Dean's World

Open thread go. (6:59pm Eastern)

At The Queen's urging, I've been watching the HBO/BBC series Rome: Season 1.

It's a remarkable series on multiple levels. On an artistic level, it is probably the most realistic portrayal of Roman society I've ever seen in a drama. The Romans were an incredibly brutal and cruel people, and quite a bit more sexually libertine than most Americans ever are or have been.

Which is not to say that the series is without its flaws. But it captures the absolute savagery that the real original Romans embraced extremely well, and much better than anything I've ever seen out of Hollywood. Compared to enjoyable fluff like Gladiator or the brilliant but somewhat sanitized I, Claudius, this series is practically a documentary.

It's not without its flaws and its artistic license of course. But it seems to capture the ancient Romans, especially in the period where the Republic fell, much better on a visceral level than anything I've seen.

"Visceral" is probably the right word by the way. It's a brutally disturbing series. But well acted and well written and probably more true to what Rome was really like than anything I've seen yet in movies or TV.

If you're wondering whether you should watch it with family: the scene where a noblewoman mother has the male genitals (including penis) of a goat hacked off chopped to bits, then forces her thin son to eat them because she's worried that he's only 13 or so and still hasn't raped any of the family slaves yet should give you a good clue what the series is like.

(And no, that is not a gratuitous example. It's a very, very Roman one.)

Mmmm. The wife-unit brought home some hot Hunter's Sausage and Polish Mustard (hot mustard with horseradish) home this afternoon. My nose is running and I'm in Heaven.

Kowalski is a Detroit institution, and one they're rightly proud of.

You know, once in a while an essay comes along and over a period of years you can turn back to it and read it again and find it every bit as insightful and surprising as the first time you read it.

I was talking about this article to a friend of mine last night on the phone and I wound up not only sending it to him but linking it again: The Jacksonian Tradition in America by Walter Russell Mead.

I'm often tempted to quote from it but I can rarely do it justice. When I read it, it was like a shock: it described the cultures I grew up in in both Texas and in blue collar Chicago--both the good and bad of that culture--better than anything I have ever read before or since.

It is ostensibly about war and foreign policy but it's the cultural observations that I find most penetrating.

Friday night open thread.

7:15 pm Eastern go!

America's Reform Jews aren't just liberal about their religion -- they're liberal liberal. So they've come out pro-surrender on Iraq.

Today one orthodox Jewish group answered back.

Classic.

(Via Professor Reynolds--I'm surprised Ron Coleman didn't snag it first!)

Bill Ardolino has an important report.

Fans of epic Sci-Fi opera fall broadly into 2 categories: Category 1 fans prefer to watch small, nimble fighter darting between gargantuan capital ships, taking targets of opportunity and blasting the hell out of them. See: Star Wars...

Category 2 fans love watching unearthly leviathan capital ships duking it out, pounding each other into scrap, and reining destruction upon whole cities. See: Babylon 5...

Granted, there is a lot of overlap between these groups. Nonetheless, there is a lot of room for preference. So: which do you prefer? Care to explain why?

What do the mullahs fear most? Not American military might, but rather the specter of nonviolent democratic Islam. And they have good reason to. Alas, the past five years have been largely wasted in that regard... Detailed analysis over at City of Brass (hat tip to eteraz).

That's right -- when you want to figure out the wrong side of any issue in international affairs, it's just like the old days: Ask Russia.

I see there's a new effort to re-introduce and try again to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. On its face it seems like a no-brainer to ratify, but Volokh has a legal analysis laying out the legal headscratchers. It will also mirror some of the political debates if the reintroduction gets any serious momentum behind it (proposed amendments are put forth all the time that never go anywhere).

Professor Reynolds notes that a growing consensus of liberal law scholars now admit that the 2nd amendment confers a legitimate individual right to own a firearm.

I've always thought it obviously did. And I never found it confusingly worded, either. Especially once I found out what "militia" and "regulated" mean.

Check it:

Are you arguing that the problem is not Islamic religion, but its use?

Exactly. What we see in some nations, then, is not Islam itself, but a politicized version of Islam that is not a necessary interpretation of those religious texts. That point has been made repeatedly by dissidents in the societies in which this politicized version of Islam is influential, such as Shiran Ebadi and Akbar Ganji in Iran. Both are devout Muslims, and both insist, with convincing argument, that there is nothing in their sex-equal democratic proposals that is incompatible with Islam. Unfortunately, people in the West often don't know much about Islam, so they equate the entire religion with a politicized version of it that they happen to hear about. As for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, maybe she ought to have moved to India rather than the Usa: surely she'd have a lot better chance of playing a leading role in political or intellectual life there, as a woman, than in the Usa. We might also mention Bangladesh, a democracy where 85 percent are Muslims and women (both Muslim) lead both of the two main political parties.

Oh, but wait, why even read past the heading of this post since Nussbaum is a feminist!

Iranian Civil Society, the future?

The specter of nonviolent democratic Islam is haunting the suicide bombers and religious zealots of every stripe.

I asked before if there was a place for pure rationalism in Islam and provided an example of one such thinker.

