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,¹ because he will save his people from their sins.' All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said though the prophet: 'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will all him Immanuel'² - which means, 'God with us.'"

¹Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves.
²Isaiah 7:14

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)

Christmas Meditation

"The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man -- that the second person of the Godhead became the 'second man' (I Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human. Here are two mysteries for the price of one -- the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. 'The Word was made flesh' (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation."

-- J.I. Packer, "Knowing God"

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:01 AM | Comments (1)

Tracking

Here's the official NORAD Santa tracking website. If you're into that sort of thing.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:00 AM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2004

Primary Source

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

"So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, becuase he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While Mary was there, the time came for the baby to born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."

-- Luke 2:1-7

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

In Memoriam

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 50 years old. For someone who has two websites with significant personal data on it, I'm actually a pretty private person. I only reveal what I choose to, of course, and that's a relatively small amount. But there's something about the experience of losing someone close to me that drives me to share part of the experience. Perhaps it helps keep their memory alive, but whatever the reason I appreciate ITA's gracious readers tolerating this recollection, with a link to my brief account of her final day.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:50 AM | Comments (2)

December 23, 2004

Happy Festivus!

Finally, a Festivus for the rest of us. Get the full details here.

Ramesh Ponnuru remarks, "This seems to be its breakout year. I'm seeing tons of references to it this year for some reason."

I would guess that many people are sick of Christmas, but don't want to be anti-holiday. Festivus is an attractive alternative. It is minimalist (the unadorned aluminium pole), self-righteous (the airing of grievances), and absurd (the feats of strength). What more could a Gen-Xer want? Oh yeah, it's also retro; Festivus was invented in 1966.

Now, who wants to pin me to the floor?

Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:32 PM | Comments (5)

They've Been Naughty

People who have earned a lump of coal in their stocking this year...

• The person or persons who have stolen the baby Jesus from a nativity scene in my town three times this month.
• The guy who shot a volunteer firefighter dressed as Santa Claus with a pellet gun during a Christmas parade in Shamokin, PA.
• Whoever is responsible for the game clock not starting on time during last night's Indiana U. vs. Charlotte basketball game, thus allowing a desperation half-court shot to hand the Hoosiers their sixth loss in a row.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:22 PM | Comments (4)

CO2 Update

Plans by three countries--China, India, and the United States--to bolster their electricity-generating infrastructrue by adding hundreds of new coal-burning power plants will completely balance out all savings in CO2 emissions required by the Kyoto Treaty, Christian Science Monitor reports. Indeed, the new carbon dioxide emissions could add up to as much as five times more new emissions as Kyoto will cut.

The U.S. is not a signatory to the agreement, and China and India are not required to cut their emissions under the terms of the protocol. China and India face a need for massive investments in their electrical grids as their economies take off (there were reports of brownouts and blackouts in China's industrial regions all throughout the summer). In the U.S., the rising price of gas-fired turbines has made those cleaner-burning plants less attractive, and because nuclear power isn't an option in the States, that leaves only coal plants.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:04 PM | Comments (7)

It's Always the End of the World For Someone

New Scientist reports on the Norte Chico civilization that sprang up in Peru about five thousand years ago. At about the same time the Egyptians were building the first pyramids, NewSci reports, these proto-Peruvians were beginning to build their own distinctive step-pyramids. What's most remarkable about the new findings is that the Norte Chicans went from hunting and gathering to building the massive stone structures in about a century and a half. The civilization lasted for about 1200 years, and then it vanished. It's always the end of the world for someone.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:52 AM | Comments (1)

Snow and Illness

Evansville received nearly 20 inches of snow in one day yesterday, and a couple more inches of snow after midnight. In one day of snowfall, December 2004 became the second-snowiest December on record--and we'll only need about another four inches to catch up with 1917. We will have a white Christmas, and probably a white New Year's and possibly a white President's Day as well.

The coincidence of this snowfall with an assault on my body by some marauding virus has meant that I've watched a lot of daytime television. Considering that I usually watch no television at all, sitting through hours of the Today show has been a revelation. I have questions after my enforced viewing--why does Katie Couric keep changing her hairstyle? doesn't she dress a bit young? why are there so many stories about murderers so early in the morning?--but it was watching a complete episode of Oprah yesterday that really set me to asking questions. Oprah was interviewing Barbara Walters, and all I could think of was that I was watching, essentially, a televised beauty parlor. Oprah and Barbara held hands, the audience cheered and swooned at the smallest revelations, and everybody smiled a lot.

