A colonial upstart

Went in with my coworkers to a law firm yesterday for a lesson on U.S. trade law and how it's made, plus U.S. civics in general. It was mainly for their benefit, though I learned a few new things that I hadn't known about the way we handle treaties and trade agreements before. Surprisingly interesting, actually, especially to note the incredulity and confusion many of my coworkers felt toward our system, "our way of doing things."

I'll talk about the substance of it in another post, but near the beginning I was struck when the presenter emphasized these differences, noting that citizens of nations with parliamentary governments often get confused by "our different system."

"Our different system"...only 239 years old, and we command such influence! I have read others making this observation many times before, but for some reason it felt more clear at this point than it ever had for me before.

Was our system at all made with the thought that we might one day be so dominant? Unlikely. No young or small nation bothers with that sort of thing. Even today, do we make our laws with a mind to their vast, often indirect, influence? There's certainly a tug-of-war there as far as whether to sacrifice even small gains for ourselves that we might make a better impact on the rest of the world, with the internationalists vs. the neo/paleocons--the internationalists vs. the nationalists, really, though putting it like that sounds somehow stupid.

My instincts lie with the internationalists, though I'm not so naive as to advocate throwing ourselves completely at the mercy of the U.N. in its current state, where China and Russia still exercise veto power. However, the sentimental "city on a hill" and other American exceptionalist drivel that the nationalists so love to spout gets zero sympathy from me.

We are a country of human beings, just like every other state on this earth. We happen to be blessed with certain democratic and meritocratic tendencies--some enshrined in our government, others existing purely by tradition--as well has a vast amount of living space* and natural resources. If pushed far enough and scared well enough, the American people are just as capable of enabling evil as the German and Russian peoples have historically been. Perhaps our institutions would serve as a speed bump on the road to hell, but in the end analysis, our government, just like any other government, really is one of men rather than laws, to contradict President Ford.

At any rate, sovereignty is a purely practical, and hopefully temporary, concern. As I point out above, when put to the test, the "American" prefix has little to do with the "people" that follows it. More on that in another post.





*the comparison to the loaded Lebensraum (edit: as the Nazis used it -- thanks Greg) is apt, I think, considering the way we viewed it when the natives still occupied it.

Nuke the Moon!

Even the uber-dry Wikipedia editors can't resist--the entry is "Project A119", but check out the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_the_moon.

Yup, that's exactly what it sounds like. During the earlier days of the Cold War, before we had gotten quite used to (or used to suppressing) the fact that nuclear annihilation at the ends of our sworn enemies awaited us around every corner, we seem to have had some rather...interesting ideas. Take the Ford Nucleon, for example. Yes, a nuclear powered car. For civilians. Never got past the concept car stage, but still! And don't say a word about 'mileage benefits'--this was clearly "macho male symbol (car) + NUKES = atomic car" BEAT THAT, COMMIES!

Whelp, nuking the moon was the military equivalent. "Haha, we nuked the fucking Moon! The Moon! Every time you Reds look up at night, you'll see the AMERICAN crater on the Moon! Woohoo!" Couch it in all the scholarly diplomatic and military language you like, the social mechanism of deterrence rests on a pretty basic part of the human mind--that of cowing your opponent enough to make him back down: "'...the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.'" Interestingly, this whole idea appears to have been borne largely out of concern that the U.S. was perceived to be losing the space race, thus a public display of power was needed to reassert America's status. Hmmm, insecurity breeding desperate bravado, sounds familiar...

Dr. Strangelove wasn't too far off, mixing Freudian male neuroses with nuclear technology. Ugh, never have I seen a clearer contrast between the scientific and emotional extremes of the human mind: nukes + sex! How we haven't vaporized ourselves in the past 60 years...I won't jinx it, sorry.

Fun fact: a certain young physicist named Carl Sagan apparently worked on the project before it was shelved, calculating projections of dust flow from the blast.

Word cloud creator

This may be old news, but it's a first for me. You know those word clouds that are all the rage nowadays? Well, I came across a do-it-yourself word cloud utility. I generally view word clouds as...damn, can't think of the word, "giving an appearance of depth and insightfulness while in reality offering nothing of the sort" (not "pseudointellectual," it's more concise and carries more meaning than that). Argh, it's on the tip of my tongue!

Anyway, the point is I don't set much store by word clouds, but they can make for interesting art.

Edit: Guess who! (click for big)

When dying just isn't enough...

The Cadaver Synod of, who else, the Catholic Church. It takes a special breed of institutionalized, bureaucratic crazy to go to all the trouble of not only exhuming and desecrating a dead body but also putting it on trial.

War, firsthand

Check out these fascinating firsthand accounts of life on both sides during a campaign in World War II.

The campaign in question is Operation Market-Garden, which is interesting for many reasons but most of all because it was the last German strategic victory (in the sense that they prevented the Allies from accomplishing their main goal, seizing a bridge on the Rhine river) on the Western Front in WWII. Yes, we were the losers on this one; an entire British airborne division was annihilated in the Dutch city of Arnhem after holding out for 4 days against an SS force many times its size. Out of roughly 10,000 men, only ~2,300 escaped across the Rhine river back to Allied lines--the rest were all killed or taken prisoner.

You may have heard of the book and subsequent movie, A Bridge Too Far, based on this campaign. I myself have several video games based on the campaign, as well.