Now, in an article about Islamic Enlightenment we see:

Between 750 and 1050, authors made use of a surprising freedom of thinking in their approach to religions and to the phenomenon of belief. In their analyses, they bowed to the primacy of reason, honoring one of the basic principles of the Enlightenment. This phenomenon took place during a period of effervescence, of intense intellectual exchange, that Islam experienced a little more than a century after its advent, when its followers were seeking to develop a tradition capable of confronting much more sophisticated systems of thought. This was also a time when newcomers to Islam continued to remember theological systems and questions raised by the beliefs that had seen them come into being or evolve (like Judaism, various Christian sects, Manicheism, or Zoroastrianism).

Continue at Eteraz.Org (longish excerpt).

From Ikhwanweb:

"The Bush administration sees all Islamists as radicals and all radicals as terrorists and thus they all need to be eliminated. But this attempt to corner Hamas – clearly has backfired," said Ahmad Moussalli, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut.

"It sent a message to the entire Arab world that the promise of democracy is false. And it handed a gift to political Islam by keeping it outside the halls of power, thereby giving them an even greater aura of sanctity."

Lebanese sociologist Kahi said Arab disappointment is underscored today by the evident backtracking of the Bush administration, which has ceased to even speak the word democracy as it works to rally authoritarian Sunni Muslim leaderships to help contain the political disintegration of Iraq.

"Arab Muslims today see the George Bush project of democracy in the Middle East crashing to a halt," said Kahi. "The only results they can see are McDonald's, Madonna and bombs. There is nothing real in it for them. The only place left to turn is Islam."

Blanket rejection also feeds radicalism, said Moussalli, as the pole of political Islam wavers between moderation and radicalism. "The more venues are closed, the more moderates get forced to the margins. The radicals are a much smaller force than the moderates, but without a political future some people will resort to military activities to change what they consider to be an evil reality."

Joost Hiltermann, Middle East team leader of the independent policy think-tank the International Crisis Group, predicts that sooner or later the West will need to find a way to engage political Islam.

"The West ought to at least contemplate it because you can't just keep this stuff bottled up and continue to support repressive regimes. It won't work," he said.

"It is a simple question of historical experience. The era of Arab nationalism, of secular ideology, is about to die because it has proved itself capable of delivering nothing but repression, corruption and illiteracy," he said.

"There are only two ways for the West to contend with this. Either give a comparatively moderate Islamic group like the Muslim Brotherhood a chance to live up to their promises by having a chance to govern. Or conversely, they can undermine the Muslim Brotherhood by actually forcing the ruling governments in the Arab world to clean up their act by fighting corruption, governing properly and actually offering some freedoms to their people."

I do not care for the Ikhwan. They do not make adequate assurances that they believe in separation of mosque and state. However, this analysis is mostly spot on.

That last sentence is the only alternative that the West has to the coming rule of Muslim Brotherhood types.

Mike Fitch passes on this link to an interview with one of the guys "doing the heavy lifting to engage an enemy that would rather be here blowing up your shopping malls."

(Are we at war with Howard Roark?)

Excerpt:

What gives you the greatest satisfaction with your current mission? What gives you the least?

The best part is seeing the Iraqis take charge of situations in the area. From IED discoveries to crowd control to providing security for pilgrims moving through the area, the Iraqi Army and Police are performing more and more of those tasks with less involvement from Coalition Forces. We are able to mentor and guide more than having to take charge and lead them by the nose. The least satisfaction comes on days when we can’t do what we planned, for example, our medic planned and coordinated for a three-day combat lifesaver course for the Iraqi Army troops. The IA medics would train the IA Soldiers under his supervision. He coordinated this training several weeks prior and even confirmed the training the day prior. At the appointed time, nobody showed for the training, not even the medics. When the IA battalion staff was asked what was going on, they simply forgot. Frustrating. Not the end of the world, I know, but a distinct challenge in maintaining motivation and mission focus. Is it merely a cultural difference? I’m not sure, but I am disappointed by it.

I recently started a new job. I have one complaint about it: the commute is way too frickin' long.

Otherwise, it rocks. The people there don't entirely trust me, they think I'm a little cocky and arrogant because I can do everything they need me to do right out of the gate. I have to be careful of that. But this may be the first time in many years where I actually wake up and look forward to going to work. I had despaired that this could possibly happen, but it does seem to be happening.

I have not entered Nirvana. But I seem to be entering a strange new "I do not hate my daily existence" mode in my career. Which is a pearl beyond price if you've ever experienced the opposite.

The pay could be better. But that's not the most important thing. It never is. So long as I can guarantee security to my family, which always is the most important thing, I can live with the pay. Plus, I like what I'm doing!

For the next few weeks I'll probably be pretty absentee here on Dean's World, and only answering threads now and then. That won't be forever, it's just that I'm learning the ropes. Just FYI.

Rumor has it that Ali wants to become a regular contributor again. I never actually shut his account off anyway (he's a good man, I trust him), so that wouldn't be hard. So rather than me answering his email, I just ask: would you like Ali back? You tell me.

It's spring and warm things are happening! Peace is breaking out! Look:

Arab leaders at their summit Thursday agreed on a call for Israel to accept their land-for-peace offer and open direct negotiations with the Arabs. Unlike past summits that at times saw overt feuds break out, the gathering of Arab kings, emirs and presidents showed unusual public unity as it revived the peace offer, which they first made in 2002 only to meet rejection from Israel. . . .

