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23-31, 2005 Archive
"We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent
men." -- George Orwell, as quoted in John Derbyshire's month
end NRO column.
The Derb also tells of the Episcopal Church's response to Maggy
Brimelow's last request.
***
The
Election in Iraq: As my adolescent kids constantly ask me whenever
we go anywhere, "Can we
leave now?"
***
My
new VDARE.com column "Malcolm
Gladwell Blinks at Racial Realities" is a demolition
of #1 bestseller Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by
the New Yorker writer who authored the 2000 hit The Tipping Point.
Gladwell describes Blink as "A book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye."
Here's
what I learned from Gladwell's style about what the lucrative corporate
audience wants a nonfiction writer to do:
-
Find
or concoct marketable buzzwords
for concepts with which readers are already familiar. For example,
Gladwell uses the term "thin-slicing"
to put a positive new spin on the old practice of judging a book by
its cover.
-
Don't
even try to make sense. Logic and consistency just annoy most
readers.
Blink's
individual anecdotes are interesting and well written. But taken as a
whole, the book is a mish-mash of contradictions. Gladwell strongly
encourages you to rely upon your snap judgments … except when you
shouldn't.
Now, it would be tremendously useful if Gladwell had figured out some
general rules of thumb for when to rely on your instantaneous hunches
and when not to.
But as far as I can tell, his book boils down to two messages:
-
Go
with your gut reactions, but only when they are right.
-
And
even when your gut reactions are factually correct, ignore them when
they are politically
incorrect.
The
most intriguing aspect of Gladwell's book is that its hopeless confusion
and mind-melting political correctness stem from the author's own racial
background. Although mostly white, Gladwell is partly of African descent
(his mother
was black, Scottish, and Jewish). But he doesn't look noticeably black
in most
of his pictures.
The origin of Blink, he writes on his website,
came when, "on a whim," he let his hair grow long into a loose
but large Afro. As you can see in
this picture of Gladwell
with his Afro, he wound up with more of a Napoleon
Dynamite Mormon 'fro than the genuine kinky kind that ABA
basketball players espoused back in the 1970s. Still, it does
finally make him look marginally black.
As soon as Gladwell grew his Afro, he claims, he started getting hassled
by The Man: highway patrolmen wrote him speeding
tickets, airport security gave him the evil eye, and the NYPD
questioned him for 20 minutes because they were looking
for a rapist with an Afro. "That
episode on the street got me thinking about the weird power of first
impressions," he says. "And that thinking led to Blink."
Obviously, Gladwell is not being wholly honest about why he chose to
grow an Afro, which is an extremely high-maintenance hairstyle.
(I know, because I looked just like Napoleon
Dynamite myself back in 1978. If you are thinking about growing an
Afro yourself, trust me when I tell you that anytime you lean your head
against a wall or the back of your chair, you will dent your 'fro.)
People pick a hairstyle to project an image, and Gladwell presumably
wanted to shed his nerdy son-of-a-math-professor look and start making
first impressions that reeked of that dangerous, sexy, black rebel
glamour associated with famous Afro-wearers like Black Panther Eldridge
Cleaver and blaxploitation movie hero Shaft:
"Who's the cat that won't cop
out
When there's danger all about?
SHAFT!
Right On!"
Now
the inevitable downside of trying to look dangerous to impress girls and
interviewers is that you look dangerous to cops.
But you aren't going to hear about tradeoffs from Gladwell, nor about
racial differences. He makes a huge amount of money lecturing
corporations, and he prudently toes the EEOC-enforced party line about
how there's no contradiction whatsoever between "diversity"
and profit maximization.
***
Melody
composition and age: A reader writes:
I
suspect that with composers there's an age correlation with melodic
skill as well, i.e. other things being equal, a 40-year-old composer
won't be nearly as melodically fertile as a 20-year-old composer. (He
may, of course, be far superior to a 20-year-old composer in structural
skills or other creative areas.) Maybe the brain cells that determine
melodic ability are among those, like short-term memory cells, that
decrease in numbers with the passing of years. I've never seen any print
discussion of this theory. One reason I cherish Wagner so much is that
his melodic inspiration flowed as freely in his old age as it did during
his youth.
