Respicite Auctoritatem Meam!

Hooray for America!

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:26:13 GMT

Happy Independence Day!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Journalism

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:06:36 GMT

One thing that writing a dissertation has meant is that I often find myself looking for distractions, and, thanks to wireless in Robarts carrels, I've had distraction in spades. Now, when one is using the intertubes for distractions, one can look to things like, oh, Memory Alpha or YouTube. If I'm feeling hyper responsible, I can look to JSTOR to furnish distractions.

More often, however, I choose a distraction that lies somewhere in the middle, namely newspapers and magazines. The great triumph of the internet is that now I have ready access to just about every magazine and newspaper out there. Two of my favorites for political news and discussion are The New York Times and The New Republic. In these two publications, I have two favorite journalists. C. J. Chivers of the New York Times is the best war correspondent I've ever read. And he's got more cred than any other reporter ever. He was a Marine Corps infantry officer before leaving the military to be a journalist. As a Times journalist, his reporting from Afghanistan (particularly the Korengal valley) has been outstanding for the vividness of how he describes what the soldiers and Marines there go through and the landscape itself. There are also small tidbits that make his writing a delight, such as Chivers, the former Marine, interviewing a Marine who says of the Taliban, "But they are not very good shots. If these guys knew how to shoot like even the U.S. Army, we would be taking 50 percent casualties on all of our patrols."

One of my other favorite journalists is The New Republic's Michelle Cottle. I can't put my finger why I so appreciate her writing, but this latest entry of hers on the magazine's weblog is a good example of her down-to-earth, absolutely human style of writing. She also mentioned in an article several years ago that she was raised Evangelical Protestant and is still kind of emotionally scarred by it, which is something with which I can sympathize.

So I guess the main point of this whole entry was to serve as an encomium to two very good journalists.

Robots in Diguise, Again

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:38:46 GMT

This evening, I went and saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It was a glorious, wonderful mess--giant robots beating the crap out of each other, Marines battling Decepticons, Optimus Prime deploying from a C-5, and the Matrix of Leadership. More importantly, seeing characters I recognized from childhood filled me with a swell of nostalgia. Absolutely wonderful.

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Michael Bay movie, but it could have done with less of the talky bits. There were some sub-plots and minor characters that only made the movie drag. If you're watching the Transformers, you're watching it for one thing and one thing only: to see giant robots fight. Have however much plot you need for giant robots to be fighting, but leave it at that.

What I also loved was that this movie was essentially a three-hour commercial for Hasbro, General Motors, and the U.S. Military. Of course, the military thing is no accident: the Pentagon's standard policy is that in movies that portray the U.S. military well, they supply the studio with military equipment, personnel, footage, etc. This was definitely one of those movies. (After all, one of the ways that the movie showed that the Decepticons are truly evil--aside from their murdering civilians, glowering expressions, glowing red eyes, and sinister voices--was that they desecrated the American flag.)

God bless Michael Bay, and God bless Optimus Prime.

Weight Training

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:14:48 GMT

Down the road in a gym far away,
A young man once was heard to say:
"No matter what I do, my legs won't grow."
He tried extensions and leg presses, too,
Cheating with those sissy workouts he'd do.

Back of the gym, where the big men train
'Midst the anguished grunts and the sounds of pain
Where big iron rides high and threatens lives
And the noise is made with the big forty-fives
A very big man with legs like trees,
A great barrel chest, and a monstrous back
Laughed as he pulled a weight from the stack.

He said: "Son, don't try to lie,
And don't say you've forgotten
The trouble with you is
You ain't been SQUATTIN'!"

I am bound and determined to do something about my chicken legs. At the moment, though, I'm actually fairly happy with my upper body: I'm weighing in at a little over 190 lbs., with a height of about 5'10" and a 33" waist. Well, I'm happy with my upper body with the exception of my lats. I'd really, really like for them to be larger, and I don't like that I was kept from lifting for just under a month by a pulled bicep.

I'm up to about a nineteen mile week with running, although this week is a light week to let muscles recover from the damage they take from the repeated pounding of running. Next week, I'll kick things up to twenty-one miles, and I hope to eventually get to 30. Hopefully, having switched to squats will help me with that.

One reason that I didn't squat for the longest time was that I was afraid for what the effect would be on my back. My upper back is a bit f*cked up from an injury I sustained a few years ago when I slightly dislocated one of my ribs. So far, though, I've felt no ill effects. Who knows, perhaps it will actually wind up helping my back, since one thing that the physical therapist so many years ago told me was that the best way to ease the pain in my back would be to strengthen the muscles.

Okay, back to work on my dissertation.

Moment of Self-Realization

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:40:35 GMT

I think that I actively hate Michael Pollan.

I only dislike Wendell Berry.

This is Kind of Fantastic

Sat, 16 May 2009 16:31:43 GMT

Sometimes when one has just gotten up, one takes out the garbage or recycling in one's boxers. Sometimes, when one has just gotten up, one fights the Taliban in one's pink I Love NY boxers.

Happy Easter!

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:13:12 GMT

Resurrexit sicut dixit! Alleluia!

Frank Miller's Charlie Brown

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:59:34 GMT

I have nothing to add.

The Joy of Discovery

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:49:21 GMT

Many years ago, in 1994-1995, I had a cookie that I really, really enjoyed, namely the Keebler Toffee Sandy. It was the same shortbread cookie as found in the Pecan Sandy, but with bits of toffee in it instead of pecan. Well, sometime in late 1995-early 1996 Keebler discontinued this cookie. I was heartbroken. How could a thing so wonderful come into my life and then vanish?

