March 31, 2005

Those darn ACLU terrorists


Continuing with the FOX News theme of this week, here is another Bill O'Reilly classic:

Bill O'Reilly began a segment of Westwood One's The Radio Factor by saying that "Al Qaeda is not the most intense threat to your freedom -- it's the American Civil Liberties Union." From the March 30 edition of The Radio Factor:

O'REILLY: All right, this hour's devoted to the most intense threat to your freedom in the world. It's not Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is not the most intense threat to your freedom -- it's the American Civil Liberties Union. And I will back up what I say.


I actually think O'Reilly has been getting worse recently, if that's possible. On March 29 he implied that gay marriage would lead to marriage between people and goats, and that he needed bodyguards because of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and "the far left." These comments can all be found at the above link to Media Matters.

And here's the audio version -- highly recommended.

David Asman explains

See below for my original email to the FOX News anchor.

Subject: RE: It's "9-1-1", not "9/11"
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:35:34 -0500
Thread-Topic: It's "9-1-1", not "9/11"
Thread-Index: AcU1U6UHSUvS9c4QROWJ52lBFEn7DgAorsYw
From: "Asman, David"
To: "Christopher J. Bateman"

Thanks for pointing that out. I try never to say "9-11" unless referring to the 2001 attack. But it must have slipped out, and I thank you for keeping me straight on the point.
Cheers,
David Asman

Loathsome people, vicious gossip

The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers, according to New York Press. I would include some highlights here but they have some anal copyright restrictions.

Many of the choices are right-on, and the rhetoric is pretty spiteful. Bill O'Reilly, Michael Bloomberg, and the Olsen twins all get what they deserve. But Carlos D from "bar-band-quality Joy Division retreads Interpol" in the top 20? I take offense.

Is Neel Shah available to comment?

March 30, 2005

Carrot Top on Fox News



Right now. This has the potential to be some of the worst programming ever to grace the idiot box.

9-1-1 now 9/11?

Fox News anchor David Asman just made a little slip, referring to the emergency telephone number "nine one one" as "nine eleven," without correcting himself. I'm not going to spin it because this blog is most certainly a no-spin zone, but I'll let you decide whether the mistake is at all telling of Fox News psychology.

Update: He just did it again. And here's some 4/11 on the accepted pronunciation and orthography of 9-1-1 and why it's used by responsible news organizations:

When the 9-1-1 system was originally introduced, it was advertised as the "nine-eleven" service. This was changed when some panicked individuals tried to find the "eleven" key on their telephones (this may seem bizarre and amusing, but it is important to remember that in emergencies people can easily become extremely confused and irrational). Therefore, all references to the telephone number 9-1-1 are now always made as nine-one-one — never as "nine-eleven" (See September 11, 2001 attacks). Some newspapers and other media require that references to the phone number be formatted as 9-1-1; 911 is still used occasionally but less so since the coining of 9/11 to refer to the September 11 attacks. (Wikipedia)

Fox News: inciting confusion and fear whenever possible.

Update 2: I just emailed David Asman about this matter. You should, too, if you've got nothing better to do. You might save a life. I'm pasting my email message to Mr. Asman as a comment to this post.

Enormous Omelet Sandwich

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Make sure you get your nourishment. Try Burger King's new Enormous Omelet Sandwich: 730 calories and 47 grams of fat.

Oh and stay away from their Angus Steak Burger. Bennat and I tried it and it's disgusting. Gotta like those commercials with the guy waking up next to the creepy king, though.

Web sites against Bill O'Reilly

A healthy niche market:

Bill O'Reilly Blowhard

O'Reilly Sucks

News Hounds: O'Reilly Factor

Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly

March 29, 2005

She can read

...we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain–perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste–a perverted taste, maybe–to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is "in a hurry." -- Nietzsche

Harriet Klausner is Amazon.com's most prolific reviewer. She reads four to five books a day, and she has 8,649 reviews as of mid-March.

Pat Sajak



The Official Pat Sajak Website

Everyone likes Pat Sajak, right? He's just so wholesome, so uncontroversial, that's why I like Pat. But check out the "Sajak Says..." section: you'll find a rather unexpected, whiny essay called "Arguing with Liberals, and Why I've Stopped."

What kind of Hollywood celebrity are you, Pat? Wait, does Pat Sajak count as Hollywood? Or as a celebrity?

Via the best humor blog around, Joe's Dartblog -- apparently, Malchow actually values Sajak's political commentary.

March 28, 2005

Radiohead working on new album

Yes, it is true, according to Pitchfork.

First person to say "It better be all guitar, Radiohead has sucked sinced The Bends" will get a guitar to the face.

Sorry to the people at Friday for stealing their thunder.

