My recollection is that Carp changed pseuds because of anonymity concerns. The sentence rightly applauding him seems distinctly unhelpful towards protecting that anonymity.
I'd say that redacting the pseud, but not the link, is the way to go. Replacing it with the full formal name should be fine -- that's a public fact.
If you walk into a burning Constitution as part of your job, can we call you a hero?
Thanks 1 and 2, I didn't realize that. Fixed.
Anyway, that is very cool, Our Own Charles Carpenter, Esq.
Much as it pains me to admit being played for a sucker, these latest "revelations" really are the last straw. While I can make intellectual allowances for "unlawful combatants", being a gray area in the Geneva Conventions, throwing people in jail because of a tortured mental case's say so just won't fly. Which is not to say that Moussaoui and Padilla are innocents, but that is not how our system is supposed to work. Like McCain said, it's not about them, it's about us.
This shit, as they say, is fucked up.
"If torture is outlawed, only outlaws will tortue."
...coming to a John Roberts opinion near you soon.
3: I think it really is fair to say we've a hero in our midsts in this case. Kudos to the lawyers and kudos to the firms willing to support this important work.
If tortoises are outlawed, seulement un criminel sera une tortue.
Fascinating article.
When somebody, or a country, has more power than anyone else, it also has more to lose than anyone else, so in addition to being capable of more crimes, it can justify more crimes in the interest of not giving up its power.
But this is eventually doomed.
But this is eventually doomed.
Some values of `doomed' include big, bloody messes.
Now is the wrong (or right?) time to be re-reading Foundation books, isn't it? I keep looking at shit like this and the story on NPR yesterday about homeless people being kicked out of a park in New Orleans and thinking, "Trantor in decline! Trantor in decline!" Where's Hari Seldon when we need 'im?
Like McCain said, it's not about them, it's about us.
This line of argument actually really irritates me. What's offensive about torture isn't that it's un-American or that it makes the torturer a bad person or whatever - it's that another human being is being put in excruciating pain. It really is about them, and the fact that they don't deserve that because no one does. It's not about "us" at all, and to pretend otherwise is narcissism.
Where's Hari Seldon when we need 'im?
You nerd.
Color me cynical, but I don't expect the revelations over the torture tapes to have make any difference at all.
15: I've kind of given up on that too.
14: You make a valid point, stras, of course. But for the people who can't envision the possibility that the tortured "suspects" aren't certainly guilty and deserving of every ounce of pain inflicted, the "Fine, but what does that make you?" appraoach seems the next best shot.
14. I don't get that reading at all, stras. I take it to mean what you're implying, that one doesn't torture because it is wrong. Why torture is wrong is informed by the potential recipient's humanity. It is "un-American" only in the sense that it is "un-human" and presumably Americans are humans.
"un-American"
Can we please just bury this term? It's almost impossible to use without coming across as an asshat, at best.
17- It's sad, in fact, that the strongest congressional opposition to torture has come from McCain; arguably the enthusiastic proponent of the war there.
I don't mind "un-American." I, however, would like to ditch the euphemisms for torture. Note "aggressive questioning" in the link.
22 it's not the word so much as the associations it has. Too many shitheads beating that drum.
4: You might also want to fix 1, which, in combination with the post, still gives away the relevant information.
23: I dunno, that suggests to me that we could use a few non-shitheads trying to reclaim the word.
23: Maybe, but it's been that way for decades now. Wouldn't it be easier to claim a perhaps more descriptive term?
24, no it doesn't.
I don't know what Carp's new pseud is.
6: throwing people in jail because of a tortured mental case's say so just won't fly
Calling Bush a "tortured mental case" might seem a bit extreme to some, but I'm with you TLL.
27: Oh, I seem I'm behind the curve.
Where's Hari Seldon when we need 'im?
Seldon's analog is Paul Wolfowitz. Asimov is a lot of fun to read, but it is hubris to suppose that you can predict and/or manipulate the outcome of complex historical events.
27:
Note that we recently acquired a new lawyer commenter.
And that he seems to know everyone already.
Perhaps because he's commented under another name.
I think you should be able to get it now.
If you walk into a burning Constitution as part of your job, can we call you a hero?
