Monthly Archives: July 2012

Not Exactly Brain Surgery

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This week I did a little job for a rocket scientist. It reminded me of this skit from The Mitchell & Webb Look about a meeting between two very intelligent (if obnoxious) men. Enjoy:

Which reminds me of a joke:

A guy walks into a bar and orders three martinis. The bartender says, “You know you can just buy them one at a time.” The guy laughs and tells that he is new in town. He used to live near his brother and sister and had drinks with them every night, so he wants to recreate this to cheer himself up. The bartender gives him three martinis, the guy drinks one and leaves. This goes on for the next month: guy orders three martinis, drinks one, leaves. Then one evening, the guy walks in and orders two martinis. The bartender says, “I hope nothing happened to your brother or sister.” The guy says, “No, I just decided to quit drinking.”

That’s a very sweet joke. Have a good night.

Fucktards! Fucktards Everywhere! But Not A One to Shoot!

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Don't Urinate on This SiteSomething went very wrong when I wrote about Moe Tucker, the mediocre drummer for the Velvet Underground, and how she had become a member of the Tea Party. It has brought out a lot of loons—non-regular readers who come to the site somehow (not from search engines as far as I can tell). Mostly everyone thinks that I’m just so mean to poor Maureen. One commenter was smart and even insightful. But the others are just garbage.

I like it when people disagree with me. This is one way that I learn and grow, because (Shocking!) I’m not always right. But most of these people are just yelling at me—they have no point other than that I’m wrong and an asshole. One commenter was upset at my “foul mouth” and called me a “parasite.”

From time to time, I am an asshole on other people’s sites. It doesn’t happen often and the last time I did it was probably two years ago, and even that turned into a good and productive exchange. So I understand that people have bad days and say things that they would not an hour later. But the harshness of these attacks makes me think these are intolerant people who shit on me and my site and move on with their webwide fertilizing project.

I wonder what to do about these commenters. I could just deny them, but that seems like it gives them too much power over me. I could continue to respond, but there are two problems there: the fucktards don’t deserve it and it is emotionally draining. I’m especially not up to being emotionally drained. I visit a lot of websites where people say things I disagree with—that’s how I keep myself intellectually honest. But I don’t post incendiary comments. I don’t go to libertarian sites and yell at the owners about how only assholes are libertarians.

A website is like a small business—a bakery, say. Anyone is allowed in my bakery. But when a person comes in to scream about how I don’t know anything about making cookies, they have broken the implicit contract we have. The deal is that you come in, you browse the cookies, maybe you buy them or maybe you tell me that you don’t like them. And that’s it. Now, if you think the guy behind the counter is a loud mouthed asshole, don’t come in the bakery. I don’t visit Bill O’Reilly’s bakery. (And you shouldn’t either; his cookies have worms that eat your brain—really!)

I suppose I am over thinking this. These people could just be having a bad day, in which case I understand—no foul. Or they could be, as I said, webwide fertilizers. In that case, I just need to treat them as the other major nuisance of website management: spammers. Both groups are made up of assholes who don’t care that the little reward they get from soiling my website is far outweighed by the harm done to my website and its readers.

The customer is not always right!

Conservative Definition of “Liberal”

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Mitch McConnellSuzy Khimm over at WonkBlog reports that Harry Reid read an Ornstein and Mann OpEd on the floor of the Senate this morning. It was about Republican obstruction in Congress. You know: the kind of thing that no serious person could contest.

But that doesn’t mean a silly (or evil) person couldn’t contest it! Mitch McConnell was having none of this talk of Republican obstruction. What he said really struck me, because it encapsalates the conservative mindset:

The reason I’m having a hard time restraining my laughter—I know Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann. They’re ultraliberals.

Needless to say, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann are not ultraliberals. Ornstein, for example, is a Republican who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. They are centrists, even by the highly conservative American political scale. By international standards, they both skew very conservative. But this is how conservatives of the Mitch McConnell kind think: if you aren’t a conservative extremist, you are a liberal. I first noticed this in conservative claims that the media were liberal. This amazed me until I realized that by “liberal” they meant “not conservative.”

Once you understand this, everything else falls in place. So sure, Ornstein and Mann are ultraliberals. They must be! They’re not Nazis.

Paul Ryan Shrugged

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Ayn RandBack in 2009, Jonathan Chait wrote a substantial article about Ayn Rand for The New Replublic. In particular, he discussed how Rand has changed the modern conservative movement, even as she was never a part of it.

As most people know, Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand devotee. On the surface, this seems kind of strange because Ryan is a Roman Catholic and Rand was a hardcore (and not very thoughtful) atheist. But as I think you can tell from Ryan’s famous budget, he has much more faith in Ayn Rand than Jesus Christ.