Must-see TV

Roger Kimball, target of one of my early posts on this blog and author of The Rape of the Masters, is on C-Span2 right now pontificating on the correct way to interpret art. He was just dissing on Walter Benjamin and the politicization of art criticism, and he is wearing a bow tie, de rigueur.

Update:

So, according to Kimball, art history and academic art criticism today is guilty of "hermeneutical hijinx"; it sets out to "taint, adulterate, besmirch," art; and it tries to "short-circuit the pleasure we take in art." There is a "grim, dour...pleasureless quality" to contemporary art history. Art historians "don't like art" and "dont wan't [people] to like art."

Revealing his elitism, Kimball equates the "sexualization" of discourse in academic humanities with the "vulgarization of polite society" that we see in pop culture. Oh dear!

I'll give credit to Kimball for calling out a far-fetched psychoanalytic reading of John Singer Sargent's "Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" by the respected art historian David Lubin. (Lubin's argument hinged on the similarity between the name Boit and the French Boite 'box' and involved lots of phallic inferences.) Psychoanalytic interpretation does get carried away (I have never put much stock in it myself), and I believe Kimball is picking on the smallest fry here -- I would like to see him take on Foucault's reading of "Las Meninas."

But Kimball's next analysis, of Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream" and the racial interpretations it has received, struck me as unconvincing and plain narrow-minded. Kimball seems to believe that since Homer (according to him) could not possibly have intended to paint a picture with racial meaning, the picture thus not cannot be interpreted in terms of race. Kimball is apparently not attuned to the fact that a work of art is not just a source of "spiritual refreshment," but also a serious product of its historical and cultural moment, and that relations of meaning necessarily exist in a work of art beyond the artist's conscious intentions -- however those may be ascertained, to begin with.

It's not hard to sit back and enjoy a beautiful painting. It is hard to think critically about it in terms of the cultural relations surrounding it. Majoring in art history would be a waste of college tuition only if Kimball had his way with it.

March 25, 2005

Atlantic Monthly to drop fiction

Beginning in August, the Atlantic Monthly, the legacy ship seeing an advertising turnaround of late, will no longer run fiction. Instead, the magazine plans to offer a newsstand only fiction issue.

The announcement will be made to readers in the editor's note in the upcoming May issue. (Folio)

I don't read The Atlantic Monthly as often as The New Yorker, but I must confess, the fiction section of the latter is the one part I consistently skip. Short stories are just the hardest thing for me to read, for some reason.

March 24, 2005

Lost on the shore



Just finished Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami's latest. Really enjoyed it until the last third or so. About halfway into the book, I was enthralled.

Critics have often blamed Murakami of ultimate "incoherence," but I treated them pretty skeptically in approaching and reading this novel; after all, this is probably the criticism most over-applied to ambitious, challenging books. For me, the problem with Kafka was not some failure by the author to "tie it all together," but an unraveling of each individual thread. Both of the novel's plots precipitously went from page-turner intensity to slight tedium as Murakami's endearing conversational style got a little indulgent and plain haphazard. If I may put on my own critic cap: Murakami takes unlikely materials and starts building a beautiful, Gaudi-like castle, full of fantasy and primal emotions, but then can't quite realize the dream. It kinda sucks, because I'm not used to being this let down by novels. I also have to agree with Janet Maslin of NYT that the translation bordered on "needlessly jive."

Still, I'd like to read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, as I enjoyed Norwegian Wood and much of this novel. In fact, I still recommend Kafka, just read the first half and I'll tell you what happens after that. After all, any book that pulls off tasteful incest and the murder of a character named Johnnie Walker by an illiterate amnesiac who talks with cats is probably worth reading.

Coming out

You'll notice we're all getting rid of our pseudonyms. Several of us have already blown our cover already, and the names lost whatever initial cuteness they had. (One reader compared us, I think unfavorably, to the girls with their pen names in Little Women or Little House on the Prairie, I forget which.) Plus this blog is turning out to be slightly more legitimate than we expected, but we had very low expectations for ourselves so that's not saying much.

See if you had matched the right person to each name!!!

March 23, 2005

Jews for Bush-Cheney and Jesus

Just saw a car with two bumper stickers: one Bush-Cheney; another reading, "Be more Jewish. Believe in Jesus." Apparently the same message has been displayed on a New York billboard. You can buy the sticker here.

More on Dean in Nashville

From The Tennessean. They don't quote the line I quoted, which I got from a clip on local TV news last night, but the short article is worth reading to get a sense of how Dean is approaching the South. Here's a positive example, in my opinion:

''We need to talk about values and not be afraid of them,'' he said, going on to make two biblical references.

In the first he said Jesus' directive to ''love thy neighbor'' didn't mean one could choose which ones to love. He then remarked that Republicans never brought up the scriptural verse saying it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.

''We should never let anybody tell us we don't respect faith,'' he said.


