City Comforts, the blog

Thoughtful post

The scholarly content of blogging.

Tyler Cowen says:

Don't focus on the single post.  Rather a good blog provides you a whole vision of what a field is about, what the interesting questions are, and how you might answer them.  It is also a new window onto a mind.  And by packaging intellectual content with some personality, bloggers appeal to the biological instincts of blog readers.  Be as intellectual as you want, you still are programmed to find people more memorable than ideas.  The academic blogger faces the new challenge of tying these disparate functions together in a compelling product.  Intellectual substance, personality, writing, and editing, that is our juggling act.

This hypothesis suggests, by the way, that reading a blog many times will be more rewarding than just sampling it once.  Readers should "specialize" their blog reading to some degree, rather than jumping around and reading the best posts on a given day.

The wild horses of Mongolia, returning.

Long ago I mentioned Nigel Calder's book: The Environment Game. I said that it was worth reading and I still think so. Its theme is habitat restoration and the possibilities provided by -- optimistically written in the mid-1960s -- advances in food-production which allow more food to be produced on less land, ("factory farming" was part of the story) thus freeing up vast acreage for, potentially, re-creation of wilderness. It's an intriguing scenario and drawn out well.

I was reminded of Calder by an interview with a naturalist -- Claudia Feh -- who has led the effort to reestablish wild Mongolian horses. She has received a Rolex Award for Enterprise:

In 1992, she established TAKH, an organisation devoted to the restitution of sustainable, independent populations of the Przewalski horse to its native habitat, and the restoration of this habitat. Determined to overcome problems associated with captive breeding, TAKH has spent the past decade raising a natural herd of Przewalski horses on a 400-hectare tract of land in southern France’s remote Causse M㩪n, a high-altitude area selected by Feh for its similarity to the harsh Mongolian steppe.

Pretty inspiring stuff. More at Tour du Valat:

The Przewalski Horse (Equus ferus przewalski, Groves 1986) is the world’s last remaining wild horse. No one has so far succeeded in riding one on a regular basis. Nonetheless, unlike numerous domestic horses that have returned to the wild (mustangs, Namibian horses, etc.) this one now only lives in captivity. The last wild individuals were observed in Mongolia in the 1970s.

 

Gordon Liddy was also an enthusiast for "will"

Friedrich von Blowhard again attempts to connect Political Will and Nuclear Waste Storage.

Is this more faith-based science? Bending of spoons with a steely-gaze? I don't know yet.

Easy terms. Nothing Down. A lifetime to pay.

Here's a scary thought:

The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security,

Tax-and-spend Republicans. Who'd a thunk it?

Unless the permissible investments in a Social Security personal account are constrained to some total market indexes it seems to me inevitable that 30 years or so hence there will be a significant pool of people who made bad investment decisions and have no money on which to retire. Moreover, they will be simply too old and/or feeble to work. We will at that point simply re-create a "pay-as-you-go" Social Security system to take care of them. The affluent will not want to live in a society with wrinkled beggars on every corner and human decency will come up with some new way to take of the aged poor. Of course a guarantee of that would be a disincentive to be prudent (yet bold) with one's own money, which is of course the whole purpose (I guess) of private accounts.

We'll just wait and see what Bush actually proposes. But if the Republican Party sincerely wishes to be a long-term majority party, I don't see understand it will be able to do away with the safety-net which Social Security provides. The idea of "privatization" — "it's YOUR money" —seems to misunderstand the very purpose of Social Security i.e. it is NOT a private investment account and never was. But no matter, from what I understand, we should be saving more in the USA and perhaps Soc Sec private accounts will be part of a solution. But I can't see how we will escape (or want to escape) a system which takes care of old people who made bad investment decisions. Call that the Nanny State if you like. I just call it having beggar-free streets.

"Mommy, he called me bad name."

Michael Blowhard is upset: Post-Election Wrapups.

A post-election point that seemed to me to be overlooked was that perhaps many of those who pulled the Bush lever weren't really voting for Bush. After all, who really likes what he's done to the economy, let alone his stance on immigration?

Perhaps what many Bush voters were doing instead was voting against Kerry's backers, many of whom have been fantastically abusive and snide towards Red America....Good lord, what to make of this?

