Trivial but amusing:
The Victorian computer monitor.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Recent reads
The Founding Finaglers : AND OTHER SCOUNDRELS : in a Fascinating History of Corruption in America from Jamestown to Teapot Dome, by Nathan Miller.
An enlightening if somewhat depressing survey of various ways in which many of the much-admired explorers, settlers, military heroes and statesmen of U.S. history have sought to enrich or advantage themselves in ethically dubious ways. It was somewhat surprising to see the name of George Washington, that stalwart of incorruptibility, listed among the smugglers and embezzlers of the prerevolutionary British colonies and the early American republic. As it turns out, all that Miller really has on Washington is that he may have been a trifle too assertive in trying to cash in on some western land grants. This pales into insignificance beside the massive swindles of the Yazoo land-grant scandal, the criminally callous profiteering of the Civil War period, the open government-for-sale corruption of the 1870s, the Machiavellian financial manipulations of railroad financiers, and the firmly entrenched systematic graft of the big-city political machines like Tammany Hall. Miller provides detailed narratives of all these and more, with footnotes to document the source of each accusation.
I couldn't help but notice that the scale of the corruption seems to expand relentlessly throughout the chronological course of the book. It would seem that improved communications, by enabling entities with political and economic power to act more efficiently and on a larger scale, have simply expanded the opportunities for crooks to take advantage of the rest of the human race. In an epilogue, Miller addresses the Watergate scandal, which was fresh in the public consciousness when the book appeared in 1976.
The Founding Finaglers : AND OTHER SCOUNDRELS : in a Fascinating History of Corruption in America from Jamestown to Teapot Dome, by Nathan Miller.
An enlightening if somewhat depressing survey of various ways in which many of the much-admired explorers, settlers, military heroes and statesmen of U.S. history have sought to enrich or advantage themselves in ethically dubious ways. It was somewhat surprising to see the name of George Washington, that stalwart of incorruptibility, listed among the smugglers and embezzlers of the prerevolutionary British colonies and the early American republic. As it turns out, all that Miller really has on Washington is that he may have been a trifle too assertive in trying to cash in on some western land grants. This pales into insignificance beside the massive swindles of the Yazoo land-grant scandal, the criminally callous profiteering of the Civil War period, the open government-for-sale corruption of the 1870s, the Machiavellian financial manipulations of railroad financiers, and the firmly entrenched systematic graft of the big-city political machines like Tammany Hall. Miller provides detailed narratives of all these and more, with footnotes to document the source of each accusation.
I couldn't help but notice that the scale of the corruption seems to expand relentlessly throughout the chronological course of the book. It would seem that improved communications, by enabling entities with political and economic power to act more efficiently and on a larger scale, have simply expanded the opportunities for crooks to take advantage of the rest of the human race. In an epilogue, Miller addresses the Watergate scandal, which was fresh in the public consciousness when the book appeared in 1976.
Watergate cracked the crust of public complacency that had grown over the issue of corruption, yet it was a complete break with old-style shenanigans. For one thing, the traditional motivations of political skulduggery were missing.... Loyalty to the President, rather than personal enrichment, was the lodestar of the men involved in corrupting the electoral process. Unhampered by constitutional limitations and untroubled by moral constraints, they believed that what was good for Richard Nixon was good for the nation. John Ehrlichman best summed up their views when he said : "The President is the government."
Watergate also legitimized paranoia....
Yet the ground that produced Watergate had been plowed and planted long before the rubber-gloved White house plumbers were caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The affair was the logical consequence of what Arthur Schlesinger has dubbed "the imperial presidency". He contends that over the past thirty-five years or so [in 1976], since Franklin Roosevelt's time, the Presidency has usurped control over the making of foreign policy at the expense of Congress, the judiciary, the press, and public opinion, which had previously exercised some restraing on the successive occupants of the White House. The belief was that only the President could deal effectively with crisis -- no matter what the crisis. Not unexpectedly, Presidential claims of infallibility in the making of war and peace were carried over into the domestic sector. What Nixon did, according to Schlesinger, was to carry the imperial Presidency to its ultimate end -- "a revolutionary challenge to the separation of powers."
