What I'm doing this weekend

and you should be too, is going to the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas with all the other liberal bloggers. But since I can't get to Texas, I'll be attending in Second Life. Where we will be streaming all the panels and avoiding the Texas heat. In fact, I will be screening some movies in Second Life as part of the festivities. On Thursday night, I'll be showing The Corporation and on Sunday night to help folks wind down, Duck Soup. All at the fabulous Marxist-Lennonist Party Headquarters, The Red Zeppelin. And did I mention that it is all totally FREE! And that we are all young, thin and good-looking in Second Life? Really, what the hell are you waiting for?

"Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons”

It seems that not only is John Derbyshire intent on challenging Doug Feith for the title of "Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Planet," he wants your kids to be in contention for the prize too.

Commenting on Barack Obama's sensible, reasonable suggestion that America's children should study a second language, preferably Spanish since there so many Spanish-speaker in or coming to America, the Derb riffs thusly:

Obama's idiotic suggestion that all our kids should learn Spanish is, amongst other things (this is multi-dimensional stupidity) an illustration of educational  romanticism run amok. The cold fact is that absent exceptional circumstances — the most common of which is, total immersion at a receptive age — not many human beings can learn another language. Oh, you can learn enough to  stumble along and get by on a trip abroad, but if you can attain fluency in a language not your own, without those exceptional circumstances, you are an unusually smart and gifted person. (For my own sad track record, see here.)

Now, I'll admit that my own track record is not much better than Derbyshire's. I failed to learn French in high school and university, where I also failed to learn Spanish. In over a decade in Japan, I still only speak enough to order dinner, give the cab driver directions and get my face slapped - though can understand a good deal more.  I do however know that the reason for this is mostly laziness and lack of effort on my part- how do I know this? Because virtually everyone I know well in Tokyo speaks at least two languages better than I do. All the people in my office, all my expat friends and their bilingual spouses, all the people I met in Hong Kong who speak three languages before finishing their coffee in the morning, to say nothing of all the English speaking Quebecois and French speaking Montreal Anglo's I've met -- they didn't all grow up in a multilingual environment, certainly my wife and the hundreds of advanced Japanese speakers of English I've met didn't. They learned the language the hard way, they studied it as adults. 

My wife aside (and presumably Derb's aside since he married a Chinese woman who obviously has infinite patience) they can't all be exceptional, nor can the entire populations of China, India, Africa and Europe, most of whom speak more than one language. Derb even manages to undermine his own argument

The pointlessness of foreign-language learning is obscured for English-speakers by all those foreigners we meet who have good English. (Scandinavians are especially humiliating in this regard.) We should remember, though, that (a) the foreigners we meet are mostly smart upper-middle-class types who travel a lot (try finding an English-speaker on a Paris street), and (b) the whole world is bathed in English, so that if you are born in, say, Finland, and want to do anything with your life more ambitious than running an autobody shop in Ylikiiminki, you can't help but learn some English, and (c) for teenagers the world over, English is cool.

We will leave the obvious arrogance in stating that doing anything more interesting than running a body shop in Ylikiiminki requires English (if this is the case, it is only because Americans refuse to learn other languages) and grant him the point that English is the most prevalent language on the Internet and in international business, while pointing out that it is not the only language and that lots of people make a good living as translators and interpreters because of that. The world is bathed in English because of the preponderance of American pop-culture overseas -- those same Holllywood movies and rock songs that Derb and his fellow are convinced are created by multiculturist terrorist-sympathizing commies out in California. That is what makes English "cool" to teenagers. 