Lordy lord, I thought. Indeed what to make of Michael's post!  Voting against Kerry's backers? "... fantastically abusive and snide towards Red America? " Huh? That strikes me as pretty excited language. At least it should be. If I truly thought that many of my fellow Kerry-supporters had been "... fantastically abusive and snide towards Red America" I sure would be annoyed and angry and upset.

For the first, it strikes me as just a tad peculiar that anyone would vote for a man (Bush) they don't like in order to get back (somehow) at people who also don't like that same man (Bush.) Isn't there some expression about "spiting one's face"?

I also wonder about the implication that the election was about feelings of insecurity on the part of Red voters vis-a-vis Blue voters. (I take for granted that elections are of course about insecurity about one matter or another.) To start with, where are these "snide and abusive" remarks and opinions? He offers no examples. And I wonder how many such statements, if any, he'll actually be able to  produce -- certainly not more nasty remarks from the Blue side than from the Red side. We have an intensely-divided electorate; the stakes are very high;of course there will be some rough-and-tumble. But the idea that the Blues were more obnoxious than the Reds and attacked Red-state voters is actually pretty funny, maybe even cheeky. Does Michael think that remarks about "Massachusetts liberals" were not just dripping with bile and contempt?

Get a grip; and if one can't stand the heat in the kitchen, there is always an air-conditioned cinema where one can watch a film.

UPDATE:  In response to Brian's comment, below: I saw Farenheit 9-11 and I do not believe that it contains any remarks, attitudes etc etc which are "abusive and snide towards Red America." Moore's movie is dishonest, slanted and nasty in its portrayal of Bush and his team. But, as I remember, it makes few if any references whatsoever to Red Americans and none which which could be considered nasty, even by hyper-sensitive right-wingers who need nurturing and reassurance. I do remember vaguely some scenes of people who had loved ones in the war but I think that they were sympathetic and poignant. No? Moreover, how do offensive anti-Bush bumper stickers reflect Democratic attitudes toward potential Bush supporters themselves? They may be silly, even unbecoming, as political speech but they don't say anything about the Red voter. Anyway, the number of such stickers was trivial; I certainly never saw one and I drive a lot and do notice bumper stickers. I do not believe that this Blowhard idea has any legs and I probably shouldn't have even blogged about it, because any link to a silly idea has the unforunate effect of giving it currency. The very fact that Michael uses FrontPage magazine as a source is an indicator that even he could not be giving his own argument much respect.

UPDATE 2: Michael disclaims any upset. I accept his claim. But his language strikes me as pretty excited language.

And there is no reason why it shouldn't be:  if I actually thought that many of my fellow Kerry-supporters had been "... fantastically abusive and snide towards Red America"  sure -as-shootin' I would be annoyed and angry and upset. And there is nothing wrong with being upset when you hear CS-BS, except that it does tend to puncture distant, what's-it-got-to-do-with-me, oh-so-casual fair-handed posing.

Is Ronchamp a "place"?

It certainly appears (in photos — I have never seen it live) to be a marvelous & strking piece of very large scale sculpture but does Ronchamp really, as one blogger puts it, create  a place?. It is is a fine point -- but of course the world and the blogosphere is made of fine points -- but the photos typically show Ronchamp as isolated in a field. And you are almost always looking slightly uphill to it with no explanation of how it functions. (Does it have a back-side? Where is the parking? Is there parking? How does one enter? Its circumstance and overall site-plan? One of the notable things about this site is that it shows a range of views; it is well worth a look.) )

I wonder if the term "place" is better used to describe some assemblage of objects; and Ronchamp seems to live by itself so the term "place" seems misplaced. Of course I guess even one Egyptian pyramid would be so incredible as to cast its aura and create "placeness." So maybe Ronchamps has that power, too?

Lest anyone diminish the importance of urban planning

Mexican mob burns officers alive.

Police said traffic jams prevented them sending reinforcements to rescue the officers.

Of course no one should diminish, least of all the police, the importance of having a police force untainted by corruption and trusted by the populace.

In thanksgiving to friends present & past

Terry Teachout offers some poignant words.