From this flowed the "enemies list", the use of the [CIA], the [FBI] and the [IRS] for illegal purposes, the intimidation fo the press and the invocation of national security and the police state to cloak criminal actions. In the end it wouldn't even play in Peoria. As Richard Nixon was hustled out of the Oval Office, his hand-picked successor attempted to exorcise Nixon's baleful spirit from American public life and to imply that Watergate was a momentary aberration by earnestly proclaiming that "our long national nightmare is over."
But is it?
Tony Hoagland's poems
... in the current issue of Poetry magazine have caught my attention. (Sample available here.) Any of you Texas types know anything about him?
... in the current issue of Poetry magazine have caught my attention. (Sample available here.) Any of you Texas types know anything about him?
Lost Dumas novel resurfaces
Fans of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other tales of gallantry and adventure, take note:
Pegasus to release lost Dumas novel
I guess I missed this story when it first broke in France in 2005. That's one of the perils of being functionally monolingual, I suppose.
The website of the French Publishers' Agency supplies further information, including the fact that it's actualy the final volume of a trilogy, the titles of the previous books in the trilogy, and the fact that this is not, in fact, the first publication of the story. It was apparently first published in serial form serialized in a magazine, and then presumably "lost" when it was not republished in book form and the scattered copies of the magazine became difficult to find. It's a common problem in the world of pulp fiction. Fortunately Dumas and his fans are fortunate to have scholars and publishers who are willing to exhume such works and give them another shot at life.
Fans of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other tales of gallantry and adventure, take note:
Pegasus to release lost Dumas novel
I guess I missed this story when it first broke in France in 2005. That's one of the perils of being functionally monolingual, I suppose.
The website of the French Publishers' Agency supplies further information, including the fact that it's actualy the final volume of a trilogy, the titles of the previous books in the trilogy, and the fact that this is not, in fact, the first publication of the story. It was apparently first published in serial form serialized in a magazine, and then presumably "lost" when it was not republished in book form and the scattered copies of the magazine became difficult to find. It's a common problem in the world of pulp fiction. Fortunately Dumas and his fans are fortunate to have scholars and publishers who are willing to exhume such works and give them another shot at life.
Another contender for worst pulp novelist of all time
... as described by The Stranger, which bills itself somewhat oddly as "Seattle's only newspaper".
The Worst Pulp Novelist Ever : Remembering Leo Guild, by Paul Collins.
Leo vs. Harry S. Keeler? The mind boggles. If they had ever collaborated, the universe would no doubt have promptly imploded into the resulting superdense black hole of ineptitude.
... as described by The Stranger, which bills itself somewhat oddly as "Seattle's only newspaper".
The Worst Pulp Novelist Ever : Remembering Leo Guild, by Paul Collins.
Leo vs. Harry S. Keeler? The mind boggles. If they had ever collaborated, the universe would no doubt have promptly imploded into the resulting superdense black hole of ineptitude.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Recent viewings
Evil Dead : The Musical. Yes, the original Evil Dead series of movies was campy and silly. They were, effectively, parodies of horror movies masquerading as horror movies. Given this fact, what else can one do but make an all-singing, all-dancing musical production out of them?
I didn't think I was going to get Fiend to go see this, but somehow, against all odds (not to mention reason), I managed to prevail.
The production adds to Sam Raimi's parody of horror movie cliches a parody of the conventions of stage musicals: the underwhelming physical props, the movements artificially constrained to the tiny confines of the stage, the projected lighting effects, etc. I found a few scenes rather offputtingly sadistic even as broad parody, but on the whole it was stupid, goofy, fun. Despite Fiend's reservations I'm quite certain I detected a smile during the over-the-top Grand-Guignol finale, in which jutjawed housewares employee Ash and his trusty shotgun and chainsaw take on a small mob of dancing, singing, demons inhabiting the bodies of his former friends. Horrific blood-spurting chaos ensues.
