VVV My commentary and comics from this week are now online. posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:21 -- link --
VVV CalPundit asks today whether there is such a thing as athletic ability. He lists a number of factors that contribute to athletic ability, to which I'd add body shape/size, stamina, and a set of mental attributes like agressiveness and competitiveness.
Athletic ability is, by definition, the ability to perform athletic feats. A brief consideration will show that ability in one athletic feat does not necessarily translate to ability at another athletic feat. You can be a great cross-country runner but a terrible football player, and vice versa. Different athletic feats require different muscles, different body types (think sumo wrestler vs jockey), and so forth. This applies within sports as well as between them -- it takes different qualities to be able to hit home runs vs to be able to pitch a no-hitter. Yet this does not mean that everyone is equally athletically talented, though. There are complementarities among athletic training and genetic proclivities for various sports.
The question that arises, then, is whether we can aggregate abilities at different athletic feats into a single scale of ability, and (crucially) whether that aggregation is useful for anything. Aggregating abilities would require us to be able to put ability within each athletic task on a common scale. Since sports commentators argue for ages about which players are better than others, I have doubts of our ability to do that. But let's say we could, through a series of laboratory tests, establish a person's ability to throw, and to block pucks, and to run, and so forth. We'd still face the problem of how to combine them. Is each element equally valuable? Or should they be weighted somehow? And on what basis would you assign weights -- maybe the prevalence of each activity within the sports that are currently played around the world? It seems an impossible task.
Thus, athletic ability is not a universally operational concept -- it's not a thing, but rather a vague and informal aggregate of things. However, it becomes more operational as the context and goals become more specific -- because you're trying to combine fewer things. It's easier to say how good a runner John is than to say how good an athlete he is. posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:34 -- link --
20.2.03
VVV There's a lot of talk going around now about the possibility that Turkey could refuse to let the US use its military bases as the starting point for opening up a northern front in the war on Iraq. Turkey is demanding a hefty sum of money from the US, and US officials are publicizing plans for an attack that can work without Turkish cooperation. But I think that Turkey will come around in the end.
It makes sense for Turkey to drag its feet. The current government got to power and derives its legitimacy from popular support, which would be undermined by seeming too eager to side with the US (in Turkey, as in most nations outside the Anglophone world, popular opinion is decidedly dovish). Further, Turkey's number one foreign policy goal is to join the EU, and Turkey must be well aware that France -- which dominates the EU along with fellow dove Germany -- doesn't plan to look kindly on EU hopefuls who help the US in the war.
But Turkey also has to know that it can't stop the war. The demands for aid and military involvement that Turkey has made are meant to offset the costs the war will impose on the nation. The biggest cost, in the minds of Turkish leaders, is the potential for instability among the Kurds. Turkey is paranoid about the prospects of an independent or autonomous Kurdistan, as well as a repeat of the influx of refugees (many of them militant) that followed the Gulf War. Turkey will bear that cost whether or not American troops march through Turkish territory. Indeed, the cost will be greater if Turkey doesn't cooperate with the US, because Turkey won't have permission to take control of Iraqi Kurdish areas (as has been promised in cooperation deals) to prevent Kurdish uprisings. Further, if the US is freed from the need to make concessions to Turkey, it can more easily side with the Kurds, granting them greater autonomy than it would have otherwise, and doing less to control the refugee problem.
So Turkey's choice is essentially to face the consequences of war with, or without, American aid. While it's understandable that Turkey would hold out for the best deal it can get, ultimately it will take America's best offer over no offer. posted by Stentor Danielson at 16:38 -- link --
VVV Folks at The Scarlet want to repaint our walls. The office is filled with graffiti from past editors, who signed their names, jotted their favorite phrases or bragged about great issues (such as a 4000-word sports story), and even drew little cartoons. Most of them are people nobody on staff now remembers. Their slogans don't mean much to us -- though there is a strong consensus to keep the message written in gold paint at eye level in one room, which says "This is the price you pay for the life you choose."
I can sympathize with the desire to clear out all the clutter. I remember many times looking at the random stuff tacked to the Maroon-News bulletin boards -- Chris Pingpank's editor application, a brochure from Beta with glasses and moustaches drawn on the guys, a top ten list from Holy Cross's paper -- and wondering if I should get rid of it, since it didn't mean anything to anyone anymore. We could keep the few things whose meaning was independant of personal associations, like the crank letters from Ed O'Donnell and the printouts from ancient websites about parallel structure, and perhaps begin to fill the boards with things that reflected my class. The old stuff was nice when I first arrived, because it felt like I was entering an organization that had a history and a thick attachment to the place. But after a while I wanted to make the office more our place, something that I made meaningful for myself rather than just inheriting from past people who had some deeper connection to it (though of course that deeper connection could be largely an illusion, an effect of our tendency to collapse the past into a single time period, not realizing the years that separated the class of '92 from the class of '97).