So does Bob Dylan:

(click to enlarge)

 

I wonder where this factoid comes from.

Sometimes it's a trivial fact which raises doubts. I was browsing Professor Bainbridge's who  linked to this article on the election by anonymous Lexington in The Economist . It contained this passage:

Second, the Democratic Party is ceasing to be a mom-and-pop party. Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation points out that the fertility rate in the Kerry states is 12% lower than in the Bush states. Vermont, the home of Howard Dean and perhaps the most left-wing state in the country, produces an annual average of 49 children for every 1,000 women of child-bearing age; in Utah, where 71% of the population voted for Mr Bush, the figure is 91. In deep-blue cities such as San Francisco and Seattle you find more dogs than children. (italics added)

Putting aside whatever other critique one might make of the use or importance of the "facts," I was struck by the last sentence. "...more dogs than children." It would seem to be easily verifiable as it is offered as a significant (even somewhat sinister) fact. Moreover, as dogs and children (I associate them) are indicia of comfortable cities, I figured that this issue is part of City Comforts Blog's core mission.

But interestingly enough, statistics on "How many dogs in ___________?" (name your city) are not easy to find. The "Quick Information" desk at the the Seattle Public Library could only offer guesstimates. Mr. Longman has not yet responded. (Of course it's the holidays etc etc.) There is nothing available on Google. Anecdotally, I spoke with someone who is in the animal control business and it is his firm impression that, nationwide, there are more dogs in households with children than the other way around.

And of course the key question is not if there are more dogs than children in Seattle but if that ratio -- whatever it is -- is significantly different in Red and Blue cities, metropolitan areas etc.

I'll be looking into this issue and if anyone has any suggestions for hard data, please let me know. And the reason I am looking into it is because while everyone is free to have a creative opinion  when I sense a creative fact I get curious as it is sometimes a tip-off to essential rot deep-down in the core argument.

Worth the wait and a trip to NYC, I'd bet.

Christo 'Gates' Arriving in Central Park Next Week.

click image to enlarge

And whaddya know?

The 20 Best Neighborhoods in North America all seem to be the same and/or at least have a very strong resemblence.

So much for that urban design shibboleth of trying to avoid "one size fits all," which only leads to excess bureaucracy and over-regulation.

UPDATE: Several points:

1. It is important to be able to walk before one can run. It would be silly for a town to address the fine points when the coarse issues-- adherence to the 3 Rules -- are ignored or misunderstood etc. It is simply a matter of stages.

2. As to how great neighborhoods developed: certainly the 3 Rules were not an explicit part of their evolution. Most of them developed long before there were cars and parking lots so the issue around which the 3 Rules turns was non-existent. (And I very much question the idea set forth by JRoth in the comments that great neighborhoods came about as a response to "stablished by countless ordinances and policies.") And yes, the 3 Rules are first and foremost decsriptive. But -- like Newton's Law of Gravity -- they are also predictive. There is no pedestrian-oriented neighborhood anywhere which is not, by-and-large with very few exceptions, very well-described by the 3 Rules. As I suggest in City Comforts, the 3 Rules are the essential spatial element but there are many socio-economic issues involved in creating/supporting an interesting neighborhood, (the primary one being some level of prosperity.)

3. None of my comments should be taken to imply that PPS's theme of 20 Best... is in any way silly. That is/was not the intention of my post; I was simply picking up on what I see when I look through the photos. Lists like this one at PPS are fun, get people to think/discuss, puts fine-grain spatial-scale on the public conversation table, etc so they are worthwhile. In fact, I should probably do something like 20 Most Comfortable Streetside Cafes or similar.

Do you like Iraqi food?

After quoting from some truly horrific links, Jeremy Brown at Michael J. Totten's blog blandly offers:

There's no denying that the current flareup in the fighting is disturbing to read about and is a horror for the people involved in it. But I don't see how anyone can deny that this is a struggle for the advancement of Iraq's future as a free, potentially democratic state. This is a struggle that we have every reason to hope will succeed and, I think, much justification for being cautiously optimistic about.

Of course I was not aware that anyone was denying that this viscious fighting is a struggle for Iraq's future. And while of course we have "every reason to hope," is such hope based on any sound evidence? Is it plausible? Is it reality-based hope? Or is it simply hope because there is little else?

