@7:19PM

...that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:19:00 -0400

July 1st is always a doozy for me. Eleven years ago today (wow), at almost this exact moment, I was standing on a field in Annapolis with my hand raised taking the Oath of Office. This is going to be a bit of a pointless ramble. Apologies in advance if you read the whole thing.

The whole day is kind of a blur. You wait in lines. You’re issued a crapload of gear. You get your hair cut. The upperclass are all very nice and accomodating as you drop your new wares off in your new room and meet your new roommate(s). It’s a lot like camp.

You change into a uniform for the first time. You stand in your first formation, and you march with your first company in your first squad down to T-court to take the Oath. (Eleven years ago, T-court was under construction, so we took ours around back in some field: inauspicious when compared with the majesty of T-court, but then again, so was my tenure there inauspicious, so maybe that’s fitting.)

It’s pretty. The sun is low, casting that same light over the Severn, and over us and our families, that it’s casting now, right this minute. The same light it will cast tomorrow at this time when the class of 2012 takes its Oath. You don’t have feelings of trepidation yet. You don’t have doubts. You haven’t really examined what you’re about to say and do. You stand before family and amongst strangers you’ll come to think of as family in due course, bathed in the waning light of the day, and you say the words.

At least, that’s how it went for me. Doubts came later. Remorse, fear, and shame all came later. Not immediately, of course. After the Oath you say goodbye to your parents, and you walk up the stairs into Bancroft, for the first time a Midshipman. That’s when the shit hits the fan. Camp is over.

The doozy though? That’s not the worst of it. The shit hitting the fan, the yelling, the push-ups, having “all your basic human rights taken away and given back one at a time as privileges”? That’s the best of it. If you’re me, that’s the part you like, the part you almost crave. That’s the part you’re good at. Weirdly, it’s the calm before the storm. It’s the bite-sized insurmountables you can conquer if you shut your mouth, put your head down, and drive on.

But, if you’re me, you can’t drive through the next part. You’ve got a full head of steam that’s not enough to get you through the storm. You grow, you learn, you start to doubt. You start to think, and then you start to hate all the things about yourself that got you where you are.

But you’ve never killed anyone. You haven’t been in combat. You haven’t left Maryland. You’re in class all day. The rifle they gave you for parades hasn’t functioned in 30 years. But none of that matters. It gets bad. You get out.

Time heals. It gets better, kind of.

You still spend eleven years thinking about that Oath, asking yourself how you ended up there in the first place, wondering if you’ve gleaned some salvageable truths from the experience, and hoping beyond hope that one day you’ll make a difference that will make it all okay. There’s a penance, and you owe.

It’s July 1st, again. 2008! @ 7:19 PM

"Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the..."

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:15:04 -0400

“Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the federal government. Over the next few they might just take over the whole darn thing.”

- David Brooks

"Of course the agreement is called a “free trade” agreement, but that is just part of the..."

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:23:05 -0400

“Of course the agreement is called a “free trade” agreement, but that is just part of the sales pitch, just like when President Reagan tried to name the MX missile the “peacekeeper” in the hope of making it more appealing to the public.”

- Dean Baker on the Colombia “free trade” agreement

Yes, because what NBA officiating really needs is to be run more...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:43:14 -0400

Yes, because what NBA officiating really needs is to be run more like the war in Iraq.

It’s a Boom MarketBaron is leaving $17.8mm on the table...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:05:00 -0400

It’s a Boom Market

Baron is leaving $17.8mm on the table and opting out. Has the Bay Area’s Bearded Era come to an end? This may explain why when I shouted “Warrior-ball, baby!” to him the other day after that Steve Nash charity soccer match, I got back a merely tepid acknowledgment. I love Boom, but he’s right to be nervous: is there anyone (who doesn’t suck) who can afford to pay him? I’d pay good money to see Baron running the D’Antoni offense here. It’s a long (long) shot, but I don’t see the Knicks winning the Lebron sweepstakes in 2010 anyway, so would rolling the dice on Davis really be such a bad look? Plus: the Baron Davis / Beatrice Inn Era. This must happen.

Supreme Court, Inc.

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:32:26 -0400

A generation ago, progressive and consumer groups petitioning the court could count on favorable majority opinions written by justices who viewed big business with skepticism — or even outright prejudice. An economic populist like William O. Douglas, the former New Deal crusader who served on the court from 1939 to 1975, once unapologetically announced that he was “ready to bend the law in favor of the environment and against the corporations.”
Today, however, there are no economic populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests, up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average, between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its first two terms — and all of them were decided in favor of the corporate defendants.

—Jeffrey Rosen on the Supreme Court’s turn toward business
NY Times Sunday Magazine | March 16, 2008

Believe it.

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:30:55 -0400

Believe it.

Paintings From a POW Camp

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:19:31 -0400

[via]

This story was written by Gail Delaney, the daughter of a Hong Kong prisoner of War. Her father, Mr. John “Jack” Burton was captured by the enemy in Hong Kong before his ship even docked. He spent four long years as a prisoner of war living in horrific conditions. But, in one of the prison camps, he created a friendship with a fellow prisoner and artist, Mr. William Allister.
Two paintings. Two lives. One shared experience. This story of ‘prison camp art’ proves that the human spirit cannot be crushed – even in its darkest moments.