I just hope he got his Bible references right this time.

March 22, 2005

Dean comes to Nashville

Howard Dean arrived in my hometown of Nashville today for a two-day visit. Republicans here made a radio ad just for his visit, replaying the scream and alerting Tennesseeans that there's a "Northeastern Liberal in Tennessee."

Dean spoke in a news conference and asserted that Democrats can win in the South and will put up a fight here from now on. He railed at Republicans' fiscal irresponsibility, and then quipped in a fairly pusilanimous voice, "If that's what makes me a Northeastern liberal, then maybe we ought to have a Northeastern liberal in charge of this country."

This is what I love about Howard Dean. To be sure, that comment will piss off a few Southern voters who catch it. But I actually think Dean knows what he's doing here, and even if he doesn't, I think it's good. That welcoming ad by local Republicans plays on lingering Civil War indignation held by a minority of the population, and it also plays on the image a lot of Southerners have of Northeastern liberals as effete. I think Howard Dean's combative fire will not only inspire Democrats but also earn some respect in the South.

Dean will conduct a Town Hall Meeting at Tennessee State University tomorrow (Wednesday) from 11:30 am to 1:30pm, I might try to make it though it's early for me for spring break.

"The Trustfunder Left"

Check out the hottest new demographic: the "Trustfunder Left" -- what Joe Malchow calls the "Rich, Fat, Elite Liberals." (Joe, I might be wrong here, but I'm gonna guess you have at least one thing and possibly more in common with the Rich Fat Elite Liberals.)

Malchow writes,

The rich, powerful, private school trustfunders aren't Republicans. It's almost funny to me, as I walk around Dartmouth. From so many angles, the Democrat Party isn't diverse. It is really the most homogenous, monolithic, establishmentarian political group currently extant.

I'd be interested to hear from exactly which angles the "Democrat Party" isn't diverse. 90 % of African Americans voted for Kerry, 10 % Bush. Kerry won the Hispanic vote 56 % to about 41 % [link]. But let's look more broadly at this constituency of trustfunders, or non-Republicans:

The demographer you can thank for this pseudo-scientific breakthrough is Michael Barone. According to him:

Where can you find trustfunders? Not scattered randomly around the country, but heavily concentrated in certain areas. Places with kicky restaurants, places tolerant of alternative lifestyles, places with lots of art galleries and organic food stores and Starbucks competitors. The heaviest concentration is in the San Francisco Bay area, which, [Joel] Kotkin says, has the largest percentage of trustfunders of any major metro area in the country.

Seriously, I hate those places. Barone sounds like a real blast -- you can tell from the tone in the rest of the article he's not down with this scene. I haven't read his Almanac of American Politics 2006 but I hope it's a little more revealing about the methodology and statistics behind its "revelation" than his article is. In the latter, Barone just observes that San Francisco and Manhattan voted predominantly for Kerry, and that they have some of the most trustfunders per capita of any metro area. Any info on how many Republicans in Manhattan have trust funds? In the South? In the country? Or what percentage of the trustfunders in Manhattan, in the South, and in the country, voted Republican, vs. the rest of the population in each case?

So we know where to find these trustfunders. Why are they so bad?

Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt. At the elite private or public high schools they attend, and even more at their colleges and universities, they are propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization, and the virtues of environmentalism and pacifism. Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism.

I'll ignore, even excuse, the McCarthyist rhetoric here. Wouldn't want to use those university classes to actually examine critically what is arguably the most important social force in the world, would we?

I'm sick of the Republican argument that people who are wealthy, i.e. have some power, can't be Democrats, while the Republican Party, the party of even more and bigger special interests, makes the Democratic Party look poor.

As for the composition of the Dartmouth trustfunders... Joe Malchow, I'll make a bet with you. Let's say the loser owes the winner 1/10 of his and his family's assests -- fair and fitting. (I have a feeling it would profit me to take you up on these odds in a game of coin flip, too.) We'll do a poll the best we can, and if the percentage of Dartmouth Republicans with trust funds is less than the percentage of Dartmouth Democrats with trust funds, you win, and I'll also go make sure hell freezes over.

Edit: Took out some of my needless invective, I got a little carried away, I admit.

March 21, 2005

Dartmouth blogs: liberals wanted

Todd Zywicki of Volokh and insurgency fame likes what he sees with the Dartmouth blog-o-bubble:

...as a blogger, I can't help but admire the sophisticated conversations going on in these student and recent-student blogs. Assuming similar things are going on at other schools, the implications of the blog revolution for alumni who want to keep track of the full story of what is really happening at their various institutions is really quite profound.

Of course, it seems like only Zywicki's right eye is working well: Joe's Dartblog, Dartlog, the Dartmouth Observer, and the beautifully named Voices in the Wilderness are the blogs he cites.