Faced with what appears to be a continuing decline, I fear that George Bush will do exactly what he claimed Kerry would have done (had Kerry been elected): "Cut-and-run." 

But Bush will not withdraw our troops in the (possibly defensible) best interests of Iraq but rather in the best interests of the GOP. The sop to our national conscience will be to allow virtually unlimited immigration to the USA for Iraqis who wish a safe-haven from Baath party fascists seeking to reestablish their dictatorship.

So I hope Iraqi food is good because I foresee -- and I do hope for their sake, more than ours, that I am wrong -- a lot of Iraqis emigres living here and making their way by running restaurants serving their national food (which is a traditional & honorable way for new Americans to start their climb up the economic ladder.)

Is he joking?

Andrew Sullivan opines:

HILLARY WON'T WIN: Michelle Cottle delivers the tough truth to Democrats.

And we are supposed to be surprised? "Tough truth?" I have no idea who Andrew spends time with but the very idea that Democrats are yearning for Hillary's candidacy is a bit off. Republicans would love to believe that we are awaiting her coronation.

Kerry is -- to his great credit -- asserting himself and my sense is that he will be successful in re-forming his image. He demonstrates in his actions a resilency, mental toughness, and ability to bounce back just weeks after what must be an incredibly draining defeat. It will not -- "style is everything" -- go unnoticed.

I sure hope they offer a Mac version very soon

Keyhole.

Too Much Froth

I couldn't even remotely hope to say it as well as do Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel.

Like smokers seeking a cure from their deadly habits, city politicians and economic development officials have a long history of grasping at fads to solve their persistent problems and rebuild middle class cities.

But I think that they overstate the case.  For example, as an illustration that the "creative city" strategy is flawed they offer Seattle:

As for the others, they are no bargain either. Seattle has also lost jobs at a far faster rate than the rest of the country and has its own litany of social problems, including a sizable homeless population; the loss of its signature corporation, Boeing; and growing racial tensions.

I wouldn't worry too much about Seattle. For one thing, it has never had a "creative city" strategy, so it seems a bit odd to use it as an illustration that that strategy doesn't work. For another. I think that the economy is if not sizzling then still quite active; at least real estate and construction seems to be. The Boeing issue is a shibboleth: its corporate headquarters left for Chicago for strategic reasons having nothing to do with creatvity and everything to do with leverage over regional operating divisions, a more central location and because Chicago has better golf clubs for executives. And I have no idea what they mean by "growing racial tensions" -- we are certainly no worse than any other major city and probably a whole lot better. Such a shallow paragraph undercuts the credibility of the article.

That said, I heartily agree with the contention that municipal governments ought to ignore trendy economic development schemes like "creative cities" -- in fact they ought to ignore economic development altogether and get with the basics:

"...commonsense policies that stress basic services like police and firefighters, innovative public schools that are not beholden to teachers' unions, breaking down of barriers to new housing construction, and policies that lead local businesses to expand within the urban area."

I'd add quick, honest public administration of building permits, keeping the streets clean etc. I take for granted that a sensible government will enforce non-descrimination laws but as much for legal immigrants here 3 years as for Mayflower gays etc.)

What is missing from all these discussions is that the idea that a civic bureaucracy is even capable of encouraging creativity; having worked in one, I find the notion ludicrous. The best one can hope is that government gets out of the way, does its own basic job meticulously and allows a thousand flowers to bloom. (Or was it a thousand points of light to glow?) Whatever.

I hope the Democratic Party policy wonks are listening.

Via 2blowhards.

Can you believe this?

It probably made him "feel good.".

House Republicans approved a party rules change Wednesday that could allow Majority leader Tom DeLay to retain his leadership post if he is indicted by a Texas grand jury on state political corruption charges.

Creepy

How zombie networks fuel cybercrime.

Once a zombie is found, the bot inside can be dissected to find the address of the controlling chat room so it can be taken down and the controller traced.

But hackers are now covering their tracks by encrypting the chat-room address or by making the bots corrupt their own program code when extracted.

You'd be surprised (well maybe not) what can be found in a supermarket these days

CNN's Crowley suggested Kerry's choice of green is a sign of why he lost.

