Bill: "We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy" to Fight Global Warming
January 31, 2008 9:26 AM Jennifer Parker-->
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
I don't really think there's much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy….So was this a moment of candor?
He went on to say that his the U.S. -- and those countries that have committed to reducing greenhouse gases -- could ultimately increase jobs and raise wages with a good energy plan..
So there was something of a contradiction there.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
January 30, 2008
The Curious Cook
Dip Once or Dip Twice?
By HAROLD McGEE
OUR annual national snacking binge is almost here. It would take a very large bowl indeed to hold all the guacamole mashed from the more than 100 million avocados that are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday. (My rough calculation gives a hemisphere bowl 20 yards in diameter and 3 times the height of the goal post crossbars.) And guacamole is just one of many dips that will be shared around the TV.
Just in time, a scientific report has some new findings that may cause football fans to take a second look at that communal bowl of dip.
The study, to be published later this year in the Journal of Food Safety, is the only one I’ve ever seen to proclaim that it was inspired by an episode of “Seinfeld.” It was conducted as part of a Clemson University program designed to get undergraduate students involved in scientific research. Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, proposed it after he saw a rerun of a 1993 “Seinfeld” show in which George Costanza is confronted at a funeral reception by Timmy, his girlfriend’s brother, after dipping the same chip twice.
“Did, did you just double dip that chip?” Timmy asks incredulously, later objecting, “That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” Finally George retorts, “You dip the way you want to dip, I’ll dip the way I want to dip,” and aims another used chip at the bowl. Timmy tries to take it away, and the scene ends as they wrestle for it.
Peter Mehlman, a veteran “Seinfeld” writer, wrote the episode. “At the time I was living in Los Angeles, in Venice,” he told me. “There was a party on one of the canals, and apparently someone dipped twice with the same chip. And a woman flipped out. ‘You just dipped twice! How could you do that? Now all your germs are in there!’ I thought, this is just too good not to use on the show.”
Timmy’s line appears to have been the first notable use of “double dip” to mean dipping a chip twice. George has to ask Timmy what it means. Mr. Mehlman said he thought that it was an obvious name for the offense.
At the party, he had sympathized with the double dipper. “We get exposed to germs in a thousand different ways,” he said. “Besides, I thought the dip was enough to kill anything. It was probably one of those ’60s-style dips with artificial dried onion soup.”
Professor Dawson told me that he had expected to find little or no microbial transfer from mouth to chip to dip, which would support George’s nonchalance. The results surprised him.
The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.
There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.
On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.
Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.
The kind of dip made a difference in a couple of ways. The more acidic water samples had somewhat fewer bacteria, and the numbers of bacteria declined with time. But the acidic salsa picked up higher initial numbers of bacteria than the cheese or chocolate, because it was runny. The thicker the dip, the more stuck to the chip, and so the fewer bacteria were left behind in the bowl.
Professor Dawson said that Timmy was essentially correct. “The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.”
Professor Dawson encourages his undergraduate teams to test popular conceptions about food safety in the laboratory. Last year he published a paper on the five-second rule, which states that food dropped on the floor can be safely eaten if you pick it up before you can count to five. The rule turned out to be false.
I asked Mr. Mehlman what he thought of Professor Dawson’s study on double dipping. “It’s pretty gratifying to know that 15 years later the show continues to exist on the cultural landscape,” he said. “But it reminds me of Jerry’s joke about the scientists who developed the seedless watermelon.”
That stand-up joke opened a “Seinfeld” episode in 1994: “These guys are going, ‘No, I’m focusing on melon. Oh sure thousands of people are dying needlessly. But this,’ ” and here Mr. Seinfeld made a spitting noise, “ ‘that’s gotta stop. You ever try to pick a wet one up off the floor? It’s almost impossible. I’m devoting my life to that.’ ”
As Mr. Mehlman implied, double dipping appears unlikely to be a major public-health threat. Professor Dawson and his team write that the actual risks of double dipping are “debatable” and depend on many unknowable factors.
But it’s good to be aware that sharing a bowl of dip can mean sharing more than we’d like. And happily, the obvious preventive measure requires no deprivation, just a newly focused snack category: one-dip chips, too small for two.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
The Curious Cook
Dip Once or Dip Twice?
By HAROLD McGEE
OUR annual national snacking binge is almost here. It would take a very large bowl indeed to hold all the guacamole mashed from the more than 100 million avocados that are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday. (My rough calculation gives a hemisphere bowl 20 yards in diameter and 3 times the height of the goal post crossbars.) And guacamole is just one of many dips that will be shared around the TV.
Just in time, a scientific report has some new findings that may cause football fans to take a second look at that communal bowl of dip.
The study, to be published later this year in the Journal of Food Safety, is the only one I’ve ever seen to proclaim that it was inspired by an episode of “Seinfeld.” It was conducted as part of a Clemson University program designed to get undergraduate students involved in scientific research. Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, proposed it after he saw a rerun of a 1993 “Seinfeld” show in which George Costanza is confronted at a funeral reception by Timmy, his girlfriend’s brother, after dipping the same chip twice.
“Did, did you just double dip that chip?” Timmy asks incredulously, later objecting, “That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” Finally George retorts, “You dip the way you want to dip, I’ll dip the way I want to dip,” and aims another used chip at the bowl. Timmy tries to take it away, and the scene ends as they wrestle for it.
Peter Mehlman, a veteran “Seinfeld” writer, wrote the episode. “At the time I was living in Los Angeles, in Venice,” he told me. “There was a party on one of the canals, and apparently someone dipped twice with the same chip. And a woman flipped out. ‘You just dipped twice! How could you do that? Now all your germs are in there!’ I thought, this is just too good not to use on the show.”
Timmy’s line appears to have been the first notable use of “double dip” to mean dipping a chip twice. George has to ask Timmy what it means. Mr. Mehlman said he thought that it was an obvious name for the offense.
At the party, he had sympathized with the double dipper. “We get exposed to germs in a thousand different ways,” he said. “Besides, I thought the dip was enough to kill anything. It was probably one of those ’60s-style dips with artificial dried onion soup.”
Professor Dawson told me that he had expected to find little or no microbial transfer from mouth to chip to dip, which would support George’s nonchalance. The results surprised him.
The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.
There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.
On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.
Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.
The kind of dip made a difference in a couple of ways. The more acidic water samples had somewhat fewer bacteria, and the numbers of bacteria declined with time. But the acidic salsa picked up higher initial numbers of bacteria than the cheese or chocolate, because it was runny. The thicker the dip, the more stuck to the chip, and so the fewer bacteria were left behind in the bowl.
Professor Dawson said that Timmy was essentially correct. “The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.”
Professor Dawson encourages his undergraduate teams to test popular conceptions about food safety in the laboratory. Last year he published a paper on the five-second rule, which states that food dropped on the floor can be safely eaten if you pick it up before you can count to five. The rule turned out to be false.
I asked Mr. Mehlman what he thought of Professor Dawson’s study on double dipping. “It’s pretty gratifying to know that 15 years later the show continues to exist on the cultural landscape,” he said. “But it reminds me of Jerry’s joke about the scientists who developed the seedless watermelon.”
That stand-up joke opened a “Seinfeld” episode in 1994: “These guys are going, ‘No, I’m focusing on melon. Oh sure thousands of people are dying needlessly. But this,’ ” and here Mr. Seinfeld made a spitting noise, “ ‘that’s gotta stop. You ever try to pick a wet one up off the floor? It’s almost impossible. I’m devoting my life to that.’ ”
As Mr. Mehlman implied, double dipping appears unlikely to be a major public-health threat. Professor Dawson and his team write that the actual risks of double dipping are “debatable” and depend on many unknowable factors.
But it’s good to be aware that sharing a bowl of dip can mean sharing more than we’d like. And happily, the obvious preventive measure requires no deprivation, just a newly focused snack category: one-dip chips, too small for two.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Brattleboro to vote on arresting Bush, Cheney
January 26, 2008
By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff
BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.
The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March.Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4.
Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter."It is an advisory thing," said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.