In addition to all those Europeans, Africans and Asians, what about other countries in Derb's backyard? According to the most recent Canadian census (as summarized in this Wikipedia entry) while Canada is officially a bilingual nation, only 17.5 percent of us speak both language well enough to be considered bilingual, though 35 percent speak a language in addition to  French or English. Damn that multiculturalism, eh Derb? How dare all those immigrants remember their native languages, keep using them and teach them to their kids? How dare they not abandon the poetry of cursing in Chinese or German or Russian, the passion of arguing in Italian or Spanish or making love in French? How dare they not abandon the buffet that you can't get into for a bland plate of good old American without any regional dialects or diction? Those people over in the corner that are whispering in foreigner are talking about you Derb, and they aren't saying anything nice.

But that's not all! Nosiree Bob! Not content to try to put the kibosh on kids learning to speak foreign, Derb would like to make sure almost every child is left behind!

Obama suffers from the fallacy — extremely common among high-IQ lefties — that everyone else is just as smart as he is, or could easily be made so with a few educational reforms. In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time.

While it's nice of Derb to admit that Obama is a smart guy - he did teach constitutional law at a college level after all - I am a little concerned that he doesn't think people need an education beyond how to read the instructions on the condom box or work the ATM. Yeah, and at what age do we decide that little Johnny, Janey,  Juan, Lateesha, Ngyen or Fritz isn't among your 16 percent Derb? 18? 13? 5? or do they need to be born into a nice white middle class family in a good school district to go learn more than the three R's?

We won't even go into the philosophical arguments in favor of learning for its own sake, how the pursuit of knowledge is the highest calling of mankind, beauty is truth and truth, beauty yadda, yadda, yadda. We won't bother to speculate at length how a magazine like National Review that fancies itself THE bastion of conservative intellectual thought could employ someone so profoundly anti-intellectual (my guess: "he wore a clean suit to the interview and had that dah-ling British accent") or how the recent crop of writers there seem to think a classical allusion means quoting from the first three Star Wars movies. Nope, we will pursue none of this at length. 

We will simply wonder aloud why he wants to deny anyone not in his mythical 16 percent the chance to learn about music, art, science, history, literature, higher math and philosophy? Could it be that his extended education include the reading of Brave New World?

And a massive tip of the hat to David over at JimDandyGoodness for braving the stupid to come up with this gem 

A shining city on a hill
Where if someone in authority doesn't like the way you look, you can disappear. Civil rights? Buddy, you ain't got no civil rights. In fact, according to our records, you don't even exist.
Italy in the 1930's? Germany in the 1940's? Argentina in the 1970's? ---Nope, the United States of America, now.
"But wait," you say "this only applies to suspected terrorists, you know--bad guys."
"Yeah" says I, "and who knows how one might becomes suspected of being a bad guy?"

This just in: Satire still dead

Obviously some stereotypes have roots in imagination and legend, others walk among us.
"Blessed are the (Colt) Peacemakers"

(hat tip to Tbogg)



and special thanks to Frank Frink for the video

A new spiritual leader of the moment

Half-staff? I got your half-staff right here!

They say it is wrong to speak ill of the dead and that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all ( or alternatively, you should go and sit next to Dorothy Parker). Like many others, I was torn this week when Sen. Jesse Helms shuffled off this mortal coil. Should I pile on the facts about how he was one of the most noxious racists of the twentieth century? How he conspired to keep the United Nations from running family planning programs in the third world by blocking the United States from paying over a billion dollars in UN dues? How as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he kept the U.S. out of the World Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol, blocked ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other arms control treaties?  How he blocked access to and information about abortion worldwide?  How he helped the spread of AIDS? How he managed to make things worse in Cuba by trying to force other nations to boycott the benighted island through his "Helm-Burton Act"?  Should I point out that he was the main supporter of  Central American death squad czar Roberto d'Aubuisson ?

Should I take the low road, like Tbogg? Or the high road like Clif?

Then David from over at JimDandy Goodness pointed out this story to me. 

"I don't see how anybody could celebrate his career," the 51-year-old said in an interview, noting Helms opposition tothe 1964 Civil Rights Act and the filibuster to stall the effort to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. "Everything he did was such a disservice to this state"

Eason, who had worked for 29 years at the Department of Agriculture, requested the option to retire Monday after his superiors overruled his decision and ordered the flags be lowered. Eason wrote an e-mail tothe governor and other supervisors saying he could not in good conscience honor Helms.