Well, the other day pauldrye mentioned to me that he remembered either Sobey's or Loblaws having a cookie very similar to the one I'd described. I searched Loblaws, but no luck. This afternoon, while going to buy a DVD and some wine, I stopped into Sobey's on a whim. And to my amazement, there on the shelf was a box of cookies. It was a different company than Keebler--the brand was Compliments--and the package was different, but there was no mistaking the cookie within. I had found my long-lost cookie, and was filled with joy and rapture. My cookie is back.

Whoopsie!

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:06:33 GMT

So today was my long run. I had planned it as ten miles, but my time felt off when I got back. So I went to mapmyrun.com and found out that I'd done closer to 11.25 miles. Man, do I feel silly. OTOH, it's the longest run that I've done since 1999, so there's that.

When Wikipedia is Wrong

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:06:12 GMT

The reasons that I am not not not a fan of undergraduates citing Wikipedia are many. One of these reasons is that Wikipedia is often just plain wrong.

For example, in the article on Opium, in the section describing the history of its use, we have this lovely line: "Opium became stigmatized in Europe during the Inquisition as a Middle Eastern influence and became a taboo subject in Europe from approximately 1300 to 1500 A.D." The above statement is what we academic folk call "not true." It's not true at several levels, but it seems superficially plausible to one who has a superficial knowledge of the history of western Europe. Now then, I would love to put an actual discussion of use of opiate analgesics in late Medieval Europe, and I suspect that some day when I'm in the library and can't bear to do any thesis work, I may take an hour and correct the article (a discussion of Dwale would be a good start).

But for now I'm sitting at home, full of disease, and so the Wrong remains on the Wikipeida web page.

Curses

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:54:29 GMT

I am sick, weak and feverish. I do not approve.

[Even More Politics] Winning in Al Anbar

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:23:28 GMT

At this point, in the last year, more Marines have died in motorcycle accidents than have died in what was once known as "the restive al Anbar province." How they won is outlined in this Power Point presentation that was made up back in 2006 by Army Captain Travis Patriquin, when the situation in the province was at its most dire. Captain Patriquin died in 2006, but the idea that he presented in that slide show was taken up, followed, and now al Anbar is one of the safest places to be an American soldier.

I wonder if somewhere in Afghanistan there isn't another company grade officer who has some similar idea about unf*cking things over there. I sure hope so.

Well Holy #$@%, Part II

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:12:25 GMT

It's... interesting to see the Senate GOP stand on principle even if said principle means somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 to 5 million jobs lost.

Lack of Worry

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:54:50 GMT

So, according to the newspapers, in the worst monthly job loss in thirty-four years, only two industries created jobs--health care and education.

It's good to be in a counter-cyclical industry.

Of course, the academic job market has always been and always will be crappy, so meh.

James Nicoll, this is for You

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:49:16 GMT

What we really need to deal with our food crisis is to have more expensive food that is harvested by human rather than machine labor. Seriously, what is it with a certain class of intellectual that is so wedded to the idea of how wonderful things would be if we all became peasant farmers? Wendell Berry, I'm looking at you.

Let The Right One In

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:27:32 GMT

The horrible decline of the Vampire genre should have been apparent from the time of the pre-conversion Anne Rice writing about vampires who were angst-ridden, but so very, very pretty while being angst-ridden. The way it's handled has only gotten worse, with stories that could have been written for unfulfilled housewives that make the vampire an object of desire with almost none of the horror. The awful nadir of this trend is of course the story of morally wholesome Mormon vampires with none of the traditional weaknesses of the vampire and all of the brooding sex-appeal.

Let the Right One in is a perfect antidote to this trend. In fact, I'd call it the anti-Twilight. It's set in a Swedish suburb of the early 80's, by which setting alone most of the glamor of the vampire is ruthlessly excised. I don't want to give too much of the film away, but it maintains both the horror of vampires and the horror of being a vampire, while also keeping the vampire at least somewhat sympathetic.

It's good. Really good. In fact, just about everyone owes it to themselves to see this movie.

There's Something You Don't See Every Day

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:30:53 GMT

Iraqi police and a U.S. soldier dancing.

Flame War and a Notice

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:29:03 GMT

I probably should not have made an LJ post full of angry nationalistic venting. But I did, and the result was the first ever flame war in the comments of said journal.

So as a note to all my readers: Be polite in the comments of my LJ. That is all.

Indiana Jones Denied Tenure

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:05:56 GMT

This is a hoot.

Well Holy #$@%

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:26:00 GMT

I don't know whether to be appalled at or have grudging respect for the type of people willing to play chicken with a multi-trillion dollar economy because of their principles. That takes some stones.

Hagiography

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:08:11 GMT

Six Saints Who Could Kick Your Ass.

I have entirely too much fun with cracked.com

Vivid Imagery

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:19:42 GMT

So, this is a nice, vivid image in Peraldus's discussion of the virtue of Faith: "Faith is the eye that the infernal crow frequently seeks to gouge out, just as a visible crow first races to the eye of a cadaver."

A Thought

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:53:38 GMT

Watching Queen videos on YouTube makes me really sad that we didn't have protease inhibitors earlier. :*(

Economic Wizardry

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:36:33 GMT

I'm still really confused about this business of money that disappears if people stop believing in it. That sounds like something out of a fantasy novel.