So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn't visited since he became president in 2001.Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war.Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys.Voting to put the matter on the town ballot were Chairwoman Audrey Garfield and board members Richard Garrant and Dora Boubalis.Voting against the idea were board members Richard DeGray and Stephen Steidle.Daims said the names submitted to the town clerk's office were the second wave of signatures the petition drive had to collect, because he had to rewrite the wording of the petition.He said he gathered nearly 500 signatures in about three weeks, and he said most people he encountered were eager to sign it.
He started the petition drive about three months ago."Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go," he said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive."This is exactly what the charter envisioned as a citizen initiative," Daims said. "People want to express themselves and they want to say how they feel."He said the idea is spreading: Activists in Louisville, Ky., are spearheading a similar drive, and he said activists were also working in Montague, Mass., a Berkshires town.The article asked the town attorney to "draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities."The article goes on to say the indictments would be the "law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police ... arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached ..."Daims said people in Brattleboro were willing to "think outside the box" and consider the issue.Daims had no compunction in comparing Bush and Cheney with one of the most notorious people in history."If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes," Daims said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
January 26, 2008
By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff
BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.
The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March.Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4.
Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter."It is an advisory thing," said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.
So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn't visited since he became president in 2001.Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war.Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys.Voting to put the matter on the town ballot were Chairwoman Audrey Garfield and board members Richard Garrant and Dora Boubalis.Voting against the idea were board members Richard DeGray and Stephen Steidle.Daims said the names submitted to the town clerk's office were the second wave of signatures the petition drive had to collect, because he had to rewrite the wording of the petition.He said he gathered nearly 500 signatures in about three weeks, and he said most people he encountered were eager to sign it.
He started the petition drive about three months ago."Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go," he said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive."This is exactly what the charter envisioned as a citizen initiative," Daims said. "People want to express themselves and they want to say how they feel."He said the idea is spreading: Activists in Louisville, Ky., are spearheading a similar drive, and he said activists were also working in Montague, Mass., a Berkshires town.The article asked the town attorney to "draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities."The article goes on to say the indictments would be the "law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police ... arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached ..."Daims said people in Brattleboro were willing to "think outside the box" and consider the issue.Daims had no compunction in comparing Bush and Cheney with one of the most notorious people in history."If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes," Daims said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
Friday, January 25, 2008
opinionjournal.com
Man Without a Party?
We thought about filing this Associated Press headline under "Bottom Stories of the Day": "Detroit Mayor Sends Steamy Text Messages." But it turns out this is a public scandal:
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick bristled in the witness chair last year when asked whether he had an affair with a top aide. No, the mayor confidently told jurors, the two were never romantically involved.
But a trove of 14,000 text messages that emerged this week tell a different story: The mayor and his chief of staff carried on a flirty, sometimes sexually explicit dialogue about where to meet and how to conceal their numerous trysts.
Now the mayor's indiscretion has landed him in a Clinton-style scandal that could cost him his job and his law license and even bring perjury charges.
Just one question: What is his political party? In 32 paragraphs, the AP never gets around to telling us. That can mean only one thing: not Republican.
We thought about filing this Associated Press headline under "Bottom Stories of the Day": "Detroit Mayor Sends Steamy Text Messages." But it turns out this is a public scandal:
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick bristled in the witness chair last year when asked whether he had an affair with a top aide. No, the mayor confidently told jurors, the two were never romantically involved.
But a trove of 14,000 text messages that emerged this week tell a different story: The mayor and his chief of staff carried on a flirty, sometimes sexually explicit dialogue about where to meet and how to conceal their numerous trysts.
Now the mayor's indiscretion has landed him in a Clinton-style scandal that could cost him his job and his law license and even bring perjury charges.
Just one question: What is his political party? In 32 paragraphs, the AP never gets around to telling us. That can mean only one thing: not Republican.
Lib Journalist: 'I Am an Intellectual Blasphemer' for Questioning Global Warming
By Matthew Sheffield | January 25, 2008 - 11:29 ET
Despite their rants and raves about being America being scared and lied into Iraq, the media elites do more than their share of fearmongering. On no issue is this more apparent than the subject of the environment where "savvy" and "impartial" journalists act like modern-day inquisitors to defame anyone who dares question the prevailing leftish orthodoxy on the earth's temperature.
Not everyone on the media left is marching in lockstep on the issue, however. One such dissident is Alexander Cockburn, a former columnist for the Nation who has experienced nothing but hatred from the "tolerant" left for thinking for himself:
Since I started writing essays challenging the global warming consensus, and seeking to put forward critical alternative arguments, I have felt almost witch-hunted. There has been an hysterical reaction. One individual, who was once on the board of the Sierra Club, has suggested I should be criminally prosecuted. I wrote a series of articles on climate change issues for the Nation, which elicited a level of hysterical outrage and affront that I found to be astounding - and I have a fairly thick skin, having been in the business of making unpopular arguments for many, many years.
There was a shocking intensity to their self-righteous fury, as if I had transgressed a moral as well as an intellectual boundary and committed blasphemy. I sometimes think to myself, ‘Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live in the 1450s’, because I would be out in the main square with a pile of wood around my ankles. I really feel that; it is remarkable how quickly the hysterical reaction takes hold and rains down upon those who question the consensus.
This experience has given me an understanding of what it must have been like in darker periods to be accused of being a blasphemer; of the summary and unpleasant consequences that can bring. There is a witch-hunting element in climate catastrophism. That is clear in the use of the word ‘denier’ to label those who question claims about anthropogenic climate change. ‘Climate change denier’ is, of course, meant to evoke the figure of the Holocaust denier. This was contrived to demonise sceptics. The past few years show clearly how mass moral panics and intellectual panics become engendered.
Great stuff. He also hits on another important point that many in the business-hating media always overlook when it comes to the temperature debate: This movement is being bought and paid for by the world's largest corporations:
For reasons I find very hard to fathom, the environmental left movement has bought very heavily into the fantasy about anthropogenic global warming and the fantasy that humans can prevent or turn back the warming cycle.
This turn to climate catastrophism is tied into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left’s optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political programme. The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice.
This is a fantasy. In truth, environmental catastrophism will, in fact it already has, play into the hands of sinister-as-always corporate interests. The nuclear industry is benefiting immeasurably from the current catastrophism. Last year, for example, the American nuclear regulatory commission speeded up its process of licensing; there is an imminent wave of nuclear plant building. Many in the nuclear industry see in the story about CO2 causing climate change an opportunity to recover from the adverse publicity of Chernobyl.
Right on the money. In addition to scamming its investors, Enron was a huge booster of the global warming agenda. Across the globe, this pattern of deception continues as rich, large companies have figured out that environmental regulation is a great way for not only getting great publicity but also to shut out the competition.
Full article.
—Matthew Sheffield is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and president of Dialog New Media, a web marketing firm.
By Matthew Sheffield | January 25, 2008 - 11:29 ET
Despite their rants and raves about being America being scared and lied into Iraq, the media elites do more than their share of fearmongering. On no issue is this more apparent than the subject of the environment where "savvy" and "impartial" journalists act like modern-day inquisitors to defame anyone who dares question the prevailing leftish orthodoxy on the earth's temperature.
Not everyone on the media left is marching in lockstep on the issue, however. One such dissident is Alexander Cockburn, a former columnist for the Nation who has experienced nothing but hatred from the "tolerant" left for thinking for himself:
Since I started writing essays challenging the global warming consensus, and seeking to put forward critical alternative arguments, I have felt almost witch-hunted. There has been an hysterical reaction. One individual, who was once on the board of the Sierra Club, has suggested I should be criminally prosecuted. I wrote a series of articles on climate change issues for the Nation, which elicited a level of hysterical outrage and affront that I found to be astounding - and I have a fairly thick skin, having been in the business of making unpopular arguments for many, many years.
There was a shocking intensity to their self-righteous fury, as if I had transgressed a moral as well as an intellectual boundary and committed blasphemy. I sometimes think to myself, ‘Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live in the 1450s’, because I would be out in the main square with a pile of wood around my ankles. I really feel that; it is remarkable how quickly the hysterical reaction takes hold and rains down upon those who question the consensus.