Last year, though, my attitude started to shift. Marty put up some posters explaining how to properly process photos for the paper so that they would look nice in print. I added a sample photo to each one -- Steve Marsi saying "I'm not going to lie to you -- I'm printed properly." And it struck me that within a few years, nobody would be around who remembered Marsi and could hear him saying "I'm not going to lie to you" all night. The photo directions might last because of their utilitarian value, but they would be as meaningless to future editors as the soul records tacked to the board are to me. It was frightening in a way to think of my connections to the place -- embodied in the marks they left on the built environment -- expunged by the next wave of people wanting to make their own fresh connections to the place. At best, the marks I leave would be reinterpreted by new classes. They may come to know and love the back room as "The Stentor Danielson Room of Doom" (as proclaimed by a sign Joe posted above the door), but they're more likely to love it for the mystery of the name than for the memories of Joe Brazauskas proclaiming the room's identity. Even if the Maroon-News had a strong enough culture to really pass down traditions (like I imagine fraternities have), it would be hard for the meaning to remain the same with the high rate of turnover that colleges experience.
Which brings us back to the Scarlet and its graffiti. It seems wrong somehow to erase the record of experience left by past editors. I think it's partly the archaeologist in me, who revels in the hints of the past carried by the markings left, purposefully or inadvertantly, on people's material surroundings. Though I can't know what experience of the office was behind Ty Poe's signature on the ceiling, I can see enough to know that there was something there. And it's nice to feel that I'm in a place with a past, that my feelings about the place are building on what others have seen before me and inscribed as they passed through. posted by Stentor Danielson at 04:53 -- link --
But the Bush administration may have gotten the power calculus wrong. The Kurds have established a real state within a state, with an administration that performs all governmental responsibilities, from education to law enforcement. Their militias number 70,000 to 130,000, and there is a real risk of clashes with any Turkish "humanitarian" force. The democratically elected Kurdistan assembly has already completed work on a constitution for the region that would delegate minimal powers to a central government in Baghdad, and could submit it for a popular vote. Short of arresting Kurdish leaders and the assembly, an American occupation force may have no practical way of preventing the Kurds from going ahead with their federalist project.
And now it seems Turkey's financial demands may exceed what Washington is willing to pay, and Turkey will sit out the war. That could weaken Turkey's influence in creating a postwar Iraq, and improve the Kurds' prospects for self-rule.
Finally, some good news about Kurdish prospects -- though it's buried in a pretty grim article. posted by Stentor Danielson at 19:04 -- link --
VVV I seem to be subconsciously treating electronic equipment as if it were an organism. My strategy for fixing my digital camera has been to leave it alone, and turn it on every now and then to see if it has healed itself. posted by Stentor Danielson at 17:40 -- link --
17.2.03
VVV It's good to know this country's academics aren't above political cheap shots. An article by Rob Krueger and Jody Emel in Local Environments, which was assigned for my environmental hazards class, starts off "The anointing of George W. Bush as the 43rd official inhabitant of the White house..." and later in the paragraph refers to W as "King George."
The thing is, the article isn't even about the Bush administration's environmental policy. It's about gold mine licensing in Montana. "King George" is just part of the context-setting introduction. Now, I understand the desire to locate an article within the larger context, but is it really necessary for every environmental studies article to begin with a couple paragraphs about how our environment is in crisis before getting to the specific substance at hand? You're just supporting the market for needlessly broad generalizations. posted by Stentor Danielson at 17:59 -- link --
VVVMatthew Yglesias thinks that William Raspberry's latest column is arguing that Charles Pickering isn't a racist. But I don't quite think that's what Raspberry is saying. He claims up front that the column is inconclusive, and says he is "intrigued ... though perhaps not in the way the congressman might have hoped." The congressman in question is Pickering's son, who called Raspberry to argue his dad isn't a racist. Most of the column is reporting -- with neither comment nor clear endorsement -- Pickering Jr.'s claims.
I think this column is an example of what makes Raspberry an interesting writer. He is more than willing to think out loud, in print. Unlike most columnists (including myself) who come to you with seemingly finalized conclusions, he can brainstorm on paper. It's pseudo-bloggerish, in a way, especially since he often comes back to talk about previous columns in the context of mail he's gotten about them. So this column is just describing something he's been pondering lately, without forcing it to a premature conclusion. In a sense it's more honest than claiming false certainty on an issue. The process of writing commentary on a deadline can teach you to convince yourself of a position on an issue much faster than you would have otherwise. Slowing down keeps you from being boxed in to a hasty conclusion -- for example, I've found it more difficult to moderate my views on GM food after committing myself to an extremely pro-GM stance in a commentary a few years ago. But at the same time it's frustrating, because we look to columnists to tell us what we ought to think and thereby engage us in a strong debate. posted by Stentor Danielson at 16:07 -- link --
16.2.03
VVV The Washington Post's story about yesterday's protests is sympathetic to a fault. It uses phrasings like "a vast wave of protest" and "the breadth of popular opposition to U.S. policies" and "an extraordinary display of global coordination." You don't get anything remotely critical until halfway down, when there are a couple paragraphs from Tony Blair, and near the end a comment about a small counter-demonstration. The second half has a bunch of stuff that's indirectly critical -- coverage of protests by folks like Saddam-supporting Iraqis that most doves wouldn't like to be linked to. But most people don't read that far. It makes me wonder how much flak the Post has gotten from people claiming the media is pro-war, and whether they're overcompensating. posted by Stentor Danielson at 20:27 -- link --
VVV It turns out Brown's pre-national-anthem patriotic spiel is even longer and more melodramatic than Colgate's. The kind of gushing these announcers do about the people valiantly protecting our freedoms makes a mockery of their attempt to be patriotic. posted by Stentor Danielson at 20:12 -- link --
