Head in a whirl

I've just finished a 3-week vacation from work. Maybe it was one of the best vacations I've had.

People asked what I did, and it's hard to answer. Just listing activities makes it sound like I didn't do much -- stayed home, chatted on MSN, went to a concert, visited my Mom, spent a weekend in Chicago for Beatlefest, took some photographs. But hidden inside each of those things I've found pieces of truth ... the kind that defies expression in words, but that fills your heart in inexplicable ways.

A friend unwittingly, unintentionally, and surely unknowingly was the catalyst for this. I hope I have the opportunity to get to know you better.

It's Too Late

This song popped into my head tonight. So, here's to everyone out there who's at a turning point, ready to break away, ready for a new step...


It's Too Late
Carole King

Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time
There's something wrong here there can be no denying
One of us is changing or maybe we've just stopped trying

And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

It used to be so easy living here with you
You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool

And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it

There'll be good times again for me and you
But we just can't stay together don't you feel it too
Still I'm glad for what we had and how I once loved you

But it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it

Oh, it's too late, my baby
It's too late, now darling
It's too late

Can we ever learn?

On Salon.com there's a column called "Ask the Pilot". In this week's column, there's a paragraph that summarizes why I get embarrassed to be from the United States.

Excavated from the rubble of Sept. 11 could have been, and should have been, a crucial and instructive lesson beyond the expected hand-wringing over security and preparedness. Specifically, a call for American citizens to broaden their horizons and develop a smarter sense of the world's mechanisms and conflicts. Instead, we appear to be growing even more insular, myopic, and unimpressed with the fact that large numbers of people despise us for reasons a tad more complex than "they hate freedom." It's a path we follow at our own peril, and it is exactly opposite to what global tensions mandate. We can't tell the difference between an Indian, a Tibetan, and an Islamic radical. More to the point, we don't seem interested in learning what those differences are.

More on multiple universes

Referring to my previous post ...

"In classical physics, [Deutch] says, there is no such thing as 'if'; the future is determined absolutely by the past."

And this is still true in a multiverse model, as long as the individual universes remain independent of one another.

Adding humans into the model: as long as the humans within an individual universe remain able to only perceive the single universe they are in, this determinism also remains true. Under the presupposition of humans experiencing only the universe they inhabit, information transfer and flow remains within the closed system of the individual universe. Things happen (information flow/transfer is initiated), other things happen as a result (information is received), and still other things happen from that (information is retransmitted). Humans have generally instantiated this in the form of "linear time" and "cause and effect".

Keep in mind that these "events" or "things happening" are also instantiations, not the "real thing" -- the events and things happening are given form by humans who perceive them and then give them names, define them, and get enough other humans to agree with the instantiation so that the social weight of the group instantiation makes the humans believe it to be real. -- Thus, for example, things that are seen in hallucinations are not "real" because they are a perception that only one human shares, while the color blue is "real" because when you point to a color and call it blue, most everyone will agree with you and even those who don't agree are disagreeing on the details of the definition, not the fact that a definition of "blue" exists. The world as a flat object used to be real until enough humans shared a different perception of the Earth.

Continuing with the article I cited in my previous post: "In the multiverse, however, there are alternatives; the quantum possibilities really happen"

We can see this scientifically (scroll to the bottom to the section "Interfering with the multiverse)

You can see the shadow of other universes using little more than a light source and two metal plates. This is the famous double-slit experiment, the touchstone of quantum weirdness.

Particles from the atomic realm such as photons, electrons or atoms are fired at the first plate, which has two vertical slits in it. The particles that go through hit the second plate on the far side.

Imagine the places that are hit show up black and that the places that are not hit show up white. After the experiment has been running for a while, and many particles have passed through the slits, the plate will be covered in vertical stripes alternating black and white. That is an interference pattern.

To make it, particles that passed through one slit have to interfere with particles that passed through the other slit. The pattern simply does not form if you shut one slit.

The strange thing is that the interference pattern forms even if particles come one at a time, with long periods in between. So what is affecting these single particles?

According to the many worlds interpretation, each particle interferes with another particle going through the other slit. What other particle? "Another particle in a neighbouring universe," says David Deutsch. He believes this is a case where two universes split apart briefly, within the experiment, then come back together again. "In my opinion, the argument for the many worlds was won with the double-slit experiment. It reveals interference between neighbouring universes, the root of all quantum phenomena."

But we can also see things in everyday life that should make us stop and consider how we should understand them: as a previously unrecognized part of the individual universe we live in, or as a glimpse of a different universe. A third option might be that it's something imaginary, but that is an option that shouldn't be chosen lightly -- it's easy to use that as a catch-all category for anything that we haven't been able to understand enough to believe in -- but we need to also realize that the fact that something was imagined by someone might be enough to make it a real part of the multiverse.

And continuing from my previous post again: "'By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,' [Deutsch] says. 'When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.'"

I'm not sure I agree with this view of the interaction between universes, apart from the idea that spreading good is beneficial and the good you spread in your universe can seep into other universes when the universes brush up against one another.