Partly, this is because there's no comparable network of liberal bloggers at Dartmouth. It's a shame, really. Let me know if I'm missing any, but, other than us, the only extant Dartmouth blog I know of with a consistent commitment to liberal ideas is Free Dartmouth (how about a permanent link to us, guys?), and it's in serious need of more posters.

So go join the distinguished Tim Waligore at Free Dartmouth, he started the damn Free Press after all, and writes for The Nation! Or start your own blog! We're doing our best here, but we're only one blog...

March 20, 2005

Operation: University Storm

Great perspective on the David Horowitz-led crusade against academia from Billmon's Whiskey Bar, great site in general:

"Scenes From the Cultural Revolution"
Last spring I organized college students to investigate the voter-registration records of university professors at more than a dozen institutions of higher learning. I had them target the social sciences. The students used primary registration to determine party affiliation, although admittedly, it's not always an exact match.

David Horowitz
Closed doors, closed minds
June 20, 2002

The "working groups" organized sessions to expose and to criticize teachers and divided all teachers into four categories: good, fair, those with serious errors, and anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists.

Youqin Wang
Student Attacks Against Teachers:
The Revolution of 1966
July 1996

* * *

In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicized student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty . . . were pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college said a teacher received a death threat.

Associated Press
Conservative Students Target Liberal Profs
December 25, 2004

During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards turned to a more spontaneous medium to denounce alleged counterrevolutionaries. They wrote "big character posters" and posted them outside people's houses or schools to publicly expose their alleged crimes.

Irene Leung
Writing and Technology in China

The Republican Playbook

Oldish news, but still important. If you haven't familiarized yourself with Frank Luntz's immensely influential memo/pamphlet Republican Playbook to advance the right-wing agenda, you're in for a real treat of a lesson in the dirty logistics of massive propaganda, including how to deflect criticisms of the economy onto public fear after 9/11 and how to make Americans swallow policies most of them don't believe in, like giving tax breaks to the rich. Even if you don't care about "taking this country back" from the Right, it's a great read.

- PDF version of The Playbook

- Searchable HTML version of The Playbook

What Would Marx Say?

"What's so great about the work ethic?" Mark Kleiman, a professor of policy studies at UCLA, asks on his blog. Maybe Germans, who apparently work about 70% as many hours per capita as Americans, have it figured out better than Americans?

An increase in income tends to make someone happier, and a decrease to make someone less happy. Being higher in the income distribution is correlated with being happier. But over time, as whole countries get richer they don't get noticeably happier (once they're at a level above about half of current US GDP/capita), and the correlation between average income and average happiness across countries (again, omitting those who are actually poor) is close to zero.

Kleiman's post throws some interesting questions out there and is worth a look. I actually stumbled upon it reading Joe's Dartblog, where you can find a funny jingoistic nonsequitur response fitting right into the exact ratrace capitalist logic being questioned: We Americans work harder because we're "perennially hungry" to "stay on top."

Want intellectual diversity?

Go to Pat Robertson's Regent University and take classes with a true theocratic fascist:
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft will serve Regent University in its new Center for Law and Justice beginning July 1, 2005, as a Distinguished Professor of Law and Government. In his new role, Ashcroft will teach law and government courses for the nation's premier Christian graduate school.

March 19, 2005

Design tweaks

I'll be messing around with the design of the blog some over the next few days, and I don't exactly "know what I'm doing," so bear with us. Thanks.

On the road

Just arrived in Nashville, TN, after driving down from Hanover.

I like to think I really get a good dose of the sights, sounds, and smells of America while tackling the interstates solo for days at a time, and driving from New England to the South is inevitably an amusing experience. This trip was not quite as entertaining as some in the past, like when I had no stereo and talked to myself aloud for the whole 20 hours or when I saw all of the following in the Ohio Valley region: 1) a dilapidated "Exotic Juice Bar" that looked a lot more like another kind of exotic bar; 2) a large sign, for what looked like a restaurant, displaying "GENTILE" (genteel?) in large letters; and 3) a single generic brown roadside attraction-info sign reading:

Water Tower

Art Museum

However, I did note the following this time around:

1) A freight truck from Liberal, Kansas. Maybe I'm just uncosmopolitan for not having heard of it before, but I had a good laugh at this one. At first I thought it might be the site of an internment camp run by the state of Kansas.

2) Tennessee's interstate roads. They're smooth as butter. Pennsylvania's suck.

3) Tennessee's education system. It's pretty abysmal. Pennsylvania's is pretty good. I guess it's a values thing.

4) A "Student Driver" decal on another eighteen-wheeler.

5) One Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker. The only one I saw after PA, I believe (other than mine). Even in the South, this is a pretty poor showing. Maybe the reminder is just too painful even for Southern Democrats.