Paul Ryan is the perfect person to illustrate the influence of Ayn Rand today (although Chait doesn’t discuss him in the article—probably because Ryan wasn’t that notable in 2009). I say this because he is the very embodiment of these two aspects of Ayn Rand’s thought that live on.

Moral Superiority

Rand didn’t believe that capitalism was necessarily the most efficient economic system (Efficient Markets), nor did she necessarily believe that capitalism was better for our species in the long run (Social Darwinists). To her, capitalism was a moral system. Ludwig von Mises once told Rand, “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your condition which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.” And this is exactly what Paul Ryan and his conservative peers believe. Chait writes:

The association of wealth with virtue necessarily requires the free marketer to play down the role of class. Arthur Brooks, in his book Gross National Happiness, concedes that “the gap between the richest and poorest members of society is far wider than in many other developed countries. But there is also far more opportunity . . . there is in fact an amazing amount of economic mobility in America.” In reality, as a study earlier this year by the Brookings Institution and Pew Charitable Trusts reported, the United States ranks near the bottom of advanced countries in its economic mobility. The study found that family background exerts a stronger influence on a person’s income than even his education level. And its most striking finding revealed that you are more likely to make your way into the highest-earning one-fifth of the population if you were born into the top fifth and did not attain a college degree than if you were born into the bottom fifth and did. In other words, if you regard a college degree as a rough proxy for intelligence or hard work, then you are economically better off to be born rich, dumb, and lazy than poor, smart, and industrious.

Hysteria!

Rand’s other great contribution to modern conservatism is her use of hysteria. You know the stuff: “The government wants to ban machine guns; if they can ban machine guns they will ban all guns; if they ban all guns we won’t be able to protect ourselves; if we can’t protect ourselves the government will put us in concentration camps.” Observation: government suggests banning machine guns. Conclusion: Nazi Germany.

What we most see—including from Paul Ryan just about anytime he speaks at length—is to jump from “I disagree with that policy” to “Socialism!” Again, Chait:

What is so striking, and serves as the clearest mark of Rand’s lasting influence, is the language of moral absolutism applied by the right to these questions. Conservatives define the see-sawing of the federal tax-and-transfer system between slightly redistributive and very slightly redistributive as a culture war over capitalism, or a final battle to save the free enterprise system from the hoard of free-riders.

Some people may wonder about my keen interest in Ayn Rand. There are a few reasons. One is that I have read the majority of her work. And I have given it serious and prolonged thought. It is, on the whole, shockingly bad. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that liking Any Rand depends not on being intelligent and thoughtful, but just the opposite. Rand offers mediocre and undisciplined minds the choice to shut down and parrot her easily understood dogma. And I am most definitely talking about the supposed intellectual Paul Ryan.

I wish to understand why Rand has been so successful, and that is my main reason for being interested. Rand’s writing is far more popular than most people think. Over 50 years after she published it, Atlas Shrugged still sells over a half million copies every year. And as Chait documents, a lot of very powerful people like Paul Ryan take seriously her “two-dimensional characters serving as ideological props” in plots so superficial and boring they would make Pollyanna cynical.

Rather than trying to be the Romantic heroes of Rand’s limited fictional universe, it would be better if Paul Ryan had done the honest thing: shrug.

Fox Not As Evil As Previously Thought

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Arrested Development Season 3Last month, I wrote an article, The 3 (or 7) Houses of Parliament. It was about a joke in the TV series Arrested Development. For the article, I made a video that used 22.8 seconds from one of their episodes, “The Ocean Walker.” And I uploaded it to YouTube.[1]

Fox, via some robot on YouTube determined that I was using copyrighted material and banned the video instantly. At first, I just bitched. Typical! Fox is evil. You know the script.

Finally, I decided that I would fight it. I filed an appeal. I noted that I was using only one-fiftieth of an episode. I noted that it was part of a larger video and that video was part of a larger article and so my use should be considered fair use. And I noted that my video acted as a commercial for the episode.

Shockingly, today I received email from YouTube:

Dear GBUtests,[2]

FOX has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video, “The 3 (or 7) Houses of Parliament“. For more information, please visit your Copyright Notice page[.]

Sincerely,
– The YouTube Team

This is great news. It makes me think that the system—at least when it comes to Fox—works. I think the copyright system is completely broken. Until it is fixed, however, I don’t think people should be able to post whole episodes and such. But my video—and now that it’s been approved, I wish it were better—clearly falls under fair use rights. I’m glad that Fox agrees.

Of course, Fox is still evil.

[1] Here is the video:

[2] GBUtests is short for “Good Bad & Uglies Tests,” which are the videos I am trying to make but are still too weak to show in public. It does, however, still have a couple misc videos that don’t involve my face that you can look at. Don’t expect much.