Fortunately, C-SPAN has its Booknotes archives online. If I were trapped here with Oprah and Katie for much longer, I shudder to think what I would do.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:35 AM | Comments (9)

I Am Charlotte Simmons

I've heard more buzz about Tom Wolfe's book I Am Charlotte Simmons than any other this Christmas season, so I decided to pick it up and read it. The novel centers around Charlotte, a naive new student at Dupont University, a school boasting a top-ranked basketball program and an Ivy League academic reputation. Although Dupont is an elite university, the atmosphere is typical of most colleges today - sex, alcohol, and social status rule the day. A drive for material wealth, physical pleasure, and a well-placed social status are priorities, and academics are only important insofar as they help achieve those goals.

Some have criticized Wolfe's portrayal of the contemporary college scene as inaccurate, but those critics are typically out of touch. The novel is a satire, but the portrayal is depressingly close to reality. Sex plays a big role, but it does in real life too. For example, there's the common phenomenon of being "sexiled," code word for being kicked out of your room for extended periods while the roommate "hooks up" with a "friend with benefits." Wolfe's typically fantastic prose strikes the perfect chord - a disinterested description, humorous and rich, but not necessarily crude.

Despite her upbringing and community code, Charlotte gets caught in the game. As John Derbyshire described it, Charlotte's innocence is "destroyed as swiftly, coldly, and thoroughly as a kitten that has wandered onto a busy six-lane expressway." The guilt and grappling with expectations weighs heavily on her and other supporting characters.

One could confine the novel to this and it would be a wonderful book, but this is a Tom Wolfe novel, and as such he takes it to a new and exciting level. In fact, the central tension in the novel is not sex or modernity's colleges, at least not directly. Instead it's neuroscience's understanding of human nature. Charlotte takes a course on neuroscience taught by Nobel Prize winning Prof. Sterling. Wolfe uses this as a means to explore the field in depth, and he demonstrates that the field is more developed than most non-scientists realize. The deconstruction of self isn't new and has in fact been around for hundreds of years, but now more than ever the science is backing up the philosophy.

The conscious self is scrutinized because science tells us it may be nothing more than a series of chemical reactions, sometimes genetic. Characters continually struggle with the existence of souls, whether they have one, and what the implications might be. Prof. Sterling tells us that the self is "nothing more than a 'transient composite of materials from the environment.'" Neuroscience is turning philosophy and religion upside down according to Sterling, and in this belief Charlotte finds the intellectual awaking she was craving. She walks out of class one day and explains that her classmates are "blithely ignorant of the fact" that they are "merely conscious little rocks, every one of them, whereas. . . I am Charlotte Simmons."

Here, in my mind, Wolfe demonstrates part of his genius. Charlotte's exultions of herself, and her comprehension, are themselves chemical reactions by Sterling's philosophy. There is a terribly dehumanizing and deconstructing effect to all of this, and although it's set in a fiction novel they are issues facing us square in the face in reality. We're all in Dupont University now.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:58 AM | Comments (13)

Cliche blogging

Insert cheesy end-of-the-year post compiling stories/lists/photos/best of 2004.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)

December 22, 2004

America Loves America

One of the less-remarked-upon truths of international affairs recently is that, of the Western nations, the United States is not only the most powerful, the richest, and the most religious, but also the most nationalist. This afternoon, I saw a box of Sweet-n'-Low that stated that it was "America's Favorite," and a Census Bureau pamphlet I was reading about educational attainment in the U.S. started out by recounting that Americans are well-known for their many successes. (Trust me, Americans, if we're going to brag about anything, let's not brag about our educational excellence, especially given that our math and science scores are slipping relative to the rest of the world.)

This is one of those things that you hardly notice while you're in America, but which it is hard to ignore when you return to America. (The death of the ballad as a form of popular music in the States is another ubiquitous but unnoticed phenomenon.) I must admit that I have no real theory as to what this is. Let's be frank: We do a good job in many things, but when I think of "world's best" in several categories, I think of many German, Japanese, Italian, and--yes--even French firms. (BMW, Sony, most fashion labels, and Moet et Chandon come to mind.) So saying that something is "America's favorite" or "America's Best" isn't synonymous with "world-beating."