My view at the moment is that awareness of the multiverse does other things for us here in our individual universe. For one thing, it's a useful explanation for those moments of deja vu and synchronicity that are otherwise inexplicable. It also can help us keep things in perspective: there really is only today to live in because everything else is just an echo of today. And whatever we think of our current universe, there are countless others that are both better and worse.

Also consider the question of mental illness or other memory or reality disorders... We should think of treatment as nothing more than methods for helping the person deal with the universe he physically shares with the rest of us, rather than an attempt to cure the person of whatever we think he has.

The concept of many universes also applies to spirituality and religion -- in what we call mystical, pagan, or shamanistic practices, the goal is to reach into the other universes while keeping a tie with the current one. The break from those, notably with the Judeo-Christian-Muslim practices, the goal is to close off the other universes and maintain control and clarity of perception within the current universe.

Spoke too soon

I should have read on in the article before writing:

Deutsch found that, almost all the time, information flows only within small pieces of the quantum calculation, and not in between those pieces. These pieces, he says, are separate universes. They feel separate and autonomous because all the information we receive through our senses has come from within one universe. As Oxford philosopher Michael Lockwood put it, "We cannot look sideways, through the multiverse, any more than we can look into the future."

Sometimes universes in Deutsch's model peel apart only locally and fleetingly, and then slap back together again. This is the cause of quantum interference, which is at the root of everything from the two-slit experiment to the basic structure of atoms.

More from the New Scientist article:

"One day, a quantum computer will be built which does more simultaneous calculations than there are particles in the Universe," says Deutsch. "Since the Universe as we see it lacks the computational resources to do the calculations, where are they being done?" It can only be in other universes, he says. "Quantum computers share information with huge numbers of versions of themselves throughout the multiverse."

Imagine that you have a quantum PC and you set it a problem. What happens is that a huge number of versions of your PC split off from this Universe into their own separate, local universes, and work on parallel strands of the problem. A split second later, the pocket universes recombine into one, and those strands are pulled together to provide the answer that pops up on your screen. "Quantum computers are the first machines humans have ever built to exploit the multiverse directly," says Deutsch.

And:

What would it mean for you and me to know there are inconceivably many yous and mes living out all possible histories? Surely, there is no point in making any choices for the better if all possible outcomes happen? We might as well stay in bed or commit suicide.

Deutsch does not agree. In fact, he thinks it could make real choice possible. In classical physics, he says, there is no such thing as "if"; the future is determined absolutely by the past. So there can be no free will. In the multiverse, however, there are alternatives; the quantum possibilities really happen. Free will might have a sensible definition, Deutsch thinks, because the alternatives don't have to occur within equally large slices of the multiverse. "By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives," he says. "When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen."

David Deutsch's article "The structure of the multiverse" is here

More on this

On the topic of the reality of objects in a quantum universe and the role of observation in reality:

Deutsch dismisses them all. "Some are gibberish, like the Copenhagen interpretation," he says-and the rest are just variations on the many worlds theme.

For example, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the act of observing is crucial. Observation forces an atom to make up its mind, and plump for being in only one place out of all the possible places it could be. But the Copenhagen interpretation is itself open to interpretation. What constitutes an observation? For some people, this only requires a large-scale object such as a particle detector. For others it means an interaction with some kind of conscious being.

Worse still, says Deutsch, is that in this type of interpretation you have to abandon the idea of reality. Before observation, the atom doesn't have a real position. To Deutsch, the whole thing is mysticism-throwing up our hands and saying there are some things we are not allowed to ask.

Except, Deutsch is slightly off too. He should talk to the cognitive scientists who work in psychology, philosophy, and linguistics.

It's not that observation forces an atom to make up its mind and place itself in one place of all possible places. It's that humans are only capable of experiencing one universe at a time, and so when they manage to observe an atom, what they observe is the atom in the particular universe that the humans have succeeded in tuning in to. In that particular universe, the atom is precisely where it's supposed to be and in the only place it can be.  (there's nowhere you can be that isn't where you were meant to be, it's easy...)

It doesn't matter if it's a particle detector or a conscious being that makes the observation, because, in the end, it's still a human that perceives that an observation has taken place. That perception, and, by extension, observation, is all about the human -- the interplay of our physically-based senses, our physically-based mental interpretations of our senses, and our experientially-based mental interpretations of our senses. Those three things are required for perception and observation to take place, and those three things, in turn, determine the outcome of the act of perception and observation -- that is, our decision regarding what it is that we perceived and observed and what that thing we perceived means.

Imaginary or multi universe?

Interesting article on a variant of multiverse theory -- that we all live in a computer simulation (we all live in a Yellow Submarine...).

The newspaper article gets part of it a little screwy:

Travel a trillion light years beyond the Andromeda galaxy, and you might find yourself in a universe where gravity is a bit stronger or electrons a bit heavier.

The vast majority of these other universes will not have the necessary fine-tuned coincidences needed for life to emerge; they are sterile and so go unseen. Only in Goldilocks universes like ours where things have fallen out just right, purely by accident, will sentient beings arise to be amazed at how ingeniously bio-friendly their universe is.

It's not that you "travel a trillion light years" or that the other universes lack what is needed for life. Both of those concepts are rooted in the metaphors that are inherent in the universe we inhabit and are thus, by definition, irrelevant to the other universes.

