Tread lightly on the things of earth

As I was looking for an online presentation of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men to refresh my memory for the previous entry, I stumbled upon Jough’s explanation of why his site is called Plagiarist.com (“an online archive of the world’s finest poetry”).

How very like the Free Software ethos this is, and why it wonderfully grips me —

One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot (1888-1965). “Philip Massinger”
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. 1922.

Early on in 2003, during the buildup to the Iraq invasion, I received lots of email forwarded from conservative Christian friends containing breathless adulation of George W. Bush as an exemplary Christian. One example is the multi-forwarded text of Paul Kengor’s National Review article dated March 5, God & W. at 1600 Penn. —

Though Bush and Democratic nominee Al Gore split the popular vote almost 50:50, Bush cleaned up among churchgoers. Among those who attend religious services weekly, he beat Gore 57 to 40%. For those who attend more than weekly, he won 63 to 36%. (Gore won by 61 to 32% among those who said they “never” attend church, suggesting that the former veep easily bagged the atheist vote.) …

[Religious broadcaster Janet Parshall] has never witnessed such an outpouring of sustained support for a president among Christian conservatives. “They call me and say they’re praying for him,” Parshall says of her listeners. “My callers like him and are thankful. They actually tell me they cried when they watched the State of the Union Address. Imagine that! They love this man.” …

My reaction to the January 28 SOTU was somewhat different than this. Beneath the words, something about the speech and its delivery smelled fishy. Indeed most of its assertions and allegations have since turned out to have been made up or outright deceptions.

Bush believes that God “has a plan” for him. He maintains that he could not be president if he didn’t believe in a “divine plan that supersedes all human plans.” …

The Old Testament story [of Moses in Exodus over whether to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land] spoke to Bush. He felt convicted. He began telling friends he had “heard the call.” God was calling him to seek the Oval Office.

Self-deception, we must whip it

I have a family member who still says, “George Bush sets a good example for all Christians in America.”

No.

When in the course of human events, a leader granted power and authority chooses to abuse that power and authority to invade a sovereign nation on the basis of a monstrous doctrine of preemptive war¹ that bears his name, not for reasons of national defense but for ideology (to forcibly demonstrate PNAC neoconservative imperial wherewithal — pride) and profit (Halliburton no-bid contracts, oil — greed), the prosecution costs of which will be borne by citizens yet unborn (multi-$trillion deficit²), wherein said leader stains his hands with the blood of 10,000 dead (~9,600 Iraqis³ and ~400 Americans⁴) and shatters the lives of thousands maimed and wounded (~2,300+ U.S. military wounded⁵, ~7,500 evacuated through Andrews AFB⁶, plus an unknown civilian casualty count), then that leader does not qualify as an exemplary Christian. He qualifies as a war criminal.

I can imagine the prophet Nathan speaking words like these to Mr. Bush, much as Nathan told King David the story of the rich man who took the ewe lamb from the poor man who had nothing — the lamb who “shared [the poor man’s] food, drank from his cup, and even slept in his arms; it was like a daughter to him.” [The rich man took the lamb from the poor man] and slaughtered it for his guest to eat:

But more significant — Nathan could be pointing his finger at us — we are the people. Being unrepentant in our support of such behavior — to repent means to turn, so as long as we continue to squander lives, treasure, and honor in Iraq, we are by definition unrepentant — means not that we’re “showing resolve” but that we’re being unrepentant of our evildoing, like those who are made to weep and gnash their teeth, thrown out of the kingdom of God (Luke 13:22-30).

Agreeing with the Bush Administration that black is white, up is down, that bad news is good news, that monstrous behavior is godly behavior, does not make you a patriot, it makes you complicit.

This worldview hawks a form of faith without its substance. Its trajectory is not God-ward; it ends instead in darkness.

We — all of us, conservative, moderate, liberal, progressive — can do better than this.

[I actually believe now that a critical mass of us have awakened and are again seeing black as black, white as white — and sometimes, gray as gray — whether we articulate our seeing in theological terms or not. Even so, I still have to rant this out of my system; it’s the closest I plan to come to saying “I told you so.”]