Media Matters for America suggests:

But green tea may not be quite the highbrow delicacy Crowley seems to think. In fact, Lipton itself makes more than a half-dozen different varieties of green tea. Lipton's website even reveals that green tea accounts for 20 percent of all tea produced. And, according to Lipton's product locator, you can buy green tea in Dubuque, Iowa, at that gourmet market known as ... Kmart.

So, who is the real out-of-touch elitist -- John Kerry, for drinking green tea, or Candy Crowley, for assuming that simple Iowa folk couldn't possibly be familiar with the beverage?

I suggest that Candy Crowley is (also) simply an unskilled reporter for not  thinking to even wonder how many people actually do drink tea.

Via Eschaton

The Democratic Party ought to be listening

Democratic policy wonks who are serious about regaining a decision-making role at the local & national level ought to be paying attention to stories like this one: 'Critical areas ordinance' provokes  bitter 'rural vs. urban' dispute.

The story itself ignores the substance of the ordinance and focusses on the politics; so unless you have been following the issue, you have no idea what the 'Critical areas ordinance' specifically does. And I have to confess that even though I am fairly knowledgeable about these issues -- I served on the very first "environmentally-sensitive areas" advisory committee in the City of Seattle -- I don't know about this specific ordinance. (The P-I brushes readers off to King County's site.) While I am skeptical of property owners who claim wipe-out, I am also skeptical of environmentalists who claim end-of-the-world.

Advice from a most common-sensical level-headed blogger (no, not me).

Americans should never forget that one of the tragedies of the Iraq war is that it has diverted us from practical and real emergency preparedness not only against terrorist activity but also for what now appears to be ordinary and prosaic civil disasters such as earthquakes. For example, I was recently astonished to learn that in my own city of Seattle, where we are warned that a major highway is in imminent danger of collapse, that  "The contingency plan is in draft form at this time.".

So it goes for civil preparedness at the social level. We should take Teresa Nielsen Hayden's advice seriously.

It's not entirely clear to me what is happening with the American electorate

Things don't completely suck, at least on some local levels leads me to Denver Ballot Initiatives.

Voters in metro Denver strongly embraced Referendum 4A, RTD's ambitious FasTracks transit expansion plan, beating back opponents who said it would cost too much and do little to reduce traffic congestion.

In my own city, the anti-monorail folks really blew it by putting their so-called and actually rather sleasy "Monorail Recall" on the ballot prematurely. While the $1.5 bilion Monorail project barely (maybe 850 votes or so) passed in 2002, this time around it received a big endorsement by handily defeating the "Recall" effort by a 63% to 37% margin.

Sometimes it pays to be patient.

Btw, the reason I say that the anti-monorail forces were premature is that we, the voters, haven't seen the details of the single bid package yet; we don't know exactly what is proposed and how much it will cost. That's not alarming as that was part of the process which was set forth in the initiative. But had the antis waited until those numbers were in, they might conceivably have garnered support even from mono-maniacs such as me, if the plan and the financing turn out to be as bad as they claimed it will be.

But what about the building?

Nicolai Ouroussoff's Art Fuses With Urbanity in a Redesign of the Modern must be one of his most important reviews so far: he is brand new to a prestigious post at the NYT and  the Modern's redevelopment is obviously a real big deal. So I found his review puzzlingly detached. It says little about the history/circumstances which started the rebuilding, the various design issues with which the designers had to contend, and how the building actually resolves those problems. The review starts, oddly and discordantly for a newspaper review, with Ouroussoff's own meandering, cerebral conclusions about it. The heart of the matter -- a description of the building itself -- is indirect & vague & late to the party while the conclusions about it are front and center, and a good number of those appear to be too fluffy to take seriously. So it's a double loss.

He does, however, manage to work in the posturing expression of "transcendent aesthetic experience" so some people will be happy.

Of course I am flattered

But I do not quite understand the title of this post: A Picture Stops a Thousand Lawsuits.

Department of Remarkable Facts

Mimi Spencer takes a look at French women's eating habits.

In their study of why the French remain so much slimmer than Americans, the researchers from the University of Pennsylvania came to the remarkable conclusion that it was because the French ate less.