Even the computer simulation part is just another, this time more modern, metaphor. If it works as a metaphor, it's just because the people who thought up the metaphor have been able to lift the veil, so to speak.

Although I shouldn't complain ...

I came down with a cold this week. Not news? Well, for me it's the end of an illness-free streak of 4 1/2 years, so when I felt it coming on Tuesday afternoon -- a real cold, not just symptoms that approach and then pass me by -- I couldn't believe it. It hasn't been a terribly bad cold, at least not like ones I remember, but the progress of the symptoms have been interesting to observe, probably because of that long gap in experiencing them. Tuesday afternoon: tired, chilled, with looming sore throat and headache. Tuesday evening: the acute blast of symptoms. Wednesday-Friday: sore throat gone but general stuffiness, drippyness and sneezing. Thursday through Saturday: all the crap draining down my throat -- this was yuckier than I remember. Friday night-Saturday: coughing, and Saturday my voice started to go. Today, I'm no longer congested or drippy or sneezing or even coughing and I feel better, but the voice is gone. I probably should have started taking an expectorant yesterday or even Friday rather than today.

Part 2: I found out my apartment complex is lowering rent by $10 a month for renewals. This is a nice complex in a good location, or at least has been. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but having them lower the rent makes me think they're losing renewals, which makes me wonder why.

Part 3: It's 82 degrees outside and sort of humid but not very. 82 degrees is nothing -- it'll be consistently 95+ soon, and that will last until October -- but when I went out this afternoon (to get the Coricidin, see Part 1 above) it felt like the dead of summer to me.

Dream Away

Not to detract from the disease of Alzheimers, but I've wondered if there isn't a different type of thing that can be going on when an elderly person grows "confused", apart from that disease.

Think of it... you spend your whole life with your mind wrapped with the reality that our culture has created for itself and our world. You live it. You compromise to it. You spend your days-into-years thinking, worrying about things, making decisions, all in conformity to, or occasionally in defiance of, the reality of the world we've decided to share -- that we've decided to share in order to maintain some unity for ourselves and so that we can agree enough in order to have some sense of satisfaction in communicating amongst ourselves.

Maybe at some point in old age, it's possible to just stop. To let other people worry about the world-as-it-is, and to just let yourself go into whatever world you want to create for yourself. No worries about what other people will think. No need to maintain some facade for the sake of the larger society. Just the freedom to think and be however and whatever you want.

Maybe a person in that stage of life seems confused to us only because we're still stuck in our world-as-it-is.

34 Hours Later

By Friday morning I'd decided I might not wait until Monday. I talked to Kris and Julie and Candy at work and after talking to them, I'd decided to call Dr. Absher's office and say I'd bring him in Saturday morning.

It was Kris who helped. She fosters cats and is very sensitive. When I told her about his disinterest in bladder control, that shook her. She only gives up on cats at the last moment, but when she heard that, her immediate reaction was that he'd given up and was telling me that by not using his litter box.

At 4:00 I called and told them and Lindsey said I could bring him in anytime after 8:15 am.

I stayed up with him all night. I watched him rest. I watched his labored breathing. I saw him refuse food. I watched him walk a few feet and have to lay down to rest before continuing. I saw him ignore a dangly-string toy.

Finally this morning at 8:00 he had his last chance. He tried. He ate a bite of the a/d, the high-fat high-palatability food that he wouldn't really be able to eat because it would aggravate his pancreatitis. I saw him walk to the kitchen to drink water. I noted that he'd been drinking quite a bit all night and hadn't urinated. He had to walk the 15 feet to his water bowl in stages. He had to stop to rest along the way. When he got there, he had to lay down with his head over the bowl to drink instead of stand. Then he finished drinking and urinated in the kitchen. But watching him drink, I knew that this really was time for him to go.

He meowed a little when I put him in his carrier. Usually he's screaming. He was quiet during the ride. Usually he meows. When I put his carrier on the bench in the vet's waiting room, he was silent... usually he's screaming. It's his distinctive characteristic, and even Thursday when we were there, Mary had noticed how quiet he was.

They really got attached to him at the vet's office. I thought it was just me, and them being nice, but Lindsey told me that he was the first cat they'd be euthanizing that they'd gotten attached to. Well, she's only been there a year or so and Mary just a couple of years. But they did love him, and that was why I was so glad to have him board with them.

So it's done. I don't know the timing, but he's probably gone now. After Thursday, they must have known it was coming, and Lindsey agreed that it was better to do it now before he started feeling totally miserable. Actually, with not eating, he'd be just starving himself anyway. Hard to believe it's been almost 10 years since Comet left. Probably the white-kitty is gone too. Now Popeye's kitty spirit will rejoin all the other kitty spirits.

Popeye the Cat

I don't know how old he is, really. A vet in 1995 thought he was about 8. In January 1997, when we visited our current vet for the first time, he put Popeye's age at around 11. So, maybe he's 18.

He's a domestic short hair, black with white feet and chest, and the white on his chest comes up under his chin and curls around so he looks like he has a white mustache. A big guy too. Long, tall, 13 pounds. Bryan, with affection, used to call him the Monster.