This experience has given me an understanding of what it must have been like in darker periods to be accused of being a blasphemer; of the summary and unpleasant consequences that can bring. There is a witch-hunting element in climate catastrophism. That is clear in the use of the word ‘denier’ to label those who question claims about anthropogenic climate change. ‘Climate change denier’ is, of course, meant to evoke the figure of the Holocaust denier. This was contrived to demonise sceptics. The past few years show clearly how mass moral panics and intellectual panics become engendered.
Great stuff. He also hits on another important point that many in the business-hating media always overlook when it comes to the temperature debate: This movement is being bought and paid for by the world's largest corporations:
For reasons I find very hard to fathom, the environmental left movement has bought very heavily into the fantasy about anthropogenic global warming and the fantasy that humans can prevent or turn back the warming cycle.
This turn to climate catastrophism is tied into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left’s optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political programme. The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice.
This is a fantasy. In truth, environmental catastrophism will, in fact it already has, play into the hands of sinister-as-always corporate interests. The nuclear industry is benefiting immeasurably from the current catastrophism. Last year, for example, the American nuclear regulatory commission speeded up its process of licensing; there is an imminent wave of nuclear plant building. Many in the nuclear industry see in the story about CO2 causing climate change an opportunity to recover from the adverse publicity of Chernobyl.
Right on the money. In addition to scamming its investors, Enron was a huge booster of the global warming agenda. Across the globe, this pattern of deception continues as rich, large companies have figured out that environmental regulation is a great way for not only getting great publicity but also to shut out the competition.
Full article.
—Matthew Sheffield is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and president of Dialog New Media, a web marketing firm.
WaPo
In fact, as Mr. Mubarak well knows, no one is starving in Gaza — though food, fuel and cigarettes are much cheaper across the border. Israel closed its border with the territory and disrupted power supplies over the weekend in response to a massive escalation of Palestinian rocket launches from Gaza at nearby Israeli towns — between Tuesday and Saturday last week, some 225 rockets were aimed at the town of Sderot, where more than 20,000 Israelis have been relentlessly terrorized. Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the “humanitarian crisis,” then by daring Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel’s victims. Its ultimate goal, stated publicly yesterday by Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, is to force Egypt to permanently reopen the border in cooperation with Hamas; that would greatly diminish Israel’s ability to respond to rocket attacks with economic sanctions, and it would undermine the rival Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert committed themselves to reaching a peace accord in 2008 during President Bush’s visit this month. Yet since then, political attention in the region has been focused on the rocket attacks, Israel’s retaliatory strikes against militants in Gaza and the subsequent blockade, and yesterday’s dramatic breach of the border. Naturally it is impossible for the peace negotiations to make progress in these conditions. So those who say their priority is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement ought to be trying to stop Hamas’s disruptions.
This is the same newspaper, remember, that has published numerous op-eds by Hamas shills, representatives, and even deported terrorist leaders. I suppose it would be asking too much to expect the Washington Post to shoulder a little of the blame for legitimizing this band of murderous thugs.
-LGF
Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert committed themselves to reaching a peace accord in 2008 during President Bush’s visit this month. Yet since then, political attention in the region has been focused on the rocket attacks, Israel’s retaliatory strikes against militants in Gaza and the subsequent blockade, and yesterday’s dramatic breach of the border. Naturally it is impossible for the peace negotiations to make progress in these conditions. So those who say their priority is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement ought to be trying to stop Hamas’s disruptions.
This is the same newspaper, remember, that has published numerous op-eds by Hamas shills, representatives, and even deported terrorist leaders. I suppose it would be asking too much to expect the Washington Post to shoulder a little of the blame for legitimizing this band of murderous thugs.
-LGF
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Parasites!
the spectator
Saul Bellow and the Bad Fish
A new way of explaining the genius of Ravelstein.
By Ron RosenbaumPosted Tuesday, April 3, 2007, at 6:35 PM ET
Warning: This column is likely to offend two groups of potentially dangerous devotees—cat lovers and Saul Bellow fans.
I've developed a conjecture that is likely to infuriate both. One that involves the deadly ciguatera toxin and the insidious toxoplasmosis parasite.
I'm writing this in Chicago, where I've begun a writer-in-residence fellowship at the University of Chicago. They've put me up in a Lake Shore Drive property colorfully called the Flamingo Apartments. It's across the street from the place where Saul Bellow lived with his third wife (out of five), and local legend has it that back in the '20s Al Capone rusticated up here by the lake. Could be real-estate lore, but I like it.
Anyway, preparing for the fellowship, I was rereading Ravelstein, the Bellow novel based on the late Allan Bloom and the kind of intellectual and cultural life he embodied at the University of Chicago, where Bellow and Bloom taught a celebrated seminar together. It was Bellow who helped make Bloom's pessimistic polemic, The Closing of the American Mind, a best-selling sensation.
Ravelstein is not only my favorite Bellow novel, it's the only one I really love. It's a rapturous celebration of the life of the mind, as well as a meditation on the glory of sensual life and on the tenebrous permeable boundary we all eventually pass over, the one between life and death. And as I was reading it, with Passover approaching, I found myself asking myself one of the traditional Passover questions about Ravelstein: Why is this novel different from all other Bellow novels?
My problem with the pre-Ravelstein Bellow is that he all too often strains too hard to yoke together two somewhat contradictory aspects of his being and style. There's the street-wise Windy City wiseguy and then—as if to show off that the wiseguy has Wisdom—there are the undigested chunks of arcane, not entirely impressive, philosophic thought and speculation. Just to make sure you know his novels have intellectual heft. That the world and the flesh in his prose are both figured and transfigured.
"Bellow has two hobbies," the novelist and Chicagoan Richard Stern is quoted as saying in James Atlas' biography: "Philosophy and fucking."
Not that there's anything wrong with these as hobbies, but the philosophical and the sensual in Bellow never fused in a convincing or satisfying way for me. They were rather like alternating voices from schizoid embodied personae.
I know he wants you to see the connection between his marital-problem-plagued Herzog and the world historical views of Hegel, but to me it's always been a heavy-handed juxtaposition rather than a novelistic fusion. But then there's Ravelstein, a novel Bellow wrote in his 80s, which I found—from the moment I read the first long New Yorker excerpt—absolutely, irresistibly seductive, both sensually and intellectually, one in which the sublimity and pathos of life and art are not joined to each other with heavy welds but transformed into a beautiful, seamless, unravelable fabric. I think a lot of people have bypassed or underrated Ravelstein because there's been too much bio-criticism about it. Believe me, I don't care that much about Allan Bloom OR whether the novel is a faithful account of his sex life. Just read it. Read it as if you didn't know who Allan Bloom was.
Recently Sam Tanenhaus made an argument in the Times Book Review that Bellow's work as a whole is "beyond criticism" because like Whitman it contains multitudes, it's "a vision of the human universe as apprehended by a being of higher intelligence" and the "many defects—the longueurs and digressions, the lectures on anthroposophy and religion" don't really matter when Bellow is considered as collective whole.
There's truth to that, but it doesn't preclude arguing that some Bellow is better than other Bellow and that in Ravelstein he achieved something that his previous novels had been striving a bit too grimly and sedulously for: that feeling of warp and woof, body and soul woven together into a single shimmering cloth.
Perhaps it's no accident that the opening scenes of Ravelstein focus in finely wrought detail on the sensual beauty of fabrics: the sheets at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, the ties at Sulka, and the tour de force episode that might be called "Ravelstein buys a sport coat"—at Lanvin.
You know the story of Ravelstein, right? It opens in the penthouse of the Crillon, where Ravelstein (the Bloom character) has flown Chick (the Bellow character) over to celebrate his best-sellerdom and to make a request: that Chick write a memoir of Ravelstein's life. The novel consists of Chick's memories of Ravelstein (who, we learn, is dying) and concludes with a dramatic episode that convinces Chick to carry out the biographical request.
This summation, of course, does not do justice to the novel's uncharacteristically ravishing sensual prose. Bellow is mesmerizing when describing the supreme material products—the gorgeous efflorescences—of civilization to be found in civilization's supreme peak in Paris. The Paris scenes recall to me a remark by Harvard's Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain, a grimly titled tome I found surprisingly full of acute contrarian observations. At one point she says that materialism—in the sense of the creation of beautifully fabricated material objects, not lust for lucre—is not the antithesis but the glory of consciousness, its inner beauty and complexity made manifest in the outer world.