2003-11-19 update:
Revised entry title refers to T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men.

Another oft-forwarded writer in my inbox was Peggy Noonan, whose writing I noticed took breathless adulation to new heights. Piyush Mathur addresses Noonan’s work head-on in a review of her new book, A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag: America Today. Mathur succeeds in highlighting much that I find unbearable in Religious Right (non)thinking.

[via Atrios]

I set up my Movable Type photolog a long while ago following Jeremy’s fine instructions. But as a practical matter I haven’t added to it often because manually calculating heights, widths, and paths is more than I really want to do.

I dimly realized back in December that Brad’s MTEmbedImage plugin could do the calculations and thumbnail creation automatically using ImageMagick, but I’m only just now getting MTEmbedImage woven into Jeremy’s approach. (I could be using newer, presumably more comprehensive approaches like Brandon’s MTPhotoGallery, but I like the simplicity Jeremy’s provides, and I wanted closure on understanding how to use MTEmbedImage.)

I present this as one example of how to put MTEmbedImage to use.

Example: With these template adjustments to Jeremy’s instructions, all I have to do to publish an image is (1) copy it into my appropriate archive directory, (2) create a new photolog entry containing just title, image filename, and optional description, and (3) save. Like so:

Title: Dinner bell, no chihuahua
Entry Body: IMG_1252.jpg
Extended Entry: This is the dinner bell that stood on a pole at my grandparents’ house. It’s part of my earliest memories. Ring, ring, ring, come to dinner! (which in the country means the noontime meal).

You can see this entry’s published result on photolog’s main page (thumbnail is autogenerated) and on photo’s individual archive page.

The result looks exactly the same as before, but now it’s more nearly effortless to achieve.

Key additions to photolog templates:

mtphoto-main-index.tmpl —

<!-- MWJ 20031108: use of MTTagInvoke allows forcing no convert_breaks in -->
<!-- MTEntryBody, which if present breaks MTEmbedImage output; not possible -->
<!-- with standard MTEmbedImage "[MTEntryBody]" syntax -->
<a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"> href="<$MTEntryLink$>"> <MTTagInvoke tag_name="MTEmbedImage" width="96" thumbsuffix="_tn-96w">
<MTTagAttribute name="basename">archives/images/<MTEntryBody convert_breaks="0"></MTTagAttribute> <MTTagContent>
<img src="<$MTBlogURL$><MTEmbedImageThumbFilename>" width="<MTEmbedImageThumbWidth>" height="<MTEmbedImageThumbHeight>" alt="<MTEmbedImageThumbFilename> (<MTEmbedImageThumbSize measure="k">k)" border="0" />
</MTTagContent>
</MTTagInvoke>
</a>

mtphoto-archive-indiv.tmpl (also mtphoto-archive-cat.tmpl and mtphoto-archive-date.tmpl) —

<!-- MWJ 20031108: use of MTTagInvoke allows forcing no convert_breaks in -->
<!-- MTEntryBody, which if present breaks MTEmbedImage output; not possible -->
<!-- with standard MTEmbedImage "[MTEntryBody]" syntax --> <p>
<MTTagInvoke tag_name="MTEmbedImage">
<MTTagAttribute name="basename">archives/images/<MTEntryBody convert_breaks="0"></MTTagAttribute> <MTTagContent>
<img src="<$MTBlogURL$><MTEmbedImageFilename>" width="<MTEmbedImageWidth>" height="<MTEmbedImageHeight>" alt="<MTEmbedImageFilename> (<MTEmbedImageSize measure="k">k)" border="0" />
</MTTagContent>
</MTTagInvoke>
</p>

Because the thumbnail URL is no longer being stored in the database as part of the entry, I can’t use SQL as I’ve been doing to select random photolog thumbnails for display on my main blog’s main page. I have to recalc the thumb URL as on photolog main page:

sb-photoselect.inc —

<!-- MWJ 20031108: Switching from SQL to alternative photolog --> <!-- retrieval that recalc's thumbnail URL (its URL no longer --> <!-- present in database) -->