6) One of

these stickers, which is not nearly as cool as



this one. Now I have been very tempted to stick the latter on my car just to piss off all the luxury SUVs (some driven by high-school friends) in Nashville on which they can be found, but I have realized of course that this is the kind of thing that loses a lot of votes for liberals. Plus I don't want my car bashed in.

I'm already looking forward to the drive back up.

March 16, 2005

Wolfowitz for World Bank; World Cowers in Fear

In International News today, the world continues to suck:

"In addition to Wolfowitz's strong support for the Iraq war, Steve Radelet, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a former undersecretary at the Treasury, said last week the Europeans were nervous that Wolfowitz would prove similar to former World Bank head and Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Radelet said McNamara was accused of channeling aid to nations based not on need but on their support of U.S. policy."

March 15, 2005

Summers falls

Lawrence Summers loses no-confidence vote.

If he ends up stepping down/being forced out, I think they should hire a woman as president.

March 14, 2005

Gay marriage ban is unconstitutional

The San Francisco County Superior Court has ruled.

Oh and check out the brilliant graphic for the story on Fox News's front page:


March 13, 2005

Facing torture

Joe's Dartblog offers this commentary on today's AP story revealing that the U.S. military has been practicing torture in Bagram, Afghanistan -- where two prisoners were beaten to death by American soldiers -- since 2002:

It seems clear that the chained position was a means of extracting information, or at least of making the terrorists uncomfortable as some sort of punitive measure. However, as a result of blood clots and repeated battery, both of the terrorists died while chained. Though the intention was not to kill the men, this does indeed seem to be abuse, and it is a shame.

But as always, to put this in context means to realize that the enemy has done- and would do- far worse to Americans. To realize that war is hell; that none of us know that we wouldn't do the exact same thing in that situation.


I emailed Joe Malchow about his unabashed use of the word "terrorist" to describe the two prisoners who died. The AP article does not apply the term to the two men, nor does it describe their backgrounds beyond stating their ages and the fact that one of them was a taxi driver with a 2-year-old daughter.

Malchow has posted my comment on his blog and replies that "As for my use of the word 'terrorist', I feel comfortable in the assumption that anyone our men in Afghanistan arrest as part of the War on Terror is indeed a terrorist or somehow supports terrorism. It's just a certain level of trust that I am comfortable with." Malchow does not provide any further justification, such as any based on the histories of the torture victims, for using the label "terrorist."

Jane Mayer's landmark article "Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America’s 'extraordinary rendition' program" alone is enough to demonstrate that this kind of blind faith in "The War on Terror" is terribly wrong. The facts are overwhelming. No, it's not a pleasant thing to acknowledge about your country, but face it, and stop perpetuating the kind of doublethink that allows it to continue: the Unites States is guilty of torture -- not "abuse"; we are killing prisoners here without trial -- on a massive scale, and among those tortured have been, and almost certainly continue to be, innocent people.

Isn't it fun to be the minority party?

Interesting reactions on Daily Kos to Kristof's op-ed in the NYT calling for a reassessment of environmental activism.

There's even a fun poll where you can decide "What's more 'extremist': Chaining yourself to a 500 year old redwood tree to save it, Or clearcutting 90% of our country's forrest in a single century"? Clearcutting seems to be losing pretty badly at this point.

Correction

In an earlier post (now removed), I ended up implying that Brian Kennedy, new Director of the Hood, was involved in censoring the Sensation exhibition in Australia, a loaded claim I couldn't susbtantiate. My post was intended more to have fun at the expense of the commentators at Dartlog, which lauded Kennedy for "criticizing" the Sensation exhibition and quoted a comment from the World Socialist Web Site that attacked Kennedy for alleged censorship. (Note to self: Be careful about trusting socialist web sites cited on Dartlog.)

Dartlog now links to some interesting information about how there were complicated issues involving museum ethics and financing that (at least ostensibly) were the primary cause for the cancellation of the original Brooklyn exhbition and, in turn, the Australia one planned by Kennedy. Though I'm a little hesitant to accept that the questionable self-financing of the show was the only factor behind the Brooklyn cancellation, and that other political pressures weren't at work, I just want to make it clear that extenuating circumstances, and a legitimate ethical dilemma, led Kennedy to make the decision to cancel that show. In fact it's obvious he really wanted to bring "Sensation" to Australia.

Dr. Kennedy -- so far, so good, after all.

March 12, 2005

Review review!

It's that time again! You know, where I get to rant about the newest TDR, and you probably don't care? Fun, yeah? It's a staple of our blog.

Little did I know when I posted below about The Review's insights into art that the aesthetes at 44 South Main would humor me with an entire issue devoted to architecture at Dartmouth.