Here's a description of the $4,500 sport coat Ravelstein buys:
The gorgeous jacket at Lanvin was beautiful flannel, silky as well as substantial. The color ... golden with rich lights among the folds.
"You see such jackets advertised in Vanity Fair, and the other fashion slicks," Chick observes, "and they're usually modeled by unshaven toughs with the look of rough trade ... who have nothing—but nothing—to do, other than being seen in all the glory of their dirty narcissism. You don't even think of such a garment on an unwieldy intelligent man ... It's actually a pleasant thing to see."
"Silky" and "substantial," "rich lights among the folds," "the glory of their dirty narcissism." It's almost as if Bellow was describing the heightened level of his prose in Ravelstein: Silky and substantial; the rich light of philosophical insight gleaming from within the folds of flesh. In Ravelstein we have the sensuality and intelligence, the "philosophy and fucking" unified at last.
Now let us consider my conjecture about what makes Ravelstein different in this way. A conjecture that occurred to me on the plane to Chicago as I was reading the last quarter of the book, the part that deals with Chick's horrifying experience of ciguatera (or cigua) toxin poisoning in the Caribbean. It is apparently based on a life-threatening experience Bellow himself underwent while on a Caribbean vacation with his wife: eating a tropical fish loaded with the toxin.
It is in this last quarter of the book that I believe Bellow makes a quantum leap to a realm he hadn't reached before. In this section, which Bellow's biographer James Atlas unaccountably dismisses as a "digression," Chick consumes a red snapper that is laced with the rare, devastating toxin, which is produced by a species of algae, is sometimes found in reef-feeding fish, and can't be neutralized by cooking, even boiling. Eat the wrong fish and you're out of luck.
Cigua is a nerve toxin that ravages the brain as well as the neurological system, and it sends Chick into a state of near death. (He even has one of those near-death visions of his dead father and brothers.) Eventually after being rushed to a Boston hospital, he experiences a cardiac failure and, under the influence of the cigua toxin's deranging but delirious effects (and the hospital drugs), experiences wild dreams and hallucinations about life and death that are unlike anything else in Bellow: "Often it seemed to me that I was just underneath Kenmore Square in Boston," he writes. "The oddness of these hallucinatory surroundings was in a way liberating. I wonder sometimes whether at the threshold of death I may not have been able to entertain myself lightheartedly like any normal person, enjoying these preposterous delusions—fictions which didn't have to be invented."
Fictions that did not have to be invented! Bellow reveling, raveling in a singular, cigualike delusional state.
It's Bellow communicating his communion, his dreamlike dialogue with death not long before the real thing ...
When Chick recovers from the cigua toxin experience, he is changed, his entire neurological capacity has undergone a transformation. The episode convinces him to do the memoir on Ravelstein. And—this is my conjecture—it's also possible to speculate that the psychotropic effects of the nerve toxin on Bellow's brain heightened his capacity to synthesize sensuality and philosophy in his prose. That, along with the deranging neurological damage, it gave him a gift.
The book that emerges—to my mind—evidences a sea change (or perhaps we should say a seafood-induced change). The cigua toxin didn't kill him; it made him, or made his work stronger, more vibrant and luminous, shimmering like Ravelstein's golden sport coat or like the Caribbean waters that harbored the toxic seafood. There's a line in the next-to-last paragraph of Ravelstein that seems to be Bellow's acknowledgment of the transformation of his prose, the synthesis of the intellectual and sensual he achieved after the cigua episode: "He lost himself in sublime music, a music in which ideas are dissolved, reflecting these ideas in the form of feeling. He carries them down into the street with him ..." Music in which ideas are dissolved: the new Bellovian prose music.
And what does all of this have to do with cat lovers? Well, I've been fascinated by recent research into the sociobiological effects of toxoplasmosis parasites. Not just on cats, their chief hosts, but on human populations. Toxoplasmosis parasites seem to have developed a symbiotic relationship with the cats they inhabit. It turns out that the parasite is transmitted to rats when they eat cat feces (apologies to the squeamish). The parasite then migrates to the rat brain, where it has the effect of making rats more friendly to cats, or at least less likely to regard cats as predators. Which makes it easier for the cats to prey upon and consume them. Could there be a similarity in the human–cat relationship? The toxoplasmosis parasite can be passed to human beings, usually through the medium of cat feces in the handling of cat boxes, cat litter, etc.
On an individual level this exposure may have profound life-changing effects. We all know terminally fanatic cat lovers. I have an ex-girlfriend who never liked cats in her life, indeed virtually despised them, but adopted one during a period of emotional stress and underwent what I can only call something akin to a radical religious conversion. A total personality change, which manifested itself as an almost utter inability to talk about anything but the super extraordinary adorability of her cat. I would get calls from her for no other purpose than to describe to me various different "adorable" positions the cat would assume while sleeping. It was almost shocking. Particularly since when it comes to adorability, her cat has nothing on my cat (or so the parasite tells me). But seriously, I underwent a milder version of such a conversion after half a lifetime of being a dog person.
But forget about us; according to recent research, the cat parasite may have the capacity to change entire societies as well. According to an Aug. 2, 2006, report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology, when there are high toxoplasmosis levels within a population, "mass personality modification could result in cultural change." The parasite may have changed human history as well as personality.
Along with what I'd call the cigua effect, the toxoplasmosis parasite raises questions about how much of our art and culture are the product of infection or disease of one sort or another. Important questions about the autonomy of art and personality which I don't pretend to have answers for but which might perhaps suggest a greater humility about our capacity for unfettered—or uninfected—free will. Perhaps some parasite or poison is responsible for my thoughts on Bellow and Ravelstein. And perhaps for your thoughts on my thoughts. It certainly seems to me that a number of American novelists could benefit from a cruise to the Western Caribbean of the sort Bellow took, and as many sumptuous seafood meals (red snapper and barracuda especially recommended) as necessary to raise the level of their art through a slightly less-than-lethal dose of cigua.
After all, doesn't the Rolling Stones song suggest that it's the cigua, not the song?
Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2163437/
Saul Bellow and the Bad Fish
A new way of explaining the genius of Ravelstein.
By Ron RosenbaumPosted Tuesday, April 3, 2007, at 6:35 PM ET
Warning: This column is likely to offend two groups of potentially dangerous devotees—cat lovers and Saul Bellow fans.
I've developed a conjecture that is likely to infuriate both. One that involves the deadly ciguatera toxin and the insidious toxoplasmosis parasite.
I'm writing this in Chicago, where I've begun a writer-in-residence fellowship at the University of Chicago. They've put me up in a Lake Shore Drive property colorfully called the Flamingo Apartments. It's across the street from the place where Saul Bellow lived with his third wife (out of five), and local legend has it that back in the '20s Al Capone rusticated up here by the lake. Could be real-estate lore, but I like it.
Anyway, preparing for the fellowship, I was rereading Ravelstein, the Bellow novel based on the late Allan Bloom and the kind of intellectual and cultural life he embodied at the University of Chicago, where Bellow and Bloom taught a celebrated seminar together. It was Bellow who helped make Bloom's pessimistic polemic, The Closing of the American Mind, a best-selling sensation.
Ravelstein is not only my favorite Bellow novel, it's the only one I really love. It's a rapturous celebration of the life of the mind, as well as a meditation on the glory of sensual life and on the tenebrous permeable boundary we all eventually pass over, the one between life and death. And as I was reading it, with Passover approaching, I found myself asking myself one of the traditional Passover questions about Ravelstein: Why is this novel different from all other Bellow novels?
My problem with the pre-Ravelstein Bellow is that he all too often strains too hard to yoke together two somewhat contradictory aspects of his being and style. There's the street-wise Windy City wiseguy and then—as if to show off that the wiseguy has Wisdom—there are the undigested chunks of arcane, not entirely impressive, philosophic thought and speculation. Just to make sure you know his novels have intellectual heft. That the world and the flesh in his prose are both figured and transfigured.
"Bellow has two hobbies," the novelist and Chicagoan Richard Stern is quoted as saying in James Atlas' biography: "Philosophy and fucking."
