Some of the wiser voices in my head speak only quietly; they get drowned out when louder voices are on stage. The louder voices like being in the driver's seat. That's part of their attraction; it's easier to let someone else drive.
In a roughly similar vein--
The comment
Soon there will be no more room for people like me who speak softly.(spoken by an interpreter who is saddened by how the the war in Iraq has deeply polarized the world) struck me as one of the more poignant lines in the movie Control Room. The movie (a documentary about Al Jazeera) is a little uneven, but it has enough strong moments that I can recommend it without reservation.
By the way: the music that opens the film is Pe Loc, the third of the Romanian Folk Dances by Béla Bartók--despite not being identified as such in the closing credits.
Wednesday 06.23.04
US media often don't report on the United Nations as prominently as foreign media do.
The USA is pressing for renewal of UN Security Council Resolution 1487, which exempts US personnel (and those of some other countries) from jurisdiction under the International Criminal Court when participating in UN authorized missions. Articles on the topic do appear in American papers, e.g. here and here, but not as prominently as in foreign media.
Resolution 1487 was a renewal of Resolution 1422. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has opposed the resolution and its renewals; six days ago, he said
As you know, for the past two years, I have spoken quite strongly against the exemption, and I think it would be unfortunate for one to press for such an exemption, given the prisoner abuse in Iraq. I think in this circumstance it would be unwise to press for an exemption, and it would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it. It would discredit the Council and the United Nations that stands for rule of law and the primacy of rule of law.
Last year's renewal was ensured by US threats to veto all UN peacekeeping operations if 1487 didn't pass. It'll be interesting to watch how the vote in the Security Council goes this time.
Monday 06.14.04
A few days ago, I wore a T-shirt with artwork from Dr. Seuss's The
Cat in the Hat. Everyone seems to like that shirt, it never fails
to elicit smiles and compliments.
This time, after seeing my shirt, a friend told me that the town's high school recently had its graduation ceremony and that the valedictorian (of a class of about 35) made a speech, and quoted Dr. Seuss:
You have brains in your head.(Hmmmm, I wonder if he got the quote from this page.)
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
In 1960, publisher Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he couldn't write a book using a vocabulary of only 50 words. Not only did Seuss manage to do it, but the result--Green Eggs and Ham--became a staggeringly popular and widely-loved book.
Before telling the $50 bet story here, I thought I should verify that the book indeed achieves that economy of expression. It does. The 50 words in Green Eggs and Ham are:
a am and anywhere are be boat box car could dark do eat eggs fox goat good green ham here house I if in let like may me mouse not on or rain Sam say see so thank that the them there they train tree try will with would you
Monday 06.07.04
I don't remember Ronald Reagan's presidency with fondness.
He was called the Great Communicator; but what kind of communicator was he? In the 1930s, Reagan gave simulated play-by-play commentary of baseball games on WHO radio in Des Moines, faking the action while reading reports coming in by telegraph.
His entertainment industry experience served him well as a politician. Reagan was not dedicated to accuracy or thoroughness, but he was skilled at presenting images that would appeal. Leslie Janka, a White House staff member who resigned in protest after the administration excluded the press from Grenada, said
This was a PR outfit that became President and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations.Professor Juan Cole's web site has some worthwhile comments about Reagan's legacy. Under Reagan, the USA was arming radicals in Afghanistan to the tune of 500 million dollars a year, thereby strengthening (among others) Osama you-know-who. Reagan's administration also supported Iraq with intelligence, biological weapon materials (anthrax spores, botulinum toxin, ...) and agricultural credits.
Sunday 06.06.04
About a month ago, I wrote
My Echeveria crenulata is getting ready to flower.Still waiting. The inflorescence is 59cm long, but it hasn't deigned to open any flowers yet. Aren't you glad you know this now.
Saturday 06.05.04
Schmoozed with a merchant in town yesterday afternoon. For some reason, he asked me what I thought about life after death. He said I seemed like a thoughtful person (i.e. my views were probably worth hearing). I'm usually a little suspicious--maybe unnecessarily so--when someone pays me that kind of compliment.
I told him I didn't know, but my working assumption was that my personality won't survive my death. He then told me about how he had once fallen asleep in a hot summer school classroom, and upon waking up found two handwritten pages in his notebook, written from the point of view of a captain of a ship, that described navigating into a harbor, making depth soundings with not-so-modern equipment, and so on. The story was written in an ornate florid script, not his usual handwriting.
I asked if he still had the pages. He said no, his first wife got them when they divorced. Maybe I just have bad luck, but that's how it always is when someone I know has a spooky story. The evidence (or special talent or whatever) is never available for me to see for myself.
I would've xeroxed the pages before letting an ex of mine have them.
Friday 06.04.04
YAJEAAD (yet another journal entry about a dream)
Last night, I had another installment of a recurring dream, of a type I've been having since I was a kid. The recurring theme is the existence of hidden rooms in the basement of my house (more specifically, the house I grew up in, where my father still lives). In last night's dream, I knew the rooms were there, I knew they were on the other side of a basement wall, but my dad was reluctant to tell me how to gain access to them. I persisted, and finally he showed me a panel in the floor.
I pulled up the panel and crawled under the wall. I found a bunch of rooms on the other side, with finished walls and working electricity, but which looked as though they hadn't been used much lately.
I'm not sure what all this means, but if the extra hidden space is somehow an allegory for my subconscious, I am struck by these elements of the dream:
- I really really wanted to see what was on the other side of the wall
- my father (perhaps representing wisdom) urged me not to go there
- the hidden rooms resembled the basement's normally-seen rooms, just not as extensively used
- I wanted to take some object(s) back that I'd found in one of the hidden rooms (but never did)
- these recurring dreams never last long after I gain access to the hidden area; I wake up.
Thursday 06.03.04
My fax line appears to be on some junk fax list. After 6.5 years of no junk faxes, I've gotten three this week. And junk faxes are even less amenable to filtering than spam is.
Jeez, spammers and junk-faxers--can't you make an honest living?
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