Since I am an old geezer, I welcomed the new year by being fast asleep. But I am not a total misanthrope. I will be entertaining some friends this evening. But what better way to start the new year than with some laughter?
Here’s John Oliver with advice for anyone who wants to get out of attending new year’s eve parties. This is a bit late I know but it also applies to any other parties.
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I have lived only once, for a period of eight months, in a large high-rise apartment building in a big city, and that was Philadelphia. What surprised me was that even though our apartment was at the end of a long corridor that had a large number of apartments, I never got to know a single one of my neighbors or even passed them in the hallway except near the very end when I encountered the person who lived just across the hall. He turned out to be a writer and we had a brief but interesting conversation in the hallway about the philosophy of science. I regretted getting to know him only just before we moved but there is something about apartment dwelling that seems to discourage getting to know one’s neighbors.
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A few days ago, I wrote about how corruption in Sri Lankan politics has become so brazen that politicians argue that it is better to return incumbents who have become wealthy while in office rather than elect new people who are seeking to join the ranks of the affluent and will thus initiate a new round of bribery and theft.
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James Fallows has a long cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine titled The Tragedy of the American Military where he attacks the current attitude in the US where it has become obligatory to talk about the military in hushed and reverential tones as an institution whose members and actions are above criticism, saying that it results in a lack of critical self-examination that leads to the rise of careerists in the ranks and a general ineptitude.
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I have been taking a vacation during the holiday period and spent a lot of the time watching cricket. I am not sure when it became the norm in sports to openly exult over victory and to taunt the opponents. Nowadays it seems routine to do fist pumps, finger pointing, and engage in other exaggerated celebrations over every single achievement. I know that Mohammed Ali made taunting an opponent part of his standard behavior and maybe he can claim the dubious credit for starting the practice.
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The US is holding a large number of undocumented immigrant children in various locations around the country. In order to cope with their needs, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a call for bids to supply 42,000 pairs of underwear to them. One anti-immigrant group known as the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) has started “Underwear for Illegals” and called on its followers to send in dirty underwear instead.
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I am sure that all of us have misheard the lyrics of songs. My own favorite is the beginning of the Beach Boys song Help me Rhonda where I thought it sounded like they sang, “Well, since you put me down, there’ve been owls sleeping in my bed”. Of course, this was preposterous but that’s what it sounded like. (In my defense, the actual words are supposed to be “Well, since she put me down I ‘ve been out doin’ in my head” which does not make much more sense. For the longest time I also thought they were appealing to Wanda.) Each of us can give many examples of getting phrases or song words wrong.
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Democracy Now! reports that there have been some encouraging signs about prosecuting key US officials for war crimes.
A human rights group in Berlin, Germany, has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has accused former Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, and called for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor. The move follows the release of a Senate report on CIA torture which includes the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was captured by CIA agents in 2004 due to mistaken identity and tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan. So far, no one involved in the CIA torture program has been charged with a crime — except the whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed it.
I like optical illusions because they remind us that seeing is not a passive experience of experiencing faithfully what is out there but involves a considerable amount of processing by the brain. Via Mark Frauenfelder here is another one that I found intriguing where just by placing pieces of paper in an arrangement, a regular checkerboard can be made to look as if it is bulging.
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