U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan hope the smaller groups will be able to be more flexible in promoting the offer to win acceptance, despite the summit’s rejection of changes. . . .

The initiative offers Israel recognition and permanent peace with all Arab countries in return for Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It also calls for setting up a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a “just solution” to the issue of Palestinian refugees forced out of lands in what is now Israel. . . .

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa rejected amending the peace offer, saying, “They tell us to amend it, but we tell them to accept it first, then we can sit down at the negotiating table.” But he said the Arabs must “do more to convince” the Israelis on the offer.

You think "accept and then negotiate" is not a good friendly offer, my friend? Then you are mistaken! I explain why!

I have not yet had a chance to read Ali's latest, or really anything else on the Dean's World front page today. I've been too busy. But I've had all day to think about this and I'm going to lay out something I've been thinking for a long time:

It's very hard for me to look at American Muslims, or Muslims in general, or anyone who considers themselves "liberal" or "progressive" or "humanist," who claim to stand for freedom and human rights and then attack everything America has done and tried to do in Iraq over the last four years.

The fact is that the naysayers claimed we weren't really striving for liberation. We were. They claimed we'd install a new puppet dictator. We did not. They claimed that we wouldn't really try to set up a democracy. We did. They claimed there would be no legitimate elections. The Iraqis had three national elections in a row, all certified as legitimate by international observers, not even counting the local elections that were held before that.

They claimed we'd do everything possible to get out of the country "before the next elections"--they claimed that before the 2004 elections and again before the 2006 elections. It didn't happen. Now these same people in many cases are cheering for a Congress that's trying to force us out of Iraq even though the war supporters consistently say "no, that would be morally and strategically wrong."

Time after time the naysayers have proven themselves both morally and intellectually incoherent, and yet they never have the introspection to acknowledge this.

Furthermore, anyone calling himself a "liberal" or a "humanist"--Muslim or not--is in my view faced with a stark choice:

You either sit around pretending that a vicious, murderous, fascist "insurgency" that routinely cuts people's heads off and shoots children in the face is the "legitimate voice of the Iraqi people," or you recognize that there is in Iraq a government elected by the Iraqi people working under a Constitution written entirely by Iraqis that recognizes human rights better than any in the Arab world.

No matter how many reservations you have about how it was done or how imperfectly that elected government implements the ideals expressed in that ratified Constitution.

If you take the former position you have no business calling yourself a liberal or a progressive or a humanist. If you take the latter position, then maybe you have to swallow the bitter pill that someone named George Bush, whom you don't like and maybe think is incompetent, was the instigator of something that damn well needs to be supported.

But you can't have it both ways. Indeed, by declaring the whole thing illegitimate, all you're doing is siding with the Islamophobes of the world who claim the Muslims and the Arabs are far too savage, backward, and primitive to respect things like democracy and human rights. Indeed, you're implicitly siding the the Jihadwatch crowd.

It's high time someone told you people this, whether you're Muslims or not.

The progressive, humanist position is not, and never has been, the "anti-war" position.

PARIS (AFP) - People dying of cancer are turning to the Internet in a frantic attempt to buy under-the-counter versions of an untested, unlicensed tumour-shrinking chemical, science journals reported Wednesday.
...
Doctors are also being urged by patients to request special authorisation from national regulatory agencies so that they can prescribe the drug.

"At first, (people enquiring) were quite honest," researcher Evangelos Michelakis told the British science weekly. "But now we're getting emails from people asking for dosage information for, say, a 150-pound (70-kilo) golden retriever."

Because DCA has been around for years, its structure cannot be patented and pharmaceutical companies are not interested in developing the drug.

Michelakis is raising money with the hope of starting his own small-scale clinical trial "within the next few months," Nature said.

Chuck Hagel has it all figured out: He's gambling that there's enough anger on the right towards George Bush and the GOP parliament of fools to forgive him — no, reward him — for selling out the President and, essentially, the Republican Party on Iraq.

And, he figures — correctly, as I show here — there's enough love for him in the liberal media for his doing just that, that he will be rewarded with every Senator's obsession: That Pennsylvania Avenue address.

But Senator Hagel is, more than ever, contemptible to (and, I would say, probably contemptuous of) the people who volunteer, fund and vote in the primaries of his own party. And the road to the White House, for him, can only be through that party. And thank God, that's a road Chuck Hagel is going nowhere on.

Still behind on the game.

Feel free to post your thoughts here.

I come to you with great sadness and heartbreak.

I also come to you guys to get an objective opinion. Should I put Eteraz.Org in hiatus? Here are my reasons:

1 - Due to time, personal and professional constraints, all of the frontpagers (Willow, H, and Thabet) have had to excuse themselves. There are many reasons for this and I really do not want to get into them. As they left, I only managed to pick up two new frontpagers. They were inadequate for our purposes and were let go. At the moment the only contributors to the frontpage are myself and a philosopher (Christian) friend who is helping to keep the site ticking. I cannot do this by myself.

2 - I cannot do this by myself because of my personal situation which has required me to relocate and essentially begin my life anew, while still dealing with the specter of my earlier life. Nor am I certain where exactly I am going to settle, nor what my profession will be (I have left the legal practice), and as such, I do not have money to throw around.

