sikrit info

I <3 Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:06:11 GMT

Until further notice I will be blogging at sikritinfo.blogspot.com so I can more easily use voice recognition software.

Status report

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:11:27 GMT

Still limited to less than an hour daily typing. Also, I'm on vacation in Costa Rica until the 29th; I might be able to read email sometimes. Last time I went on vacation Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized - please try not to blow anything else up while I'm gone.

Past lessons

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:50:03 GMT

The more I read about China, the more I am reminded of Tocqueville's analysis of the French Revolution:

Revolutions are not always brought about by a gradual decline from bad to worse. Nations that have endured patiently and almost unconsciously the most overwhelming oppression, often burst into rebellion against the yoke the moment it begins to grow lighter. The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform. A sovereign who seeks to relieve his subjects after a long period of oppression is lost, unless he be a man of great genius. Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable, become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested. The very redress of grievances throws new light on those which are left untouched, and adds fresh poignancy to their smart : if the pain be less, the patient's sensibility is greater.'

Then again, China is still pretty damn authoritarian, so maybe it'll all turn out fine.

How to spend your American Airlines frequent flyer points

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:03:35 GMT

One heuristic is to assume between 0.5 and 1 cent/point. At 3200 points, a subscription to The Economist is still way cheaper than paying ~$100 in cash. Since AA points expire after 18 months if there is no activity, this seems well worth it. A number of newspapers and magazines are availabile.

The Good War, or, The Most Famous Classic Blunder

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:13:25 GMT

I'm reading some essays Chomsky wrote in the 1960s, about Vietnam... It's worth remembering that Vietnam was a liberal project, supported by two Democratic presidents. Here's an update on the war our current batch of Democratic leaders can all believe in:

KABUL, July 9 (Reuters) - Foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military must exercise caution to avoid further civilian casualties while hunting militants in Afghanistan, or people will rise against them, lawmakers have warned.

...

"They should not act like the former Soviet Union did in Afghanistan," the [Afghan upper house of parliament] said in a statement, the Anis daily newspaper reported.

It was referring to the 10 years Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s when Moscow's forces relied heavily on air raids in the war against guerrillas known as mujahideen, or Muslim holy fighters, causing widespread destruction and civilian deaths.

Update:

From today's Washington Post:

Congress has quietly used fiscal 2008 legislation on military construction to signal that it plans on a long-term military presence in Afghanistan.

In the recently approved supplemental funding bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, legislators approved construction of a $62 million ammunition storage facility at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, where 12 planned "igloos" will support Army and Air Force needs.

...

In another sign that U.S. troops will be there a long time, the Army requested, and Congress provided, $41 million for a 30-megawatt power plant at Bagram. It is capable of generating enough electricity for a town of more than 20,000 homes.

Great moments in Mad Science

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:21:47 GMT

RSI strikes again

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:41:27 GMT

No typing for me, use phone to reach me.

Meme of the week

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:27:43 GMT

Public privacy: practices that protect against widespread privacy violation of the public at large, e.g. sending mail in envelopes. Or do you have a better phrase for it?

Unfinished essay

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:20:40 GMT

I love books. I love their physical feel, the beauty of text laid out on a page, and most of all the chance of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. But we book readers are an ever smaller breed, having faced first the onslaught of radio and television and in these later days the draw of video games and the Internet. Having first learned the love of books from my parents, long time readers themselves, the solution to this problem seems obvious: book readers must only marry other book readers. Only thus can we be certain that our children will not be tempted by other media. "The best way to have a home that expresses a love for reading books is to share your home with a life partner who loves being a reader."

That last sentence is, of course, not a completely accurate quote: it comes from Tough Questions Jews Ask, by Rabbi Edward Feinstein, a book aimed Jewish teenagers. The tough question in this case is "Why Should I Marry Someone Jewish?" Rabbi Feinstein first approaches this question with a musical metaphor (p. 123): "Suppose I love classical music. What would happen if I have an intimate relationship with someone who hates classical music but loves heavy-metal rock? I'm into symphonies ... she collects Metallica, Megadeath, Nine Inch Nails. ... I wouldn't be able to take my partner to the concerts I enjoy ... [or] share the thrill of finding a great CD... Such a relationship would mean that I would have to give up a great deal of myself. What kind of love is that? And how long could we be happy?" In other words, the Jewish reader should marry someone Jewish because only someone who shares their culture will truly make them happy.