<MTOtherBlog blog_id="2"> <MTRandomEntries lastn="10">

<div class="preview">
<a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>" href="<$MTEntryLink$>" title="<$MTEntryTitle$>">
<MTTagInvoke tag_name="MTEmbedImage" thumbsuffix="_tn-96w">
<MTTagAttribute name="basename">archives/images/<MTEntryBody convert_breaks="0"></MTTagAttribute>
<MTTagContent><img src="<$MTBlogURL$><MTEmbedImageThumbFilename>" width="<MTEmbedImageThumbWidth>" height="<MTEmbedImageThumbHeight>" alt="<MTEmbedImageThumbFilename> (<MTEmbedImageThumbSize measure="k">k)" border="0" />
</MTTagContent>
</MTTagInvoke>
</a>
</div>

</MTRandomEntries> </MTOtherBlog>

Result is the random several thumbnails displayed in my main blog’s main page right sidebar.

As I tweak further, my current live photolog templates stay accessible here. (Yes, these hacked-up photolog templates, while functional and valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, need a good sweeping and deuglification. Soon come.)

Additional Movable Type plugins used <applause, applause>:

• Brad Choate’s MTEmbedImage
• Stepan Riha’s MTTagInvoke
• David Raynes’ MTOtherBlog
• David Raynes’ MTRandomEntries

Related: For easy bulk publishing of images, I’m fond of David Ljung Madison’s command line HTML photo album generator, album (which has nothing to do with Movable Type).

<!— imported into Txp from MT on 2004-12-23 (as orig published on 2003-11-12) —>
<!— May not be relevant in new context —>

On last week’s CNN Rock the Vote Democratic debate, one questioner asked the candidates, “Which is it, Mac or PC?” Besides being a fluff question, it doesn’t even mean anything unless the questioner was referring to hardware. Generally speaking, there’s Apple hardware and there’s PC hardware. But each can run multiple OSs. So what the questioner probably meant was “Mac OS X or Windows?” (She could have been excruciatingly precise by asking, “Which is it, Mac OS X or Windows or Linux or NetBSD or … on what kind of hardware?”)

Specifically addressing the Mac OS X or Windows debate, MacWorld UK reports that UK newspaper The Times pitted the two by having two reporters, one a long-time Mac user, the other a “Windows-based PC man proud to say that my machine is always in pieces,” swap computers for a week.

[Mac user Nigel] Kendall says his first encounter with the [Windows] PC was a “heart-stopping experience” and that he had the feeling that “something nasty and utterly incomprehensible is lurking just below the surface.” …

“After a week with a Windows machine I get the feeling that this system is designed by people who know a lot about computers. Macs, on the other hand, seem to be designed by people who know a lot about people,” he concluded.

In contrast —

Three hours into using the Mac, PC user [Stuart] Miles admits, “I started to wonder if I should have made the change years ago.”

“The well-styled hardware has a wow factor out of the box (even the box has wow factor), while the oh-so pretty user interface, with its rounded corners, 3D rotating graphics and smooth dissolves, gives you a feeling of security.”

As for compatibility, Miles found getting the Mac to talk to his home PC was “simple”. This point is even more astounding when he notes that is something even his Windows laptop struggles with.

I adamantly think life’s too short to screw around with Windows. It’s not that I have a problem with PC hardware per se; hell, I’m an electrical engineer by training and I like having my computers in pieces. I know and use PC hardware extensively, but what I buy is Apple hardware because it’s durable and elegant.

Hardware aside, I see the more significant debate as being between Windows and Unix (more precisely, “Unix-like” OSs †) where Unix is understood to include Mac OS X, Linux (say, Debian or Gentoo), NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD. In that debate there’s no contest as far as I’m concerned: Unix wins, hands down. And my hands-on favorite is Mac OS X, the most usable, satisfying implementation of Unix now available.

Just be informed, then use what works best for you.

† I refuse to use the official designation of UNIX in all caps; that’s as ugly to me as a cheap PC running Windows95. Besides, Unix isn’t an acronym that needs to be capitalized — it’s a pun. :-) 

Back in June, bbum mentioned a tantalizing computing technique I didn’t yet comprehend —

If you don’t trust the web proxy on your LAN (I wouldn’t in either a hotel or a corporate environment), turn on Apache’s caching proxy server or install squid, then use port forwarding to forward a port on your local machine to the proxy port on the remote proxy server. Then, point your browser (or OS) to use the local port as the proxy server. This allows for secure, non-monitor-able, transparent, surfing from any location.