3 - I cannot do this by myself because I am writing a book. All the tracks are laid in the publishing industry. Now I have to finish the product. When the original frontpagers were around they were planning on picking up the slack. They also were very much in step with my vision, and, as such, I did not have to worry about someone with an agenda coming in and effectively hijacking the project. I do not have this luxury anymore. Nor can I find another Ali Eteraz; certainly many budding ones, but they would require mentorship, and for reasons already mentioned I cannot do that.

4 - While the reader diaries have been a success, they have often derailed the project of the website. They quite often deal with issues of Muslim identity rather than Muslim constructiveness. I didn't launch Eteraz.Org to fight Islamophobia. That is a fight that doesn't interest me and is not part of the Islamic Reform project.

5 - The good writers that the reader diaries have produced are almost all theoreticians and not activists. I know real life activists and they simply do not have time to come and write of their works on a website. This is due to the fact that being an activist in the Muslim community is very lonely, individual work. The entire staff of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, for example, is one person. She is also the staff for two other national organizations.

6 - Our tech person has had to recuse himself due to the fact that he has to feed his family, get a master's, be involved with his mosque, and raise two children. PERL is a notoriously difficult and time consuming system and there aren't very many Muslim PERL experts out there. I could "buy" such experts but I am not currently working.

7 - For the most part, Muslim academics in the United States have NOT taken to the website. A few very prominent ones did. However, Muslim graduate students in Near East and Middle East studies programs (in the hundreds or even thousands) have not. Again, most of them want to "defend" Islam. Certainly this could have been remedied over time. I will admit that I was counting on these academics to be there for me. They haven't been. Part of this has to do with the fact that they are all theoreticians. Thus, when I need an answer to what school of jurisprudence so and so belonged to in the 11th century, I have many helpers. If I want to know what kind of legislation is being passed in the Muslim world today, they are useless. Thabet, our British frontpager, called them "wine and cheese Muslims." I don't see how this can be remedied. I am not about to start offering tours through the Muslim world.

8 - American Muslims are the wrong community to talk Islamic Reform about. Ultimately every American Muslim is an American first. Their concerns, if they are black Muslim are things like relations with immigrant Muslims, and local social problems; if they are immigrant Muslims are things like sending kids to college, not get discriminated, and maybe have a nice mosque somewhere. To be more stark, the immigrant Muslims in America are the "quitters" of the Muslim world. They left because they knew that a better life in the Muslim world was not possible. Now that they have a better life here, it is hard to shake them from their wealth worship. Those that do take an interest are the aforementioned wine and cheese Muslims.

9 - The premise of the site was to turn individual opinions into collective opinions. This did not work. I believe that the better approach would be the one that Avaaz.Org is taking: have a closed set of dedicated activists who pre-fashion both the message and the delivery method and collective action comes in via petitions or text message campaigns. Getting individual people to write letters, sign letters, deliver letters, contact Muslim leaders around the world, is just way too hard.

10 - The premise of Eteraz.Org is wrong. There is no way of taking action on "Islam." In the real world there is no Islam, but Islams. Not only that, but these Islams are all beholden to temporal and political power called the nation-state. As such, real reform occurs on a country by country basis. Theological reform is certainly necessary but if you want to do that, you cannot be a hedonist, party loving, liberal like Ali Eteraz, you have to be a long bearded, thowb wearing, old man with certifications from religious schools. However, like I said, theological reform is not even the first thing that is necessary as long as there is legislative reform. I just conducted a massive media analysis of how Islam has been discussed over the last three decades and found that until very recently no one discussed "Islam." We only discussed individual Muslim countries. Only after 9/11 did we start talking in terms of "Islam." Methinks that we are now going back to the original position: country by country discussions. If you check out the news, you'll see that to be the case. Eteraz.Org was "States of Islam." Wrong premise.

11 - I believe that given the fact that many Muslims simply never became net savvy the way the American left did, I first need to be exposed in the media before I can start trying to talk people into "joining" anything. This requires me to go out and show my face and talk and travel. I am willing to do those things, however, as I already mentioned, I have no help. Besides, these things would be received better if I have a book in hand.

12 - The website we set up is technologically unable to handle multiple languages. Our aim was to make the frontpage posts in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and English. Between the four original members we had all those languages covered and could have done our own translations. So, even if I go on a platform (for which I do not have money) that can handle multiple languages, I now don't have the core.

So those are my reasons. What are your thoughts?

We did launch a couple of excellent projects. These would be the Muslim Countries Legislation Project and the Muhammad Asad Quran Distribution Project. For the sake of these two projects I'd leave the website online. I actually believe that I can do more for these projects by myself, on my own, if I can give them more regular attention than I am currently able to do. For example, the Muslim Countries Legislation Project requires talking to people out in the Muslim world. Thus, instead of just keeping it on the web, I should head out to the Muslim world and start talking to people and make in-roads. I am, in fact, leaning in this direction. Without the responsibility of a job or a community to run, I can easily get away for the requisite travel. The Quran project I can keep as a paypal on my personal blog and somewhere prominently on .Org and only appeal to it when I do speaking engagements (instead of collecting honorarium).