Are classical music and heavy metal really so incompatible? I could point to the genre of symphonic metal, which is influenced by classical and operatic music (at least, according to Wikipedia, though I first heard of such bands from a friend who loves both jazz and heavy metal.) But a more obvious example is the Metallica album S&M, a collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra that came out in 1999, four years before Rabbi Feinstein's book. My girlfriend pointed to the band Apocalyptica, a group of "classically trained cellists" (Wikipedia again) who released an album of Metallica covers in 1996.

While it's certainly unfair to require Rabbi Feinstein to be an expert on popular music, I think his choice of metaphor is significant. He starts with the unobjectionable claim that one probably cannot be happy with someone whose culture is too different from one's own (p. 124): "Eventually, we get tired of all the compromising that such relationships require. We get tired of giving up the things that mean so much to us." But as we see with his approach to music, he goes further than that. Rabbi Feinstein believes that cultures don't merge or blend, but rather are distinct entities with clearly defined borders. Heavy metal and classical music are too dissonant to combine, and the same goes for religion (p. 81): "Being a Christian is very admirable ... [and] being a Jew is equally admirable ... but being a 'Jew for Jesus' combines things that are impossible to mix."

And yet organizations like Jews for Jesus and the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations do exist, and they at least would claim the combination is not only possible but necessary for their members. Rabbi Feinstein asks (p. 125), "if you think a lot about the Holocaust, about Israel, about Torah, wouldn't you be happier spending your life with someone who shared all this with you?" According to the UMJC's website they "envision Messianic Judaism as a movement ... committed to Yeshua the Messiah that embrace the covenantal responsibility of Jewish life and identity rooted in Torah ...", and certainly Israel and the Holocaust appear to be important to them. What Rabbi Feinstein sees as immovable borders simply don't exist at all to others.

...

That's how far I got before running out of typing time, and getting distracted by other ideas. Somewhere in the final result, if I ever get back to it, will be a pivotal event in my youth: my failure to stop two former classmates from burning a copy of the New Testament (their Rabbi told them to burn it.) I don't think Feinstein would actually support such a thing, but it peeves me when people tell me how deep in my soul only Jews are my brethren. Including, apparently, Jewish Orthodox men who every morning at the beginning of their prayers say "Blessed are Thou for not making me a woman." Hilariously, Feinstein describes the different Jewish movements (including the Orthodox) as different instruments in a single beautiful orchestra. Though Ultra Orthodox Jews believe a woman's singing is impure, so presumably they're not playing opera.

Attention to details

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:00:38 GMT

Sometimes I think Ha'aretz, admittedly one of the less militaristic newspapers in Israel, sugarcoats its English edition. Consider this lovely incident:

In another instance, soldiers at roadblocks choked 10-year-old Palestinians with their bare hands until the children passed out. "Hebron is like the Wild West and the army is the law," a soldier said. "We would see who could go without breathing the longest."

But here's what the Hebrew version said - I translated the rest:

"We would see who could go without breathing the longest. How do you check? You choke them. You block the trachea, push on the Adam's Apple. It's unpleasant. You look at your watch meanwhile, check who takes the longest to faint."

The English version of article talks about another incident where "one of the soldiers is accused of exposing himself." The Hebrew version says that one of the soldiers "was documented waving his penis in front of the face of a Palestinian detainee."

Of course, those involved will be put on trial, but it's worth noting what these soldiers' task is: enforcing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Consider this incident:

"We'd go on a patrol," one soldier told Channel 2. "If even one kid looked at us the wrong way, he'd be slapped. Rocks were thrown at us during one patrol, and we caught one of the kids who knew the perpetrators. We beat the crap out of him until he told us who did it." The soldier said that he and other soldiers tracked down a boy said to be involved, aged 14, and placed the tips of their rifles in his mouth. "We said, 'You want to die? Just say when and where,'" the soldier recalled.

Now compare it to another incident involving the same unit, recounted by a peace activist who took a video you can apparently see on the website:

"It was around noon; we were accompanying shepherds from the village of Tuba to a nearby Wadi, because the settlers regularly hassle them and throw stones in our direction," he recounted.

"The settlers demanded that the shepherds evacuate the area, and IDF soldiers who arrived at the scene also attempted to clear the Palestinian shepherds from their grazing fields; then, in the middle of the argument and for no apparent reason, the soldiers pulled down their pants and exposed their rear ends to us."

These soldiers will all return to civilian life in Israel in a year or two.