Back in November of 1993, my ex-partner Bryan and I moved into a house we rented in Fort Worth. It was a stroke of luck really. We'd been looking for a while, and then we came on this one, a 1940s era bungalow in west Fort Worth -- Arlington Heights, though at the east edge making it almost in the Cultural District. I looked inside the windows of the empty house and all I saw was this shining. place. I knew we were going to live there -- things shine when they're right, you know.

When we moved in, there was a couple living next door who had cats who lived outdoors. There was Comet, the little yellow tabby with the long incisors, lean from being such a hunter. There was Popeye, with major attitude, who'd made himself the alpha cat, mostly because the others were happy to let him have his way because they knew he was so insecure inside. And there was the other cat, marked just like Popeye but without the mustache, whose name I can't remember.

The house we moved into had been empty for some time, and the cats had adopted our yard and front porch as their second home. We were happy to have them as surrogate guests too. For quite a while, we didn't know their names, so Comet was the sabertooth-tiger kitty (because of those incisors). Popeye was the black kitty. And his twin was the white-kitty-in-disguise. This was because, unlike Popeye, his undercoat was completely white.

The white-kitty was the sweetest, and he was Bryan's favorite. Loved being petted. Loved being affectionate with the other cats. Popeye was the most recalcitrant. Hated being petted. Ignored the other cats. But the white-kitty loved him, and Popeye appreciated that. Only the white kitty would ignore Popeye's attitude and groom him. Only from the white-kitty would Popeye tolerate such attention.

Comet was my favorite. When we moved in, he was third in the pecking order, but I cultivated him, in favor of Popeye, and he grew in status, at the expense of Popeye's.

All went well. We got acquainted with one the guys next door, the cats' owners.

Then, in the summer of 1994 disaster happened. The guys next door were planning to move to a different house a block away. In the midst of this, one morning I went outside and saw that Comet had been injured terribly in one of his eyes. It turned out that he'd been shot by a BB gun -- eventually we heard that he'd done ok, but we never saw him again, and I think they put him down.

It was about a week after the injury that the guys moved down the block, and the trauma to the other cats was absolute. They refused to stay at their new home. Popeye and the white-kitty immediately came back to our house if they were outside. And the personalities of both completely reversed.

The sweet white-kitty wouldn't let us come near him. He'd hiss and cry, and became completely antisocial. Independent, aloof Popeye craved our attention. Eventually, the guys kept the white-kitty indoors, but they decided to let Popeye come to our house as long as we didn't mind. Gradually, we kept him fed, and then, by the end of 1994, we agreed with his owner that we'd take responsibility for him.

Sometime in 1995 we turned him into an indoor cat. Another couple had moved into his old house next door, and they had a cat with whom Popeye shared a fierce territoriality. After one particularly bad fight and having to nurse the resulting abscess on Popeye's head, that was enough. He was indoors.

Well, Bryan and I broke up. He moved out. Popeye stayed with me. Where else would he go? Who else would he live with?

We moved to Arlington, and here we've been for the last 7 1/2 years.

I'm trying to remember the progression of his aging. He used to get up on the bed with me while I was reading before going to sleep. He'd put his front paws up on the front of my shoulder and start kneading. It was so nice. I called it my kitty massage. It's been a couple of years since he stopped doing that.

He used to take interest in animals outside. Dogs or cats. Birds on the balcony. It's been at least a year since he even noticed they were out there. What a difference from before. It was in May of 1997 that he bit me. And meant it. Or rather, didn't mean to bite *me*, I was just in the way. At that time, there was a cat in the neighborhood who'd climb up on my second floor balcony. This, of course, would drive Popeye crazy. One evening, the patio glass door was open, and I didn't notice the cat had climbed up on the balcony until Popeye started lunging at the screen and the two cats were about to start fighting with the screen between them. I jumped up to close the door. My hand happened to be cat-high. Popeye bit, thinking of his enemy on the balcony, but my hand was what got bit. Man, I have never experienced such pain. Not the bite itself, but the infection, which started within hours. A cat bite in anger is not the usual bites, even that draw blood. I swear cat bites in anger have a special toxicity.

Apart from that, besides paying attention to the animals outside, he'd even get territorial when other cats were around outside the apartment building -- why do I say this? Because he'd get into his litter box and spray instead of pee. He'd pee too, but it's the spraying that made me know he was feeling territorially insecure. At least it was in the vicinity of the litter box, in the bathroom, and easy to clean up!

But, it's been at least a year since he's even noticed other animals exist outside. He doesn't even notice birds on the balcony. Maybe it's been two years.

I'm trying to remember how long he's been hyperthyroidic. Maybe that's been three years. He's had times when he'd get lethargic. A year and a half ago he stopped eating once, but I'd been traveling a lot, and both I and the vet think he was just "on strike".

I just couldn't get him to eat. I tried all kinds of food. Even human food -- tuna -- which the vet said to give him as an enticement. Nothing. Until finally, in desperation, I started talking to him. I told him how frustrated I was. I told him he might be the cat, and I might only be a human, but I wasn't stupid or mean. I reminded him of how I took him in, and gave him a home. And he listened, I swear. He looked at me, looked surprised at my outburst. Then started looking ashamed. And then he got up and went to his food bowl and ate.