The rest, i.e. the articles on apostasy and extremism that I wrote, can go back on my personal blog. Since I will still be in the blogosphere, once the book is out, and a new set of frontpagers can be found, and new technology can be paid for, I can re-ignite Eteraz.Org

I was 21 years old. I had never been to a concert. I told my father that had he not failed to raise me properly, this tragedy would have been avoided. Now, I told him, I had to pop my concert cherry in a truly spectacular fashion. I showed him the ad: Bob Dylan and Paul Simon were on tour together. He laughed...

The next day my Step Mom handed us tickets...

The thing is, I've seen Dylan since then. Playing everything from huge stadiums to (I'm not making this up) the UC Davis gym. His style keeps evolving

Say what you will about Hendrix-- no homage to his genius could be complete enough-- Bob Dylan is a master. I will never get tired of hearing him play. And All Along the Watchtower will always rival Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 for the title of "music piece I find most moving"...

Bush pulls nominee opposed by Dems over Swift Boat donation

President Bush on Wednesday withdrew the ambassadorial nomination of businessman Sam Fox after Democrats denounced Fox for giving money to a controversial conservative group that undermined Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.
...
At the end of the hearing last month, Obama told Fox he found his testimony "somewhat unsatisfying."

"I would have preferred you saying, you know, 'In retrospect looking back, contributing to the Swift Boat campaign was a mistake and I wish I hadn't done it,"' Obama told Fox.

I write about Tony Blair's awful, if predictable, predicament at Likelihood of Success:

Now what? Can Blair possibly use force (assuming Ian is overstating the dearth of strategic options) when he has no support at all to be there in the first place? Can he not use force and just reinforce the claim that England would only end up weakening, not strengthening, its global position by virtue of engagement in the Mideast? And then — what force? George Bush’s force? How humiliating and how absolutely politically bitter for Blair, who deserves better, at least morally.

Tony at Catholic Pillow Fight opines about blogger Dawn Eden and her book "The Thrill of The Chaste". He references a review of the book by blogger Udolpho. Here is an excerpt of Udolpho'a review (zing! to Tony):

Part of chastity is the discipline not to allow sex - including its obsessive, destructive, and dehumanizing varieties - to crowd everything else out of our relationships. It is not only or primarily a discipline, although this is close to its popular connotation of meaning abstinence or self-denial. Inherent in the chaste life is the understanding that placing undue emphasis on the pursuit of sex endangers our pursuit of happiness.

Eden defines chastity as intrinsically related to the divine. As she puts it, "In a larger sense, chastity is seeing your sexual nature as part of a three-way relationship - and no, that isn't what it sounds like. The relationship is between you, your husband - or, if you're not married, your future husband - and God. That means if you have sex without one corner of that triangle in place - with a man who isn't your husband, or with your husband but without faith in God - the act becomes disconnected from its purpose."

I propose that chastity has relevance even or especially for the irreligious, as it is an aspect of virtue, thereby belonging among the universal aspirations (much as kindness, constancy, compassion, and so on are not essentially religious ideals).

Read the full review here. As you may know from reading my posts, I'm not religious in the slightest but very spiritual. But I do see how Dawn Eden has come to her belief that chastity is the way to go for herself and others. She isn't down for pre-marital sex but wants to wait for true love. Now you can snicker at that all you want but it is noble and virtuous regardless of your background and/or life experiences. I've been happily married for 13 years. And I've also had pre-marital sex with girlfriends (not many) before I met my wife. I can honestly tell you that when my wife and I do our thang, it's the best thing this man has had and ever will have. The love is what makes it. I deeply love my wife. She deeply loves me. And things are just swell.

But I'm not going to get all wild-eyed innocent on ya. People crave that connection with another person. And sex frequently is what that connection boils down to. Sexual desire is so strong and can consume you completely if your weak. And that weakness is there my friends. So while I think chastity is a noble and virtuous decision, I think sexual responsibility needs to pushed out there first. No unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Respect your sexual partner even if your paying for it (a prostitute is a human being, not a blow-up doll). And try to limit your partners.

Thus ends the T-Steel PSA.....

(Cross posted at Palm Trees In The Ghetto)

This is the text of a Gtalk chat I had between 8:00pm and 8:45pm PST. This person added me to their IM list. I got curious. Can anyone help me figure out what they were after?

Andrew: hello?

Sent at 8:10 PM on Tuesday press.club.2007: r u journalist?

Andrew: yeah

press.club.2007: which paper?

Andrew: I am wondering why you added me to your IM list...

press.club.2007: v r planning a media blog for journalists? just checking if u r a journo? which country?

Andrew: Why don't you give me more info about you...

press.club.2007: im with ny press club working with ny times names anna

Andrew: you have a link to your credentials?

press.club.2007: search on google Jessica Taylor is my boss

Andrew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Taylor

press.club.2007: Nicholas D. Kristof search him hes the top boss jessica is my boss

Sent at 8:19 PM on Tuesday Andrew: So, what are you guys up to at the 2007 press club?

press.club.2007: inviting journos for our smash paarty press club meet

Andrew: Oh yeah? Where at?

press.club.2007: new york hilton

Andrew: And you're handing out invites? Or should I go to your site?

Sent at 8:26 PM on Tuesday press.club.2007:

invites are by sms gimme ur mobile and which paper r u from pakistan?

Andrew: Nope. I'm from the bay area...

