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Bush in that Country East of Germany

Saturday 09 June 2007

Bush went to visit Poland during the G8 summit. Yesterday in the car, I heard two different NPR news briefs about it -- not whole reports, but simply a mention in the headlines.

Neither time did the reporter refer to the Polish president by name.

The first time was something about Bush going to Poland to visit "that country's president."

The second time, it was a mention of Bush meeting his "Polish counterpart."

I've wondered why they didn't use the Polish president's name. Is the Bush's Polish counterpart's name so difficult to pronounce? Did the reporter not know the name of the president of Poland?

For the uninformed, it's Lech Kaczenski. (That "n" should have an accent on it.) That would be pronounced "Ka-chenee-ski."

Can they not pronounce it? Can they not remember it? At least they didn't have to say "president of Poland" in Polish -- that is a mouthful: "Prezydent Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej"

Who Killed Sasha?

Friday 08 June 2007

Slate has a detailed examination of the Litvinenko murder, and the nature of polonium, the ultimate smoking gun.

Fairly damning evidence against Andrei Lugovoy:

What can be said at this point is that Lugovoy was shedding radioactivity before Sasha was exposed on November 1. For example, Lugovoy contaminated the leather sofa in Boris's study when he visited him on October 31.

Lugovoy might not have put the polonium in the teapot himself, but he did carry it around.

It's well worth a read.

Romney

Friday 11 May 2007

Sharpton's words about Romney bring to the debate so much that it's difficult to know where to start.

CBS News has a great editorial about this.

Sharpton is entirely justified to question Romney on his views on the racist aspects of Mormonism. Blacks were excluded from assuming positions of power until the late 1970s. We all know, of course, that Romney will condemn that aspect of his religion -- it would be political suicide to do otherwise. In that sense, we'll never know if we got a straight answer from him. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

What's most disturbing about Romney is his religion -- a cult, by the standards of many orthodox Christians. It has all the earmarks:

  • exclusivity
  • specially "revealed" information
  • a founder who was somehow closer to God than anyone else

Oh, wait -- I just described every major monotheistic religion, didn't I?

Romney's Mormonism will be problematic with many of his target constituency of conservative Christians. Evangelicals tend, I believe, to regard Mormons as misguided at best, Satanically deceived at best. Many of these same individuals (who would fall into the umbrella term "fundamentalists") call Catholics non-Christians, and Catholicism is much closer, theologically, to evangelicalism than Mormonism is.

The question is whether Romney's views on abortion and his generally conservative views -- he is a Republican candidate, after all -- will weigh more favorably with traditional Christian voters than his unorthodoxy.

“Background Check? We don’t need no stinkin’ background check”

Friday 20 April 2007

Cho Seung-hui went through the mandatory background check before buying the guns he used in his rampage. No criminal record, no problem.

Yet...

  • He'd been admitted to a mental health care unit within the last eighteen months.
  • Teachers and students alike commented on his disturbing behavior.
  • Complaints had been made about his behavior.
  • A professor had raised concerns about the content of his writing.

But what kind of a background check could have discovered all this?

If if someone has recently received significant mental health care in the same state he's trying to buy a gun, it's conceivable that that information could be available. But since there's no national database of such information, all one would have to do is cross the state line.

Do we want a national database to record that kind of information? I don't think I do.

Do we want to have background checks that include interviews with former educators? Is that even feasible?

Just what kind of background check can stop someone like this from getting a gun? The only solutions I can think of involve national databases and inquiries into very personal information.

Wiki wars

Sunday 04 March 2007

From Language Log, I recently learned about Conservapedia, which, as you might guess from the title, is a conservative Christian version of Wikipedia. (Language Log was interested in Conservapedia's erroneous entries on linguistics.)

Conservapedia's welcome message includes the following explanation: "Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American."

Conservapedia's entry on Wikipedia begins,

Because anyone can edit it, and because of its system of governance, it does not have standards similar to those of printed encyclopedias. As with any wiki, the balance of the content in Wikipedia inevitably represents what its contributors find interesting to write about, rather than what encyclopedias traditionally contain. Thus, gossip and hundreds of thousands of entries about pop songs or celebrities are pervasive on Wikipedia. (Conservapedia)

And what does Wikipedia, in turn, say about Conservapedia? Until recently, nothing. Wikipedia redirected "Conservapedia" to "Eagle Forum," and the entry itself was in the "Articles for Deletion" bin. Most voting for deletion feel it's not notable, it's trivial, etc.

And then Language Log mentioned it, and over the weekend, it's reappeared...

Strong Son

Monday 05 February 2007

According to the Washington Post:

Ryan O'Neal says his weekend arrest came after he fired a gun in self-defense to prevent his son from w him with a fireplace . [...]