The articles aren't online yet so I can't link to them, and I don't think I'll bother when they are online. Suffice to say that if Joe Rago (who writes half the publication these days; rumor has it he has turned a few potential Reviewers off...) and Roger Kimball (managing editor of the quaint New Criterion, whose interview with TDR in 1996 is pleonastically reprinted) had their way with campus architecture, this would be one dreary campus.

Sure, the Shower Towers were an expensive misfire, but we got money to blow, and how many students really think the Hopkins Center is unequivocally "not a success," as Kimball says? Kimball's criteria for great architecture smack of elitism -- more or less just a more archaic, "classically" grounded elitism than the kind he accuses Robert Venturi (Berry, Rockefeller, Cummings) of. Has he never noticed the droves of Dartmouth students heading straight for the the Courtyard Cafe after checking their mail, spending hours there, athletes and artists coexisting and all checking out the diverse exhbitions around them as they wait in line?

What about the sight of the Hop at night, the colors in the Top all aglow for pedestrians outside to see, providing a refreshingly transparent contrast to the spotlit ramparts of Baker across the Green? And how about the view from inside the Top? The Hop might be a little haphazard in its layout (part of its spontaneous charm?) and its curving concrete forms might look a little retro and overdue for a whitewash, but I happen to like this building very much, and I personally don't know one student who feels otherwise. Maybe it's the fact that I have eaten about 900 sausage breakfasts there, but it's the one building at Dartmouth I actually get a little sentimental about. Kimball calls Wallace Harrison, the designer of the Hop, the "Venturi of his day." Well, judging just by the buildings representing the two architects on this campus, I would call this ridiculous. The Hop strikes me as almost childlike for all its sincere revelry in colors and shapes.

I won't get into Berry here right now, but I swear, again, at some point, I'll write that defense of it. It's by no means a "perfect" or even "great" building (and not as good as the Hop, IMO), but it's not as insidious as some of these supposed classicists will have you believe. I mean, Kimball makes it sound like, for all practical ideological purposes, Berry's a cross between a gulag and Disneyland,* or something.

Enough for now. I get worked up about architecture. Too bad the "program" at this school, which I dabbled in, was a disappointment and a half.

Oh yeah, and I'm glad I could provide TDR with their latest ad campaign (p. 18). Seriously -- because I'll admit it: I kinda like The Review. And, architecture aside, Joe Rago puts on a pretty good one-man show.
___________________________

* As you might know, it's been argued (like in my Urban Geography class reading, by those wacky postmodern theorists) that Disney and gulags share some design traits, incidentally. Cf. Fun Facts of Magic Kingdom's Underground Complex.

March 11, 2005

Another Dartmouth blog

Launched March 9, Voices in the Wilderness purports to be "A forum for discussion of all things Dartmouth":

With that in mind, we began this forum in the hope that it can be a place where all views on the subject are discussed, weighed and valued in a true marketplace of ideas. There are already many sites where debate has been joined, but this one is singular in purpose and devoid of the baggage that comes with other causes. We welcome any and all thoughts regarding Dartmouth, and hope that better understanding of all positions will result.

Slight problem: you can't make comments, and you can't reach the two authors by email, either. So far all the posts concern the trustee election and just circuitously applaud the petition candidates in a completely bland and vapid way.

Don't even bother visiting, actually.

Dartmouth on The Daily Show

John Stewart apparently took a mild shot at Dartmouth last night?

Stewart: "this weekend debuts the new SAT test. It tells whether you'll be a success or a Dartmouth grad."

And I thought producing 500 i-bankers a year would make us cool...

Nothing funnier than financial insecurity and fiscal irresponsibility

This comes from the White House's own website ("President Participates in Social Security Conversation in Alabama"). Thanks to Atrios and Daily Kos for pointing this out:
THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you something about the Thrift Savings Plan. This is a Thrift Savings Plan that has a mix of stocks and bonds?

MS. WEBSTER: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, how hard was that to learn how to do that?

MS. WEBSTER: And I chose the safe plan, government bonds. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: That's all right. Well, not so safe, unless we fix the deficit. But other than that -- (laughter). We're fixing the deficit. (Applause.)

Senator Sununu's letter to me

Recently I sent a letter to New Hampshire Senator John Sununu (R - I voted against him) about doing more to stop the Darfur genocide. Got a response today. Sununu, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, informs me that

The United States has provided over $100 million in humanitarian support for Cetnral African countries this year, and we have provided $14 million in emergency supprt for humanitarian assistance activities in eastern Chad and the Darfur region of western Sudan. This assistance is part of an allocation announced by the President on June 24, 2004, from the Emergency Refugee and Migrtion Assitance Fund.

$14 million? Holy Shit! That's 0.00065 % of what the federal government spent in 2003. It's $41.42 per person killed in the genocide so far (c. 338,000).