As a 22-year-old in Toronto, my father, John Burton, joined the military in Toronto to see the world. In the fall of 1941, 1,975 Canadian Soldiers were sent to Hong Kong. After Japan’s inevitable entry into the war, the leaders knew there was no hope of victory, nor of evacuation, nor of relief – and they were right.
On Christmas Day, seventeen days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the massively outnumbered Allied troops admitted defeat. Of the Canadian troops, 290 had been killed, 1,675 had been taken prisoners of war. What they endured for the next 44 months in no way resembled the conventional definition of the term.
My dad was one of those POWs who rarely spoke of the four-year nightmare, only at times to guilt us into eating our supper because he could not tolerate waste — especially when food was involved.
Another POW and friend of my dad’s, William Allister from British Columbia, was an artist and writer. The paintings below are ones that William painted for my dad in 1942. He used a piece of tent canvas, bristles from a shoe brush wired onto a stick, and for paint he used crank case oil and cranberries for colouring.
One picture depicts their guarded housing units, and the other picture shows a sinking ship in Hong Kong Bay.

The paintings were well hidden until they dried. Then, my Dad rolled them up and sewed them into the inside of his pant leg where they stayed for over 3 years.
By the time of liberation in September of 1945, 267 of the POWs had died and the rest were barely clinging to a semblance of life.
The POWs were all shipped to Vancouver where they were hospitalized, and thoroughly evaluated mentally and physically. Upon dad’s return to Toronto, he had the two canvases cleaned and framed. They hung over our living room couch all my life.
After both my parents passed away, I brought them to my home on Prince Edward Island where they still hang, above my living room couch, in silent memory.

claudia: matthewb: Malt Liquor. (via Peter Nidzgorski)

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:18:53 -0400

claudia: matthewb: Malt Liquor. (via Peter Nidzgorski)

"The most cynical interpretation of history cannot deny that most of our people did care and do care..."

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:14:47 -0400

“The most cynical interpretation of history cannot deny that most of our people did care and do care for the common good. Those who hold differently betray ignorance, and I think they invite pity. They invite the thing that has come to so many areas of the earth where, because of cynicism and indifference and falsity to democracy, we see now that saddest of all things in the human story—the epitaph of a vanished freedom.”

- Grattan O’Leary
“The Right Honorable Arthur Meighen”, 1971

"You may ask why do I dwell so much on eloquence and words and debate and so on? I do, my friends,..."

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:07:00 -0400

“You may ask why do I dwell so much on eloquence and words and debate and so on? I do, my friends, because I place tremendous stress on the value of words. Words are the things which distinguish us from the animals; words are the only things by which we communicate in this world. Words. Words whose transcendent meanings call up the best passions of all the bygone times, steeped through with tears of triumph and remorse—sweet and painful and cleansed in fire.”

- Grattan O’Leary
“The Right Honorable Arthur Meighen”, 1971

"Democracies operate by persuasion, and men are persuaded by ideas and ideas are packaged in words...."

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:57:25 -0400

“Democracies operate by persuasion, and men are persuaded by ideas and ideas are packaged in words. One of the problems in our time is that we suffer from a paucity of ideas surrounded by a plethora of words.”

- Grattan O’Leary
Recollections of People, Press & Politics

"On the advice of some readers I picked up Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the..."

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:03:22 -0400

“On the advice of some readers I picked up Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World where I learned that Genghis Khan banned torture in his empire. So, yes, under George W. Bush the United States of America is regressing to an understanding of humane treatment of people that doesn’t reflect the enlightened views of Genghis Khan. That’s your feel-good thought of the day.”

- Yglesias (via hellofriend)

Journalist John Spivak took a series of photos at forced labor...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:14:00 -0400

Journalist John Spivak took a series of photos at forced labor camps in Georgia in the 1930s. Many of them are included in Douglas Blackmon’s new book, Slavery By Another Name, which chronicles the Age of Neoslavery that existed throughout the American south from shortly after the Civil War up until the 1940s.

Blackmon is the Atlanta bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. Here he talks about the book with Bill Moyers.

[]African-Americans thousands and thousands of them worked for years and years of their lives with no compensation whatsoever, no ability to end up buying property and enjoying the mechanisms of accumulating wealth in the way that white Americans did. This was a part of denying black Americans access to education, denying black Americans access to basic infrastructure, like paved roads, the sorts of things that made it possible for white farmers to become successful.
[The] whole regime of the Black Codes, the way that they were enforced, the physical intimidation and racial violence that went on, all of these were facets of the same coin that made it incredibly less likely that African-Americans would emerge out of poverty in the way that millions of white Americans did at the same time.
[]These are events unlike Antebellum slavery. These are things that connect directly to the lives and the shape and pattern and structure of our society today.

"Theory of Applied Batmatics: Insist on reality — no effects, no tricks — up to the point where..."

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:59:00 -0400

“Theory of Applied Batmatics: Insist on reality — no effects, no tricks — up to the point where insisting on reality becomes unrealistic. Then, in postproduction, make what is necessarily unreal as real as possible.”

- Wired on Chris Nolan’s commitment to realism in making The Dark Knight.

Phoenix - “Twenty-One One Zero”First track off...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:20:28 -0400

Phoenix - “Twenty-One One Zero”

First track off their new album, due this fall. This seems like it could be a return to the Phoenix I prefer, the Phoenix of United and Alphabetical. As opposed to the “generic rock band” Phoenix of It’s Never Been Like That (Boring!). These guys are at their best when they embrace beats and keys, and their best is damn good.

Gabe and Aaron’s cat, Horace, and Gabe’s worms...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:48:49 -0400

Gabe and Aaron’s cat, Horace, and Gabe’s worms (unclear whether or not this is to scale). I don’t know this cat, but I like his style.

Photo

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:18:41 -0400

"I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And..."

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:10:00 -0400

“I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, ‘Carlin already did it.’”

- Jerry Seinfeld

Dept. of George Lucas Is A Giant Tool

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:22:00 -0400

Dept. of George Lucas Is A Giant Tool