Has
anybody ever done an objective study of the ages at which songwriters
peaked? Irving Berlin, for example, was 23 when he wrote
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" and 51 when he wrote "White
Christmas," which sounds quite late in life to write a massive hit
song. That's a long, long time to stay on top of the game. Richard
Rodgers' last mega-musical, "The Sound of Music," debuted when
he was 57.
***
Another
phony campus hate crime: An e.e. cummings-like reader writes:
the
article mentioned "crying." that says it all. this sort of
behavior is *hysteria*...the byproduct of the feminization of higher
education, that is, the change in the culture which tends to prioritize
emotional values and empathy rather than facts or reason.
***
My
old golf articles: When it comes to golf, I write better than I
play:
The
Decline of the Black Golf Pro
The
Decline of the Black Caddie
Sociobiological
Roots of Golf Courses
Lesbians
Flock to Nabisco Ladies Golf Championship
Sorenstam
"will miss cut by four strokes"
Sorenstam
or Wie as future of women's golf
Why
affluent homeowners like environmentalism:
1.
Revolt of the Range Rover Republicans
2.
A Golf Course 30 Years in the Making
3.
All Green Politics Are Local
The
Golf Recession:
1.
The Golf Recession
2.
Why Golf Has Gotten So Expensive
3.
Will Less Expensive Golf Courses Catch On?
4.
Golf's Demographic Dead-End
***
The
War Nerd Is Back with his Superwar Preview: The U.S. versus
Iran.
Of course all the NeoCon crazies are peddling the old story that "once we invade, the people will rally to the cause of freedom."
Yeah. Just like they did in Iraq. If we couldn't get people on our side after deposing a monster like Saddam, what chance do you think we have of winning hearts and minds in Iran? The kids in Iran are pissed off at the way the old Mullahs won't let 'em rock and roll, but the idea that they'll support an American invasion because they're bored is totally insane. It's like imagining that the kids in
Footloose would've backed a Soviet invasion of Nebraska because John Lithgow wouldn't let them hold school dances.
The argument between Mullahs and kids in Iran is a classic family fight. And you know what happens when some intruder crashes in on the middle of one of those: the whole family unites in about a millisecond and tears him apart.
****
Those
poor, oppressed lesbian
lover engineers of academia. A reader notes that Dr.
Denice "Speak Truth to Power" Denton and her close friend Gretchen
Kalonji, both newly of high paying jobs at UC Santa Cruz, have been
scratching each other's, uh, backs for some time:
LEADERSHIP
AWARD
Presented
to
Gretchen Kalonji, Ph.D.
Kyocera
Professor
Materials
Science & Engineering Department
University
of Washington
For Innovations and Leadership in
Transforming
International Engineering
Education
by
International
Advisory Board
International
Network for Engineering Education and Research (iNEER)
July
23, 2003
Valencia,
Spain
Nominator:
Denice Denton,
Dean
College
of Engineering, University of Washington
Nominee:
Gretchen Kalonji,
Kyocera Professor
Materials
Science & Engineering, University of Washington
My
reader asks, "What exactly do they mean by "nominator "
and 'nominee' here?" I dunno, maybe it's a term used in the lesbian
personal ads, like, "Nominator looking for nominee for long steamy
nights of nominations."
***
Where
do we get these people? Mickey Kaus catches
Andrew Sullivan at two different points in his prescription
testosterone cycle -- "giddy" about the Iraq elections on
Saturday and "almost distraught" about them today -- and
writes:
Sullivan has many virtues, but steadiness of judgment is not one of them. This isn't a man you want to follow into battle. Unfortunately, many Americans did.
Sullivan,
O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Bennett, the list goes on. I suppose we
conservatives get the opinion-makers we deserve, but still... lately,
we sure have been getting who we deserve good and hard.