And in case you were wondering, yes, the Splatter Zone is exactly what you think it is. We walked out of the theater in the company of two giggling girls wearing substantial quantities of stage blood in addition to the clothing they had worn to the theater. They received some strange looks from passers-by at crosswalks, but I presume the local cops have been conditioned to ignore alarmed 911 calls about bloodspattered people leaving this particular theater.
Evil Dead : The Musical. Yes, the original Evil Dead series of movies was campy and silly. They were, effectively, parodies of horror movies masquerading as horror movies. Given this fact, what else can one do but make an all-singing, all-dancing musical production out of them?
I didn't think I was going to get Fiend to go see this, but somehow, against all odds (not to mention reason), I managed to prevail.
The production adds to Sam Raimi's parody of horror movie cliches a parody of the conventions of stage musicals: the underwhelming physical props, the movements artificially constrained to the tiny confines of the stage, the projected lighting effects, etc. I found a few scenes rather offputtingly sadistic even as broad parody, but on the whole it was stupid, goofy, fun. Despite Fiend's reservations I'm quite certain I detected a smile during the over-the-top Grand-Guignol finale, in which jutjawed housewares employee Ash and his trusty shotgun and chainsaw take on a small mob of dancing, singing, demons inhabiting the bodies of his former friends. Horrific blood-spurting chaos ensues.
And in case you were wondering, yes, the Splatter Zone is exactly what you think it is. We walked out of the theater in the company of two giggling girls wearing substantial quantities of stage blood in addition to the clothing they had worn to the theater. They received some strange looks from passers-by at crosswalks, but I presume the local cops have been conditioned to ignore alarmed 911 calls about bloodspattered people leaving this particular theater.
Recent reads
Listen, Moon!, by Leonard Cline. Cline's second novel, after God Head, is a relatively light and fluffy comic novel about a somewhat stuffy, recently widowed professor of classics who discovers that life does, after all, extend beyond the borders of his library and his school. A runaway debutante, an eccentric philanthropist, a rakish newspaper reporter, a beauteous housekeeper, and a copy of Treasure Island all figure into the tale. Not to mention a secondhand fishing schooner, moonshiners, a bullying preacher, a romantic-minded Southern judge, a dilapidated small town jail, and the Ku Klux Klan. Also, a cannon and a gaudy assortment of piratical costumes. And a treasure map.
It starts somewhat slowly, but by the time the principal characters set sail down the inlets of Chesapeake Bay in their secondhand schooner with the avowed purpose of becoming twentieth-century pirates, it's become a delightful farce. The romantic pairings don't necessarily work out predictably -- Cline is too clearsightedly pragmatic for that -- but believably.
My desultory research on Cline, and correspondence from one or two wiser heads than my own, indicate that he worked for a time in Baltimore under the aegis of H.L. Mencken. Certainly a degree of familiarity with the environs of that city is evident here, as is, perhaps, a trace of Mencken's sharpfanged wit added to Cline's own evident love of myth and the influence that it has on human lives. It doesn't have the powerful, unified dramatic punch of his first novel, but like the backwaters of the Chesapeake, it eddies and wanders about in an affably amusing fashion.
Listen, Moon!, by Leonard Cline. Cline's second novel, after God Head, is a relatively light and fluffy comic novel about a somewhat stuffy, recently widowed professor of classics who discovers that life does, after all, extend beyond the borders of his library and his school. A runaway debutante, an eccentric philanthropist, a rakish newspaper reporter, a beauteous housekeeper, and a copy of Treasure Island all figure into the tale. Not to mention a secondhand fishing schooner, moonshiners, a bullying preacher, a romantic-minded Southern judge, a dilapidated small town jail, and the Ku Klux Klan. Also, a cannon and a gaudy assortment of piratical costumes. And a treasure map.
It starts somewhat slowly, but by the time the principal characters set sail down the inlets of Chesapeake Bay in their secondhand schooner with the avowed purpose of becoming twentieth-century pirates, it's become a delightful farce. The romantic pairings don't necessarily work out predictably -- Cline is too clearsightedly pragmatic for that -- but believably.