Yet only a handful of international firms refer to themselves as "Germany's Best" or "Italy's Favorite," while American firms are habitual in their puffery. Is this because of the distance of the States from other referents? Is it because our usual product is, indeed, the world's best? (Trust me, you do not want to experience British ketchup or Czech hamburgers.) Or what? I admit that I am at a loss to answer.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 07:57 PM | Comments (5)

Try again

Thanks to Balta and Atrios for pointing out why I can no longer respect Jonah Goldberg's commentary on culture:

I've always thought the Beetles will eventually decline in esteem because of a similar phenomenon.

[Emphasis added] Wow.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:07 PM | Comments (9)

Financing the Rich and Famous of Indy

It seems that public financing for sports stadiums has become my obsession of late. I'm in line with Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star on the tax and gambling scheme to build a new crib for the Indianapolis Colts and keep the Triplets from galloping towards the bright lights of Hollywood and LA.

Like Kravitz, I want the Colts to stay, I want a cool stadium (see the animation link of the proposed diagonal building), but I don't have to like the sausage making money shuffle.

Kravitz captures the irony of government in action:

You think of all the pressing public services that go unfunded in this city and state, and yet, when it comes to a big, honking pleasure dome for our football team, our government is bursting with creativity.

Consider the irony: Our mayor, Bart Peterson, came into office riding a white horse named Family Values, promising to rid the streets of Sodom -- sorry, Indianapolis -- of porn shops, lingerie modeling boutiques and other monuments to degradation and debauchery.

Now, here he is, just a few years later, an expanded convention center and a new stadium in his sights, and he's gone libertarian on us. Today, he wants pull-tab machines, or basically slot machines, which eventually will turn into full-fledged casinos. What's next? Legalize prostitution and use the tax proceeds? How about decriminalizing marijuana and putting those tax dollars to good use, maybe for schools or infrastructure?

There must be an overarching reason why we feel the need to fund these pricey playgrounds over so many other needs. As a society we function as servants tending to the needs of the rich and famous. We live in a celebrity culture, ten minutes in front of the tube proves that point. Why are we so driven to make sure those who will make more money in a few months than we will make in a lifetime are given the red carpet treatment and our time, energy, and money? And for that matter why do we fight so hard for the election of politicians who benefit more than we ever do?

We really do have the power to turn off Celebrity Culture. It's in our hands, but wouldn't our lives be so empty if we did? How could a void like that ever be filled with anything else?

Posted by PunchTheBag at 12:11 PM | Comments (3)

You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce.

I am a Grinch. Now, like others who defy minor social norms (e.g., vegetarians, tee-totallers, and those without TVs), I know to tread lightly on this subject. Militant hatred of Christmas is merely annoying, not enlightening, and besides, hatred takes too much effort. I want to have as little to do with this "holiday" as possible.

Normally, Christian grinches might content themselves to eschew the secular trappings of the season in favour of the raw religious significance. But secularism and the awfulness of Christmas are stealing even the refuge of the Church, and the paths to Christ are anything but straight.

The main problem with Christmas is that it is just too much. Christmas decorations are ubiquitous, and I can't stand any of them: the wreaths, candy canes, trees, carols, bells, ribbons, and --worst of all-- the Christmas sweaters. It's hard to explain my irritation at such a benign celebration, but I think it has something to do with being burnt out. I can't stand being immersed for far too long in trappings that are unamusing, shallow, and gaudy. Everything has become one undifferentiated mass of bad taste.

This is the threat to the religious meaning of Christmas; the secular blends seamlessly into the religious, as does my disgust. I don't think I could stand to have even a crèche in my home, what with the stupid little animal figurines and all. I find myself on Christmas Eve rolling my eyes during "Silent Night," trying not to drip wax all over myself. And I could not even delve into gift-giving without bringing out tired clichés about stress and commercialism, the apparent culprit for destroying Christmas.

I am compelled to celebrate Christ's entry into the world and the start of the end times, but why should it be an ordeal? Perhaps that is fitting, though, that the world would attack the Church by subtle means and alienate His flock. What better time to do this than the seasons the Church Fathers set aside as the beginning of the Church year, and then again at Easter?