This is piss poor. Again, if you think what the U.S. is doing to stop this is inadequate, go here and here to send more letters to your congressmen, the president, Kofi Annan, etc.

March 9, 2005

Senate Insanity

Hendrik Hertzberg writes another great article in this week's New Yorker. This one is, in fact, more important than the last one I posted -- I really recommend reading it.

Last week's New Yorker featured a disturbing article ("Blowing Up the Senate") about the "nuclear option" Republicans are seriously considering in order to end all Democratic filibusters on Bush's most right-wing judicial nominees. I'll let Hertzberg describe:

Now it turns out that the filibuster is not the ultimate weapon after all. It’s merely the penultimate one. As Jeffrey Toobin reported in these pages last week (“Blowing Up the Senate”), the real ultimate weapon is—shades of Joe McCarthy!—the point of order. Here’s how it would work. Normally, under the Senate’s famous Rule XXII, it takes sixty senators, three-fifths of the full membership, to cut off debate and proceed to a vote. However, during a debate on a judicial nominee, a Republican senator would ask the Presiding Officer to rule that further debate is out of order. The Presiding Officer—Vice-President Cheney—would so rule. The ruling would be challenged, of course. But because such a challenge can be tabled by the vote of a simple majority, and because there are fifty-five Republican senators, the ruling would be upheld. And, boom, that would be that—a piece of procedural ordnance so devastating in its effects and its aftermath that it has been nicknamed “the nuclear option.”

The filibuster has always been controversial, and as Hertzberg points out, it has been used historically for some pretty atrocious purposes, but doing away with it thus, for the judicial nomination process, would be unprecedented and plain undemocratic. Hertzberg observes that, after all, the current Senate's 55 Republicans represent 131 million people, while its 44 Democrats represent 161 million.

It's no secret that Republicans would use the nuclear option to ram through nominees like Antonin Scalia. Hertzberg excellently calls attention to perhaps the tidbit of news from last week I found most incredible: Scalia, in addition to blasting his fellow Supreme Court Justices for ruling that the execution of minors is unconstitutional and morally indefensible (Only the likes of Iran and China still sanction it), called the Ten Commandments "a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from God," during the recent case involving two Kentucky courthouses displaying the Commandments.

Somewhat reassuringly, Hertzberg reports that Democrats vow to raise hell if Republicans try the nuclear option. I think those of us not in the Senate should, too.

Edit: Just got an e-mail from MoveOn about this very issue. I'll post it as a comment.

March 7, 2005

Hey Joe

Joe Malchow '08 actually laments the fact that American troops didn't kill the Italian reporter, too.

Shoot her again one more time baby...

March 6, 2005

China criticizes U.S. human rights in broken English

Yes, this could be a headline from The Onion, and yes, it's true.

Take a look and have a laugh, though neither the irony nor the validity of China's critique ultimately are funny.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004, as stated by the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, March 3, 2005, according to the English People's Daily Online.

"In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the United States. The scandal shocked the humanity and was condemned by the international community."

I would give credit to the notorious Dartmouth publication where I learned of this document but a) I have reason to believe they've been stealing from us and 2) they didn't milk it for all its humor, so screw them.

Living by the coin

This is an important matter Clifford and I have discussed in the midst of several drunken fits. It's high time we put forth this insight of ours to the world.

We reasoned that the best way to make the most important personal life decisions -- those that don't really affect other people directly -- is to flip a coin.

I just did it for a relatively minor but not insignificant choice I had to make and I'm pretty happy with my decision.


Mmmm pretty desktop...

Windows sucks

This weekend I got fed up with the poor design and sheer ugliness of my PC's Windows interface. So I made it look like a Mac. Running OS X, icons, Aqua, dock and all. If you're like me and are stuck with a Windows operataing system you hate, check out the following:

This program will take care of the icons, windows style, background, screensaver, and some more in a matter of minutes. It's shareware.

ObjectDock will give you a cool dock just like OS X's. I find them quite useful and nice to use. Also shareware.

AquaXP.com is a site all about turning Windows into OS X.

Of course, your PC will still crash and get viruses like a PC should.

On the Trustee election

On Free Dartmouth Timothy Waligore '01 asks himself, "How should I vote in upcoming Trustee election?" and has some insights into this zesty campaign, and even gives our blog a plug.

March 3, 2005

Through the Grapevine

Programming Board's big Spring show (in Leede Arena) looks to have been confirmed for April 2nd as Talib Kweli.

March 2, 2005

Democracy For America at Dartmouth

The Committee on Sponsoring Organizations just gave official recognition to a new student group, Democracy For America at Dartmouth, whose primary aims include

establishing a chapter of the national organization of Democracy For America (Burlington, VT) for Dartmouth students, in order to pursue a range of projects focused on activist training, candidate recruitment, and sponsorship of progressive academic causes and speakers on campus.