Yesterday I somehow stumbled upon a quote by the commanding officer of the German forces at Arnhem, SS (!) General Wilhelm Bittrich, lamenting his own victory, saying it was his biggest regret of the entire war as it needlessly prolonged a clearly losing conflict. I'll try to find it again.

Market-Garden, explained quickly:
The main line of defense for Germany is based around the Rhine river, which runs from Germany's south up along its border and into Holland (difficult to see, thin blue line running through Arnhem on this map). Securing a bridge over the Rhine would bypass this defense and allow the western Allies to make a quick, deep thrust into the heart of Germany, bringing the war to a rapid close--no later than Christmas 1944, while in actuality the war in Europe dragged on until May 1945. Arnhem, a Dutch city, has such a bridge.

Allied tanks (XXX Corps) break through the German front lines at Eindhoven (A), final destination Arnhem (C). American and British (and, eventually, Polish) paratroopers drop in along the planned route. The Americans drop in to secure bridges just north of Eindhoven and in the city of Nijmegen (B), while the British drop in to secure the bridge at Arnhem (C). The original plan is for XXX Corps to reach Arnhem in two days. In reality, due to blown bridges and heavier than expected German resistance, after five days XXX Corps has only just taken the bridge at Nijmegen (B), and the British in Arnhem (C) are finally crushed, despite a Polish drop just south of Arnhem in an attempt to reinforce the British there.

(ignore the white dots along the route; the intervening 60+ years have seen the construction of several highways altering the fastest route)

View Larger Map

Christian Bale: "do you want me to FUCKING TRASH YOUR LIGHTS?"

GRAAAH! At a director of photography (DP) on the set of Terminator 4 for moving around and adjusting lights during takes. Apparently this is a huge no-no in Set Etiquette 101, so it's particularly egregious during a big-budget Hollywood production. I'm not passing judgment on Bale either way (disclosure: I'm a huge fan of him as an actor), but I also hear that shooting films, especially large ones like this, can be very very stressful, too, and the occasional outburst is not unusual.

What most interests me is the way Bale shifts seemingly randomly back and forth between the All-American John Connor accent to his native British English. I've read that in interviews and public appearances leading up to the release of Batman Begins, Bale kept the American accent so as to keep the Bruce Wayne image consistent, and I know he takes acting and accents very seriously in general. I wonder what exactly was going through the accent-managing part of his brain at this moment. Funny that it would be a Terminator movie, as I'm reminded of the frantic shapeshifting of the dying T-1000 from Judgment Day.

As promised, a real New Year's

Not particularly safe, but definitely fun. Felt like a warzone at times (two solid weeks of nonstop fireworks everywhere, day and night). All hail the Year of the Dog!

Sunday New Year's

Just got back from Washington, D.C.'s Chinese New Year celebrations. My Taiwanese coworkers at TECRO (Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, in lieu of an Embassy due to the Taiwan-China dispute) encouraged me to go. I assumed we'd all stand on the sidelines and watch the procession of dancing dragons and such go by. Turns out we were part of the parade!

Not the dragons, of course, but simply marching with lines of alternating Taiwanese and American flags. I initially felt a bit self-conscious, as I was the sole white guy in a sea of Chinese, but then I remembered the 8 months I'd spent in exactly the same position while studying in China, and it was easily shrugged off. I'd never been in any kind of parade before, either--it was neat to try out the opposite perspective. And so many people! Perhaps in New York or San Francisco I would have expected a big deal, but we actually had a pretty good turnout.

The parade appeared to have been organized and put on entirely by the Taiwan Chinese population of the District, with the only sign of the mainland being a large PRC (People's Republic of China) flag on display at a souvenir stand. I must admit I felt a few brief pangs of worry that taking part and associating myself so visibly with the ROC (Republic of China) flag might affect my chances of future employment on the Mainland, but barring an unexpected downturn in currently upbeat cross-straits relations, I highly doubt it.

The parade ended with several speeches by Taiwanese and D.C. government dignitaries, including one surprisingly interesting one by a D.C. "senator" whose name escapes me. This fellow spoke of the lack of official representation from which D.C. and Taiwan both suffer, and gave a rousing call to action for both parties. I'm not sure I'd give much for Taiwan's chances of representation, what with the current government's stated desire somewhere between "don't talk about it" and "eventual reunification", plus a very large neighbor threatening instant annihilation or at least invasion at the first sign of declared independence, but it was a nice thought. Sigh, and for all that, D.C.'s chances are probably pretty equivalent, so I suppose it was an apt comparison.

I did see current Council member and former mayor Marion Barry up there with the officials, and I'd never seen him before despite having heard so much about him, so that was kind of cool.

The whole event was scheduled to end with an awesome Chinese firecracker display so long that it had to be held up by a crane, but the DCFD came along at the last minute and cancelled it. Admittedly, there may have been some hidden issue of which I was unaware, but come on guys, it's just a bunch of gunpowder packed in paper held up by a crane. They even pushed the crowd back far enough to form a good-sized empty circle before the DCFD showed up, which probably wasn't necessary. If the fire department thought this was dangerous, they would have had a collective heart attack at the week-long celebrations in Beijing (videos forthcoming!).

Ah well, still a fun time in the parade. Happy Year of the Ox!