This man, L.F. Eason III is no shrill liberal blogger or ideologue, he's just a guy who was willing to chuck his nearly 30-year career rather than honor an evil man. Call him inflexible, call him unreasonable if you will --We here at the woodshed call him our Spiritual Leader of the Moment.

"I've suffered for my music and now it's your turn"

Not my best performance ever, but I don't like to do more than one take. Stop me before I sing again America - impeach, indict and imprison these people and I'll promise not to do this again.

It's only torture when they do it

Can we call it torture now?

From The New York Times:

China inspired interrogations at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

Drowning on Dry Land

I dislike Christopher Hitchens for his knee jerk contrarianism and think he's a pompous ass most of the time, but I'll be the first to admit he puts words together very well even when doing so in the service of a stupid idea (see: Iraq, invasion of). With the possible exception of his remarks on the death of Jerry Fawell, his televison appearances usually make me want to smack him. Say what you like about the man, but this took some serious testicular fortitude.

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.

Addendum: While I still think it took some cojones to volunteer to be tortured, especially a second time, I think Chet has it just about right when it comes to how much respect is owed to Hitchens for finally realizing that torture is torture, not an "enhanced interrogation technique" when his nose was literally rubbed in it.

Clearly I was remiss in my earlier choices and left out some vital Canadiana - that's what happens when you blog on lunch hour!

And I won't even talk about the time Al Purdy came to me for advice...

War on the press

This article is four years old, who wants to bet the law hasn't changed?

Happy Canada Day, eh!
Canada Day comes a day early on this side of the Pacific, and Tokyo in July is a bit warm for the traditional national costume of wrist-to-ankle Stanfields, checked flannel shirt, jean, kodiak boots and touque, but don't worry about me, I will be celebrating in the traditional manner:



and for those of you without access to adequate quantities of maple syrup, Molson's and back bacon, there's this bit of knowledge that all Canadians need:



While the political system in my homeland may not be the best, with limited prospects for it getting any better anytime soon、I still think it is the best place in the world to live and I hope to get back there permanently sooner rather than later. For now, you can listen to this:

Memories, misty water-coloured memories

Go put on some polyester, crank up the Barry Manilow, set the wayback machine for 1974 and LET'S EAT.

h/t to Canadian Cynic

Black day in June, almost July

Is it possible to overdose on schadenfreude? Because this has been a good week for it.

Satire is dead
Putting the "fun" in "Fundemental" again this week, Focus on the Family leader and close personal friend of Jesus and George W. Bush, Rev. James Dobson has accused Barack Obama of distorting the Bible and having a "fruitcake" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Glass houses, stones, blah, blah, blah...aw screw it, insert your own snark here. I'll be in the bar. We're having a wake for satire. Apparently it was crossing the street and go run over by the streetcar called "Reality"

Which side is he on?
Dear Ralph Nader,
Haven't you done enough damage already?
Please, just shut up and stay home this year. Please.
And spare us the justifications about how no one should have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Electoral politics is and has always been about choosing the least bad candidate and the higher the office, the truer this becomes. Voltaire was right when he said "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" - If it hadn't been for the electoral temper tantrum you led in 2000, the United States would have had four-- probably eight--years of the less-than-perfect Al Gore, who I think we can agree would, for all his shortcomings, have been far better for the USA and the rest of the world than the unspeakable disaster that is George W. Bush.
Ralph, your suggestion that the only reason anyone is voting for Barack Obama is white guilt is both offensive and incorrect. And frankly, irrelevant. I don't care whether Barrack Obama get elected by using white guilt, negative ads, witchcraft or frickin' satellite-based mind-control laser beams. I don't think he's the messiah, I just think he will do a lot less damage than John McCain. Could the United States and the Democratic Party do better? Maybe, maybe not. But it's not like your shit doesn't stink, Ralph, so spare us the Jiminy Cricket act.