O'Neal's son Griffin, 42, who has a history of alcohol and problems, was visiting. O'Neal said Griffin grabbed a fireplace , started swinging it and grazed him four or five times. (Source)

He ripped an entire fireplace out of the wall and swung it at his father? That's some strength.

In all seriousness, I've noticed quite a few such mistakes in the Post lately. In all fairness, this is an AP story, but still...

PETA Suit (Taken Off)

Tuesday 23 January 2007

I heard about this on NPR coming home the other day: Jury selection begins in animal cruelty trial of PETA activists. According to the article,

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of two animal rights activists charged with animal cruelty after they were discovered dumping dead animals in a trash bin.

Adria J. Hinkle, of Norfolk, Va., and Andrew B. Cook, of Virginia Beach, Va., are charged with 21 counts each of animal cruelty in addition to charges of littering and obtaining property by false pretenses. Both volunteered with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.

PETA on the receiving end of an animal abuse case?

According to NPR, this is all just a big misunderstanding, the PETA defense team explains. This local PETA chapter had some kind of agreement with the shelter from which Hinkle and Cook were taking the animals. They were apparently supposed to be euthanizing animals, and the volunteers' only mistake, PETA lawyers explain, was where they chose to leave the bodies.

There's something more than a little odd about this. PETA, euthanizing animals? That sounds about like the NRA melting down illegal assault rifles.

I went to PETA's web site this morning to see if I could find anything out about this odd ly ironic case. Instead, I got distracted by PETA's State of the Union Undress (Warning: the video contains nudity). Apparently, PETA thinks if it has buxom volunteers undress while talking about animal rights, it will get a more attentive audience. One has to wonder what demographic the animal rights organization is targeting with such tactics, and whether said demographic will be receptive to PETA's vegan animal rights position.

Polish Scandal(s)

Wednesday 10 January 2007

The Wielgus scandal in Polska right now highlights the strange role the church plays in the country's collective psyche. Intensely Catholic, Poland is a bit of a paradox when it comes down to praxis -- while most Poles label themselves "Catholic," there is a sizable percentage that doesn't live Catholic. Birth control is not a sin, nor is missing a Sunday mass. Still, Catholicism in Poland is big, to put it crudely. As Anne Applebaum put it in Slate,

This could only have happened in post-Communist Poland. Where else would millions of people be avidly watching the live transmission of an archbishop's inaugural mass? (Source)

I too have experienced the occasional spectator nature of Polish Catholicism. Sitting in a bar before John Paul II died, I was privy to a speculation about who could be his successor. And the discussion included names, and it had the free feeling of fans sitting in a sports bar, discussing the upcoming NFL draft.

The relationship with Communism is equally odd. While no one wants to go back to the days of informants, secret police, and closed borders, there is a longing in some quarters for a return to the "security" of Communism. Take into consideration the fact that the unemployment rate in Poland hovers around 19% and it's clear what that "security" is.

So when these to monolithic components of Polish identity collide, it's bound to be explosive. Even many not-so-devout Poles have a view of the Catholic church as being a stalwart moral guide under Communism. The Polish Catholic church stood up to Communism, and eventually, Communism collapsed. But priests and bishops are fallible, weak people too, it turns out, and the lure of privileges dangled by those in charge proved too tempting to some.

But why the sudden crisis, now, in 2007? John Paul II. Craig Smith writes, in the International Herald Tribune:

Perhaps the most explosive assertion by people in the church is that the taint of collaboration was known for decades but kept quiet out of respect for — or perhaps even at the behest of — Polish-born Pope John Paul II who died in 2005.

"The church didn't want to hurt the pope, but actually, more harm was done by keeping silent," said Zaleski at the hilltop compound of a charitable organization he runs outside of Krakow. (IHT)

So I expect there'll be more of the same in coming months and years.

State Sentence

Saturday 30 December 2006

We’ve all seen the picture of the hooded executioners putting the noose around Saddam’s neck. The International Herald Tribune and the New York Times ran it on their main pages, as did al Jazeera‘s English website. The Washington Post didn’t.

What struck me about the photo was the lack of officialness about everything.

  • The executioners are wearing street clothes.
  • The room looks relatively small, and suspiciously like a randomly chosen room in a building’s basement.
  • The executioners are wearing tattered ski masks.
  • Not only are the executioners not wearing uniforms; not a single uniform is visible anywhere.

Of course, it’s difficult to tell much of anything about the room itself with such a closely cropped photo.

Still, what immediately came to mind when I first saw this was the obvious similarity to all the beheading videos released from Iraq. It hardly looks like an official state action.