It was over the past weekend that I noticed the change. He's been reducing in activity gradually for years, but from about Friday he was moving even less. He started peeing over the side of his litter box. I didn't think much of it, remembering the old days, and got puppy pee pads to put under the box so I wouldn't have so much cleaning up to do. But he was also eating and drinking less. And walking slowly, as though it were uncomfortable. He'd mostly sit, rather than his usual sprawl, shifting occasionally also as though he were trying to find a comfortable position.

Then Tuesday I started noticing nothing in the litter box. By Wednesday, yesterday, after work, I confirmed that he still hadn't had a bowel movement. He was urinating, but at the doorway to the bathroom, where the litter box is, as though he got that far and said "eh, close enough..." He wouldn't actively seek his food and water. I could get him to drink and eat a little tuna if I put it right in front of him, but he'd lose interest after a few licks at the tuna and laps at the water. I also thought I noticed him breathing heavily, but I wasn't sure if it was that, or just me being hyperobservant. But Dr. Absher noticed it too, today.

So, I took him into Dr. Absher this morning. We got the bloodwork back. It's nothing specific. Maybe a little pancreatitis along with the hyperthyroidism. A little dehydrated from not drinking enough. Maybe some cardiac problems, but $1000 for an internist and tests are required to confirm that diagnosis. I'll get the thyroid results back tomorrow, but they probably won't be different.

When I got home from work in the afternoon (he'd been home alone for about 6 hours), he'd finally pooped a little, and it was well-formed, but he'd been on the glass-topped coffee table at the time, and hadn't gone to his litter box (at least the glass is easy to clean and the stool wasn't loose). And he's still peeing on the carpet -- the last time, he only got halfway to the bathroom doorway.

I'm not going to do the internist. I'll see how he is over the weekend. And then call Dr. Absher on Monday and tell him what I've decided. If he's still not happy, and especially if he hasn't rediscovered his litter box, I'm going to have to have him put to sleep.

Popeye the Cat. That's how Walgreen's knows him, how he's named on his prescription.

I think I'm ok. I'm ready for this I think. I've been afraid of having him die at home. I've been afraid of what it'd be like to make this decision. Maybe the peeing on the floor is a blessing -- makes it easier. Can't lock him in the bathroom to keep him from peeing on the carpet. Can't have him peeing on the carpet indefinitely. But it's also sad. I'll not spend some $2k a year on food, medicine, supplies, boarding, and exams. I'll have half of my bathroom cupboard, freed from litter box supplies, and space to walk where the litter box has been, which has been a third of the bathroom floor space. Half a shelf in the pantry that's had food and treats. I can travel without spending $200 on boarding. I can take off for the weekend at the last minute and not have to have arranged for boarding in advance.

I guess the house will seem empty though. I'll miss the people at the vet's office. When they told me today that, if he died at home, I could just bring his body in to them, and they'd take care of things, that was the most comforting thing I'd heard. As I told them, I was happy I could do that, and would do that in that case... because they almost feel like part of the family by now.

Even during his exam, after the preliminaries when it was clear that this was a "serious" exam, the other girl, Mary, who has liked Popeye so much, came in to watch, and she looked so sad. I'll miss those people.

But I'll still have the stories, these stories I've told tonight.

Popeye the Cat. He's had quite a life.

Quirky Alone

omigod, and I always just thought I was antisocial or at least just poorly socially adjusted. quirkyalone.net

Oh, I should add

Oh, I should add: that should be *ex-patriate* Iowa Democrat.

But an Iowan and an Iowa Democrat nonetheless.

Being a Democrat

I love being a Democrat. Specifically, I love being an Iowa Democrat. I love that the primary season starts with the Iowa Democratic caucuses.

I'm watching the Des Moines Register debate with the Democratic presidential candidates, and it's the best run debate I've seen so far this season. A real debate, with good questions, including questions submitted by Iowa Democrats.

I'm not a Deanie, or whatever those people are called, but of these Democrats, the only one that is vaguely presidential is Howard Dean. Of course, he's not presidential in the traditional sense, but the rest of them I'd have a hard time voting for. No question, I'll vote for the Democrat, and will never vote for George W., but jeez, you've got Gebhardt, who's so 80s. Lieberman who is such a wimp. Kerry who is such a politician. Carol Moseley Braun is good, but she'll never be President. Edwards is too young. Kucinich (I think I misspelled his name) has a good heart, but his idealism, as much as I agree with his statements, needs some pragmatism.

What's interesting is that all these candidates... it's like they are there so that a complete, clear picture of the issues can be drawn. By debating and airing their positions, they are creating the Democratic platform which the final candidate will run on. And, if the candidate can integrate those positions and articulate them well, the Democrats will be giving George W. a run for his money. I'm not sure a Democrat can win, but this collection of candidates can create a platform that will finally give the Democratic party some definition again. This they will need in 2008.

And, I think the Democratic candidate will be Howard Dean.