The Bane Also Rises

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Rush Limbaugh said today, “Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in [The Dark Knight Rises] is named Bane?” Here’s the whole 4 minute bit:

The problem, of course, is that this comment shows a complete lack of familiarity with the facts. You don’t have to be a comic book geek (which I am, but in the amateur category) to look on Wikipedia to find out that Bane first appeared in January 1993, in Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1.

And just from a grammar standpoint: please! Bane is a great name for a supervillain. Bain is just the name of a Scottish philosopher.

Repeat after me, “There is such a thing as a homophone! There is such a thing as a homophone!” After you accept this, we can have such a damned good time together.

Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Update (19 July 2012 12:16 am)

Update (19 July 2012 11:16 am)

Rush Limbaugh now claims he never said the character of Bane was created as an attack on Romney’s experience at Bain Capital, except, you know, he did. He now claims he only said that Democrats would use it in the campaign. But even that is not going to be the case. This whole thing shows Limbaugh in an even more contemptible light than usual. It is really pathetic.

Romney: Do What I Say Not What I Do

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Ezra KleinIn a widely quoted passage from The Real Romney, Kranish and Helman explain that when Romney was asked to take over Bain Capital, he first demurred. It was only when he received guarantees that if the Bain Capital venture went bad he would not lose any money and that his reputation would be protected.

Ezra Klein today, uses this story to discuss Romney’s economic policies. He goes on to discuss the careful “no way I can lose” manner that Romney left Bain Capital. And this, to Klein, shows the lie of Romney’s entire argument for cutting the taxes of rich people:

But Romney’s policies seems to reflect the inverse of these lessons: They increase the rewards for taking risks that pay off handsomely while reducing the baseline level of security people need to take those risks. In that way, his platform seems likely to widen the economic gap between the rich and the poor, as it will be even harder for a working class father who can’t count on having health insurance for his family to leave his company and start a new business, but it will be even more profitable for a son of privilege to take a sweetheart deal to start a new business.

There is a sense in the United States that the rich play by different rules than the poor or the middle class — rules that make it easier for them to get even richer. Romney history show he has been aggressive in taking advantage of those rules, which is fine. But his proposed policies would make it even easier for the rich to stay rich and even more difficult for the poor to scrape by, which is not fine. As Romney likes to say, the American people don’t resent success. But they do resent tax cuts for the rich at the cost of health care for the poor.

Let me put this more directly than Klein does: Romney’s wealth does not come from risk taking; it comes from risk avoidance. His argument that the rich need to be rewarded for taking risks is belied by his own story. People need a certain amount of security if they are going to take risks. Romney’s economic ideas will only make the wealthy more so and provide fewer options for everyone else.

“They” Have Been at It Again

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My schedule is kind of chaotic, so I’m posting in clumps. This one just caught my eye. It is a catch from Media Matters in an article, Fox’s Carlson: Obama Is ‘Apologizing To Foreign Nations All The Time,’ But Won’t Apologize To Romney. It is less than one minute:

What I find interesting about this is the exact phrase Carlson uses, “They accuse the President of apologizing to foreign nations all the time.” This is a standard mainstream media “he said”/”she said” tactic, but used in the most evil way. Who is it that accuses the President of apologizing to foreign nations (all the time)? They! I happen to know who “they” are: they are Republican operatives and other right wing nutjobs.

So if you ever needed any more evidence that this practice in the mainstream press is evil, now you see how the media arm of the Republican Party (i.e. Fox News) uses it. It is not acceptable except when the issue at hand truly is just a matter of opinion. Some say football is the best game ever invented; others say it sucks. (Others are right.)

Aaron Carroll Get a Bit Annoyed

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Aaron CarrollAaron Carroll is a doctor and a healthcare blogger. I wrote to him about a year ago about trend changes in healthcare. He was nice enough to write back that he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Ah, the trials of a PhD scientist![1] Anyway, he takes on Tyler Cowen’s column in the New York Times, The New Tug of War Over Medicaid. Carroll is nicer than I am; he starts his article by going out of his way to say that he normally thinks very highly of Cowen. I’m just truthful: Tyler Cowen is a dick.

But once Carroll gets going, he is as blunt in his appraisal of Cowen’s argument as I am of Cowen himself. He starts each of the center paragraphs, “I get a bit annoyed…” There are five of them.

  1. when people claim that we can’t “afford” more government intervention
  2. by the claim that an expansion of government insurance leads to lines and waiting
  3. by blanket claims that doctors won’t accept Medicaid
  4. when people just claim government programs are “unpopular”
  5. at the blanket acceptance of the awesomeness of the free market in health care

He provides information that debunks each one of these claims. Mostly, he is just annoyed that thoroughly debunked ideas show up in columns in major American newspapers.