***
My
old music articles: A lot of people seem to like to read my old
movie reviews, so here are some old rock music articles from 2001-2002:
Review
of Shakey: Neil Young's Biography
Review
of Heavier than Heaven, Kurt Cobain's biography
Why
are rock bands so racially segregated?
Surviving
as songwriters: Q&A with Mann & Weil
Sir
Elton welcomes Eminem into the celebrity cartel
The
end of the singer-songwriter fetish
Joe
Strummer, RIP
Where
did all the catchy tunes go?
***
Is
"American Idol's" Simon Cowell Unamerican? A reader
replies:
I
don't watch that show, but its cruelty is exactly why so many watch it
as with other "reality shows." Being vicious to others isn't a
traditional American character trait, but in the New Ex-America, it is
becoming one. Just as the reign of "Cool" has destroyed the
old American character traits of enthusiasm and innocence, it is also
creating a new ethos of cruelty. A kinder and gentler America is further
away than when Bush the First called for it in 1988. What else can the
popularity of the slogan "You're Fired" mean in a society that
was once scarred by the notion of people losing their jobs. Recall how
Reagan didn't like to fire people in part because of his father's
experience and his memory of the Great Depression. All of the Oprah
sentimentality notwithstanding, the rise of schadenfreude is the true
spirit of the age.
***
GOP
sells out the Red States: Because the cost of living is much less on
the wide plains of the Republican states, incomes are lower too, and
thus progressive tax rates works to redistribute wealth from Blue States
to Red States. So, why has the GOP been so hot to cut progressive taxes
like the income tax and the inheritance tax? Because they are responding
less to Red State Republicans than to Blue State Republicans, who tend
to be quite affluent. For example, I wonder what the mean income is of
the small number of Republicans who live in Manhattan: $200,000?
$400,000?
***
Call
Nancy Hopkins! As far as I can tell, no woman has ever gotten an
Oscar nomination for Cinematography, at least not in the last 40 years
(200 nominations).
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#exit.poll.Asian.Jewish
A
rare midweek VDARE column by me is up now: It reviews the
details from the internal report on what went wrong with the
Presidential exit poll. As I figured out months ago, Bush's share for
Hispanics was smaller (i.e., more realistic) among the larger sample
size who took the short form of the questionnaire than among the smaller
sample size who took the long form. The same was true for
Asian-Americans (reported as voting 44 percent for Bush but now revealed
to be only 39 percent in the larger sample ) and Jews (reported as 25
percent, but actually only 22 percent).
Both
figures are bad news for neoconservatives. The Asian deflation makes
upping immigration, as Bush wants, look even more suicidal for
Congressional Republicans. And the revelation that Bush only carried 22
percent of Jews shows that the neocons have a lot more chiefs than
Indians. As they say in Texas, the neocons are all hat and no cattle.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#Unamerican.Simon.Cowell
The
Unamerican Simon Cowell -- "American Idol's" sardonic
British judge is the antithesis of the modern American Oprah-style
television host. These days, Americanism is all about encouraging people
to "follow their dreams," whereas Simon typically listens to
contestants sing for five seconds, then tells them to forget their
dreams and give up all hope of a singing career. In the singing
business, it's kind to be cruel, because, otherwise, ambitious but
talentless young people always wind up sexually exploited by promoters
as cold-blooded as Cowell, but lacking his honesty.
Similarly,
Larry Summers is being condemned for causing young female math and
science students to doubt their dreams, but doubt is exactly what people
considering entering a career like math or physics should do before
making a lifetime commitment. What's the point of being, say, a third
rate mathematics professor if you'll never achieve any breakthroughs
when you make far more money with your quant skills in private industry?
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#natalism.does.not.exist
"Natalism"
Rears Its Nonexistent Head Again: I spent an hour on the phone today
with a newspaper reporter who called me to get the inside scoop on the
new Natalist Movement to force women to have more children that's
sweeping the nation. Apparently, I'm the evil genius behind this
trend toward keeping women barefoot and pregnant.