But is it naïve to protest the crassness of Christmas? As I said before, being a Scrooge isn't very effective. It is tempting to withdraw from the world, and to the extent that Christmas is a stumbling block, we should. The best we can hope for is that the Christmas message pierces through the crap. After all, Jesus is the light no darkness can overcome. And this is the sufficient comfort I have in a culture obsessed with green, red, and white.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 10:28 AM | Comments (5)

Academic Freedom And Its Opponents

Via the Drudge Report, I find a CourtTV article discussing academic freedom. The article takes an unusually balanced view of the situation, although it does not mention that David Horowitz is little more than a provocateur (which is a fair point to make by now, I think).

Implicit in the struggle over the representation of conservative doctrines in class is the idea of truth itself. Liberals, like the "peace studies" professor mentioned in the article, believe that what they are teaching is the truth, and that any incorporation of conservative beliefs will pollute their subjects. If you believe, for instance, that nonviolence is the only moral and efficacious way to resolve problems, then you are not going to present the case for war in a balanced way. To your eyes, there is no balanced case to be made: There is black and white.

Conservatives have similar shibboleths. I remember hearing complaints from my classmates about the "socialistic" doctrines allegedly preached by my economics professors, all of whom were strong believers in the market. Any suggestion of market failure or for a rational basis for government intervention or redistribution of wealth is a deviation from conservative orthodoxy, and can hardly be tolerated. (Many of the people who held that IU was a hotbed of Marxism were also convinced that the progressive income tax was, literally, evil and immoral.)

Swarthmore professor Timothy Burke has written about this subject at length, and I recommend his essay to you. What stands out in this dispute is that conservatives and liberals have reversed their usual stances on discrimination. Liberals are usually more apt than conservatives to hold that group homogeneity and subtle signals of group identity constitute pervasive discrimination; conservatives usually hold that the market and other impersonal forces will act to end discrimination. If the conservative position in this debate is correct, then the business and political worlds really are rotten with racism; and if the liberals are right about the academy, then the lily-whiteness of most suburbs is not evidence of economic and social barriers.

I hate reducing such a complicated topic to another they-said, they-said dispute, especially because the conservatives who tend to complain about discrimination are, to my knowledge, not exactly poster children for scholarly objectivity, or even academic quality. And yet when there are "peace studies" courses but (ROTC excepted) "war studies" courses, then there does seem to be some sort of evidence that the university has gotten isolated from the public and (I would argue) reality.

But isolation of opinion is not evidence of wrongness. I am likely in the utter minority of ITA readers and contributors in this opinion, but I am a staunch defender of Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute. No matter how "immoral" his research conclusions appear to be to the Judith Reismans of the world, the argument that sex research in toto should be ended is a grotesquerie.

Arguments similar to those used against Kinsey and his successors and colleagues are normally the only ones that are advanced to prove why "liberal" domination of the universities are harmful. This seeming "liberality" of opinion, though, is in most cases only novelty or sophistication married to an opposition to existing power structures within society. The self-importance of academics has led them to conclude that what they do is more critical to social change than it really is, but subjecting the truth-claims of the powerful to scrutiny is important.

Finally, we can come to an analysis of why conservatives feel threatened by what they perceive as the liberal monopoly over higher education. Academics are not always right in their critiques. But the very act of challenging received wisdom threatens all of us who believe that past practices should be presumed to work until convincingly proved unjust. And sometimes those practices are proved unjust, and the irritation of dealing with peace studies professors when they're in full-on dove mode is worth it when we fight racism, sexism, or xenophobia.

Social scientists--and it is really social scientists and humanities professors who are the target of these criticisms; what do I care who my accounting instructor voted for?--do nothing but come up with interpretations of society, and in most cases those theories are going to conflict with our received opinions, simply because scrutinizing a belief normally yields a conclusion at odds with that belief. This is unpleasant for all involved, as Socrates can testify.

My fear is that conservatives are making themselves into the enemies of truth and the tormentors of Socrates by seeking to reserve a quota of professorships for people who believe, with no other qualification, that affirmative action is bad and homosexuality is a sin. Those may be valid opinions, but they're not exactly going to stimulate further debate. (On the other hand, the smug assumption by many professors that their students will laugh at jokes about Ronald Reagan shooting homeless people for sport is offensive, and professors who continue in that practice should be forced to listen to Rush for an hour or two a day until they repent.)

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 10:23 AM | Comments (2)

How to Look Like a Genius

Would you like to impress your friends and relatives at your holiday gatherings this weekend? Then check out these instructions on how to solve a Rubik's cube.