Best line of the campaign so far: the topic was balancing the budget and it was Dean's turn. He ran through some arguments and positions and ended by agreeing with Kerry that balancing the budget won't happen right away. Then he said "but by the 6th or 7th year of my term..."

!!!

I didn't see reactions of the other candidates. the DMR moderators looked stunned then amused. The audience laughed. Dean paused, looked around, and said "What??" and gave a look like he'd been joking.

But, I don't think he was joking! I think he got caught up in the moment and came out with what he'd really been thinking, and only after backpedaled to make some comedy of it.

Honestly, I loved it. It really is refreshing to see someone playing the game and still having some truth underneath.

Catching up on reading

I've been on vacation this week and catching up on my reading. In doing this, I've had the pleasure of encountering some of the worst writing I've seen in some time.

In the academic writing category, this is from "To Be Indian, to Be Bolivian: "Ethnic" and "National" Discourses of Identity" by Thomas Abercrombie, in _Nation-States and Indians in Latin America_, edited by Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991, p. 105:

"Indians" came, at least by the mid-seventeenth century, to regard themselves as civilized sons of (a solarized) Christ; their pre-Columbian ancestors as the defeated satanic race of a prehuman age; and the underworld place-deities that they continued to ritually celebrate as the sources of necessary chthonic potencies that, domesticated by Christian powers, could still sustain them (Abercrombie 1986). These anti- or pre-Christian underworld beings and powers are portrayed (by today's "Indians") in the likeness of the Spaniards' image of Indians as Others (un-Christian and without bueno policía regardless of Spanish efforts, as many colonial Spanish and contemporary urban accounts paint them). The asymmetrical power of the colonial gaze ensured the alienation of the Indian self (pushing it into the nearby and well-remembered past), but guaranteed its retention, in the shape of the transformed Indians' Other's Other.

Ok, I want to know the difference between "Indians" and Indians. One would imagine that Indians are "real" Indians while "Indians" are pseudo- or ex- Indians or Indians in name only, basically not-exactly-Indians. But that still doesn't help in understanding why he'd drop the quotation marks in some places. On the other hand, Tom's got an apparent fascination with punctuation in general -- I don't see his parenthetical phrases as particularly parenthetical -- so maybe it's got more to do with that.

Beyond that, I have to ask: did you get lost in the Others?

And in the category of academic trying to write for a popular audience, from _Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping_, by Paco Underhilll, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 12:

[added later: let me correct myself. Paco isn't an academic. So he has even fewer excuses for producing the following "paragraph" (a paragraph only by 2 criteria: it goes on for several lines, and it's set apart by indentation)]

Well, if, say, anthropology had devoted a branch to the study of modern shoppers in situ, a fancy Latin way of saying shoppers out shopping, interacting with retail environments (not only stores, but also banks and restaurants), including but not limited to every rack, shelf, counter and table display of merchandise, every sign, banner, brochure, directional aid and computerized interactive informational fixture, the entrances and exits, the windows and walls, the elevators and escalators and stairs and ramps, the cashier lines and teller lines and counter lines and restroom lines, and every inch of every aisle -- in short, every nook and cranny from the farthest reaches of the parking lot to the deepest penetration of the store itself -- that would be the start of the science of shopping. And if anthropology has already been studying all of that ... and not simply studying the store, but what, exactly human beings do in it, where they go and don't go, and by what path they go there; what they see and fail to see, or read and decline to read; and how they deal with the objects they come upon, how they shop, you might say -- the precise anatomical mechanics and behavioral psychology of how they pull a sweater from a rack to examine it, or read a box of heartburn pills or a fast-food restaurant menu, or deploy a shopping basket, or react to the sight of a line at the ATMs ... again, as I say, if anthropology had been paying attention, and not just paying attention but then collating, digesting, tabulating and cross-referencing every little bit of data, from the extremely broad (How many people enter this store on a typical Saturday morning broken down by age, sex and size of shopper group?) to the extremely narrow (Do more male supermarket shoppers under thirty-five who read the nutritional information on the side panel of a cereal box actually buy the cereal compared to those who just look at the picture on the front?), well, then we wouldn't have had to try to invent the science of shopping.

I want to know, who was Paco's editor at Simon Schuster and where was he/she when ol' Paco submitted his manuscript. It occurs to me that, after reading the above paragraph, the poor editor resigned Paco to hopeless status and just sent the MSS through, being fearful of reading further.

Actually, I myself haven't gotten much farther than that, but I'm going to keep going.

Tom Abercrombie's article actually improved some following his exercise in jargon quoted above. Maybe Paco's book will improve as well.

Black white gray

There's an article in today's New York Times Magazine.

I think that article expresses a key characteristic of what's going on in the US now -- the complicated, mixed feelings and opinions I hold and, I suspect, more than a few people hold -- at least those who are letting themselves think about it.

There have been a couple of key points over the past 40 years in American social-political life. One was the realization that the justification for the Vietnam War that they'd been given wasn't valid. Another was Watergate, when whatever trust people had in American politics was shattered.

In a way, however difficult those two were, I think that both were simple compared to the thinking that Americans are facing and will be facing as the active war phase of current events comes to an end. Maybe that's why people are watching FOXNews ... whatever else FOXNews is, it presents things as though they were simple, and in the face of nothing being simple, maybe that's part of the appeal.