Karma's a bitch - Payback edition
Once upon a time, I worked here. I didn't like it much, mostly because the people I worked for were, not to put too fine a point on it, dishonest pricks. Naturally, I was very upset last fall when all these bad things happened to worse people. Imagine how I feel today.

Police to arrest ex-president of Nova over embezzlement
The Yomiuri Shimbun
OSAKA--Osaka prefectural police plan to arrest on Tuesday former President Nozomu Sahashi of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. on suspicion of instructing the firm's accountants to misappropriate the reserve funds of the firm's employees, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
Regarding "Ochanoma Ryugaku," a system through which Nova students could take lessons from home, the police have learned a large amount of money was sent from Nova to a communications firm owned by Sahashi.
According to sources close to the investigation and others, Sahashi instructed employees in late July to transfer 320 million yen from the reserve fund to Nova's bank account through a Nova Kikaku account he once managed.
Meanwhile, the Osaka Labor Bureau will send papers to prosecutors by the end of the week on Nova and Sahashi, over failing to pay its workers about 105 million yen, equivalent to salaries for about 400 Japanese employees and foreign instructors.

Happy Feet - Penguin Dance - The top video clips of the week are here

Anyone else for champagne?

Brass with balls

New spiritual leader of the moment

Retired Major-General Antonio Taguba was the first American officer to investigate claims of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. He has not backed off, despite being "encouraged to retire" and is still insisting the emperor is bare-ass nekkid.

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
-Anthonio Taguba, writing in the preface to a new report released by Physicians for Human Rights that uses medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Baghram.

Go watch the whole Democracy Now program from last week on Torture and then repeat after me: Impeach, Indict, Imprison.

"Well I'm not prejudiced, but..."
Reasonable people can and do disagree on whether certain comments or actions are racist or sexist, but only some kind of complete dope would deny that certain things are explicitly racist or sexist. So if you are a conservative who does not think of yourself as a racist, who is appalled by the recent hijinks of the racist shitheads at F0x News thinks, you really have to ask yourself why you are associating with the some of your fellow Republican and Conservative travellers - and these are the official functions and elected politicians the parties have some control over, let's not even get started on the bloggers and loose-cannon pundits.
Take a look at the comments on this story for an example of what I'm talking about. I'm sure many of the people here --I'm looking at you Diane72, Superpants and Peapod-- would blithely tell you that they don't have a prejudiced bone in their body, but that they know for a fact that (insert ridiculous racist claim here).

With God on their side

And frankly, they can have him/her/them/it. While we may or may not be locked in a "Clash of Civilizations,"  it certainly isn't the Christian West vs Muslim East one that the right imagines it to be. It is the clash between the secular, logical, reality-based world and the fundamentalist, unreasoning, faith-driven supernaturalists. Personally, I'll take the scientific side - we don't know everything, but we can learn and at least we are willing to live and let live. The other side, eh, not so much.

 The creationists sometimes try to pin the massacres, holocausts and pogroms of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot on atheism and their own misinterpretation of Darwin's theories as a justification of  "survival of the fittest" -- when the real cause of these horrible events, and indeed most of the evil that men do, is the "true believerism"  the notion that one is righteous that brooks no doubt, no reconsideration in the face of evidence that one's thesis is not airtight. It is that sort of inability to admit errors or tolerate dissent that leads to everything from the Iraq war to religiously driven fatal child abuse and deadly neglect.

And lest you think I am only picking on the Jesus-addled variety of superstitous dumbassery, consider this marvelous little episode and tell me blind belief in obvious chicanery does no harm.

(hat tips to Cat, the General,  MJS,  and David)

For Mrs. Rev.Paperboy
Happy 9th (!!!) anniversary