February 2005 Archives

The Guardian has published multiple profiles of Shakespeare by modern playwrights and biographers. Gary Taylor nails him for me. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan.

Fuck the South

Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

O.K., so I guess I am perhaps the last person in America to discover this rant, but it is still funny. Thanks to the Suburban Limbo.

Hunter S. Thompson Dies at 67 (washingtonpost.com)

Hunter S. Thompson, whose life and writing, vivid and quirky reflections of each other, made him one of the principal symbols of the American counterculture, shot and killed himself yesterday at his home near Aspen.

My roommate and I used to read HST in college as a diversion from our studies. Tonight I feel a little older and a little sadder than I did before. Not a surprising way for Thompson to bow out, but what a tragic waste.

Srijith has announced that he has managed to get his Palm Pilot to sync on his Linux box by resetting the permissions on the device with which the Palm syncs (usually /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyUSB1).

Srijith's post illustrates both what is right and what is wrong with Linux. On the one hand, Linux supports the Palm and it gives the user full access to the software so that it can be tweaked when there is a problem. On the other, all too often the software requires tweaking, rather than working right out of the box, and the support for the Palm is, at the moment, rather limited. (This is in no way disparagement of the excellent work of David Desrosiers and J.P. Rosevear).

I love to play with Linux, even though I am not fundamentally a very technical person. I love the fact that it is fast and clean: what it does, it does very well. I love the philosophy behind open source software, even if my contribution has been very small (documentation for GNOME System Monitor).

However, for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that Linux will be anything more than a toy for me. Case in point is the fact that I rely on my Palm Pilot for essential tasks in my work and my life; it is far more important to me than my Linux box. My life as a lawyer is structured around calendars, deadlines, and to do lists. My Palm keeps track of my money, my diet, and my weight and syncs all this information with my Windows box. I keep a number of books on my Palm for emergency reading or reference; it includes a portable dictionary. The fact that Palm support on Linux requires painstaking configuration and supports only the most basic Palm applications is a reason why I am unlikely to move exclusively to Linux in the near future.

A second reason is that althought Linux does provide word processing and spreadsheets, it does not at present support the kind of third-party software for chess or languages that I am interested in using. Until it does, it looks as though I will grudgingly put up with Windows' slow, crusty, virus-ridden, unstable interface.

The trip from Washington to Richmond and back on Amtrak was the worst rail voyage I have experienced since I rode a third-class Moroccan coach from Rabat to Nador in December 1988. On the way to Richmond, a defective switch extended our trip from two hours to six. It would have been reasonable to expect the return trip to be faster, but our train was over an hour late and remained sidelined on the tracks for at least another hour. Upon arrival in Union Station, the wait for my checked baggage took another forty-five minutes.

In Richmond, there was no doubt that we were in the South. Coming and going, the cab drivers warned us about how strict law enforcement was. One of the major roads is named "Powhite Parkway." And the United States District Court is housed in a building that was formerly the treasury of the Confederate States of America.

It seems fortuitous that I finished Joyce's Ulysses on the day before Valentine's Day. Any comments are likely to be too little or too much, but I will make a couple of brief observations.

It is remarkable that Joyce wrote the book between 1914 and 1921, encompassing the years of the worst catastrophe in human history until that date, the First World War. Despite its obvious allusion to a great war (or post-war) poem, Ulysses has nothing to say about war. It has a great deal to say about life. Ulysses is a demanding novel, but it rewards patience.

The core of the story is the fractured relationships that knit the central characters together. Leopold Bloom's quasi estrangement from his unfaithful wife, dating tragically from the premature death of their little boy. Stephen Dedalus's estrangement from nearly everyone, owing in part to his hypertrophied intellect, and his rapprochement with Bloom. Gerty McDowell's flirtation with Bloom born in part of her isolation owing to her limp. If there is a single emotion that characterizes Ulysses for me, I would say that it is yearning.

Joyce has a preternatural power of observation and description, and no detail is beneath his notice, whether it is a dirty handkerchief, a visit to the restroom, or a forgotten key. One has the sense that Joyce has missed nothing, and that everything is related.

In fact, one could easily conclude that Joyce viewed himself as the Shakespeare of his day, an obvious inference from Joyce's recurrent references to and analyses of Shakespeare. Joyce undoubtedly had the encyclopedic vision, but he just as obviously lacked the common touch.

On minor note, I was struck by the fact that Morocco and the "Moorish" quality in Molly Bloom seem to represent the exotic sexuality of the East for Joyce (a very "orientalist" perspective). Ironically, Morocco also represents a country that is perilous for Jews (as perhaps Molly is for Poldy).