War reporting

With the war in Afghanistan in late 2001, the complaint was the limited access to military sources that reporters had. And, as they recalled the 1991 Gulf War, the media had the same complaint. So, this time, there are embedded reporters ... reporters who went through a training program and who agreed to the military's rules of embedding, and in exchange, travel with a unit, file reports, and transmit what's billed as real-time video. Thus, from this, we're supposed to feel as though we have a true view of the war, and even the things the military doesn't allow the reporter to say or show at a particular time will be available as a record of the war after it's over.

Maybe that's true, who knows. But, nevertheless, one of the interesting things with watching this war is the information war that's going on.

Last night seems particularly telling. We see Walt Rogers filing audio and video supporting the impression that the US has control of the Saddam/Baghdad International Airport (you know... the US admits they don't have *secure* control of the airport, but they're already renaming it... propaganda is part of war, I don't fault them for that, manipulation is a tactic, but we still have to recognize it as a tactic and not necessarily a reflection of anything else).

US Central Command starts saying they have military in "central Baghdad" or "the heart of Baghdad" (depending on what time it was you heard them talking). Simultaneously, we see the static video shot of somewhere in what's presumably central Baghdad with cars, taxis, buses, all moving in what looks like a normal manner.

The Iraqi information minister does his daily briefing, and says they've defeated the US military at the airport and once they finish cleaning up, they can take the press out there to show them they have control of the airport.

Nic Robertson calls in to say his sources in Baghdad have seen some of the US military in the streets, not a lot, and not seeming to be doing a lot, but there. But Nic is in Jordan. But it's Nic, who we would ordinarily trust to provide an accurate report.

Rula Amin reports that the Arabic press has reporters in Baghdad who don't really contradict the Iraqi information minister, at least as they report on the Arabic language media. But she's in Jordan too, and working for CNN, but she's also filed in past situations (e.g., re: Israel and Palestine) with an Arab slant.

A few days ago, the topic of reports was selling water to Iraqis in the south. Reports varied: the UK were selling water and the US deplored it. the US was selling water and the UK deplored it. Maybe they both were selling water. Maybe neither was.

The point is, who knows what the reality is.

.....

I notice that, now that things are starting in the north, it's Brent Sadler who's with the Peshmurga and filing on their activities with US Special Forces as they approach Mosul. I really don't have a sense of him as a reporter, just that he's been the CNN Beirut bureau chief for some time.

But, with Brent with the Peshmurga, the question is, where's Ben Wedeman? Is he not with the Peshmurga because they're with the US Special Forces and so embedding rules would apply? .... ah ... well, Brent in a filing at this moment (1:27 pm CST) mentioned Ben as being with another group of the Kurdish army. Man, it seems like whatever is the more dangerous situation at a given time, that'll be where Ben Wedeman is. God bless his wife (I'm assuming he has one).

......

Now, the US military is using the offer of citizenship to people with green cards if they enlist. Who needs a draft if you can bribe people into drafting themselves? Sheesh.

.....

It's reported that some among the US citizenry complain that 24/7 war reporting is causing them anxiety, interrupting sleep, generally making them uncomfortable and unhappy. So, the advice is that they not watch. Duh.

Yet, it's outrageous that they're complaining. They *can* just turn off the TV, or at least change channels. But more importantly, for them, turning off the TV is actually an option. Consider the people who are in the middle of the whole thing: armies on both sides, reporters, citizenry. Its seems like the least we can do, here in the calm, prosperous, safety of our living rooms, to watch the war, become involved in whatever unpleasantness we're shown, to live the war in our imaginations while others are forced to live it in real life. How else can we have any idea of what's really going on. How else can we develop and maintain some sense of understanding of the human conditions there. How else can we keep ourselves from the propaganda that's coloring media reports from both sides.

CNN had an antiwar night last night

CNN had an antiwar night last night. Well, not precisely antiwar, but for about 3 hours of primetime, the message from analysts, including ex-US military, and reporters, mostly not embedded but some embedded as well, was that this war is a big mistake. We're pretty much back to normal today, still, of what's available on broadcast and cable here, CNN is the best choice.

And for the Bill Hemmers who wouldn't know hard news if it hit him in the face -- or unless his producer spoke in his ear -- there are the Ben Wedemans. He interviewed Al-Qaeda guys who were at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001. In February 2002 he was in Pakistan reporting Daniel Pearl's abduction and murder. A month later he was in the West Bank during the terrible siege by the Israeli army. Back in fall 2000 he was shot while covering a story in Gaza. And a year after the West Bank siege, he's in northern Iraq with other CNN Middle East bureau chiefs: Jane Arraf who was in Baghdad before she was expelled and Brent Sadler from Beirut.

Aaron Brown was talking to him during a report the other night. Aaron mentioned being embedded in northern Iraq and then corrected himself, confirming with Ben that Ben wasn't embedded, and then adding "and knowing you, you probably prefer it that way", meaning not being embedded. Ben didn't respond -- it was the end of the spot -- and who knows, but my sense is that Aaron probably made a true statement.