Sent at 8:29 PM on Tuesday Andrew:

I'll see if I can get my paper to spring for it...

press.club.2007: ok

Sent at 8:34 PM on Tuesday press.club.2007: which paper pp?

Andrew: Diablo Magazine

press.club.2007: which country?

Andrew: USA

press.club.2007: thx whats ur good name PP r u the ditor/

Andrew: Naw, just a writer

press.club.2007: thnkd name?

Andrew: Andrew Cory

Heh.

It is a fact that Iraq is a much better place than it was under Saddam, unless you were an Iraqi Baathist. It is also a fact that Iraq is now, thanks to American intervention, the freest Arab country in the world.

It is to the great shame of the Muslim community in the United States that they did not do more to try to help, and instead spent most of their time on Bush-bashing.

I eagerly look forward to the day that the American Muslim community gets off its collective, whiny Americaphobic duff and actually takes action to help improve the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Bush-bashing and talking about how awful the situation supposedly is is so much easier, isn't it?

I found out tonight that Border's, Amazon, and the mainstream booksellers all pulled Methuselah's Daughter from their bookshelves. It appears that our crime was that we had dared to question the $10+ per copy premium they wanted for self-publishers. They didn't like that, so they pulled us completely, even though we'd paid a premium for the ISBN# and other things that would leave us in their distribution system.

It's good to know that Amazon, Border's, Barnes & Noble, and others don't want you to read this book, isn't it?

It was an odd sort of acceptance I had found, and not at all the way I had thought I might. It was as if, in recent years, a fog had begun to lift from my mind, but as that fog cleared I found only desolation around me. I found myself in just another village, just another clan, or so it seemed. These new people were farmers mostly, and were more prosperous than others I had seen in recent years. I had come to them in a trade, thrown in almost as an after-thought to seal a deal. The winters had been growing harsher, the summers less productive, and my old clan was cutting away whatever it could not use. At least they had liked me enough to keep me through spring.

I started in this new tribe in almost the worst possible situation: I was still orjan, an outsider, but no one owned me, and no one was responsible for my well-being. Instead I was merely the property of the village and expected to make the best of it that I could. So, as was usually the case, a strong back, eager hands and a willingness to lie down on demand meant I would not starve or freeze, but I had no place at all of my own. Decade after decade after decade of living like that had me despondent, and I had begun wondering, for the first time, why anything mattered to me.

His real name was Attaz, but no one called him that. He was a lanky one, and with pale skin, black hair he kept in a knot, and flinty gray eyes. He was respected amongst the men, desired by the women, but strange in his own way.

UPDATE (J. A. Eddy):

I spoke with Lulu.com last night and they confirmed the listings are still there. I had no problem finding them using a title search. Whatever the issue was, they did not pull our listing.

BTW- anyone thinking of buying a copy should wait until after April 1st- the price will be dropped on Amazon, Borders, etc to $19.96 from it's currently ridiculous $27+.

Issues arose about a month ago, when Lulu decreed (at the behest of EU regulators, no less) that retail prices and Lulu prices had to be identical. This meant our book was going for more than $27 on Lulu and the download version was nearly $15. I got with Lulu and they agreed to waive the change fee and reset the price to something more reasonable (we weren't the only ones screaming bloody murder). They also let us change the book description for free as well- normally this would incur an $80 fee as the description is bound to the ISBN, but since we were already doing the price they let us do the description at the same time.

So, it IS available through online retailers and the price through those retailers should drop out of the stratosphere on the 1st of April. Of course, if you buy it through Lulu.com we get about 10 times the royalty...

Some have said that Jimi Hendrix was over-rated as an electric guitarist.

Not possible.

By the way, is that male sexuality at its most raw, or what?

More right here.

No.

There should always be a Tony Snow. :-( :-( :-(

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghan bloggers. The pickings are very slim this week.

Hometown Baghdad is a web site for

A documentary web series following the lives of a few Iraqi 20-somethings trying to survive in Baghdad.

Ibn Al-Rafidain comments on his experience as a member of the Baath Party and the different approaches that Americans and the Iraqi government have to d-Ba'athification.

Iraqi Rocker has re-surfaced after a lengthy hiatus.

neurotic iraqi wife answers her commenters.

There's a new Iraqi blogger: Iraqiya, an Iraqi woman who works at a government ministry. Hat tip: Iraqi Blog Count.

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

It's a Chagall thing. But evidently you have to bring your own bottle.

Will be gone most of today. It's going to be long, wish me luck.

Here's an open thread if you like.

Is federalism a protection against fascism?

I'd say that it is one of may safeguards against it.

Ali has reopened his personal blog to focus on non-political stuff.

After decade upon decade of Christian-upon-Christian violence in Northern Ireland and the UK, the Good Friday Accord signed in the late 1990s was soon followed by a cessation of terrorism.

Those of us a bit more cynical thought it had a bit more to do with the fact that most funding for terrorist activities in Northern Ireland had dried up a few years earlier. But be that as it may, it must be said that that historic agreement was followed by a gradual deflation of tensions in Northern Ireland. Today another historic event, as Protestand and Catholic leaders come together, agreeing to establish a unity government.

How he dealt with the Northern Ireland terrorism problem will probably be Blair's greatest legacy to history.

If you caught BSG last night, you get it. If you didn't catch it, well...