Not that there's anything wrong with these as hobbies, but the philosophical and the sensual in Bellow never fused in a convincing or satisfying way for me. They were rather like alternating voices from schizoid embodied personae.
I know he wants you to see the connection between his marital-problem-plagued Herzog and the world historical views of Hegel, but to me it's always been a heavy-handed juxtaposition rather than a novelistic fusion. But then there's Ravelstein, a novel Bellow wrote in his 80s, which I found—from the moment I read the first long New Yorker excerpt—absolutely, irresistibly seductive, both sensually and intellectually, one in which the sublimity and pathos of life and art are not joined to each other with heavy welds but transformed into a beautiful, seamless, unravelable fabric. I think a lot of people have bypassed or underrated Ravelstein because there's been too much bio-criticism about it. Believe me, I don't care that much about Allan Bloom OR whether the novel is a faithful account of his sex life. Just read it. Read it as if you didn't know who Allan Bloom was.
Recently Sam Tanenhaus made an argument in the Times Book Review that Bellow's work as a whole is "beyond criticism" because like Whitman it contains multitudes, it's "a vision of the human universe as apprehended by a being of higher intelligence" and the "many defects—the longueurs and digressions, the lectures on anthroposophy and religion" don't really matter when Bellow is considered as collective whole.
There's truth to that, but it doesn't preclude arguing that some Bellow is better than other Bellow and that in Ravelstein he achieved something that his previous novels had been striving a bit too grimly and sedulously for: that feeling of warp and woof, body and soul woven together into a single shimmering cloth.
Perhaps it's no accident that the opening scenes of Ravelstein focus in finely wrought detail on the sensual beauty of fabrics: the sheets at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, the ties at Sulka, and the tour de force episode that might be called "Ravelstein buys a sport coat"—at Lanvin.
You know the story of Ravelstein, right? It opens in the penthouse of the Crillon, where Ravelstein (the Bloom character) has flown Chick (the Bellow character) over to celebrate his best-sellerdom and to make a request: that Chick write a memoir of Ravelstein's life. The novel consists of Chick's memories of Ravelstein (who, we learn, is dying) and concludes with a dramatic episode that convinces Chick to carry out the biographical request.
This summation, of course, does not do justice to the novel's uncharacteristically ravishing sensual prose. Bellow is mesmerizing when describing the supreme material products—the gorgeous efflorescences—of civilization to be found in civilization's supreme peak in Paris. The Paris scenes recall to me a remark by Harvard's Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain, a grimly titled tome I found surprisingly full of acute contrarian observations. At one point she says that materialism—in the sense of the creation of beautifully fabricated material objects, not lust for lucre—is not the antithesis but the glory of consciousness, its inner beauty and complexity made manifest in the outer world.
Here's a description of the $4,500 sport coat Ravelstein buys:
The gorgeous jacket at Lanvin was beautiful flannel, silky as well as substantial. The color ... golden with rich lights among the folds.
"You see such jackets advertised in Vanity Fair, and the other fashion slicks," Chick observes, "and they're usually modeled by unshaven toughs with the look of rough trade ... who have nothing—but nothing—to do, other than being seen in all the glory of their dirty narcissism. You don't even think of such a garment on an unwieldy intelligent man ... It's actually a pleasant thing to see."
"Silky" and "substantial," "rich lights among the folds," "the glory of their dirty narcissism." It's almost as if Bellow was describing the heightened level of his prose in Ravelstein: Silky and substantial; the rich light of philosophical insight gleaming from within the folds of flesh. In Ravelstein we have the sensuality and intelligence, the "philosophy and fucking" unified at last.
Now let us consider my conjecture about what makes Ravelstein different in this way. A conjecture that occurred to me on the plane to Chicago as I was reading the last quarter of the book, the part that deals with Chick's horrifying experience of ciguatera (or cigua) toxin poisoning in the Caribbean. It is apparently based on a life-threatening experience Bellow himself underwent while on a Caribbean vacation with his wife: eating a tropical fish loaded with the toxin.
It is in this last quarter of the book that I believe Bellow makes a quantum leap to a realm he hadn't reached before. In this section, which Bellow's biographer James Atlas unaccountably dismisses as a "digression," Chick consumes a red snapper that is laced with the rare, devastating toxin, which is produced by a species of algae, is sometimes found in reef-feeding fish, and can't be neutralized by cooking, even boiling. Eat the wrong fish and you're out of luck.
Cigua is a nerve toxin that ravages the brain as well as the neurological system, and it sends Chick into a state of near death. (He even has one of those near-death visions of his dead father and brothers.) Eventually after being rushed to a Boston hospital, he experiences a cardiac failure and, under the influence of the cigua toxin's deranging but delirious effects (and the hospital drugs), experiences wild dreams and hallucinations about life and death that are unlike anything else in Bellow: "Often it seemed to me that I was just underneath Kenmore Square in Boston," he writes. "The oddness of these hallucinatory surroundings was in a way liberating. I wonder sometimes whether at the threshold of death I may not have been able to entertain myself lightheartedly like any normal person, enjoying these preposterous delusions—fictions which didn't have to be invented."
Fictions that did not have to be invented! Bellow reveling, raveling in a singular, cigualike delusional state.
It's Bellow communicating his communion, his dreamlike dialogue with death not long before the real thing ...
When Chick recovers from the cigua toxin experience, he is changed, his entire neurological capacity has undergone a transformation. The episode convinces him to do the memoir on Ravelstein. And—this is my conjecture—it's also possible to speculate that the psychotropic effects of the nerve toxin on Bellow's brain heightened his capacity to synthesize sensuality and philosophy in his prose. That, along with the deranging neurological damage, it gave him a gift.
The book that emerges—to my mind—evidences a sea change (or perhaps we should say a seafood-induced change). The cigua toxin didn't kill him; it made him, or made his work stronger, more vibrant and luminous, shimmering like Ravelstein's golden sport coat or like the Caribbean waters that harbored the toxic seafood. There's a line in the next-to-last paragraph of Ravelstein that seems to be Bellow's acknowledgment of the transformation of his prose, the synthesis of the intellectual and sensual he achieved after the cigua episode: "He lost himself in sublime music, a music in which ideas are dissolved, reflecting these ideas in the form of feeling. He carries them down into the street with him ..." Music in which ideas are dissolved: the new Bellovian prose music.
And what does all of this have to do with cat lovers? Well, I've been fascinated by recent research into the sociobiological effects of toxoplasmosis parasites. Not just on cats, their chief hosts, but on human populations. Toxoplasmosis parasites seem to have developed a symbiotic relationship with the cats they inhabit. It turns out that the parasite is transmitted to rats when they eat cat feces (apologies to the squeamish). The parasite then migrates to the rat brain, where it has the effect of making rats more friendly to cats, or at least less likely to regard cats as predators. Which makes it easier for the cats to prey upon and consume them. Could there be a similarity in the human–cat relationship? The toxoplasmosis parasite can be passed to human beings, usually through the medium of cat feces in the handling of cat boxes, cat litter, etc.
On an individual level this exposure may have profound life-changing effects. We all know terminally fanatic cat lovers. I have an ex-girlfriend who never liked cats in her life, indeed virtually despised them, but adopted one during a period of emotional stress and underwent what I can only call something akin to a radical religious conversion. A total personality change, which manifested itself as an almost utter inability to talk about anything but the super extraordinary adorability of her cat. I would get calls from her for no other purpose than to describe to me various different "adorable" positions the cat would assume while sleeping. It was almost shocking. Particularly since when it comes to adorability, her cat has nothing on my cat (or so the parasite tells me). But seriously, I underwent a milder version of such a conversion after half a lifetime of being a dog person.
But forget about us; according to recent research, the cat parasite may have the capacity to change entire societies as well. According to an Aug. 2, 2006, report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology, when there are high toxoplasmosis levels within a population, "mass personality modification could result in cultural change." The parasite may have changed human history as well as personality.
Along with what I'd call the cigua effect, the toxoplasmosis parasite raises questions about how much of our art and culture are the product of infection or disease of one sort or another. Important questions about the autonomy of art and personality which I don't pretend to have answers for but which might perhaps suggest a greater humility about our capacity for unfettered—or uninfected—free will. Perhaps some parasite or poison is responsible for my thoughts on Bellow and Ravelstein. And perhaps for your thoughts on my thoughts. It certainly seems to me that a number of American novelists could benefit from a cruise to the Western Caribbean of the sort Bellow took, and as many sumptuous seafood meals (red snapper and barracuda especially recommended) as necessary to raise the level of their art through a slightly less-than-lethal dose of cigua.