I trust Ben Wedeman's reports, and I look forward to thte stories he tells. I hope he's got a book in him from his years of living in the Middle East and observing the world. The book of his reporting observations is written in the CNN archives, but the book of his own observations isn't part of that.

Horizontal and vertical prayer

Who'd have thought a movie critic would clear up a lifetime of puzzlement about religion.

Religion as such was never much of a part of my childhood. We were Episcopalians, but the times I remember going to church with my parents I can practically count on one hand. As a young child (my childhood has two parts: before and after my dad died, which was about a month before my 7th birthday) my favorite holiday was May Day, when I'd make paper-woven baskets, fill them with violets picked from the yard, and leave them on the doorsteps of our neighbors.

But I was always interested in religion, and as an older child and a teenager, I even started going to church, belatedly got myself confirmed, and even taught Sunday School for a while.

At the same time, at youth group meetings, our priest almost just told me to shut up, because I kept asking those questions -- you know, like, just who was it that Cain married? and what about those dinosaur fossils? why did Mary have to be a virgin -- and wouldn't it have been even more miraculous that a normally born human being would become the Son of God?

And then there was the time when I was in college that he got so worried about how I was getting involved with Judaism that he drove the 90 minutes to drop in on me to try to convince me out of it. Sheesh.

I liked the Episcopal Church though -- I liked the singing and the structure of the services, but mostly I respected that nobody seemed to really much care what people believed ... whatever they believed was between them and God (or whatever). Everybody was happy to leave it that way, and the point of actually going to church was to provide some social or psychological benefit not some religious benefit. Even a religious benefit of communing with your creator privately-in-public was that in-public part ... you could commune at home or anywhere privately, but for some reason, doing it privately-in-public filled some need of its own, and not a religious one.

It's just that I was always looking for something else -- what came before in human's religious thought? (thus the explorations in Judaism) Out of respect, I refrain from asking the question of my Muslim friends, the one that goes "[X Middle Eastern country] has such a long, ancient history ... don't you wonder about the religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of your ancestors before Muslims from another country came in and converted people?" (which actually stands for the question "don't you ever feel the urge to explore your pre-Islamic roots?" which is even less respectful)

So, over the years I dispossessed myself of organized religion. Although the standard explanations held, I still felt vaguely disquieted. Maybe I just didn't believe enough to want to find people who shared my beliefs. Maybe I was just masking antisocial tendencies by not wanting to join up with people for the purposes of something religious.

But I never really believed those things, and while I know that I thought that religion as an institution was about politics and social control rather than spirituality, it all finally came into focus with the distinction between the horizontal and the vertical. Thanks Roger!


Changing the subject ....

Here's an update on the UTA student who was deported. They gave his friends 25 minutes to get his things together and drive to Dallas to give them to him to take home with him. What's the point, when it takes 25 minutes just to drive to Dallas from UTA, let alone packing up his stuff, getting it into the car, and then parking once you get there.

The print version of The Shorthorn had a sidebar to that story:

The Road to Jordan

Jordanian graduate student Tahir Ibrahim Aletewi's month-long detention by U.S. authorities ended Thursday [Feb 28, 2002] with his deportation to Jordan. His departure is the latest in a joint terrorism task force investigation that apparently began last year.

• Spring 2002 FBI and INS agents initiate regular interviews with Aletewi at his apartment on Center Street near campus. Friends familiar with the questioning say they began as informal conversations, and at one point officials attempted to recruit Aletewi to provide intelligence.


• Sept. 10 The State Department notifies Aletewi by a letter sent to his family's residence in Jordan that his student visa has been revoked. According to friends, Aletewi was later assured that the matter was resolved by one of the immigration officials who had been interviewing him.


• Fall/Winter 2002 Aletewi tells friends that the federal interviews are growing more intense as agents pointedly question him about his political and religious views.


• Jan. 31 Federal agents ask for and are given consent to search Aletewi's apartment and later ask him to accompany them to their office for an interview. He later tells friends that he was interrogated extensively over the next week while being held at the Euless City Jail.


• Feb. 2 After not hearing from Aletewi for two nights, roommates try contacting the FBI, but cannot reach anyone on a Sunday.


• Feb. 3 FBI Special Agent Robert Fowler notifies Aletewi's roommates that he is in federal custody awaiting a deportation hearing for violating his student status. The detainee is allowed to speak with friends on the phone, and, later that week, receive visitors after he is transferred to the Dallas County Jail.


• Feb. 7 U.S. Immigration Judge Anthony Rogers orders Aletewi deported, reportedly within five days. A court spokeswoman now says there was no time stipulation on the order.


• Feb. 22 A friend is allowed to visit Aletewi in jail for the first time since the judge's ruling, the friend says.


• Feb. 27 Aletewi is deported, according to a government source. He is not known to have contact with any friends here since his departure.

Oh boy ....

Oh boy ....

here's a version from the Albany paper

Amazing -- at least people in Albany are protesting.

But, hearing about how wearing a t-shirt can get you arrested, after hearing about the draft of "Patriot Act II" ... boy, makes you start thinking about all those frequent flyer miles you've got saved up...