Though it will focus on advancing the causes of social progressivism and fiscal responsibility, and will endorse political candidates who embody these ideals, DFA Dartmouth, or "Dartmouth For Democracy," will be oriented not so much around political parties but around issues and activism, like the greater DFA itself, which was an offshoot of Howard Dean's presidential primary campaign, and somewhat like America Coming Together and MoveOn.org.

I know this because I was at the COSO meeting speaking for DFA Dartmouth.

Sarah Ayres '06 is the founder of DFA Dartmouth.

March 1, 2005

Truly Bizzare

But pretty funny. I might have to check this book out.



Thanks to the Generic Good Morning Message for this one.

A Drinker's Peace

Friends,

Yesterday I turned 21. It has been a long 21 years. Or has it? I can't really remember my first memory at all, not with any surety... so I really have no way of proving to myself how long I've actually been alive. What a mindfuck eh? With those kinds of annoying thoughts in my head I had good reason to go out and get drunk last night.

Ramunto's-
Ramunto's was my first stop on this guided drinking tour. Had the 22oz of Long Trail. Pretty good deal! Pretty decent beer! I thought about working at Ramuntos earlier this term. I really needed some cash.

Molly's-
For some reason my companions and I decided to have like three rounds at Molly's. The crowd wasn't so much for me, a lot of suits hanging out after work (it was around 8pm). The lighting, too, was a little cheesy. The "Time to Eat" clock just made me want to vomit in anger. Margaritas were decent. Had a couple of those. Sapphire Martini... well, lets just say I don't really like Martinis. Still trying to figure out why I hung out here so long. I suppose cuz someone else was buyin' the drinks.

Murphy's-
Now here was a pleasant suprise. I never "got" Murphy's. The food has always been terrible, the accomodations cramped, and the guy who owns it had the gall to open up that horrible "mexican" restaurant a few doors down. BUT the BAR! My god, it was like heaven. Or London, or something. The dude spoke with this great Irish accent, said I looked 16, and slapped down a gift certificate to come back whenever. Normally that last item would've been a little too TGI Friday's for my taste, but it was totally redeemed by the fact that it looked hand made and was soaked in beer. My companion and I had a pitcher of Heffevisen. Their Jalapeno Poppers are pretty insane. I really can't recommend them to anyone, unless, like, you are a Dragon.

5 Olde-
5 Olde was just as disgusting as I expected it to be. SIGN ME UP! Had a Long Island Iced Tea, very palatable. The tender was sweet, too. Of course by this point I had gotten all grand with my planning and was in a hurry to catch a free milk shake at Ben and Jerry's before it closed. I vaguely remember having a conversation with the guy next to us about something Indie or other... some band...?

Ben and Jerry's-
Was closed.

India Queen-
Taking Aurelia's advice, I headed next to India Queen. There was a private party going on. Eight drunk people singing Karaoke. I was not impressed. Frankly I don't like Indian food. And the owner, as "cool" as he might be, still creeps me the fuck out. SO yeah, I was in and out in like two minutes.

Well, that concluded my drinkin' tour. Headed off to play Pong. Its the Dartmouth way. Note that I did not stop at Mai Thai (for I've been drinking there for the past three years, thanks to their "ID Card?" policy), or The Canoe Club (because my shoes click rather than crunch).

I think Murphy's is going to become my spot.

Concerned alums form Strong Dartmouth

Alumni for a Strong Dartmouth

Looks like some alumni are finally stepping up to stop the petition-candidate madness of the vocal conservative minority and dispel the idea that all Dartmouth alumni feel angry and estranged from today's Dartmouth. Way to go.

Thanks to Dartlog for pointing out this promising development.

Selling Dartmouth, literally

From The D today:

"Leading financial services firm UBS Investment Bank donated $1 million to the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration for use in the school's admissions office, Tuck officials announced on Friday. Tuck's admissions office will now be named the UBS MBA Admissions Suite in recognition of the grant."

Ha. Apparently this is a widespread phenomenon in business schools, and Tuck already has a lot of rooms named after corporations? I wouldn't know because I've never stepped foot in Tuck (and don't plan to any time soon).

However, I'd love to see this practice extended to the rest of Dartmouth's campus. How about we talk to that Dartmouth alum now president of Vivid Entertainment about renaming Loew Auditorium?

Zywicki and Robinson: Petitioning and Misleading

Great op-ed in The D today by Geoffrey Berlin '84 , former CEO of First Tuesday and co-founder of Alums Online. He reveals that the petition candidates are running on a platform of completely unfounded criticisms of Dartmouth -- which I would say (Berlin stops short of this, but I think he is well aware of it) are covering up their ambitions to make Dartmouth a conservative and backwards institution.