The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. . . . Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler… Read more →
June 2004
Mixed Reviews
Christopher Hitchens takes a chainsaw to Fahrenheit 9/11. Here’s an excerpt, on the film’s closing quote from Orwell’s 1984: A short word of advice: In general, it’s highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It’s also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history. Read more →
Predictable, Unfunny and Eminently Forgettable
A Slate article confirms my 20-year suspicion that Garfield the witless comic strip is just an adjunct to Garfield the marketing empire, rather than the other way around: Read more →
Meet the Press
Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990’s were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq. . . . Read more →
One Thing Bill Clinton and I Have in Common
. . . I was once the only kid at an Easter egg hunt who didn’t get a single egg, not because I couldn’t find them but because I couldn’t get to them fast enough. — Bill Clinton, My Life Read more →
Inspired Idiocy
It’s amazing how much havoc a person can wreak in the workplace by applying a certain kind of inspired idiocy to every situation: follow all procedures to the letter, do exactly what you’re told, and respond to all questions exactly as asked. One-word answers are ideal. The latter technique is especially effective via email. Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
One Never Knows
A former neighbor of ours, a man about my age with two young children, was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. His doctor says he has a year to live. A friend of mine from grad school died recently of stomach cancer, age 38. He too was married with two young daughters. One never knows when the blow may fall . . . Read more →
Clinton on Iraq
After 9/11, let’s be fair here, if you had been President, you’d think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you’re sitting there as President, you’re reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I’ve got to do that. Read more →
This Just In
I’m listening to a radio ad in which a man purporting to be a medical doctor is pitching an herbal rejuvenator: Call now and I’ll send you my free report on aging and its effect on energy and sex drive! Let me guess: they go down . . . Read more →
Two Short Arguments For Affirmative Action
It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it . . . Read more →
High-Visibility Management
A friend of mine asked me the other day, “Do you think an organization really values a good manager?” He asked me that because he’s moving from a position as lead developer on a high-visibility system (lots of job security) to a position managing the developers of that system. And I had to say that in general, I think the answer is no, which is why you see managers generating a lot of useless paperwork to make their work visible: project plans, Gantt charts, spreadsheets, flowcharts . . . Does this help? I haven’t found that it does, but it does provide an illusion of control and an acceptable way of failing: the manager can point to all the paperwork and say, “Well, I followed the accepted process right down the line, so the fact that we failed can’t be my fault!” An analogy Our local basketball team is coached… Read more →
I Sit By The Window
A loyal subject of these second-rate years, I proudly admit that my finest ideas are second-rate, and may the future take them as trophies of my struggle against suffocation. I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out. — Joseph Brodsky, “I Sit By The Window” Read more →
Meet the Press
. . . I do think there was what amounted to a kind of conspiracy to get the U.S. into a war against Iraq, if we define the term as a secretive plot involving a group within the government but excluding many important officials, who bent events and information to their undeclared purpose. Although you’d have to say it was a barely undeclared purpose. — Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser Is it really a secret conspiracy if it involves a congressional vote and 17 U.N. resolutions? Read more →
Obesity vs. Thought
Obesity Could Be More Widespread Than Thought — New York Sun I believe that. I run into a lot more fat people than thoughtful people . . . Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
James Arness – actor Doris Day – actress Yvonne DeCarlo – actress Lady Bird Johnson – U.S. first lady Art Linkletter – TV host Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – spiritual guru Fess Parker – actor Paul Winchell – voice of Tigger Updates James Arness – died 6/3/2011, age 88 Doris Day – died 5/13/2019, age 97 Yvonne DeCarlo – died 1/10/2007, age 84 Lady Bird Johnson – died 7/11/2007, age 94 Art Linkletter – died 5/26/2010, age 97 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – died 2/5/2008, age 91 Fess Parker – died 3/18/2010, age 85 Paul Winchell – died 6/25/2005, age 82 Read more →