Subsumed ... resumed.: December 2005

Boom ...

and a ...

happy new year.

Best wishes for all in 2006 !

Tehran TV

Not Desperate Housewives, but Barareh Nights, a comic soap opera:

On Iran's nuclear program, "Barareh" firmly backs Iran's right to nuclear technology and criticizes the Europeans for requesting that Iran enrich its uranium abroad. Tehran insists its atomic program is peaceful.

An Anglo-American, the epitome of Western duplicity to many in Iran, persuades the villagers to let him "enrich" their peas abroad. He fattens the peas by soaking them in water, then sells them back to the villagers at twice the price. The villagers realize the foreigner is conning them.

Beyond the big questions of bribery, censorship, and uranium enrichment, "Barareh" also tackles social issues. The village is divided into "Upper" and "Lower" Barareh, a divide that mirrors class boundaries in Tehran.

"The ones from Upper Barareh are funny because they put on airs and try to mix English in with their Persian, but make lots of mistakes," said Maryam, a teacher. The football game between the two parts of the village mirrored the match between Tehran's two teams, Persepolis and Esteghlal -- a grudge match which has several times sparked vicious clashes between rival fans.

State television's survey center said the show was drawing a huge audience, being watched by 90 percent of people with access to a television, now most of Iran's 69 million people. It cited surveys that said 67 percent of viewers appreciated the show for tackling contemporary social issues through humor.

There were, however, plenty of complaints. "I was listening to state radio the other day and one village council complained that the accent they use in Barareh was mocking them," said Khosro.

State television's survey center said some viewers had complained the show was an insult to rural morals and degraded "distinguished" figures such as poets. Barareh's poet is manifestly gay, breaking a taboo in a country where homosexuality is illegal.

First the Saturday and Sunday people...

Now the Cheap Monday people.

Good lord! What is this world coming to?

Did you hear

the one about... ?

Hap Erstein on Sarah Silverman's: Jesus is Magic, in today's PBPost.

She's just not ...

that into you.
or,
How to know you're having a bad day.

Potty humor sells.

But there's just a lot of Catholics out there. And they vote, as some people have noticed.

Some people can't take a joke, eh? (It reminds me of that scene in Madonna's Truth or Dare.)

How I spent...

my winter break (Kids: don't try this at home.)

You find the most interesting things around here to read when you're cleaning. This one somebody sent copied me on a while back, and I thought I'd share:

Ring...ring...
"Hello, Mental Health Hotline."

--If you are obsessive compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.
--If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
--If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
--If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want.
--If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mother ship.
--If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you what number to press.
--If you are manic depressive, it really doesn't matter what number you press, you'll get no attention.
--If you are dyslexic, press 96969696969696
--If you have a nervous disorder, fidget with the 0 key until an operator responds.
--If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, ph number, social security number, date of birth, and mothers maiden name.
--If you have short-term memory loss, please press nine. If you have short-term memory loss, please press nine. If you have short-term memory loss, please press nine.
--If you have low self esteem, please hang up. All of our operators are too busy to talk with you right now.

Linda Rawls in today's PBPost dishes on Tiger's new digs in Florida. Interesting reading; I like the "in" gossip about the local club.

VC -- update

Good news: Looks like things are back up at volokh. Eugene jokes about it not being a conspiracy. It looks like another commenter, also named Mary, was expressing concerns about them being down on SCOTUSblog. Coincidental world. :)

Speaking of, I'm pretty sure Eugene Vololokh himself was a computer wunderkin, back before he went to law school. It probably helps to be handy with the hardware, software?, when there's trouble in hosting such a large site. Myself, I'm glad to be with blogger, and rely on their services for my low maintenance blog.

Well, it's a winter cleaning day here. Warmed up a bit, we had the springlike melt a few days back. It had been about 20 degrees colder than usual two weeks back, so hopefully our coldest spells just came early. Pretty melty and old shaped re-freezing, so not good ski weather though...

I'm not too much of a shopper and haven't lived in Chicago for a while, so news of the "Marshall Field's to Macy's" change didn't shake me up much. But, good bye to the Berghoff? I have good memories of Oktoberfest celebrations on the street outside the restaurant on a sunny day. A happy place and time in the city.

"It shouldn't happen here."

Nick Coleman in yesterday's Minneapolis Star Tribune.

"...and believe me, Cuba is an extremely safe country."

In Vietnam we destroyed villages in order to save them. In this war on terrorism, why not go ahead and destroy our freedoms in order to save them?

The reason we don't do these absurd things, of course, is that we see a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable.

Do you read Eugene Robinson? This sentence, to me, says a lot: "There can be no freedom without some measure of risk. ... We accept these risks as the price of liberty." Some people are irrationally afraid, think people who are not like them necessarily are out to get them, which can lead to overcompensation and self-fulfilling prophecies. That's why people are more comfortable, it's human nature really, in keeping close to them types who share a similar background. But fearful people don't make for the greatest leaders or more effective fighters. Particularly if they are compensating for past losses and humiliations. That risk calculation model -- if you're playing for big stakes, one tremendous loss could wipe you out and it doesn't matter how many smaller victories were won before then or how smart you thought the strategy was. Hindsight v. foresight.