For _years_ I have been noodling with ways of making that song a background to a post-apocalyptic fantasy story. I'm not a good enough storyteller to pull it off. Ron Moore, it would seem, is...

I've found my preferred commuter option...

Via Power Line

Iran's seizure of British sailors is getting tense. It could be dumb luck, but chances are there's a reason they went after Brits and not Yanks.

One more time...

It's a standing joke: there are a ton of Jewish lawyers. Which is inarguably true to anyone who's not just stupid.

Indeed, it's such a standing joke that I actually know anti-semites who say they want "a good Jew lawyer" when they're in trouble.

Arrogance says that it's because Jews are so smart.

Another argument would be that history forced them into the role. Which is probably more correct. They weren't allowed by the Christians to own land or to be members of the nobility, so what would they gravitate towards besides being merchants, or toward professions such as law, accounting, science, or entertainment?

But another argument: if you grow up studying Talmud, you grow up studying how to argue. A career in Law is almost natural as a result.

Discuss.

(And yes, I await the inevitable criticisms that I'm an anti-semite who's "stereotyping." Whatever. Discuss the question on its own merits, please.)

A useful discussion at City of Brass.

(Read the comments.)

How, uh, admirable.

Dean's World has a long relationship with Trogdor the Burninator, going back many years. We were one of the very first weblogs to get behind the majesty that is Trogdor, going back four years. Check our archives if you don't believe it.

So now fast forward to Spring 2007, and one of my elder son's favorite video games is "Guitar Hero." So imagine my thoughts when I first saw this:

Man. It's a whole new world, ain't it?

It's time again for Haveil Havalim!

Drop me a note or say in the comments if you have trouble with any of the lingo.

Must read.

Kim du Toit has the strongest endorsement of Fred Thompson that I've seen yet.

I don't agree with Thompson on everything but there is a lot there I can agree with.

I'm having a hard time finding anyone on the Democratic side who excites me at the moment except maybe Bill Richardson. But since Democrats are absolutely wrong on Iraq, it's still almost impossible for me to contemplate supporting any of them. Depressing.

Bill Bennett had a great interview recently.

Oh no, not that kind. Is that a good title for search engines? Didn't even think about that.

No, I wrote an item about real jail bait for a different kind of creep. Until, at least, the appellate court of the moment gets a hold of it.

Jan continues her series on the small, this time on water.

This is the face of the conservative movement I still respect and love.

5:55pm. Open thread: GO!

I recently spotted a new pizza joint that's opening up near me. They're called Benito's Pizza. No kidding.

Regardless of what else you might say about them, I'll bet their delivery boys are rarely late.

Typically on a Saturday morning I'll drive around running a variety of errands: grocery shopping, going to the hardware store, the druggist, etc. On my way I'll typically listen to our local NPR station, WBEZ. Car Talk. Wait, Wait! (a news quiz show), and so on.

They've recently revised the Saturday schedule a bit and added a new program: Sound Opinions which characterizes itself as “the world's only rock and roll talk show”. It's hosted by rock critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. Today as I was driving around I caught one of the programs.

I'm not much of a follower of contemporary rock music but I found the enthusiasm and excitement that the two hosts brought to their subject made good listening.

Podcasts of the show are available for listening here. Check it out. Maybe you'll find your new most favorite band.

We don’t have dogs anymore, but my son does, so when the news of the dog food recall hit, it was something we definitely noticed. As it happened, we were visiting Prescott over last weekend. The thing that Sean picked right up on, as did I, was that a number of brands of dog food, from bargain brands to top-of-the-line, appear to come all out of the same pot.

Look, I already told you once.

Austin Bay is looks at the current congressional chuckleheads' hijinx.

Congress never really changes. Oh, sure, it changes hands, but it never really changes.

Despite it all, I still fervently believe it's the best system there is. And no, I don't mean the American model per se. Although I'm fond of that, I recognize that it's got weaknesses as well as strengths. I mean a system that answers directly to the electorate, not every day but at least every few years.

Are the politicians fickle and sometimes dishonest and often intellectually, morally, and ethically incoherent? Why yes. After all, they represent the people who elected them, don't they?

I’m a civilian working in a support position for the Marine Corps. The agency I work for used to be called, Morale Welfare and Recreation, or MWR, and has since morphed into Marine Corps Community Services. The other military services have similar agencies.

I think the main reason they chose to change the name was to give us a little bit less of a military ambience. In the library where I work, as well as other services, such as the Auto Skills Center (my husband works there) and the Child Development Center, etc., rank means nothing. We’re “the softer side” of the military. We call people by their first names, or Mr., Mrs. or Miss whatever. (I don’t use MS, but others do.)

Everyone who comes in is a customer or patron, period. Matters not if you’re a Major or a Lance Corporal, you get the same treatment. We love all our Marines & others equally ;>) This works well for me, since I really don’t know anything much about rank – dunno the difference between a Staff Sergeant and a Gunnery Sergeant, or why a Lance Corporal is apparently sometimes a Private, but not always. Don’t even ask me about the Navy’s ranks, which appear to have a random collection of numbers and letters. ;>)

When I’m looking at an ID card to sign somebody in for computer use, the rank is quite often the place covered by my thumb. So normally I don’t even know the patron’s rank.