No,
I kept trying to explain, NYT op-edster David
Brooks just made it all up when he wrote, "There is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is
'natalism.'" He just did it because journalists try to make
everything sound like a trend. If Isaac Newton had been a reporter, he
wouldn't have named his book explaining the Law of Gravity the Principia.
No, he would have called it something newsworthy like "The Growing
Trend toward Gravityism."
There's
no organized "natalist" movement to speak of; there's just
people having babies. What I have found is that some parts of the
country are more conducive to having babies than other parts, and those
baby-friendly states vote Republican more than baby-unfriendly states.
That's it.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#new.blogs
Newish
Blogs: It's gratifying, after several years of blogging, to finally
see a sizable expansion in recent months in the number of blogs worth
linking to.
For
example,
Luke
Lea's Born Again Democrats
website features his blog.
Many of you are familiar with Luke as a wise and civilized commenter on
other sites. It's about time he got his own.
Modern Tribalist is an elegantly spartan site devoted to excerpting,
with a minimum of commentary, articles illustrating examples of
"tribalism and ethnic nepotism in the modern world."
Military Thoughts is by a guy with the comic nom de plume of "coolbert"
who knows an enormous amount about, surprise, military history. With the
War Nerd hibernating lately, check him out.
I've mentioned Across
Difficult Country before. Carter van Carter's efforts are hard to
describe: perhaps you could call them a blend of the essays of Guy
Davenport and Steve Martin:
I read in the news that:
America's second biggest bank, JP Morgan Chase, has made a rare apology for its subsidiaries' involvement in the slave trade 200 years ago, admitting that it accepted slaves as loan collateral and ended up owning several hundred.
In the spirit of atonement exemplified by JP Morgan Chase, I would like to apologize to the descendants of anyone who may have suffered a raping or a pillaging at the hands of one of my Viking ancestors. I feel terrible about it. Or I did, before apologizing. Now I feel terrific.
The
Julian Calendar is the work of a devout Catholic sociobiologist in
Australia.
Glaivester's postings are
a lot better than his graphics.
GetReligion covers the media coverage of religion. With Jeremy Lott.
And lots more over in the Links
section toward the top of the left hand column.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#reconquistadores
Blue-Eyed
Reconquistadores Watch: A reader of Chilean-Spanish descent
writes:
You
yourself laughed at the blue-eyed Univision anchorman Jorge
Ramos pretending to be the standard-bearer of the Indians that his
ancestors enslaved--and over whom he still rules like C-3PO in the land
of the Ewoks. White Spaniards like Jorge Ramos would love to see America
turn into another Mexico--ie, a plantation colony populated by a
swarming drone class of Indians, ruled by wealthy Europeans in white
suits [a la Ricardo Montalban]. Sadly, George W. Bush shares this shabby
vision of a future America with Ramos and his Conquistador ilk.
Such
a system of social inequity/iniquity is unthinkable to any sensitive
person--which is why I was glad that my Chilean ancestors left South
America when they did. On a recent trip back down to South America, I
saw with my own eyes the disgusting imperial system of 98% Indian
nations ruled by 2% blue-eyed Spaniards.
America, behold your future!
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#gay.marriage.polygamy
Gay
Marriage Makes Legalized Polygamy Inevitable argues Colby Cosh.
All right-thinking folks say, "Horrors, no, while the word
"marriage" doesn't imply two sexes, it can't possibly imply
more than two people." Colby replies, "Yeah, right ..."
By
the way, nobody else noticed it but Spike Lee's most recent movie She
Hate Me was built on exactly that gay marriage --> polygamy logic.
Spike's not too crazy about gay marriage, but he thinks it definitely
justifies what he's enthusiastic for: polygamy. Here's my review
of She Hate Me.
By
the way, Colby, please do my 46-year-old eyes a favor and use a larger
typeface on your blog.
***
New
VDARE
column on red-blue Marriage Gap...