This intrigued me because I do a lot of surfing from work (for news, technical research) in the process of doing my work. I consider this warranted because I’m a full-time tech writer/web publisher, and I’m constantly keeping current and on the lookout for more efficient publishing and troubleshooting techniques. But I still don’t like leaving my employer’s domain strewn in server logs all over the ‘net.

Following Bill’s hint, I built/installed squid on my always-on NetBSD box at home — squid is in NetBSD’s pkgsrc — and for security, configured squid to allow access only from my home internal network.

Now from work I open a ssh tunnel to squid running on my home NetBSD box with

ssh -2 -C -L 3128:home_box_int_name:3128 -N home_box_ext_name

where home_box_ext_name is kept current courtesy DynDNS and home_box_int_name need only be known to home_box_ext_name.

Then I set my at-work web proxy to http://localhost:3128/ and start browsing.

Result: All my at-work surfing is now actually being initiated by squid from my home box, with the results cached there, then encrypted and compressed through the ssh tunnel to my machine at work.

That this is happening is easily verifiable by visiting WhatsmyIP.org before and after setting the at-work browser’s web proxy — before, what visited servers see is my at-work proxy’s IP; after, what they see is my home IP.

Of course — as usual for me — now that it’s working, what once was mysterious is now old hat, and I therefore feel as though not only have I always known how to do this but that everyone else does, too. I have to remind myself that as recently as June I had no clue, so I mention this proxying option (granted, without much specific detail) in case it’s useful news to anyone. :-)

Thanks, Bill.

Note: Privoxy is a lighter-weight alternative to squid that I haven’t looked into yet.

A fascinating tidbit from Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, as he discusses the Reagan years and specifically, the relationship between Reagan’s actions and 9/11 —

The Christian Coalition and other rightwing religious groups supporting Reagan even had a “biblical checklist” by which they wanted all senators and congressmen to be judged. And one of the items in the “biblical checklist” was “support for the Afghan ‘freedom fighters’” [that is, the “Gulbuddin Hikmatyars and Usama Bin Ladens”]. The rightwing Christians were saying in the 1980s that if you didn’t support al-Qaeda and its Mujahidin allies, you didn’t deserve to be in Congress!

1st thought: And have we grown in wisdom and discernment since then?
2nd thought: Apparently not.
3rd thought: Dogmatic certainty ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Josh Marshall at TPM recommends Juan’s site as “one of the few places online — in English at least — where you can find good sustained reporting on these nitty-gritty details of what’s going on over in Iraq. Invaluable.”

And of course Josh creates invaluable reporting of his own. At The Hill Josh writes:

In recent months, Democrats have criticized President Bush for claiming that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to the United States. Ted Kennedy said it. Wes Clark said it. And plenty of others have, too.

But now Republicans say it’s a bum rap. A chorus of conservative columnists and talk-show hosts claims that nobody in the administration ever said any such thing.

“No member of the administration,” conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, “used the term ‘imminent threat’ to describe Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. No one.”

Really, how dumb is it to say something like this when Google’s memory is wide, deep, and instantly accessible? And indeed Josh proceeds to mine this digital deposit to deftly demolish this wacky, “no one ever said that” assertion.

Weirdly though, such assertions often work, in part I think because people like me respond with our mouths open in disbelief that any self-respecting person could utter easily-disprovable nonsense like this.

Which I guess makes me like a bullsht detector with an almost-dead battery — I detect the bullsht, but don’t have enough juice to sound the piercing beep.

Note to myself: Re-read Atrios’ principles of wingnut argument until Dumbstruck Response is eliminated and action ensues. We’ve got a country to reclaim, and a sh*tload of intellectual laziness and dishonor to work off.

2003-11-06 update: I see that Ben at SpinSanity attempts further precision concerning who said what about “imminent threat,” but he’s not as convincing as he usually is.