After all, doesn't the Rolling Stones song suggest that it's the cigua, not the song?
Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2163437/
Monday, January 21, 2008
Global Warming!!!
"People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues."
-George Will
-George Will
Thanks Dad!
“We’re not saying he’s Phil Simms or anything,” Archie Manning said after his son had gone to the interview room. “I just never thought he was as bad as some people thought he was.”
Friday, January 18, 2008
The Taboo 'Cut' From a New York Times news story on Ireland's entrepreneurial boom:
The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.
So Ireland experienced an economic boom after it "rewrote" tax policies and "changed" tax rates. We'll give you three guesses as to which direction tax rates moved, and one guess as to why the Times wasn't clear on the point.
The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.
So Ireland experienced an economic boom after it "rewrote" tax policies and "changed" tax rates. We'll give you three guesses as to which direction tax rates moved, and one guess as to why the Times wasn't clear on the point.
Alright then. Two of 'em. Both had our father in 'em. It's peculiar. We're older now then he ever was by 20 years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one we don't remember too well, but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he's gonna give us some money. We think we lost it.
The second one, it was like we was both back in older times, and we was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past us and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past ... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down, and when he rode past we seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do, and we could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream we knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and we knew that whenever we got there he would be there.
And then we woke up.
The second one, it was like we was both back in older times, and we was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past us and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past ... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down, and when he rode past we seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do, and we could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream we knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and we knew that whenever we got there he would be there.
And then we woke up.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
"Kiss It"
Best of the Web Today - January 17, 2008
By JAMES TARANTO
The Lewinsky Decade
Sometime in 1997, a friend signed us up for the Drudge Report's email updates. We didn't quite understand what the Drudge Report was, but into our email box at irregular intervals would pop often-interesting news and gossip bulletins, written in a breathless, tabloidy style. (One of them, dated Nov. 9, 1997, declares, "WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE TOPS 150,000 PAID!")
Ten years ago today came the most interesting Drudge missive:
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month.
The following day, Drudge named the intern as Monica Lewinsky, and a few days after that, the story was all over the mainstream media. It looked for a while as if President Clinton might not serve out his term. Even his dutiful wife commented on the "Today" show that if true, "that would be a very serious offense." But, insisted Hillary Clinton, it was not true. The real story "is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."
One participant in that "conspiracy" was Attorney General Janet Reno, who had petitioned to expand Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's mandate to include the investigation of possible obstruction of justice in a sexual-harassment suit filed by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas employee who alleged that then-Gov. Clinton had dropped his pants and issued a demand that she "kiss it."
Clinton's denials were politically expedient. By the time he owned up to his shenanigans with the youthful Miss Lewinsky, his supporters had accustomed themselves to the idea of presidential droit de seigneur, and they defended Clinton's conduct as being "only about sex." Because Clinton had issued false denials under oath, however, as a legal matter it no longer was only about sex but about perjury and obstruction of justice. Starr presented a report to Congress, which impeached him. In February 1999 the Senate found him not guilty.
Clinton survived the scandal by brazenly lying. Had he acknowledged the affair at the outset, he surely would have been forced to resign. This centrist president became the hero of the left, which actually believed that "right-wing conspiracy" talk. The impending impeachment produced a backlash against Republicans, who lost House seats in 1998, countering a historic trend in which the president's party almost always suffers big congressional losses in the sixth year of his term (cf 1986 and 2006).
The effects of the Lewinsky scandal continue to be felt. By some accounts it launched Mrs. Clinton's political career. The notion of a first lady seeking a Senate seat in a state to which she had no real connection was preposterous--yet she carried it off, in part by affording liberal New Yorkers an opportunity to poke the eye of the vast-right conspirators. Now she is a viable candidate for president. Who'd have expected that back in 1998?
Organized feminism lost much of its moral authority, as no less a personage than Gloria Steinem--in a famous op-ed that is mysteriously missing from the New York Times archives but we found here--explained away treatment of women that she never would have tolerated from a Republican or a private-sector boss.
The independent counsel statute, a post-Watergate abomination that no one thinks made government cleaner, finally went by the boards when Congress in 2000 declined to renew it. (The impulse behind the independent counsel, however, remains alive, as shown by the witch hunt in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle.)
The paranoid style of politics took hold on the left, which blamed right-wing conspiracies for George W. Bush's victory in the disputed election of 2000, the liberation of Iraq, George W. Bush's victory in the undisputed election of 2004, Hurricane Katrina and, on the furthest fringes, the attacks of 9/11. A far-left subculture harbors fantasies of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney as revenge, even though they haven't committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.
In reality, far from being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Clinton was caught in a trap set for him unwittingly by the political left, which made sexual harassment both a legal offense and a political outrage, and which hatched the independent-counsel scheme. He was saved only by an exercise of raw, partisan political power in the Senate, where not a single Democrat voted for conviction.
Mrs. Clinton, facing a strong challenge from Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, finds herself in a weirdly parallel position. Once again, as we noted last week, Gloria Steinem has produced a risible op-ed for the Times, this time defending Mrs. Clinton as a feminist icon, even though she owes her political power to her husband, and even though she seems to have saved her chance at the nomination by coming close to tears.
Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun, in a report on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial Afrocentric "spiritual mentor," notes that "that woman" has come up this year, in a new context:
On Sunday morning--amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential campaign--Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary political message.
Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past--from Nat Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But, Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for [Mrs.] Clinton "because her husband was good to us," he continued.
"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."
Feminism, the independent counsel, now racial identity politics: Before the Clintons have passed from the stage, maybe they will have been hoist by every liberal petard.
By JAMES TARANTO
The Lewinsky Decade
Sometime in 1997, a friend signed us up for the Drudge Report's email updates. We didn't quite understand what the Drudge Report was, but into our email box at irregular intervals would pop often-interesting news and gossip bulletins, written in a breathless, tabloidy style. (One of them, dated Nov. 9, 1997, declares, "WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE TOPS 150,000 PAID!")
Ten years ago today came the most interesting Drudge missive:
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month.
The following day, Drudge named the intern as Monica Lewinsky, and a few days after that, the story was all over the mainstream media. It looked for a while as if President Clinton might not serve out his term. Even his dutiful wife commented on the "Today" show that if true, "that would be a very serious offense." But, insisted Hillary Clinton, it was not true. The real story "is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."
One participant in that "conspiracy" was Attorney General Janet Reno, who had petitioned to expand Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's mandate to include the investigation of possible obstruction of justice in a sexual-harassment suit filed by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas employee who alleged that then-Gov. Clinton had dropped his pants and issued a demand that she "kiss it."
Clinton's denials were politically expedient. By the time he owned up to his shenanigans with the youthful Miss Lewinsky, his supporters had accustomed themselves to the idea of presidential droit de seigneur, and they defended Clinton's conduct as being "only about sex." Because Clinton had issued false denials under oath, however, as a legal matter it no longer was only about sex but about perjury and obstruction of justice. Starr presented a report to Congress, which impeached him. In February 1999 the Senate found him not guilty.
Clinton survived the scandal by brazenly lying. Had he acknowledged the affair at the outset, he surely would have been forced to resign. This centrist president became the hero of the left, which actually believed that "right-wing conspiracy" talk. The impending impeachment produced a backlash against Republicans, who lost House seats in 1998, countering a historic trend in which the president's party almost always suffers big congressional losses in the sixth year of his term (cf 1986 and 2006).
The effects of the Lewinsky scandal continue to be felt. By some accounts it launched Mrs. Clinton's political career. The notion of a first lady seeking a Senate seat in a state to which she had no real connection was preposterous--yet she carried it off, in part by affording liberal New Yorkers an opportunity to poke the eye of the vast-right conspirators. Now she is a viable candidate for president. Who'd have expected that back in 1998?
Organized feminism lost much of its moral authority, as no less a personage than Gloria Steinem--in a famous op-ed that is mysteriously missing from the New York Times archives but we found here--explained away treatment of women that she never would have tolerated from a Republican or a private-sector boss.