All you have to do after that is manage to put together junior's new play set in less than half an hour and without muttering profanity, and everyone will be convinced that you're an intellectual heavyweight.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 08:56 AM | Comments (1)

December 21, 2004

A Good New Album

At some point, I think, ITA will be sharing its contributors' choices for best new artist of the year 2004 with you. I can't recommend her as a new artist, because she's not new, but Joss Stone's new album "mind body & soul" is worth your time and money. Amazon is offering a deal on the CD if you buy the first Norah Jones album, and that sounds about right--except that Joss Stone can, as we say, rock.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 02:35 PM | Comments (8)

Thinking About the Agora

...a little later Dicaeopolis [in The Acharnians by Aristophanes] asserts, with obvious exaggeration, that it is already nearly noon, the Athenians have not yet left the Agora in the Ceramicus: "They're down in the Agora gossiping, keeping well clear of the red-painted rope." The Agora was, in fact, a favourite resort for every idle layabout in town; and Athens had many such.
Robert Flaceliere, trans. Peter Green, Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles (1959/trans. 1965: London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson) 35

We should criticize the Periclean Age because it was not perfect. Nor should we romanticize the Greek ideals because they are not ours, nor should they be: Any society in which only a small handful of people are politically free, and in which the vast majority of people are shackled by servitude or gender to roles they could not choose, is one that we justly reject. Nor would it be right to underemphasize the illiberality of the Greek regimes:

...the ancient city was an end in itself, an absolute which left none of its members any great measure of liberty, and severely restricted all individual activities. In this sense, it was a basically totalitarian concept, which is obvious enough when we look at Sparta. In Athens, however, the more liberal aspects of the Athenian character may tend to mask this profound truth, though they cannot ever eradicate it. Freedom of speech and opinion, especially in the religious sphere, simply do not exist--as the "impiety trials" and the death of Socrates testify. We should note, too, that it was not under the oligarchic regime of the Thirty Tyrants that the hemlock was administered to Socrates; that act was left to the restored democracy which succeeded them. A citizen could be ostracized, in the technical sense, without any specific charge having been laid against him. (Flaceliere, 30)

So why do we speak of the Greeks as paragons, and why do we meet at this site?

Athens and the Athenians may not have been free by modern standards, but they were incredibly free by the standards of their time and their place, and that is important. More importantly, the Athenians in particular loved liberty, and knew the difference between liberty and unfreedom. If they ever needed a reminder, they could look to the slaves in their own household. And if Aristotle is any reflection of what Greek thought prized, then the Athenians did not liberty just because they hated tyranny, but because they loved justice more.

And yet their committment to justice ws not so complete that they freed their slaves, nor was it so broad as to extend civil liberties, as we would understand them, to women or foreigners. Nor did the Athenians decide everything in their public discussions; Athens was not a democracy, but neither was it an isonomy. There were bureaucratic officials who regulated commerce and took care of the routine burdens of administration--anyone who has ever worked in a sufficiently large administration, or even dealt with one, is aware of the power these seemingly menial positions can wield. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, there were the great men of Athens, like Pericles, who--although in theory no more than primus inter pares--nevertheless were far more influential than their supposed peers. (Some animals are always more equal than others.)

How to square the actuality of classical Athens with its gossips, its serfs and its dictators with the image we have of men in white togas conducting endless philosophical debates in the Academy? And why should we care? Why not treat Athens as we treat Corinth or Thebes--that is (for the purpose of learned but nonspecialist discourse, at least) not at all?

There are several reasons I might adduce, but I wish to bring forward one in particular, and that is that the study of antiquity challenges us. We are familiar with the forms of classical antquity because of the seeming similarity of Athens's ideals to the United States', and the constant invocation of classical antecedents by the Founders and the succeeding generation (as Garry Wills argues, the Gettysburg Address is the product of a man who was greatly influenced by the classics--his first speech, after all, was delivered in a lyceum). But though the forms of our philosophy may echo those of the Athenians, they are clearly not the same, and the constant and close comparison of these superficially similar systems of belief can provoke us into a better understanding of why our ideals are as they are--and whether they are as they should be. If it is easy for us to say, now, that women should be equal to men and that none should be slaves, why was it so difficult for the hallowed Athenians? And--more troublingly--if the Athenians, those lovers of liberty found that they could lose their position as hegemon and lose all of their freedom, then should the United States be sanguine about its position?

