'Bred Crumbs
03.06.03
Military analyst and adviser Thomas Barnett's piece in Esquire, of all places, is the most persuasive case for war on Iraq that I, a skeptic, have read or heard. It replaces the usual emotion, simplicity, and reflexive ideology with heaps of logic, honesty, and fairness. The power of globalization is at the core of the argument, which is in some ways unnerving given that the keys to globalization are listed as "banking, tariffs, copyright protection" and, almost incidentally, "environmental standards." But the postulate that globalization has stabilized the parts of the world that successfully adopt it is compelling, and there's an appealing implication that America will be required to share the wealth to truly get the whole world more connected and, so the theory goes, less dangerous.
The theory doesn't erase my mistrust of the Bush administration and its motives for war, its dismissiveness of world opinion, and the degree to which it is willing to let freedom be subverted in the course of supposedly spreading it. And the article doesn't consider whether something besides military action could close the "gap" of disconnectedness that marks the world's terror sources. But Barnett's argument is strikingly well made, and as the all-but-certain war looms it's good to be able, for the first time, to think it could even possibly have a positive long-term outcome. (Link via Metafilter)
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Sunday night/Monday morning's edition of the radio program SciFi Overdrive features Farscape mastermind David Kemper and former MST3K conspirator Kevin Murphy. Sounds like a show that was made for me, so why isn't it on a station near me? Oh wait, maybe it is. Praise ye again, Internet.
03.05.03
If an invasion is "regime change" and global warming is "climate change," what other Republican-spawned candy-coated "changes" can we look forward to?
- Hemmorhaging deficit = accounting change
- Infringement of privacy = information change
- Imperialism = diplomacy change
- Religious oppression = philosophy change
- Suppression of dissent = freedom change
- Corporate inhumanity = responsibility change
- Unemployment = lifestyle change
- Depression = prosperity change
This ills that can be shrouded by this language need not be political or governmental:
- Addiction = priority change
- An affair = fidelity change
- Divorce = household change
- Child abuse = discipline change
- Malpractice = treatment change
And to make us feel better all-around, the approach can also be used for things often beyond human control:
- Flood = humidity change
- Earthquake = landscape change
- Paralysis = mobility change
- Disease = comfort change
- Death = existence change
03.03.03
Dig that crazy date!
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The stage was set for justice, but it declined to perform.
Saturday night, when we were walking from Market to Rawhide for New Wave City, just as we started crossing Howard, a young woman in – let's say it together, shall we? – an SUV raced through the crosswalk, careening right on red without even the pretense of stopping.
The problem, aside from her reckless failure to even bother to check for pedestrians daring to use their right of way, was that the street she was turning right onto is one way. The other way.
The cool part was that a police car was sitting right there, waiting behind a left-turner, just two lanes over from the thought-free SUV driver, now struggling to bail her and her needlessly giant vehicle out of their upstream bind. Several of us standing and walking there noticed, and cheered, and eagerly awaited the jerk's comeuppance.
But the cop didn't do anything, just went on down the street when the way was clear.
Damn. Maybe he had an indictment to get to.
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The Small Hours/Dealership all-"plugged" happy-hour show Saturday (and, thanks to $3 draft Red Hooks, I got quite happy indeed, at 6 in the evening) was my first-ever visit to a cool little rock bar called Thee Parkside, and my lingering main observation is that there were more babies and toddlers there than I'd expected.
Which is to say, any.
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