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#america.dutch.disease
Something
to think about the next time you're stocking up your Costco shopping
cart with Chinese-made goods. A reader writes:
The
US is quite literally destroying the productive, tradable goods sector
of its economy, by maintaining an overvalued currency, supported by
massive borrowing from other nations. This is not a new or unique
observation. There is actually a term for this phenomena. It is called
the "Dutch Disease". It is characterized by an overvalued
currency, manufacturing decline, high investment in the non-tradable
sector and disinvestment in production of tradable good.
The phrase "Dutch
Disease" was coined in response to the performance of the Dutch
economy after vast natural gas reserves were found near Groningen in
1959. Gas quickly become a lucrative export "competing" with
traditional Dutch exports. By inflating the value of the Guilder,
traditional exports were in effect, "crowded out" and
declined. The impact was so prominent that it was studied and came to be
a well accepted consequence of highly valuable natural resource
exports...
Although the disease is generally associated with a natural
resource discovery, it can occur from any development that results in a
large inflow of foreign currency, including a sharp surge in natural
resource prices, foreign assistance, and foreign direct investment.
Economists have used the Dutch disease model to examine such episodes,
including the impact of the flow of American treasures into
sixteenth-century Spain and gold discoveries in Australia in the
1850s."
"Why does a dramatic increase in wealth have this paradoxically
adverse consequence? The answer is found in a classic 1982 paper by W.M.
Corden and J. Peter Neary. These authors divide an economy experiencing
an export boom into three sectors: of these, the booming export sector
and the lagging export sector are the two traded goods sectors; the
third is the nontraded goods sector, which essentially supplies domestic
residents and might include retail trade, services, and construction.
They show that when a country catches Dutch disease, the traditional
export sector gets crowded out by the other two sectors."
What does this have to do with the US? Hopefully the answer is obvious. The
US has "created" a massive new export in recent years. The
export is debt. Like any other massive new exportable good, it has
displaced other traditional exports. Actually, the US has done this
twice. First, in the early 1980s leading up to the Plaza Accord of
September 22, 1985. And then more recently, in the 1990s as a
consequence first of the Internet bubble and then later because of
massive Federal deficits and the housing bubble.
Current US economic policies are a double blow to the economy. On the
one hand the US is furiously accumulating debt that we owe to the rest
of the world. On the other hand, we are systematically dismantling the
manufacturing sector that produces the tradable goods needed to pay our
nation's bills. Of course, these follies also impact employment in the
manufacturing sector. The following graphs should provide a useful
perspective.
Of course, the trade deficit is not the only reason for the decline in
manufacturing employment. Productivity has been growing faster in
manufacturing than other sectors. However, it is clear that without the
trade deficit, the manufacturing sector would be roughly 50% larger than
it currently is. This is equivalent to many (5/7) millions of jobs. Note
that these are not net new jobs. The trade deficit has shifted
employment out of the tradable goods sector into other parts of the
economy. Without the trade deficit, employment would shift back. Total
employment might or might not grow.
As the reader can see, the trade deficit is not just a source of future
financial burdens (creditors expect to be paid). It is also a direct
assault on the productive power of the US economy. The linkage would
scarcely be clearer if foreign capital was used to pay for wrecking
balls tearing down industrial America.
Many
have commented that Bush's recent 2nd Inaugural address sounded a lot
like JFK's in its emphasis on America's commitment to fighting tyranny
abroad. The only real difference was in how Bush intends to finance his
global crusade for freedom. Here's an actual, authentic excerpt from
Bush's speech:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall
pay any price, borrow any burden, sponge any spare change, cadge from any friend,
scrounge from any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Remember
how back in the 1960s, Democrats would say that budget deficits aren't
so because we just owe the money to ourselves? Well, our trade deficits
aren't so bad either, because we just owe the money to the Red
Chinese.
*
In
related news, inventor Raymond
Kurzweil, who had been taking 250 vitamin supplements per day in
an attempt to live forever, announced that, after reviewing the rapidly
mounting debt burden we were passing on to future Americans, he was
switching to a new daily regimen of three packs of Lucky Strikes, a
bottle of Jack Daniels, a dozen hits on a crack pipe, and one round of
Russian Roulette.