Yes. Despite bad taste in baseball teams, excellent taste in cheese, and dubious understanding of their current state's importance in certain wars that may or may not have taken place is certain eras that may or may not have preceded this one, the persons involved in this task deserve huge accolades.
31: Thanks. Ned's comment was actually enough to alert me to the set of facts you outline. I now have a clue.
33: And now I see that 31 was to 27 and not to 29. Never mind.
LB spills the beans without so much as a glass of water poised threateningly over her face. No state secrets for you!
LB and Buck speak like this all the time:
Some of the toys have been purchased
And you better hide them so that the kids do
Not know
That I have already purchased
All of their presents.
Too obvious, will.
Which isn't to say that I didn't need the help.
In unrelated news, the sun just appeared outside my window for the first time since Saturday afternoon. Yay.
it's that another human being is being put in excruciating pain.
Too simple. MDs and physical therapists do that all the time (and most parents have done so to a lesser degree their kids) for very solid reasons.
30: Agreed. When I read them as a teenager I found myself pulling for The Mule.
well, i want to express my humble gratitude to charles carpenter, esq., no matter how he likes to style himself on the web.
really--these have been dark days. the dark days aren't over. some people have shone. you and katherine have been radiant.
Some of the toys have been purchased
And you better hide them so that the kids do
Not know
That I have already purchased
All of their presents.
30: Ah, but they call it "escapism" for a reason. I'd like to escape some of the realities our leaders have created.
I still don't know who it is. Several people have changed their names recently.
I think this is a good sign for my sanity.
Robust: Can you claim it is both escapism and a relevant book that should be read today?
Thanks actually a serious question. The remake of Battlestar Galactica seems to me to be both relevant political commentary and escapism.
43: LB gave it to you on a plate, you just have to look.
44: I think this is historically a useful way to speak about things that are politically difficult to talk about.
dammit, I can't tell who's a lawyer. Everyone seems like a lawyer. Except Bob McManus.
are there more lawyers here or more academics?
Cease and desist, Cryptic Ned. Mala grammatica non vitiat chartam.
Ned - just think about it.
Everything will be clear.
Don't be dense - it's just a bit CRYPTIC.
This feels so dorky. Get it, damn you.
There's a Latin tag I'd never seen before. And sorry, Ned, but being any clearer at all would sort of kill the point of name-changing. (I was probably clear enough to kill the point, actually.)
Congratulations, Charles Carpenter!
OT: My new passport arrived in the mail today! I exist, legally! The Department of State accepted the affidavit of a Known Iranian to support my identity claim! I can fly!
I know, I'm not asking who it is! Just saying it's not obvious.
Thinking happy thoughts, JM?
LB wasn't saying it was obvious either, just giving you the answer.
There is a certain amount of irony to this, Cryptic Ned.
50: Thanks, JRoth.... Ned, if it makes you feel better, you aren't the only one who missed the hint.
Ned has never been an eleven year old, sending coded messages to friends.
Yes. In fact, I wept in relief. They turned that shit around in a little over a week.
Hey Lizard, when do you hear back about the interview you had yesterday?
58. Don't weep, it will make you crash. Be sure to have enough fairy dust, and the happy thoughts will keep you flying all the way to Neverland.
Well, that one's cleared up. Now I just have to figure out who this PGD fellow is.
48: I think it goes academics, lawyers, computer nerds, and then perhaps journalists.
If we're playing this game anyway, did text change aliases or just vanish?
Underemployed slackers belong somewhere near the top of that list, 'Smasher.
Ned has never been an eleven year old, sending coded messages to friends.
I preferred the pigpen cipher.
Have figured it out now, of course.
63 sounds about right. With a surprising number of gaming representatives of the 3rd bunch, at least out of the self-identified.
58: When Magpie and I went to Europe last year, I had to get my passport renewed, but of course like a dumbass I left it until the last minute. Luckily the passport agency for Northern California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah is a block away from my office.
They had, framed on the wall, a letter from a woman whose son had been due to go on a class trip to Costa Rica, leaving on a Sunday. The previous Thursday, she went to get his passport out of their safe deposit box... only to discover that it was missing. She managed to get into the agency Friday afternoon, and with the assistance of a couple of workers who were willing to stay late, got her son's replacement passport in less than half a day. It was rather heartwarming.
academics, lawyers, computer nerds, and then perhaps journalists
And then lonely ol' me.