My desultory research on Cline, and correspondence from one or two wiser heads than my own, indicate that he worked for a time in Baltimore under the aegis of H.L. Mencken. Certainly a degree of familiarity with the environs of that city is evident here, as is, perhaps, a trace of Mencken's sharpfanged wit added to Cline's own evident love of myth and the influence that it has on human lives. It doesn't have the powerful, unified dramatic punch of his first novel, but like the backwaters of the Chesapeake, it eddies and wanders about in an affably amusing fashion.
Recent reads
The Stone Cage, by Nicholas Stuart Gray. A short, entertaining play based on the fairy-tale story of Rapunzel. It's cleverly sardonic take on the story is somewhat reminiscent of the Rapunzel plotline of Stephen Sondheim's 1986 musical play Into the Woods, and I can't help but wonder whether Sondheim was inspired or influenced by it.
I have no idea how it ended up in my interlibrary loan queue, but I'm glad it did.
The Stone Cage, by Nicholas Stuart Gray. A short, entertaining play based on the fairy-tale story of Rapunzel. It's cleverly sardonic take on the story is somewhat reminiscent of the Rapunzel plotline of Stephen Sondheim's 1986 musical play Into the Woods, and I can't help but wonder whether Sondheim was inspired or influenced by it.
I have no idea how it ended up in my interlibrary loan queue, but I'm glad it did.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Omerta
The Bush Crime Syndicate, speaking through its consiglieri, has delivered the message: their footsoldiers are under orders to observe the Mafia code of omerta, the silence about criminal actions that shields gang bosses from legal consequences.
Republicans are fond of braying that the only people who object to all-encompassing government surveillance are those with "something to hide." Their own logic now proves that the Bush administration has something to hide, else why would they be so determined to, well, hide things?
And will the Congress's Constitutional obligations be acted upon, or ignored?
The Bush Crime Syndicate, speaking through its consiglieri, has delivered the message: their footsoldiers are under orders to observe the Mafia code of omerta, the silence about criminal actions that shields gang bosses from legal consequences.
Republicans are fond of braying that the only people who object to all-encompassing government surveillance are those with "something to hide." Their own logic now proves that the Bush administration has something to hide, else why would they be so determined to, well, hide things?
And will the Congress's Constitutional obligations be acted upon, or ignored?
Your tax dollars at work
The Other War: Iraq vets bear witness (from The Nation)
A college friend sent me this article by e'mail. It's hard reading, but necessary reading for any US citizen who chooses not to be wilfully, deliberately ignorant of what our military is doing in our name and with our tax money, both to our troops and to the civilians who have the bad fortune to live in a country that Dick Cheney and the rest of the Project for the New American Century were determined to invade and conquer at a hefty profit to themselves, on one pretext or another, no matter what the facts.
Of course, I can hear the protestations from the Bush supporters now. Why, it's the Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy! (Booga booga booga!) They refuse to report the Great Good News that we just know is really happening in Iraq! The Media hates America! Terr-ists! Terr-ists! Yada yada!
The Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy, in this case, is rather oddly composed of combat veterans who have served their country under fire, and seen the reality of the Iraq occupation first hand at point-blank range. Rather unlike the draft-avoiding Republican types who continue to yammer for more war, perpetual war, ever-expanding war... so long as it's fought by somebody else, in somebody else's hometown, while they sit safe at home on the couch watching Fox News, chomping on potato chips and belching out gaseous jokes about "sand niggers" and blustering that the US should "nuke" any country that gives it any lip.
It's hard for this one-time self-described conservative to imagine that the situations described in the article can in, the long run, be anything other than the biggest aid to recruitment that the Islamist jihadis could possibly have. Consider the following question carefully. If a foreign army were occupying the US, and the events described in the Nation article were happening to your neighbors and friends and relatives in Dallas, or Kansas City, or Detroit, whose side would you be on?