Uh...

Protecting India's forests

Via Sepia Mutiny: Bugging Trees to Stop Logging, this ingenius approach:

The state of Kerala is resorting to drastic measures to defend its dwindling forests of rare sandalwood trees from illegal logging. Its Forest Department is planning to use satellite tracking to protect the trees. Under the plan, microchips will be embedded inside the trees.

This seems to me an example of technology transfer -- the sort of very cheap inventory control, RDFI is it called? -- used by large retailers and which makes terrific sense in this application.

I'd be curious to know more details: how the chips are place and where because if the chip is obvious, then of course the poachers will simply remove it before or just after cutting the tree. So, one assumes, it must be hidden rather cunningly to avoid detection, at least long-enough to allow the authorities to trace the tree to the sawmill etc. I wonder how they do it.

Here is one exceedingly smart blogger

Here.

Out of anything else I've read this year, David Sucher's City Comforts has completely changed the way I look at the world, in particular cities and the urban environment.

ELITE DESIGNERS AGAINST IKEA

Is it meant to be serious?

Maybe not.

via Left exiled: Culture

"Suburbs" vs. "Exurbs"

What's the difference? Is the distinction useful? Relevant? Particularly in terms of site plan/urban form/architecure etc etc?

My suspicion is the answer is "No" but I am curious to hear others' reactions.

There is an unconvincing entry on exurbs at Wikipedia; it is justly in dispute at Wikipedia itself.

The issue arises because of David Brooks' recent sales piece (for his book) titled Take a Ride to Exurbia in which he sets the stage:

People in established suburbs are moving out to vast sprawling exurbs that have broken free of the gravitational pull of the cities and now exist in their own world far beyond.

Ninety percent of the office space built in America in the 1990's was built in suburbia, usually in low office parks along the interstates. Now you have a tribe of people who not only don't work in cities, they don't commute to cities or go to the movies in cities or have any contact with urban life. You have these huge, sprawling communities with no center. Mesa, Ariz., for example, has more people than St. Louis or Minneapolis.

That may very well be true and of significance socially and politically. But from my observation, these exurbs have the same spatial form as do suburbs i.e. go look at where they park the car ib both suburbs and exurbs and they are the same. Now it's possible (and perhaps politically significant) that exurbanites have even less sense of what a pedestrian-oriented city is like than do suburbanites. But I don't think it would be by much.

Brooks, btw, doesn't use the word exurb in its original meaning in which it was simply a "region lying beyond the suburbs of a city, especially one inhabited principally by wealthy people." (American Heritage Dictionary) I first heard it in the 1950s (when it was invented by A.C. Spectorsky for his book The Exurbanites) to describe the wealthy areas of northern Westchester, Putnam and even Dutchess counties. These areas did indeed contain (and of course there wasn't much else then) traditional "main street" towns. Lovely towns, in fact. So it's a slightly annoying surprise for me to hear the term contorted. But I guess that is the way language evolves.

The Reader and His Ordeal

I wouldn't mention a review in the Wall Street Journal of Ada Louise Huxtable's new book on Frank Lloyd Wright -- typical as the review is in its mindless acclaim for Wright -- except for something truly odd and unusual about it, something I have never seen in major media and not at all since I was in junior high and was myself padding "book reports." 

The review is all of 682 words and yet devotes 477 words to an excerpt from the book. (The excerpt is an account of how Wright met one of his girlfriends which could have appeared in People.)

Word count says something.

The review is unsigned; for all we know it could have been written by Ms. Huxtable herself, who is that paper's "architectural critic."

•••

NOTE: Here's the link: The Architect and His Ordeal It's free and funny. And it illustrates the point that with a certain amount of fame, an auteur is immune from any serious consideration, that his work itself becomes untouchable. Of course I assume that's what every egotist wants.

Has bluster, posturing and fluff triumphed?

It would seem so. I am disappointed that Norm Geras and Michael J. Totten would spread Christopher Hitchens' cant that only George Bush and the right wing can save us from Islamofascism.