The independent counsel statute, a post-Watergate abomination that no one thinks made government cleaner, finally went by the boards when Congress in 2000 declined to renew it. (The impulse behind the independent counsel, however, remains alive, as shown by the witch hunt in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle.)
The paranoid style of politics took hold on the left, which blamed right-wing conspiracies for George W. Bush's victory in the disputed election of 2000, the liberation of Iraq, George W. Bush's victory in the undisputed election of 2004, Hurricane Katrina and, on the furthest fringes, the attacks of 9/11. A far-left subculture harbors fantasies of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney as revenge, even though they haven't committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.
In reality, far from being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Clinton was caught in a trap set for him unwittingly by the political left, which made sexual harassment both a legal offense and a political outrage, and which hatched the independent-counsel scheme. He was saved only by an exercise of raw, partisan political power in the Senate, where not a single Democrat voted for conviction.
Mrs. Clinton, facing a strong challenge from Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, finds herself in a weirdly parallel position. Once again, as we noted last week, Gloria Steinem has produced a risible op-ed for the Times, this time defending Mrs. Clinton as a feminist icon, even though she owes her political power to her husband, and even though she seems to have saved her chance at the nomination by coming close to tears.
Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun, in a report on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial Afrocentric "spiritual mentor," notes that "that woman" has come up this year, in a new context:
On Sunday morning--amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential campaign--Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary political message.
Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past--from Nat Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But, Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for [Mrs.] Clinton "because her husband was good to us," he continued.
"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."
Feminism, the independent counsel, now racial identity politics: Before the Clintons have passed from the stage, maybe they will have been hoist by every liberal petard.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
If Elected, He Will Not Serve
"Fidel Castro said Wednesday he is not yet healthy enough to speak to Cuba's masses in person and can't campaign for Sunday's parliamentary elections," the Associated Press "reports."
Too sick to campaign, eh? Gee, it's lucky for him he's a dictator!
"Fidel Castro said Wednesday he is not yet healthy enough to speak to Cuba's masses in person and can't campaign for Sunday's parliamentary elections," the Associated Press "reports."
Too sick to campaign, eh? Gee, it's lucky for him he's a dictator!
Wow! Straight Talk From Lauer on Surge, Media Double-Standard
By Mark Finkelstein
Created 2008-01-16 08:06
You don't suppose NewsBusters has become Matt Lauer's guilty pleasure; one having a salubrious effect on his thinking? The Today co-anchor this morning suggested an MSM double-standard on the Dem and GOP races and acknowledged the success of the surge.
Matt's guest during the first half-hour was Tim Russert, impressively fresh despite red-eyeing to NYC after moderating last night's Nevada debate. Lauer, after playing clips of the candidates' take on Iraq, suggested that the war is no longer the winning issue the Dems once thought it was.
MATT LAUER: How much of a tightrope are they walking with the apparent success of the surge over the last couple months, how difficult is it for these Democratic candidates to score points on Iraq right now?
TIM RUSSERT: They have to keep playing to their base, which wants immediate troop withdrawal, and yet they also want to be responsible, that they're not going to leave Iraq in a more chaotic situation.
Did Tim Russert just imply that the Dem base favors an irresponsible position on Iraq? Sure sounded like it. He continued.
RUSSERT: But you just seized on a real dividing line this coming November. The Republican candidate's going to say "the surge has worked, keep the troops there, we must protect Iraq well into the future." John McCain said perhaps the next 100 years! The Democrats are going to say "troops out soon."
Lauer then offered that candid kernel on the MSM double standard.
LAUER: No front-runner on the Republican side; no front-runner on the Democratic side. And yet when you listen to the press coverage of this, you hear them say "the up-for-grabs race on the Republican side signals a party in disarray. The up-for-grabs race on the Democratic side signals a party with an embarrassment of riches." Why is that? Is it the media?
RUSSERT: We have to be careful. I remember in 1992 it was the Democrats who were the party in disarray [remember the "Seven Dwarfs"?] and Bill Clinton finally emerged and beat George Herbert Walker Bush. But what the Democrats point to, Matt, is money -- Democrats outraising them dramatically. Last night in Michigan, half the Republicans said they're angry or dissatisfied with the Bush administration. We found the same thing in Iowa, and the same thing in New Hampshire. And there are still five viable candidates on the Republican side; only two, two-and-a-half, three on the Democratic side.
LAUER: Mr. Edwards would be really happy that you called him half a candidate.
RUSSERT: I said three at the end, didn't I? It was a long flight!
By Mark Finkelstein
Created 2008-01-16 08:06
You don't suppose NewsBusters has become Matt Lauer's guilty pleasure; one having a salubrious effect on his thinking? The Today co-anchor this morning suggested an MSM double-standard on the Dem and GOP races and acknowledged the success of the surge.
Matt's guest during the first half-hour was Tim Russert, impressively fresh despite red-eyeing to NYC after moderating last night's Nevada debate. Lauer, after playing clips of the candidates' take on Iraq, suggested that the war is no longer the winning issue the Dems once thought it was.
MATT LAUER: How much of a tightrope are they walking with the apparent success of the surge over the last couple months, how difficult is it for these Democratic candidates to score points on Iraq right now?
TIM RUSSERT: They have to keep playing to their base, which wants immediate troop withdrawal, and yet they also want to be responsible, that they're not going to leave Iraq in a more chaotic situation.
Did Tim Russert just imply that the Dem base favors an irresponsible position on Iraq? Sure sounded like it. He continued.
RUSSERT: But you just seized on a real dividing line this coming November. The Republican candidate's going to say "the surge has worked, keep the troops there, we must protect Iraq well into the future." John McCain said perhaps the next 100 years! The Democrats are going to say "troops out soon."
Lauer then offered that candid kernel on the MSM double standard.
LAUER: No front-runner on the Republican side; no front-runner on the Democratic side. And yet when you listen to the press coverage of this, you hear them say "the up-for-grabs race on the Republican side signals a party in disarray. The up-for-grabs race on the Democratic side signals a party with an embarrassment of riches." Why is that? Is it the media?
RUSSERT: We have to be careful. I remember in 1992 it was the Democrats who were the party in disarray [remember the "Seven Dwarfs"?] and Bill Clinton finally emerged and beat George Herbert Walker Bush. But what the Democrats point to, Matt, is money -- Democrats outraising them dramatically. Last night in Michigan, half the Republicans said they're angry or dissatisfied with the Bush administration. We found the same thing in Iowa, and the same thing in New Hampshire. And there are still five viable candidates on the Republican side; only two, two-and-a-half, three on the Democratic side.
LAUER: Mr. Edwards would be really happy that you called him half a candidate.
RUSSERT: I said three at the end, didn't I? It was a long flight!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8U62CP80&show_article=1
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal"
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal"
Monday, January 14, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
The Greatest Sentence Ever Written — Lead sentence to a crime-news story in the NY Daily News, by reporter Scott Shifrel:
“A baby jammed in a shoebox amid a swarm of cockroaches, a pile of drugs, and a loaded handgun was well cared for and loved, her teenage mother insisted as she was released from jail yesterday.”
An entire novel in 36 words.
“A baby jammed in a shoebox amid a swarm of cockroaches, a pile of drugs, and a loaded handgun was well cared for and loved, her teenage mother insisted as she was released from jail yesterday.”
An entire novel in 36 words.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Journo Love for Obama
NBC's Brian Williams took to MSNBC today at noon and had this to say:
WILLIAMS: I interviewed Lee Cowan, our reporter who covers Obama, while we were out yesterday and posted the interview on the web. Lee says it's hard to stay objective covering this guy. Courageous for Lee to say, to be honest. The e-mail flood started out we caught you guys, we never did trust you. That kind of thing. I think it is a very interesting dynamic. I saw middle-aged women just throw their arms around Barack Obama, kiss him hard on the cheek and say, you know, I'm with you, good luck. And i think he feels it, too.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
OOAD
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000172.html
Long but interesting analysis on War, Warriors, and the War.
Long but interesting analysis on War, Warriors, and the War.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Bye Bye, Light Bulb
If only Microsoft could argue its competitors hurt the environment.