Preserving the ideal concept of Athens has its own benefits. Even if it was never true that the Athenians were as free and noble as we, or at least I, used to naively imagine, it is at least a useful model and goal. Imagine a polity where reason, debate and persuasion made policy, and where all citizens had a right and the ability to participate. Hannah Arendt argued in On Revolution that the ideal of freedom, kept alive in classical texts, allowed for the rebirth of liberty in its modern forms, as exemplified by the earliest stages of the French Revolution and the American Revolution in its totality.

Even if the historical agora was populated more by craftsmen and idlers than by statesmen and philosophers, we can still invoke the symbols of an ideal antiquity to guide our discussions, and our principles.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 11:54 AM | Comments (4)

Share!

It's obviously Christmas time, a season full of memories. Please share some of your favorite or more notable memories for others to read. If you're shy about it, just post anonymously =)

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:52 AM | Comments (10)

December 20, 2004

Doing it ourselves?

Artificial life keeps inching closer and closer:

The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material.

This essence of life contains ready-made much of the biological machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code.

When they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins, just like a normal cell would.

Someone call Dr. Frankenstein. (H/T Instanpundit)

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:59 PM | Comments (3)

New Kids on the Block

A new blog I've been reading lately for intelligent conservative commentary is Sounding the Trumpet, a group blog of students at Cornell University. In their most recent post "coyote" explores the possibility of a national ID.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)

I want to consume!

Far be it from me to criticize HH Ioannes Paulus II, but...

Materialism is fun.

I'm not referring to the philosophy of materialism, that the universe is WYSIWYG and that metaphysics is irrelevant. We can have that discussion some other day, and this site has already played host to a number of discussions similar to that debate anyway.

Instead, I'm referring to materialism in its anti-philosophical sense, in the sense in which a Valley Girl and Donald Trump are materialist. And while there are a number of objections to such a lifestyle, I don't intend to go into those objections because--as I said earlier--I want to prove that materialism is fun.

Obviously, I believe that there is more to a good life than this crass consumerism. The vapidity and superficiality of the shopping mall is ample testament to that. And any glance at my personal site should indicate clearly that there is more to my life than shopping.

In fact, in many ways I am the opposite of the mall rat stereotype: The only chain stores I enjoy are Barnes and Noble and Restoration Hardware, and when I buy clothes I always try to limit the time I spend in the store to the absolute minimum.

Yet I'm no science fiction-style disembodied brain-in-a-vat. Although I cheerfully spend hours upon hours in the library or the archives researching fairly narrow and obscure subjects, even I occasionally want to go out and live the high life. It just happens that my idea of getting wild is having a Vanilla Creme Frappucino.

All right, I don't have much experience with materialism. Any fourteen-year-old girl can tell you more about contemporary pop music than I can. But even so--materialism is fun.

I stress this point because one of the shibboleths of the sophisticated is that consumption is a sin. If you want to be accepted as a deep person, as someone who sincerely cares about hunger in Africa, you have to avow that you get no satisfaction whatsoever from worldly objects.

This secular asceticism is not only joyless, it is a killjoy. The louder you denigrate material pleasures, the more you get to denigrate those who still foolishly and wastefully find any happiness whatsoever in their possession of objects. Indeed, you trade off conspicuous consumption for conspicuous nonacquisitiveness, and you wear your thrift store clothes as proudly as a peacock spreads his feathers.

Some roots of this anti-consumption crusade are sincerely felt. It is true that much consumption is wasteful and harmful; the Humvee and most SUVs fall into this category. Nearly all watches and most jewelry exist for no reason other than to trumpet one's status. The examples are familiar to all by this point, I think.

If the anti-consumerists would stop there and attack ostentation instead of consumption, then I would agree with them. Modesty and humility are not only personal virtues, they are social virtues too, because they make society a gentler and fairer place. But I can't shake the suspicion that many of the anti-consumerists hate consumption because they were the people who resented the Valley Girls of their youth.

Why do I believe this? Because I was one of those people in high school who didn't fit in; surprisingly--to me--my mastery of international relations and American history didn't translate into popularity. Those people who spent their evenings watching MTV instead of reading the Economist, though--they were popular. And I was jealous of them.

My social marginality paid off (handsomely) in the long run. I have developed a deep and stable inner life thanks to my intellectual cultivation. That cultivation, however, doesn't give me the right to disdain others for rejecting my path. Far from it. On what basis to I criticize others for spending time with friends and family? Are they inferior human beings because they can't offer a capsule biography of John Hay? Of course not. Of course not.