Right after I started working there in August 2005, we had 350 Army men sent to MCAS as sort of a meet-and-greet operation before they were sent to Iraq. (No, there doesn’t seem to be any phrase like “in-country” as there was in the Vietnam era. It’s mostly just Iraq.)

In the library, we had a flood of Army men who were mostly officers trying to run their offices without their secretaries, and in some cases, without any knowledge of things like e-mail or word processing. We did our best to help them work the cantankerous machines. ;>) Most were able to go overseas with a little better knowledge of the technology. I really loved working with those Army officers. I felt like I was working in some sort of Victorian British country club the whole time.

Thing is, at the library, the rule is 30 minutes computer use per patron. If somebody’s working on a project, or doing schoolwork, we can allow up to three patrons at once to go over time. Of course we can recognize who’s doing serious work and who’s screwing off.

That fall of 2005 was busy and crazy. Not only did we have the Army men, we had WTI (Weapons Tactics Instruction – Marines come here from all over the country) come in October, so there were times I had 15 people waiting in line for our 10 computers. It was not unusual for me to boot a Major or Lt. Colonel off a ‘puter for a LCPL.

I run a tight ship. 30 minutes is 30 minutes, tho the Army would prefer to call it half an hour. Equally effective, but different approach.

Some new Army men have come, and we also have National Guard people, though they are billeted elsewhere at an area that has WiFi and don’t come to the library.

Yesterday, one of our Army regulars mentioned that getting a haircut was really hard for him. Apparently the haircut shop goes by rank, and as an Army man, on a Marine base that would be less than a private. So he gave up on that and got his haircut in town.

What I’m wondering about here is if anybody has ever done anything about improving communications and respect between the services. As a civilian, I was upset to see that an Army man was given poor treatment by my service, and I bet this happens all over.

This is a funny one – as one could imagine when dealing with large numbers of people, sooner or later you’re going to get two guys with the same name. In this case, I’ve encountered two men of roughly the same age, with the same name, pretty much the same rank, who could be twins. Except that one is a Marine, the other Army. Go figure!

If there was one thing I could wish, is that all the pilots from all the armed services stop trying to be Tom Cruise. Gentlemen, he is a squirrelly little sh*t and overall you real pilots tend to be far hotter and better equipped. Not to mention you actually know how to fly a plane. Please be your genuinely charming selves!

Our friend Ali will be Live Blogging a Democratic Party event on health care reform today. If you're interested in what the Democratic presidential candidates and the party's power brokers have to say on the subject of health care reform, you'll want to tune in. I know I will.

*Update*: Ali's latest report is up. Some of the comments are interesting.

While you're at it, don't miss Navy officer Smash's exceptional series of photo-essays on the same "anti-war" demonstration that Tantor was:

Part 1, The Radicals, Part 2, Eagles Up!, Part 3, Infiltration, and Part IV, a Tsunami of Stupid.

I can only repeat what has been my lifelong experience: the vast, overwhelming majority of those who've served in uniform generally loathe the "anti-war" people, and the handful of "beards" who support their vile nonsense.

Because I work in a library, I often get recommendations from patrons. I usually take these to heart, because when you work where the books live, it’s pretty hard sometimes to pick which ones to check out – there’s so much!

I’d been thoroughly disappointed in Stephen King’s latest. Lisey’s Story was so negative and hopeless, it pretty much turned me off my once-favorite author for all time.

So when a patron recommended Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series, I was right there.

I was so impressed – particularly by the fact he doesn’t take cheap shots at men. Unlike most big-time mainstream writers, he seems to recognize that men have no reason to apologize for their existence, and that women can be terrible people once in a while. He also takes a different tack from the all-scary-all-the-time thing, which would probably be easier.

Dunno why, but I took some time and wrote him a letter letting him know how much I enjoyed his books. This was just a couple of weeks ago, and I really didn’t expect any kind of response.

So when a package arrived in yesterday’s mail, I was floored. Not only did he append the usual form letter with a nice handwritten note, he signed another of his books (Life Expectancy) and sent it along. I thought that was really, really, cool!

I took the package to work with me, and showed it around to everybody who showed the least interest ;>)  Now, it’s not the latest book he sent, but as I told him, I’d never read his stuff before Odd Thomas, so I am not in any way ungrateful. I’m going to put it back in the bubble wrap, and take it with me when I go to L.A. (again!) in April. It almost goes without saying I’ll need some good reading material.

Of course I know authors of books are regular people. After all, Dean Esmay and John Eddy, authors of Methuselah’s Daughter are about as regular as it gets.

I’ve known a lot of authors of a lot of books over time, and I can tell you not even some of the lesser-known would ever take the time to do something so nice for a reader. I’ve actually known a couple who took pride in the fact they never answer fan mail, for some perverse reason.

Dean Koontz is right up there on the top of my list of Good People. What a sweetheart!

…and if he happens to get wind of this blog post, Semper Fi to you too, sir!

Don't miss a real veteran's take on recent "anti-war" rallies in Washington: Vietnam Vets Face Down The Moonbats, then, Vets vs. Moonbats, part 2, then, Vets vs. Moonbats, part 3, and finally, Vets vs. Moonbats, part 4. With lots of photos.

These people generally have no idea how the vast majority of veterans really despise what they stand for. And how many of them are smart, educated, decent people.