Read Hitchens carefully. He makes wild accusations that "liberals" are soft on terrorism but provides no specifics, just crude bluster. He offers nothing which a fair-handed observer -- me, for example -- could interpret as being "soft on terrorism." In fact I offer such an example -- look back a few posts to Where does the therapeutic approach end? -- but I would hardly suggest that one unknown Seattle "progressive" even remotely compromises liberals in general much less mainstream Democratic politicians.

Of course some people double-up when faced with a poor hand and maybe Hitchens is finally able to see that the Iraq war has been a gargantuan fisaco.

I'd even add that perhaps Hitchens' wild and muddled thinking and his lack of specificity indicate some sort of milestone; I take his silly post (and its linking with virtually no comment by usually intelligent bloggers) as tacit recognition that while there may indeed be a war on, the currrent adventure in Iraq is a failure in that very war. Why, if things are going so well, would Hitchens (except for money?) bother with such a baseless and incoherent diatribe? He doesn't even start to try to persuade by showing us the cowardly rhetoric of appeasement. And of course he can't show it because it doesn't exist in mainstream thinking.

•••

Sorry to see that Harry's Place also falls for Hitchens' cant -- I think highly of that group most days -- though there are some excellent comments there. Glad to see that Beautiful Horizons can see through it.

Optimism!

Consider these election result maps carefully, this one in particular:

Via The Washington Monthly.

Ian Nairn?

I'd never even heard of Ian Nairn until I read this flattering post by Francis Morrone about Nairn's London.

Where does the therapeutic approach end?

Particularly in light of the murder of the Dutchman van Gogh, I thought this quote seemed a bit odd:

...the larger questions of how we're going to create a world where people do not get so bitter that they're willing to murder 3,000 innocent people by hijacking an airplane...

(This is from an interview with a Seattle "progressive" in one of our local fish-wrappers under the title What Next?)

"Bitter," eh? And no followup question? No pause on the part of the interviewer..."bitter?"

Such a mild characterization strikes me as "enabling." Maybe we should also ask why the Chilean dictator Pinochet and his goons were so "bitter" that they had to kidnap and torture and murder?

Now I guess in some cosmic sense, yes, that's a fair question: what is the source of evil. But would any progressive even remotely think to phrase it that way when it comes to Pinochet? To offer what comes across (to me) as the crudest excuse-making? To somehow suggest that the 9-11 murderers were "bitter" seems to me to diminish their criminality and lighten their personal responsibility.

As a purely tactical question, the question "what drives murderers and terrorists to do what they do" is an important one. But to ascribe it to "bitterness" in the question itself immediately shifts the burden and lessens the criminals' responsibility.

Would the Seattle "progressive" now ask why van Gogh's murderer was so "bitter?"

All I am suggesting is that there is a huge difference between a fair question such as "Why did he murder?" and a loaded one such as "What bitterness drove him to murder?"

UPDATE: I mentioned this interview to a friend a few days ago and how non-plussed I was when I read it etc etc. I was curious to get his reaction -- triangulation of opinion and all that as I have been known to react before thinking -- as he is phlegmatic and slow to react. So I started praphrasing as fair-handedly as I could and when I got to the word "bitter" he burst out laughing.

Remember what Deep Throat said

Anyone have facts on whether red states receive more Federal dollars that they contribute in taxes? There is a meme going around the blogosphere that the red states which so piously crow about their rugged individualism and morality are simultaneously slurping at the public teat in DC in excess of what they actually contribute in i.e. they are net importers of tax dollars.

I have no idea if it's true or not.

But if it is true, it would suggest a psychological dynamic -- sheer embarrassment -- for the virulent anti-Federalism we hear from so many rural areas such as the Dakotas etc etc. They love the loot they get from the productive area (e.g. California, New York, Massachusetts) via Federal taxes but they hate having to admit that they need the help because of their own lack of productivity.

It's just a question and has an objective answer.

Thus I wonder if one of the things we'll see from the Republican majority in Congress is an on-going attempt to bankrupt the blue states through clever manipulation of Federal spending. The small states have the votes in the Senate. And as we learned from Watergate, "Follow the money." This election may not have been so much about "morality" as simply about less productive people getting hold of the Federal budget to benefit their red states at the expense of the blue ones.

But as I say, I don't know; let the facts speak.