Feelings are surprisingly resistant to reason. It took two years to get over my resentment of the materialists, and every now and then I have a kneejerk reaction against them. But those instances are less and less frequent these days.

And as I've made my peace with the uglier parts of my high school years, my need to condemn others for their consumption has dramatically lessened. I may limit my own consumption to DVDs, CDs and books (loads and loads of books), but I can see why other people would choose to live their life according to a different set of priorities, in which buying Richard Posner's latest book comes near the bottom. The utility-maximizing intersection of the budget line and isoquants of the materialists simply requires a larger proportion of consumption vis-a-vis reflection. Or, in plain English: materialism is fun.

Now, the materialism I am praising here and that which the Pope is arguing against are different phenomena. The Pope would surely agree that material forms have a place in spiritual life: Let us not forget who it is who lives in the private apartments in the Vatican. But the Pope is not obsessed with materialism, although he lives in the most gilded cage of all. And it is desires, more than wealth, that define materialism when it becomes malignant.

Update: In comments, Brian Logue recommends this post on why "Shopping is not Entertainment," and I concur in his recommendation.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 02:08 PM | Comments (2)

Political Correctness at Conner Prairie?

I have fond childhood memories of Conner Prairie, an "open-air living history museum" just north of Indianapolis. I recall at least a couple school field trips in addition to family outings to see the pioneer lifestyle demonstrated by the staff and volunteers there.

So I was dismayed to hear from ITA reader Kevin Killion that he observed some instances of political correctness superseding historical correctness during a trip to Conner Prairie two years ago. Mr. Killion is from the Chicago area, and had read favorable descriptions of the museum, including accolades for its "accuracy." What he observed on a family trip, however, was something quite different.

Mr. Killion cites a couple examples:

-- An impromptu public court passed severe "sentences" on people who had transgressed against minor moral mores, bringing great amusement to all. It made it seem downright silly for anyone to be upset about how someone else behaves.

-- There was little or no evidence that religion played any role in
the lives of these 19th century communities. There was nothing
religious in homes or the re-created school building. The one church
building was an empty shell (!), and the description of it made it
seem strange rather than a focus of community life.

But most disturbing was the perpetuation of the "evil white men vs. noble savages" meme. In a scene played out by two youngsters reading from cards given to them by a Conner Prairie volunteer, the implied message seems to be that William Conner made his fortune by taking advantage of the native population in the area. Here is a video clip of the scene. A transcript provided by Mr. Killion is below.

Fur trader (reading from card): I came to this area to make my fortune. I hear that the Indians will trade beaver, otter and other furs for items like brass kettles, guns and these beads. I get paid a lot more for beaver pelts than a whole crate of trade goods costs me.

Indian (reading from card):
People of my village have been trapping animals [unclear] for furs
and food for as long as we can remember. Now, white men come from the
east and ask us to trap even more, just for the furs. It's a lot of
work, but the items we get in trade make up for it. The beads, silver
pots, stones [? unclear] are all popular [unclear].

Teacher:
Now, I would like you gentleman to trade.

[Indian gives trader an animal pelt; trade gives Indian two plastic necklaces.]

Teacher:
Now who got the better deal?

[General laughter]

Teacher:
Now you know how Mr. Conner could afford this house. See, what he'd
do was the Indians would do the work. They would do the trapping and
the hunting. They were the experts. They'd bring in the furs and sent
everything down to Conner [unclear] where his brother John was
located near the Ohio River. John shipped those furs east and they go
to Europe.
...
Mr. Conner really thrived during this period.

It is peculiar that those who view indigenous populations as noble and wise (when it comes to living in harmony with nature), would also think they are too stupid to realize they are getting shafted by a white trader. In any case, thanks to Mr. Killion for bringing this to my attention. Is Conner Prairie trying to foist revisionist history on its visitors? We report, you decide.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:36 PM | Comments (11)

America's true imperialism

MTV announced that in February it will, for the first time, be available in Africa. The African venture will be the music video network's 100th overseas channel. The channel will be in English, but it will include some African programming. It is set to reach 48 sub-Saharan African countries.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

Wendling joins ITA

In the Agora is pleased to announce the addition of Zach Wendling to the ITA family. Zach is a well-known writer and thinker, as well as a personal friend. You may read his biography in full here. Welcome aboard!