But Apo, don't you work in information technology, and aren't you enough of a dork to have once sported a ginormous red mullet? I think you fit the third category listed.
I discovered the loss of my passport the night before we were to leave on our honeymoon, and the passport office in DC managed to get me sorted in time to catch our flight. It was amazing. (My punishment is my passport photo, which very much reflects the fact that I was up all night panicking and tearing the apartment apart.)
Apo, you ain't alone in your aloneness. (Nobody else is in marketing, are they?)
Unfortunately, my new passport photo makes me look like a deranged addict. My old passport photo was so cute! I was wearing a Sorbonne Socialist scarf and my cheeks were all ruddy. And now of course the passports are insanely tricked out with patriotic imagery: every page has a different security-coded engraving of, like, bison or eagles or some wacked shit.
don't you work in information technology
Nope. Technical writing for the clinical trials industry.
a ginormous red mullet
It was certainly dorky but, alas, not computer dorky.
70: surely IT is a subset of computer nerds for this purpose. We're using `academics' fairly loosely, and perhaps lawyers as well.
74: Ah, tech writing is a weird melding of tech geeks and lit geeks, as far as I can see. I suspect you're not alone, although perhaps amongst the commenters.
Chopper—dude. I missed you in Miami, sorry. On the bright side I did see Paris Hilton at a party. She threw up on my friend's shoe.
you have an odd bright side, 'smasher.
Perhaps we should come up with a secret handshake for UnfoggeDCon?
I'm practically famous now, soupstuff.
77: It wasn't this party, was it?
On the bright side I did see Paris Hilton at a party. She threw up on my friend's shoe.
How much on ebay?
Congrats, JM! Now you can get the rest of your ID back! It is a sign of grad school that I think I look better in my passport photo than I do most days.
It was on Friday night. Naturally I was at the Artforum party on Saturday.
All you last minute passporters realize that you're the reason everyone else has to wait so long, don't you?
Did you eer think that I might want Paris to vomit on my shoe, Smasher?
I wouldn't have been any fun, anyway--I had worked myself to the point of exhaustion the previous few weeks. I crashed that night, went home the next morning, went straight to the doctor on arrival, was diagnosed with an infection in every mucouse membrane possible (seriously: double ear, sinus, throat, lung, and eye), picked up my prescription for Zithromax, and spent the next 40 hours in bed. My ears still aren't unclogged.
Come to think of it, I'm having trouble thinking of anyone I would less like to see at a party (at least, who I didn't know well)
fair enough: discounting sociopathic killers, suicide bombers etc. etc. etc.
Besides, at this point seeing Cho at a party would consitute absolute proof for the walking undead. So you know; cool beans.
Come to think of it, I'm having trouble thinking of anyone I would less like to see at a party (at least, who I didn't know well)
Tara Reid?
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,22867085-7485,00.html
I guess I qualify as a computer nerd, although really I'm an undergrad (and at the moment, doing something totally orthogonal to either category).
Can you claim it is both escapism and a relevant book that should be read today?
Off the cuff, yes. It's about the struggle to preserve normalcy in the face of a continually decaying and increasingly chaotic political ecosystem. It's also about using manipulative PR and deception to maintain power in an era when the will to learn and progress has drained out of society to be replaced by tradition and self-anointed experts. I like the books a great deal. I also think there's a reading in which they're seen as a screed in support of packing the mini-van full of encyclopedias and Bibles and moving to Alaska to set up a mega-church and try to wait out the apocalypse. I don't read it that way but I can see how one would.
(and at the moment, doing something totally orthogonal to either category).
Snorkeling?
Gawd, sometimes I'm really glad I don't live in Australia or the UK. I feel like I am forever reading articles which just come out-and-out with the "we-hate-you-and-you're-a-slut", instead of the gently misogynist subtext we're more used to seeing in the States.
97: orthogonal to that, as well. Let's see how many dimensions of orthogonality we can stack up.
30,96:Asimov is ok. Blish did Spengler as an (near)immediate response to Isaac's Toynbee. The ideational density of some of those magazine novella is awesome.
