4.3.03

VVV Ninja-posting while I wait to get picked up to go to the airport. I just ran across a transcript of Howard Dean's interview on Face The Nation, and I had a couple observations.

1) I'm glad they called him on using "unilateral," and I hope he stops it. While Matt Yglesias (I'm too lazy to find the link to the post) may have a point that "unilateral" conveys some of the right sense -- that the war is the US's project and its international base of support is quite narrow -- in point of fact it's not correct. And it comes off as a little disingenous for Dean to be so loose with a definition when he makes an issue of Bush's misleading use of "quotas" to describe Michigan's affirmative action policy, and rejects the term "partial-birth abortion." Saying "unilateral" may win him more friends among the doves than it loses among the pedants, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

2) He sounded like a broken record talking about North Korea. They asked about Iran, and within a few sentences he was back on about how big a threat North Korea is. And it wasn't like he was adding detail to his stance on North Korea (until they specifically asked him about it). I know it's important to drive home campaign themes, but he came off sounding like he was trying to push a talking point rather than speaking from a sophisticated knowledge of the geopolitical situation. With foreign policy destined to be a top item in 2004, and Dean's reputation as a foreign policy lightweight already established, I feel like he can't get away with just talking points. And again, whatever the strategic value, I don't like it.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 02:59 -- link --

3.3.03

VVV I'm gone for the rest of the week to the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in New Orleans. When I come back I'm sure to have all kinds of exciting geography observations to tell you about. Aren't you excited.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 15:07 -- link --

2.3.03

VVV With the warmer weather, I'm feeling less angry about my heating system. And today I found a new target for my wrath: Quicktime. For a long time I had had problems with Quicktime. Any videos had this horrible gurgling underwater sound to them. This was somewhat annoying, since it prevented me from watching the Time Cube debate at MIT. I thought the problem might be that Quicktime hadn't installed properly. So I downloaded the newest version. Things weren't any better. And today I discovered that the site I use to practice Finnish -- which had worked beautifully before -- has been corrupted by the underwater sound. Quicktime: To the kiosk with you!
posted by Stentor Danielson at 19:41 -- link --

VVV John Quiggin asks about the " the relationship between cleaning up litter and environmentalism." I've heard the kind of arguments that he references as reflecting negatively on the relationship -- far-left warnings that little steps like picking up litter and recycling reduce the pressure to bring down the whole corrupt capitalist system. But I think John's conclusion that "the impact has been to reinforce support for environmentalism" is correct, for two reasons:

1) Cleaning up litter is empowering. If we see environmental problems as the result of global political-economic structures, there seems to be little we can do short of dedicating ourselves to some sort of socialist solidarity movement. This is not an option available or appealing to most people. There would be a tendency to give up on caring about the environment, since it seems like there's little we can do. I'm not saying that cleaning up litter is itself going to fix much of the negative impacts we have on the environment, but it still gives the litter-cleaner something.

2) Taking action makes you feel more committed to the side you're acting on behalf of. I've argued this point before with reference to protesting the war, and I think it holds here. While other forms of environmentalist empowerment like buying organic food may create a stronger commitment to the movement (which could in a sense be a negative, since it's harder to get people to take such a big step), picking up litter has a few important advantages. First, it's hard to argue that less litter is a bad thing -- while picking it up may be seen as a waste of effort, few people wish there were more McDonald's cups along the side of the road. Second, it appeals to an important human value -- cleanliness. And it connects the litter-picker to the strongest emotional/philosophical basis for environmentalism -- an appreciation of the beauty of nature. Right or wrong, preserving natural beauty is the most important motivation for public environmentalism.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 15:38 -- link --

VVV I'm looking at eBay's Everything Else > Weird Stuff > Totally Bizarre category. Certainly most of the stuff in here is at least rather bizarre -- the talking middle finger lighter, the fake bullet holes, or the haunted diet pill, for example. But I'm not seeing the bizarreness angle on the car vacuum or the backpack.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 01:14 -- link --