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:32 AM | Comments (4)

Back that copyright up

A 48-page opinion that Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King issued by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Friday addressed a dispute concerning the popular rap song Back That Azz Up. An issue in the case is whether the lyrics to the song "Back That Azz Up" are substantially similar to the lyrics of the song "Back That Ass Up." Here's more on the case published in The Village Voice. You can watch Juvenile's "Back That Thang Up" (the edited for TV version) here at this link and you can watch a 30-second clip from the explicit original version by clicking here (RealPlayer required).

The Fifth Circuit found it unnecessary to reach the question whether the phrase "back that ass up" is incapable of receiving copyright protection because "the phrase is not original and because the merger doctrine precludes extending protection to a phrase that is necessary to describe a particular thing--in this case, a dance move."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 07:42 AM | Comments (3)

December 19, 2004

Standing in the corner

NRO's Corner can be a good blog, but Kathryn Lopez does everything she can to keep that from being so. In response to President Bush being named Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" she writes, "It's about time" and then complains about them getting "their kicks in" for using this "odd picture" on their homepage. National Review has long been an honest, intellectual organization. Sometimes they're wrong, but they're usually driven by reason and philosophy, not a political hack job. Kathryn bucks this trend and calls NR's integrity into question. Bush was Time's Man of the Year in 2000, and the only president to get the title more is FDR, who not incidentally served longer than any other. So the "it's about time" comment is silly, and the picture is far from odd. Is the RNC or National Review writing Kathryn's pay check?

Update: Thanks to Bobby A-G for pointing out that Andrew Sullivan agrees with me.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 06:26 PM | Comments (10)

Rummy changes course

"The Pentagon has acknowledged that Donald H. Rumsfeld did not sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq, but it said that from now on the embattled defense secretary would stop the use of signing machines and would pick up the pen himself," the Washington Post reports.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 06:22 PM | Comments (1)

Warning

Children of the 1980s and 1990s are advised not to visit this website, which offers awesome, professional remixes of songs from that era. Your free time will never forgive you.

Update: An ITA reader writes to warn that the site infected her computer with a bunch of spyware and adware. You've been warned. Twice.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:26 PM | Comments (1)

December 17, 2004

Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories

Ruben Bolling is a great cartoonist, and Thrilling Tom The Dancing Bug Stories, his new collection of strips from the syndicated Tom The Dancing Bug, proves it. Bolling's style is his own, and is rarely as issues-driven as Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World or strident like Ted Rall's pre-9/11 work. But underlying all of the work Bolling produces for his weekly strip is a consistent rejection of shallowness.

It's hardly revolutionary to say that American culture or modern life or the media is shallow. Finding someone who can say it so that it is both worth listening to and funny is remarkable. Bolling has always accomplished that. "I love Rall and Perkins [Dan Perkins, Tom Tomorrow's real name," Bolling wrote in an email interview, "but I don't see myself as an advocate. I usually just try to find humor, hypocrisy or absurdity in situations."

For that reason, Bolling has usually avoided discussing some obvious topics at length. "As a satirist, you can't write directly about the war--it's like looking directly at the sun," Bolling said. "You have to look at the peripheral aspects of it." Bolling has done so fantastically well.

Bolling mines politics for his work, but shies away from political themes. "I grew uncomfortable with my comics leading up to the election because I began to cross the line into advocacy, and started to worry if I was becoming too strident," Bolling said. Engagement with the partisan media was harmful, he said: "I read too many political blogs leading up to the election, and it was to my detriment." (Two sample Bolling strips about politics: example, example.)

Of course, his work isn't a series of ideological statements: Bolling is a humorist, and his criticism of American manners derives from his talent for detecting absurdity. Pop culture is an unending source of material. "I keep up with pop culture just by watching what I like--I don't make assignments for myself, for example to learn about American Idol," Bolling said. "Recently I've enjoyed writing about pop culture I know absolutely nothing about--such as Ashlee Simpson."

Bolling has a cast of recurring characters--like Charley the Australopithecene (example), boy adventurer Billy Dare (example), and Louis Maltby (example) --but he isn't dependent on them to create the strip. Comics themselves have been a target of Bolling's through the years, especially in his remarkable "Super-Fun-Pak-Comix" strips (example). And Bolling has shown that he's more than capable of skewering the conventions of played-out genres (example).

Ruben Bolling is an underappreciated modern master. Buy Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories. (Neither this site nor any of its contributors w