Umm, Thoma had a post recently on how complicated Fed policy was getting in an age of informed expectations. 100% chance of a 1/4 point cut today in whatever market gambles on that event.
And, and somebody at Econospeak had a good post on the Invisible Hand vs the Prisoner's Dilemma. That damn IH\PD curve.
Ooooh—Red Mullets. Tonight, the Washington Capitals are giving away Red Mullet Wigs as part of an 80's Night promotion.
I suppose I'm a computer nerd as well, despite not being a techie at all.
I suppose it would be odd to identify as "nerd" plain without any modifier.
Sifu is operating a cement mixer.
uh, replace one "I suppose" with something else.
Blish did Spengler as an (near)immediate response to Isaac's Toynbee.
I love those, although mostly just for Manhattan Island bombing along through the galaxy, steered from City Hall.
They get paid to show up at parties? Bizarre.
Continuing my musings about replacing ID in the post-9/11 age, at this point of overlapping jurisdictions each with its own security insanity, I really don't get the resistance to a national ID card. It's not as though my privacy has been safeguarded by this fucking rigamorole.
106. I loved that image of Manhattan flying too. This BA ad (gosh is it that old?) made me jump up and down in recognition.
107: It's not that weird. You know how people pay you not to go to their parties? It's just like that, only reversed.
110: Huh. For $1000, I won't show up at UnfoggeDCon.
109. seeing the towers again made me sad and mad, again.
108: On the upside, at least you didn't have to replace another card.
seeing the towers again made me sad and mad, again.
Yeah, me too.
Speaking of cryptic, there is John Peale Bishop's relatively unexplained acrostic gem from the 20s or 30s.
Famously she descended, her red hair
Unbound and bronzed by sea-reflections, caught
Crinkled with sea-pearls. The fine slender taut
Knees that let down her feet upon the air,
Young breasts, slim flanks and golden quarries were
Odder than when the young distraught
Unknown Venetian, painting her portrait, thought
He'd not imagined what he painted there.
And I too commerced with that golden cloud:
Lipped her delicious hands and had my ease
Faring fantastically, perversely proud.
All loveliness demands our courtesies.
Since she was dead I praised her as I could
Silently, among the Barberini bees.
Thanks, Charley Carp. Too fucking bad it didn't work. Assholes.
Well, presumably a national ID card would be required, which a passport isn't.
seeing the towers again made me sad and mad, again
I get mad, then I get mad that I'm mad because of the way that impulse has been manipulated by our unscrupulous leadership post-9/11.
It's weird, I don't think I've ever been mad about the towers. Just sad.
Maybe my grief process is retarded.
You're required to have some sort of government-issued ID, though, and each one has slightly different requirements, and none of them seems to be exactly equivalent to the others. And then they all expire at random intervals and cost a lot to replace. It's just a pain in the ass.
118: The 2004 Repub convention being in New York was the most galling for me. With the Police activities and the purple bandage stunts just adding insult to injury.
109:Blish, IIRC, was Catholic & pessismistic by nature, whereas Asimov, Jewish liberal optimist? Course both were humanist.
101 was a response to 30 in that catching up on my econ blogs ("bias" in the Fed Statement) etc makes me unsure. Economics and practical political science (whatever, the kind of thing Stoller & crew do), and IR are simultaneously self-consciously descriptive/analytical, predictive, and manipulative. Keynes & Friedman were self-conciously trying the change the psychologies of participants. Could we have predicted Katrina/Iraq-like political events in the mid-70s when Free to Choose became a television event? Could we lefties at that time sowed the seeds for the post-neo-classical society?
I was constantly aware when reading MY's "Incompetence Dodge" article that if everyone accepted Matt's conclusions we might have less war. Matt may have changed history there just a little. It may not matter if he was right.
I think Tyler Cowen has outright said that a degree of delusion is necessary for equilibrium. Thank goodness, no one believes him.
Groceries.
120: Yep, that's how they're going to get us. It'll all be so much more convenient when the government knows everything....
Jesus. I just had to front my fucking hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-in-revenue-a-year employer a couple of hundred bucks for a transcript because there's no way to get a check cut the same day. And take lip from the fucking managing clerk as well.