As a practical matter, splitting hairs whether and how often Mr. Bush said the word “imminent” followed by the word “threat” concerning Iraq is about as meaningful as debating whether and how often he explicitly connected the events of 9/11 with Saddam Hussein. Both false assertions were implied with sledgehammer subtlety and numbing frequency — and thus led to present consequences too real and too pressing for us to waste time engaging in technical difficulties, for which see —

Steven at Ethel the Blog, following Atrios’ lead, seeks to assemble the definitive Wingnut Debate Dictionary. Pretty darned funny. I see in these definitions that almost all of us stumble into bits of wingnuttery occasionally, but some of us seem to be stuck there.

Melanie alerts me to DOD transcript Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz remarks at Georgetown University (October 30, 2003) —

Q: Hi, Mr. Wolfowitz. My name is Ruthy Coffman. I think I speak for many of us here when I say that your policies are deplorable. They’re responsible for the deaths of innocents and the disintegration of American civil liberties.

We are tired, Secretary Wolfowitz, of being feared and hated by the world. We are tired of watching Americans and Iraqis die, and international institutions cry out in anger against us. We are simply tired of your policies. We hate them, and we will never stop opposing them. We will never tire or falter in our search for justice. And in the name of this ideal and the ideal of freedom, we assembled a message for you that was taken away from us and that message says that the killing of innocents is not the solution, but rather the problem. Thank you. [Applause and jeers]

I’m with you, Ruthy. A compassionate, courageous, and reasonable message — one I note is entirely consonant with Jesus’ teaching, which can hardly be said for the Christian Right’s pro-war cheerleading — forcibly told to Mr. Wolfowitz. To which he immediately replies:

Wolfowitz: I have to infer from that that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power. [Applause] …

What an unfounded inference that is. I therefore have to infer that Mr. Wolfowitz is a sinister abuser of logic. (I can logically insert the adjective sinister because Wolfowitz’ neoconservative logic has led directly to thousands upon thousands of deaths.)

The magic continues —

Q: I’d just like to say that people like Ruthy and myself have always opposed Saddam Hussein, especially when Saddam Hussein was being funded by the United States throughout the ’80s. And after the killings of the Kurds when the United States increased aid to Iraq. We were there opposing him as well. People like us were there. We are for democracy. …

Wolfowitz: I don’t know if it was just Freudian or you intended to say it that way, but you said you opposed Saddam Hussein especially when the United States supported him.

It seems to me that the north star of your comment is that you dislike this country and its policies.

Of course, to any thinking person the “north star of the comment” is specifically and only that the questioners dislike this country’s policies — that’s what they said. There is no basis for Wolfowitz to insert “that you dislike this country”; he’s being belligerent and intellectually dishonest.

Noteworthy Kos commentary that speaks for me:

[Proposed question: Mr. Wolfowitz,] how can you be so despicable to say that I would be “happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power” simply because I oppose your disastrous pre-emptive war which has made the world so much more dangerous for us all? (Major6th)

I’ve rarely seen so many logical fallacies rolled into two comments. Let’s see: straw man, ad hominem, non-sequitur … (Jonathan)

The widespread use of fallacious reasoning by individuals in the administration (such as Wolfowitz) … points to an alarming trend. It is almost as if these individuals, who are probably bright and certainly have mastered principles of rhetoric — including use of common fallacies — have decided that the public will swallow any sequence of statements which sounds like an argument. (CSTAR)

“Then you would be happier with Saddam” is … an appeal to the pre-analytical, the stupid, the emotional, the fearful. It is emblematic of this administration’s systematic impoverishment of political discourse. (C S McCrum)

Yes, this administration’s systematic impoverishment of political discourse is something I will never tolerate and cannot forgive. If we accept this low level of discourse in which coherent thinking is displaced by black-and-white, reactionary nonsense, then why do we bother educating ourselves to think at all? PhD, my ass.

2003-11-05 update: On a related note — that is, on the conservative right-wing tendency to use fallacious reasoning — Atrios skillfully and amusingly pinpoints “four tools in the arsenal of wingnut arguing” [via Body and Soul].