As we evolve...

Hitchens always offers something to say and a brief review of the last three posts in his Slate "Fighting Words" column shows that he is two for his last three. The old curmudgeon can still hit a little, eh? The column dated 7/7/08 on the death of Jesse Helms is definately a double to the gap.

I make no apology for calling him a provincial redneck, because that, to be fair to him once more, was how he thought of himself and even described himself. It was a scandal that a man with so little knowledge of the outside world should have had such a stranglehold on American foreign policy for so long. He once introduced Benazir Bhutto as the prime minister of India. All right, that could have happened to anybody. But what about the hearings on North Korea in which he made repeated references to "Kim Jong the Second"? In order to prevent any repetition of this idiotic gaffe, Helms' staff propped up a piece of card on which was clearly written the pronunciation "Kim Jong ILL." The senator from North Carolina duly made the adjustment, referring thenceforth to the North Korean despot as "Kim Jong the Third."

Good riddance Jesse...

I won't go into great detail on his post from July 14th on what he feels is a false zero-sum choice proposed by liberals with regard to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I feel this piece is either a hard line out to right center, or maybe it is reaching on an error by the left side of the infield? I am not as convinced as Mr. Hitchens that the war in Iraq is going as well as he would have it, but he does make one point in reference to the Afghanistan war that I believe to be of import.

It would also be very nice to accept another soft-centered corollary of the Iraq vs. Afghanistan trade-off and to believe that the problem of Afghanistan is a problem only of the shortage of troops. Strangely, this is not the view of the Afghan government or of any of the NATO forces on the ground. The continued and, indeed, increasing insolence of the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies is the consequence of one thing and one thing only. These theocratic terrorists know that they have a reliable backer in the higher echelons of the Pakistani state and of its military-intelligence complex and that while this relationship persists, they are assured of a hinterland across the border and a regular supply of arms and recruits.

Until Pakistan gets serious about the insurgents in the Tribal Regions, an area much neglected and extremely economically and politically depressed, there will be no true "peace" in Afghanistan... no matter how many NATO or US troops are there.

And finally we have the blind salamander column dated July 21st. In this column Hitchens offers an interesting argument against the entire mindset of linear progression, which is of primary import to the Creationists (and is at least partially shared by many other humans). Hitchens proposes considering our current position not as the resultant of a natural progression, but as the temporary status quo of an ongoing and dynamic process, whereby things (cells, organs, organisms, ecosytems, planets, galaxies, etc.) come and go. There is no ultimate end to evolution, it is merely a part of the ongoing change that is the universe.

I am not myself able to add anything about the formation of light cells, eyespots, and lenses, but I do think that there is a dialectical usefulness to considering the conventional arguments in reverse, as it were. For example, to the old theistic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" we can now counterpose the findings of professor Lawrence Krauss and others, about the foreseeable heat death of the universe, the Hubble "red shift" that shows the universe's rate of explosive expansion actually increasing, and the not-so-far-off collision of our own galaxy with Andromeda, already loomingly visible in the night sky. So, the question can and must be rephrased: "Why will our brief 'something' so soon be replaced with nothing?" It's only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design.

Torture, it is...

Hitchens penned an interesting piece of journalism in the August Vanity Fair, discussing his own experience being waterboarded. His writing is excellent as ever, with some interesting conclusions:

I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer.

The truly interesting part of this article is that Hitchens doesn't apply his conclusion that waterboarding is torture to the bigger issue of what this means for America and its image. George Packer takes up this idiosynchrosy in his work in the July 3rd New Yorker.

Feminism, Poverty, Crime, Electric Cars, 11 Big Ideas...

and more. All in the July/August edition of The Atlantic. This issue is being billed as the "ideas" issue, which being the donkey I am begs the question, what are all the other issues supposed to be? But on a more SERIOUS note, there are a number of very interesting components to this summer issue. I would love to link to each of these articles or essays, but unfortunately they are not up on the website (previously linked) as of the date of this being published. Following is a brief rundown of the issue's more interesting components:

Hanna Rosin discusses the rise of crime in many American cities, specifically those of the mid-sized variety. This article focuses on Memphis and specifically on the correlation between crime and the prevalence of Section 8 vouchers in an area. There are countless issues that arise out of discussing this correlation, and many officials are wary to do so, but even if it isn't causal (and what is really when you talk about poverty and crime) there is plenty of room for discussion here.

Nicholas Carr offers the cover story on the effects of the Internet on our brains. I know that a couple of the passages resonated particularly strongly with me, such as

"What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."

I know the feeling. It does seem we are altering our ability to handle large swaths of difficult text.

I didn't read the article on "What Rumsfeld Got Right," because I'm pretty sure the correct answer is two words: Not much.

The 11 1/2 biggest ideas of the year, penned by a variety of contributors (including Fallows, Crook, and Sullivan) offered promise -- but came up a bit short to me. The surge, renting, post-partisanship, mass-market atheism, torture, social networking politics, the return of regulation, personal genomics, not bombing Iran, Carbon Consciousness, the End of 9/11, and being lonely at the top (an aside on the sexual escapades of the powerful) all seem so intriguing, but are glossed over a bit... Maybe they read the Carr piece?

Jonathan Rauch's piece on the Chevy Volt (electric car) project was a good read and offered an interesting look at a project that has lots of hope for America, the world, the environment and GM. All this hope, of course, makes one wonder if it can possibly fulfill it's promise. Rauch doesn't hold out much hope for the behemoth of a company being able to fulfill all of the promises made, but seems to think some good may come from this. We shall see.

Goldberg offers us a piece on the science of "neuromarketing," whereby scientists attempt to map our brain's activity and response to images. This could be used to discern the success of an advertising campaign of course, but as Goldberg points out is more likely to be a vanity project for the well to do and overly self interested in the near term.

"Distracting Miss Daisy" is another argument for limiting the number of traffic signs all over the American roadway. This idea has been floated around before, but we seem to love the idea that a sign makes us safer, when studies and statistics seem to indicate otherwise. The biggest boon to traffic safety is more aware drivers, and four way stops are just one example that makes true awareness of the surroundings secondary to obedience to signage.

I skimmed the article on Rupert's plans to take the Wall Street Journal to war with the New York Times, which probably makes Rupert happy and the author Mark Bowden said, given that Rupert's idea of journalism is focused primarily on scooping a sensational story and using that to fill the content of all his various outlets. Damn, I have to reread this article just to piss him off now.

The Critics section has a lot to offer as well, with Hitchens on Rushdie; Sandra Tsing Loh on modern women's work, parenting, etc.; and Virginia Postrel on a new theory of the leisure class based around inconspicuous consumption. The Tsing Loh and Postrel pieces are very good, and should be read for yourself, so I won't go into too much detail here.

Wow, kind of a long post, but I have to admit this issue was one of the most satisfying print mags I've read in quite some time... and I'm totally SERIOUS.

McCain's Rose Colored Glasses...

Apparently, McCain doesn't think we will have to fight the war in Iraq for 100 years anymore, but maybe we can win by 2013.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,” Mr. McCain said at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. “The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.”

I am a little concerned that the "best" scenario McCain could come up with is "winning" in another four and half years -- and this "win" would still entail a troop present and "spasmodic" violence... I don't know that I can accept the idea that a functioning democracy can tolerate "spasmodic" political/ethnic violence. And what is so miraculous about 2013? What is going to happen in the next four and a half years that hasn't in the last five? Well, the one sure answer under McCain's watch is that more American troops and Iraqi civilians will die in a war zone.