You should have planned ahead, LB. They have procedures.
Sifu is trying to Gramm-Schmidt the thread in 100.
126: I'd just like to find the principal components of what I'm not doing right now. Seems like it'll make it easier for everybody.
125: Planning ahead would be easier if the fucking partner on the goddamn case would answer my fucking emails about what the fuck he wants me to handle, and what he's doing himself.
Then you'd lose independence. You can have it back, statistically speaking, if you use ICA instead
sounds like fun, LB. Sorry to hear it. Sending good interview result thoughts your way, how's that?
Thanks. I have all of my appendages crossed on a permanent basis.
||
Last week Doris Lessing complained about a similar phenomenon on a much larger scale. In the speech she prepared to accept this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, she describes regularly visiting rich schools and even universities where she is told that some students don't read books at all, and that the library is half-used."We are in a fragmenting culture," she wrote, "where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers."
She goes on to lay the blame on the Internet, which she said "has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc."
From today's Chronicle of Higher Education, via my wife.
|>
fucking
Hey, shitstain! usually gets their attention. Good luck.
Which lurker is Doris Lessing? Was she at the Vancouver meetup?
All the top hits for "blugging" refer to Lessing's speech. Had anyone else heard this word before? Is this going to be one of those words like "intertubes", or "the internets" that gets famous because it is used by someone who is not net savvy, and then is picked up by typing hipsters everywhere?
Use the word Blugging in a sentence.
Everyone was Blugging at UnfoggeDConII.
Blugging means to engage in bluggery?
md 20/400 is confused. He meant that everyone was bulging at UnfoggeDConII. A common typo.
With blug\deons?
(Hopster is good value.)
I am not adding value either. I will go home now.
101: The markets were betting on a 1/2 point rate cut, but only got a 1/4 point. It dawned on me two days ago that the Fed was only going to cut a 1/4 point, so if I'd announced it publicly I'd look like a genius. Sadly, no.
huzzah for mr. carpenter, esq.
ogged, there are some tapes of interrogations that have survived, based on court docs. filed in the mousassoui case. What they show, I don't know.
this whole thing is very odd though. there's not much functional difference between the evidence being destroyed & being kept secret forever and ever and ever and ever--so why does everyone care about the tapes, & only lunatics like me go on & on about the need for speciaul prosecutors or a truth commission? I guess destroying the evidence being a felony & looking so much like an admission of guilt is a factor. And the main thing is that "U.S. tortures people in secret" is old news, while this destruction of evidence stuff is a fresh angle. I mean, far be it from me to tell people NOT to be up in arms about this; I just wish the press & congress had a longer attention span.
41: thanks. I am sore in need of a pep talk today...
144. The Fed is trying to remind the market that it is an independent body and does not take dictation. Now sit on my lap and I'll tell you some more.
144: Well, the markets were obviously smoking crack today. Everybody and their brother was expecting 1/4, and had absolutely no cause to expect 1/2. And yet they freaked out when what occurred was exactly what was expected.
147: I thought the fact that they didn't cut the discount rate was more the issue. Who knows, of course.
148: Actually, they did cut the discount rate by 1/4 percent. But apparently that wasn't enough.
Likely the rate change was just an excuse to blow off some pressure that had been building up. The market was charging ahead in the past couple weeks, which seems kind of silly given the, you know, upcoming recession.
given the, you know, upcoming recession
No way, man. I heard on the news that today's action by the Fed was going to head off the recession. Just in time for holiday shopping!
I heard on the news today that 2.2 million people are expected to lose their homes in the next year. What a bunch of whiners!
151: No way, man. I heard on the news that Bush had a plan for that.
147:According to the odds at Thoma's, which I think he gets from Tim Duy (impressed yet?) the oddsmakers had given a 40% chance of 1/2 point, along with 100% chance of a 1/4 point. Since the one dissenting vote was in favor of a half, which means you had 5+ votes for a quarter, I wouldn't call expectations of a half pont "smoking crack"
This was not good news today. As the Fed looks a while ahead of itself, it means that what the Fed is seeing for certain is some kind of stagflation: too much recession not to cut, too much inflation to cut a half.
153: Dow Up 194 points this morning? No, the markets are definitely on crack.....