BY BRIAN M. CARNEY Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:01 a.m. EST
Just like that--like flipping a switch--Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.
The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don't be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it's next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb--and there won't be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.
Representatives of Philips and General Electric, two of the biggest lightbulb makers, say there's nothing to be concerned about. And Larry Lauck of the American Lighting Association says, "I think everyone's pretty happy" with the new law. But then, the lighting industry has no reason not to be: People will need light, whatever the law says--according to Randy Moorehead of Philips, there are four billion standard-size (or "medium base") light sockets in America alone.
So if you're GE or Philips or Sylvania, the demise of the plain vanilla lightbulb is less a threat than an opportunity--an opportunity, in particular, to replace a product that you can sell for 50 cents with one that sells for $3 or more.
Yes, the $3 bulb lasts longer. Yes, it cuts your electricity bill. Mr. Moorehead says that when every one of those four billion light sockets has an energy-saving bulb in it, the country will be saving $18 billion a year on its electric bill. That's $4.50 per bulb--and the bulb makers are standing by to make sure a substantial portion of those "savings" get transformed into profits for them.
Now it may be that those bulbs are worth more--because they last longer, etc. But some of those bulbs, like compact fluorescents and Philips' new "Halogena-IR" bulb, are already available. Currently they command all of 5% of the lightbulb market. That means that, whatever value proposition GE and Philips are selling, consumers aren't buying.
What we bulb buyers needed, it seemed, was a little nudge. Or, if you want to be cynical about it, the bulb business decided to migrate its customers to more-expensive--and presumably higher-margin--products by banning the low-cost competition.
"I was kind of involved at the very beginning" of this legislation, Mr. Moorehead says modestly. Indeed, in December 2006, Philips announced a campaign to encourage governments all around the world to phase out low-cost bulbs by 2015.
Now, I'm sure that Philips and GE and Sylvania all want to make the world a better place and so on. But if they can do so while at the same time getting the government to force their customers to pay 10 times as much for their products, well . . . did they mention that they're making the world a better place? The light bulb that costs 10 times as much does, it is true, last four times as long. But if you're a lightbulb maker, that's a pretty good trade.
If you're a consumer, you have to decide that for yourself. Except that, after the ban, you won't be allowed to any more. You just got traded up, forcibly, to a "better" product.
What's remarkable about this bit of market interference is that there is, basically, nothing wrong with the present-day, Edison-style lightbulb. It's not a lawn dart or a lead-painted toy or a magnet that will perforate your kid's intestines if he swallows it. It is what it is, and for most people in most applications, it was good enough. So the lightbulb makers and the environmentalists convinced Congress to ban them for no better reason than they believed everyone would be better off with something else.
Note that the lightbulb makers didn't need a ban to convince consumers to "upgrade." Microsoft, Dell, Apple and any number of other companies manage to convince the Joneses that they need a better "one"--whatever it is--every few years. If Philips wanted a Halogena-IR bulb in every socket, it had only to put them on the market at a price that made them irresistible compared to the 50-cent bulb of yore. Likewise with the much hailed compact fluorescent. They have been on the market a good deal longer than Philips's fancy new incandescent. The prices have come down and the quality has gone up. But not, apparently, enough for 95% of the bulb-buying public.
A few years back, one could have argued with a straight face that consumer awareness of the benefits of CFLs was inadequate. No more. The sticking point lies at that ineffable nexus between price and quality--with all that "quality" implies, whether it be service life, the delay between flicking the switch and full power, or color temperature or the look of the thing.
There are billions to be made--and spent--figuring out how to get consumers to pay more for something. This year Steve Jobs convinced a million people to pay $400 for a cell phone in a market in which many people believe that the phone should come free with a service contract. But why worry about making a product so good people feel they have to have it, when you can instead get the government to tell them they have no choice?
Don't fault the bulb makers for this. If Microsoft could get a law passed requiring users to upgrade Windows, they'd probably go for it, too. Same with Detroit--"Buy a hybrid, or else!" would probably suit them fine. But do remember this the next time a company goes to Washington to save the world: They'll end up doing it at your expense.
Mr. Carney is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
If only Microsoft could argue its competitors hurt the environment.
BY BRIAN M. CARNEY Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:01 a.m. EST
Just like that--like flipping a switch--Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.
The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don't be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it's next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb--and there won't be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.
Representatives of Philips and General Electric, two of the biggest lightbulb makers, say there's nothing to be concerned about. And Larry Lauck of the American Lighting Association says, "I think everyone's pretty happy" with the new law. But then, the lighting industry has no reason not to be: People will need light, whatever the law says--according to Randy Moorehead of Philips, there are four billion standard-size (or "medium base") light sockets in America alone.
So if you're GE or Philips or Sylvania, the demise of the plain vanilla lightbulb is less a threat than an opportunity--an opportunity, in particular, to replace a product that you can sell for 50 cents with one that sells for $3 or more.
Yes, the $3 bulb lasts longer. Yes, it cuts your electricity bill. Mr. Moorehead says that when every one of those four billion light sockets has an energy-saving bulb in it, the country will be saving $18 billion a year on its electric bill. That's $4.50 per bulb--and the bulb makers are standing by to make sure a substantial portion of those "savings" get transformed into profits for them.
Now it may be that those bulbs are worth more--because they last longer, etc. But some of those bulbs, like compact fluorescents and Philips' new "Halogena-IR" bulb, are already available. Currently they command all of 5% of the lightbulb market. That means that, whatever value proposition GE and Philips are selling, consumers aren't buying.
What we bulb buyers needed, it seemed, was a little nudge. Or, if you want to be cynical about it, the bulb business decided to migrate its customers to more-expensive--and presumably higher-margin--products by banning the low-cost competition.
"I was kind of involved at the very beginning" of this legislation, Mr. Moorehead says modestly. Indeed, in December 2006, Philips announced a campaign to encourage governments all around the world to phase out low-cost bulbs by 2015.
Now, I'm sure that Philips and GE and Sylvania all want to make the world a better place and so on. But if they can do so while at the same time getting the government to force their customers to pay 10 times as much for their products, well . . . did they mention that they're making the world a better place? The light bulb that costs 10 times as much does, it is true, last four times as long. But if you're a lightbulb maker, that's a pretty good trade.
If you're a consumer, you have to decide that for yourself. Except that, after the ban, you won't be allowed to any more. You just got traded up, forcibly, to a "better" product.
What's remarkable about this bit of market interference is that there is, basically, nothing wrong with the present-day, Edison-style lightbulb. It's not a lawn dart or a lead-painted toy or a magnet that will perforate your kid's intestines if he swallows it. It is what it is, and for most people in most applications, it was good enough. So the lightbulb makers and the environmentalists convinced Congress to ban them for no better reason than they believed everyone would be better off with something else.
Note that the lightbulb makers didn't need a ban to convince consumers to "upgrade." Microsoft, Dell, Apple and any number of other companies manage to convince the Joneses that they need a better "one"--whatever it is--every few years. If Philips wanted a Halogena-IR bulb in every socket, it had only to put them on the market at a price that made them irresistible compared to the 50-cent bulb of yore. Likewise with the much hailed compact fluorescent. They have been on the market a good deal longer than Philips's fancy new incandescent. The prices have come down and the quality has gone up. But not, apparently, enough for 95% of the bulb-buying public.
A few years back, one could have argued with a straight face that consumer awareness of the benefits of CFLs was inadequate. No more. The sticking point lies at that ineffable nexus between price and quality--with all that "quality" implies, whether it be service life, the delay between flicking the switch and full power, or color temperature or the look of the thing.
There are billions to be made--and spent--figuring out how to get consumers to pay more for something. This year Steve Jobs convinced a million people to pay $400 for a cell phone in a market in which many people believe that the phone should come free with a service contract. But why worry about making a product so good people feel they have to have it, when you can instead get the government to tell them they have no choice?
Don't fault the bulb makers for this. If Microsoft could get a law passed requiring users to upgrade Windows, they'd probably go for it, too. Same with Detroit--"Buy a hybrid, or else!" would probably suit them fine. But do remember this the next time a company goes to Washington to save the world: They'll end up doing it at your expense.
Mr. Carney is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
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