One thing that detracted from an otherwise magnificent novel for me was Joyce's periodic slurs toward African Americans and his adoption of minstrel show dialect at points in the novel.

The inaugural speech of January 20, 1961 is as stirring today as it was over 40 years ago.

Wal-Mart Chief Defends Closing Unionized Store (washingtonpost.com)

Wal-Mart Chairman H. Lee Scott on his company's bully boy tactics in Chicago:

"Our size causes us, when we do something inappropriate, which is usually done out of stupidity, to come across as being done out of arrogance. And people just won't stand arrogance."

Now Wal-Mart has created an uproar by shutting down its only union shop in Quebec instead of agreeing to arbitration. Stupid or arrogant?

Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs (washingtonpost.com)

But Mosteller, 25, said the blog was one of the reasons she was given for losing her job, and she is still in shock. "Considering I treated the blog as a smoke break, I didn't think of it as a problem."

I take a dim view of companies that fire people for saying things outside of work. I think it is particularly deplorable when the company is an institution putatively devoted to free speech, such as a newspaper. However, it is an unpleasant reality that some companies can and will fire employees for what they say outside of work.

Like any potentially powerful tool, a blog deserves to be treated with respect. Sometimes that means taking some care about what we say.

People groom themselves before they present their persons to the world. Similarly, a blog is a public persona, which should at least receive the same amount of care as choice of a necktie, polished shoes, a clean shave, and combed hair.

Update: On a more sinister note, Robert Ehrlich's staff member Joseph Steffen also paid for the illusion that he was not accountable for his blogging.

NPR does Byron!

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Bush must face up to a rising power

Jeremy Rifkin on the possibility that President Bush may address the european Parliament in Brussels:

Let me suggest that if the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, were to convince the president to make such an address, the positive political fallout might be as significant as Henry Kissinger's bold move to have Richard Nixon visit China 33 years ago. Formally recognising the EU in this kind of very public way could help usher in a new era of cooperation between Europe and America and go a long way to heal the rifts that have developed since the end of the cold war.

'Crossfire,' R.I.P (washingtonpost.com)

Update: Kinsley's column in the Post.

I heard one of my heroes, Michael Kinsley, on the radio today as I was listening to NPR. In the face of a chorus of approval over the cancellation of "CrossFire", Kinsley defended the program, of which he was formerly the host. Kinsley's argument was that journalists were more honest, and issues more fully explored, when the journalists were free to be themselves and to express their own point of view. As for the shows "gotcha" format, he also defended the use of questions along the lines of "When did you stop beating your wife?" Kinsley's point was that such questions either force a politician to give a thoughtful answer or to engage in a transparent evasion. For Kinsley, Crossfire at its best was a quintessential exercise in democracy.

Kinsley made essentially the same points years ago in Slate:

To start, it is honest in a way the other shows are not. Virtually all the political talk shows require journalists to adopt one of two dishonest postures: agnosticism or omniscience. On traditional Q&A shows like Meet the Press, journalists must pretend that they are neutral observers who have no opinion about the subject at hand. This is not only dishonest, but it also limits their ability to frame sharp questions and to pursue evasive answers. On opinion-spouting shows like The McLaughlin Group, by contrast, journalists (often the same journalists) are free to have a point of view. Indeed, they are required to have, or to pretend to have, a passionate and fully informed viewpoint on every subject that comes along. How many of those opining solemnly on the Indonesian financial crisis this past week know (or care) squat about Indonesian finance?

Crossfire's basic fuel is the tendentious question. As a host, you needn't pretend to be impartial or pretend to be all-knowing. This is more honest, and it's also more effective in getting at the truth. Or at least, that is the premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which uses the same model. (For the neutral-interrogator approach, try France.)

Right or wrong, never dull.

Andrew Sullivan announces that he is taking a hiatus of indeterminate length from his blog. The Internet will be poorer for it.

He also recently posted a very touching portrait of Abraham Lincoln. I had never really clued into the meaning of "Log Cabin Republican" until my wife pointed out that many people believe Lincoln was either gay or actively bisexual. Sullivan's essay makes a very persuasive case for this point of view. I imagine it is cold comfort for gay members of the Republican Party today, however.

News: D.C. Law Students Receive $2.4 Million Contribution

The D.C. Law Students in Court (LSIC) program received a contribution of $2.4 million from a cy pres award resulting from a court settlement.

Clinical programs are among the most valuable parts of a legal education. Not only do clinics give law students practical training that is otherwise largely absent from the law school curriculum, but they also provide much needed legal services for people of limited means. I am delighted to see that the clinics at my alma mater, George Washington University Law School, will share in the proceeds of the settlement with Comcast.