He ends:

Look, I get that people may not like the political implications of those systems. They may not like the governments that produce them. They may not like the lack of choice inherent in such systems. They may not like the potential limitations within them for making money, and therefore for innovation. But we need to stop making stuff up about them.

What Aaron Carroll doesn’t understands is that conservatives (including libertarians like Cowen) are not intellectually honest. Their ideology is fact-proof. This is because ideology always trumps new facts. As John Maynard Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” What conservatives do is ignore the facts. I know this. But when they do this, I, like Aaron Carroll, get a bit annoyed.

[1] I noted something really interesting, but no one is going to spend an hour listening to me talk about trend lines and their derivatives. If anyone starts making a big deal out of this, I will be really pissed off.

A Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch

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If you’re like me (And who isn’t?) you really liked the phrase “a pair of pliers and a blowtorch” in Pulp Fiction. It isn’t that I’m into torture; it is just that it’s a great phrase, “I’m gonna call up a couple hard pipe-hitting niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.” This video is queued to the exact right place so go ahead and click play; I’ll rejoin you in about 15 seconds.

After Reservoir Dogs was all the rage, many people pointed out that Quentin Tarantino had lifted many ideas from other films. I suppose that he thought he was creating an homage to his predecessors, and I’m inclined to agree. But it is still a little bothersome when the things you most like in his movies are all lifted verbatim from others.

Charley Varrick

And that brings us back to, “A pair of pliers and a blowtorch.” About a year after seeing Pulp Fiction, I was watching TV late one night and Charley Varrick came on. It is about a bank robbery that goes wrong for unusual reasons and the consequences. And it stars Walter Matthau in an unusual kind of star role. Two-thirds into the film, we get this very short scene:

That’s John Vernon delivering the line, “You know what kind of people they are. They’re gonna strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.” Truthfully, I don’t know if the line is original to this movie; it may have been a common turn of phrase. The one thing I do know is that Tarantino got it from this film. Just watch the film; it is his kind of movie.

If you haven’t see Charley Varrick, I recommend it. It is very good.

Raffel’s Unique Don Quixote

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Burton Raffel Don QuixoteAs I read through Don Quixote, I try to mix it up in terms of translations. As readers know, my favorite translation is Putnam for various reasons, but most especially because his translation is distinctly better than previous translations and no translation since is distinctly better than his. Nonetheless, recently I’ve been reading Burton Raffel’s 1995 translation. It is the most unique translation that I’ve found.

At first, I was put off by what I thought unusual translations for the sake of being different. In particular, Sancho names Don Quixote, “Caballero de al triste figura.” This is translated by various writers as follows:

Knight of the Sorrowful Face (Grossman)
Knight of the Rueful Countenance (Ormsby)
Knight of the Mournal Countenance (Putnam)
Knight of the Sad Face (Raffel)

It was only later that I realized that Raffel was (as much as possible) translating Don Quixote like a poem. He tries to get the sound and the syntax as close as possible to the original. This is a hopeless task, of course, but he succeeds surprisingly well.

There are times when this causes him to give up on translating altogether. A particularly interesting passage is in Chapter 26, where Sancho is quoting a letter Don Quixote had written. In the original:

“Alta y sobajada senora.”

“No diria,” dijo el Barbero, “sobajada, sino sobrehumana, o soberana.”

The point is that Sancho is ignorant and confuses words. He refers to the, “Great and scrubbing lady”![1] The barber replies that it can’t be that and suggests “superhuman” and “sovereign.”

Dealing with word play of this type is difficult in translation. Putnam deals with it well, but at the expense of a close translation:

“High and sufferable lady—”

“He would not have said sufferable,” the barber corrected him; “it must have been sovereign lady or something of that sort.”

Compare this to Raffel who doesn’t even try to translate this, but simply adds editorial comments so the reader can understand the joke.[2]

“Oh much pawed-over [sobajada] lady.”

“It couldn’t say that,” said the barber. “Not ‘much pawed-over’ but ‘more than human’ [sobrehumana] or ‘sovereign’ [soberana] lady.”

One way is not necessarily better than the other. However, despite Putnam’s cleverness in translating this, the true nature of the joke comes through better with Raffel.

Because Raffel has worked so hard at recreating the experience of reading Don Quixote in Spanish, the text is a bit more stilted and less modern than Putnam’s. It is nonetheless highly readable; the pages fly by. I’ve thought a lot about why there have been so many translations of Don Quixote since Putnam. Grossman’s translation, while marginally better, doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. Raffel’s translation is distinct, and we are better off for it.

[1] “Sobajada” is not in my Spanish dictionary; Google translates it is “scrubbing.”

[2] Putnam provides an endnote on the subject:

The word play on “sobajada,” “sobrehumana” (omitted in my rendering), and “soberana” is in reality untranslatable.