And does that make you a "patriot", or a "terrorist"? Or just a normal human being?
The Other War: Iraq vets bear witness (from The Nation)
A college friend sent me this article by e'mail. It's hard reading, but necessary reading for any US citizen who chooses not to be wilfully, deliberately ignorant of what our military is doing in our name and with our tax money, both to our troops and to the civilians who have the bad fortune to live in a country that Dick Cheney and the rest of the Project for the New American Century were determined to invade and conquer at a hefty profit to themselves, on one pretext or another, no matter what the facts.
Of course, I can hear the protestations from the Bush supporters now. Why, it's the Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy! (Booga booga booga!) They refuse to report the Great Good News that we just know is really happening in Iraq! The Media hates America! Terr-ists! Terr-ists! Yada yada!
The Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy, in this case, is rather oddly composed of combat veterans who have served their country under fire, and seen the reality of the Iraq occupation first hand at point-blank range. Rather unlike the draft-avoiding Republican types who continue to yammer for more war, perpetual war, ever-expanding war... so long as it's fought by somebody else, in somebody else's hometown, while they sit safe at home on the couch watching Fox News, chomping on potato chips and belching out gaseous jokes about "sand niggers" and blustering that the US should "nuke" any country that gives it any lip.
It's hard for this one-time self-described conservative to imagine that the situations described in the article can in, the long run, be anything other than the biggest aid to recruitment that the Islamist jihadis could possibly have. Consider the following question carefully. If a foreign army were occupying the US, and the events described in the Nation article were happening to your neighbors and friends and relatives in Dallas, or Kansas City, or Detroit, whose side would you be on?
And does that make you a "patriot", or a "terrorist"? Or just a normal human being?
Sunday, July 08, 2007
A DoJ attorney speaks
John S. Koppel, a civil appellate attorney with the Department of Justice since 1981, writes in the Denver Post about the Department of Justice as it exists under the Bush Administration:
John S. Koppel, a civil appellate attorney with the Department of Justice since 1981, writes in the Denver Post about the Department of Justice as it exists under the Bush Administration:
As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.There's more at the source, and, of course, discussion both civil and otherwise at DailyKos.
The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.
In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.
In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to "play ball." Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not "performance problems."...
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Get Out of Jail Free!
"Go ahead, Congress; go ahead, prosecutors and courts," says Bush. "I can let my cronies, the perjurers and the traitors, out the back door of the jail as fast as you can bring 'em in the front. Whatcha gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?"
Oddly enough, the authors of the U.S. Constitution contemplated exactly this situation. And they prescribed a response, which David Swanson describes here.
"Go ahead, Congress; go ahead, prosecutors and courts," says Bush. "I can let my cronies, the perjurers and the traitors, out the back door of the jail as fast as you can bring 'em in the front. Whatcha gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?"
Oddly enough, the authors of the U.S. Constitution contemplated exactly this situation. And they prescribed a response, which David Swanson describes here.
George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."
James Madison (1751-1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."
A kind of poetic justice?
Well, considering the likely quality of the writing, it might better be described as prosaic justice. From the Boston Globe:
Well, considering the likely quality of the writing, it might better be described as prosaic justice. From the Boston Globe:
The family of Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to O.J. Simpson's canceled book, "If I Did It," from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee in a settlement reached Monday. The book rights will be held in the name of Ron Goldman LLC, Goldman family attorney David Cook said. Goldman and Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, were slain in 1994. The former football star has maintained his innocence. He was acquitted of murder, but Goldman's family won a civil wrongful death case against him totaling more than $33 million. "Ron Goldman LLC will own Simpson's name, likeness, signature and story and will hawk it to satisfy this terrible judgment," Cook said. "Justice has arrived in Miami." The Goldmans own the copyright, media rights, and movie rights. They also acquired Simpson's name, likeness, life story, and right of publicity in connection with the book, according to court documents. The Goldmans want to rename the book "Confessions of a Double Murderer" and plan to shop it around, Cook said. (AP)[emphasis added]
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