There's a great line, related, in Farley Mowat's early autobiography, Born Naked. He's the Canadian naturalist and author, who was afforded a great deal of freedom to tromp about the countryside in his early days. As an adult, he once asked his mother why the parents let him out so early in life to find things out for himself.

"We felt that keeping you in a nice safe cage would leave you with only the vaguest and perhaps the wrongest ideas of what life was really about. Chances have to be took even by the young."

Well said. Sometimes in trying to protect our loved ones, we limit them unnecessarily. Burden them with our past. Fear, loss, risk calculation -- I'm not saying the protective response is not rational necessarily. But at what cost? I think here, Eugene Robinson speaks for quiet masses, not that they're unaware of risks. Not at all.

It's just, you can't safety-proof the world. Who in their right minds would want to? Can you imagine the cost, and who pays? Lots of people have survived hard times; you can't let it beat you down. At some point, you have to get out there with others unlike you, and learn to adapt to survive outside your self-imposed confines. A caged life limits growth. "Chances have to be took even by the young."

In defense...

of anonymous blog comments:

In real life, some people's views count more than others. You concentrate on who is saying something, not what they're saying. It's very easy to dismiss, perhaps before they've even said a word.

We see this all the time in say, politics, the workplace or the classroom. One person can present views, which are summarily rejected, perhaps because of who is speaking. Maybe we don't like their physical looks, or they have a background, or for whatever reason, we just don't understand what they are saying. Instead of evaluating on what is said, we evaluate the credibility of the speaker.

Later, a new face can present essentially the same argument, and it is more accepted because the person delivering the message, for whatever reason, is viewed with respect. That's human nature to trust or distrust the messenger, and I don't think it will change soon.

The Internet, however, opens up the world. Lots more things can be accessed. It's like a great public library: if you know what you're looking for and where to find the good stuff, the world is your playground, so to speak. Sure there are risks of playing in a bigger world, but the potential to benefit is also great.

Everybody gets to choose. Here, there are no comments allowed at all. I don't want slurs or wisecracks, and I miss out on the feedback from what I'm thinking and choosing to share. Oh well. I'm not looking to keep readers at my blog for extended times after they've read my thoughts. I'm not looking for your pity or praise.

The first impulse, when you've read something you believe is rude or uncomfortable, is to attack the writer. If they're anonymous, more the better. They should rot somewhere, nevermind responding to what about their comment has upset you so. It's human nature to fear people who don't automatically sign onto our thoughts, and upsetting to think not everyone views the same set of facts exactly as we do. I think you can see this in the mature national discussion we are having right now regarding the future of our country, America.

Some day, this online public library will be the better for getting past the presentations and having an honest exchange of views and general information sharing. The more voices we listen to, even if their thoughts and experiences are not necessarily incorporated into our course of action, the better. I read somewhere that better than physical torture, more effective, is the ability to get someone to want to talk.

If we can have the flexibility to see other points of view, not just judge from our own circumstances, we might move to take positive actions that will bring effective compromise in the future. Forcing new technologies to fit past ways, keeping the same playing fields, is short sighted and limiting. It's human nature though, we cling to the familiar ways at the expense of growth.

---

Another rule that some apply, I don't, is that you can't edit or delete posts without notifying your readers. There is usually a virtuous spin given on keeping up material, as though all deletions are corrections. Or, you could use this to your advantage. Unlike a newspaper that physically stays around, here you can put up things for regular readers and then take them down. Again, why should there be one set of rules that governs all blogs? We should each determine, and enforce, our own policies and not be so sure that our way of running things is the only way, or the most noble. That is a rejection of the possibilities something new offers, falling back into old ways and forcing them on the new and different technologies and voices.

(If this doesn't make sense to you, or you disagree with me, that's ok too.)

River Deep
Mountain High

Iraq as Dixie

An interesting take in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune, by Jeffery A. Jenkins.

Sad but funny

... or funny but sad? Or not funny at all maybe. Did you hear about Alistair Cooke's family?

"That people in need of healing should have received his body parts, considering his age and the fact that he was ill when he died, is as appalling to the family as is that his remains were violated."
---------
Hope you all liked the recent outdoor photos. Those are some of my favorite spots on the rivers. With this camera, I can go back and show changes in time. Like a series. So if the winter ice and colors weren't that interesting, try again in spring when the life starts showing itself.

If you can, try to imagine the sounds too. Ice cracking, rocks causing gurgling, water pounding down. Very powerful places. Different each time you visit. Hopefully that comes through, or will anyway, when I get other seasons in the series. Stay positive and remember, even if you're not religious, you'd be a fool to be missing out on the bigger spiritual themes everyday; nobody is so great who can't be in the company of betters and see that he is greater for it.