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#blue.california
Why
the land of Nixon and Reagan votes solidly Democratic now: Youngish
Southern Californians can't afford to buy a house, so they postpone
getting married and having kids, all processes that make people
confirmed Republicans. The
LA Times reports:
The
percentage of households in Los Angeles County able to afford a
median-priced home of $474,570 was 17% in November, down from 23% a year
ago when the median was $382,190, according to the latest figures
reported by the California Assn. of Realtors. The Orange County median
for November was $633,340, with only 13% of households able to afford a
residence, down from 18% a year ago...
"With a $450,000 median home price," said Leslie
Appleton-Young, chief economist with the California Assn. of Realtors,
"if you can save 20%, do the math. How many first-time buyers have
access to that kind of money?"
Not only does a buyer need a hefty sum for a down payment, L.A. County
buyers needed an income of $109,971 to qualify for a 30-year fixed-rate
loan with 20% down on a median-priced home in November. In Orange
County, the annual income needed was $146,763.
Also,
20% down on the $475,000 median price house in LA County is $95,000 in
cash. In Orange County, you need $127,000 in cash on hand.
On
the other hand, it was 75 degrees and sunny today in SoCal and the
hills, for once, are as green as Ireland.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#red.blue.taxes
Why
Does the Federal Government Shift So Much Wealth from Blue States to Red
States? An overlooked reason is the progressive income tax. Blue
states are much more crowded than red states, and thus have higher land
prices (see item above on Southern California housing costs) and higher
overall costs of living. In turn, their residents have higher incomes.
The progressive tax rates mean the higher paid blue staters have to pay
more of their income in taxes, although it's not clear they can afford
that better than lower-cost-of-living red staters.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#johnny.carson.rip
Johnny
Carson, RIP: These days, when late-night talk shows, even ones
hosted by obviously bright fellows like Conan O'Brien, consist of
nothing but celebrity chit-chat, it's hard to imagine just how
intellectually wide-ranging Carson's Tonight Show was. Carson's
particular interest was astronomy and he made his frequent guest Carl
Sagan a national celebrity. The science fiction classic Lucifer's
Hammer
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle about the approach and
catastrophic impact of a comet includes a brilliant chapter written from
Johnny Carson's point of view as he interviews the two astronomers who
discovered the approaching comet and figures out on the fly how to guide
them into making their esoteric topic fascinating to the masses in TV
land.
Even
at interviewing movie stars, Carson was dramatically better than
Letterman and Leno.
My
favorite Carson memory is of the time in the early 1990s when he had on
the high school students who had won a national quiz bowl championship.
So, he, Ed McMahon, and Doc Severinsen played the four kids using real
questions about history and science. Johnny, who no doubt had been the
brightest boy in his class back home in Iowa, buzzed in to answer just
about every question, but always a fraction of a second behind the
teenage whiz kids. His frustration at finding that in his sixties he
just wasn't as quick as the teenagers was compounded by his discovery
that his teammates, Ed and Doc, were complete idiots of no use
whatsoever in winning the competition. Finally, the question "Who
founded the American Federation of Labor in 1886?" stumped the
students, but not Johnny, who triumphantly buzzed in and proclaimed
"Samuel Gompers!" with the proudest look I've ever seen on his
face.
Carson's
30 year career on television, an unbelievably long time for a star to
remain a star, was a model of professionalism. Starting to slump as he
got older, he insisted on cutting the length of the nightly show from 90
minutes to 60 minutes, and rebounded strongly. Rather than hang around
into senescence, he retired in his mid-60s while still on top of his
game.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanC.htm#larry.summers.nancy.hopkins
A
little known fact: Harvard President Larry Summers & MIT
feminist Professor Nancy Hopkins took Creative Writing 101 together long
ago:
Nancy
and Larry
Creative Writing 101
Prof. Miller
Jan. 29, 1965
In-class
Assignment for Wednesday
Today
we will experiment with a new form called the tandem
story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the
person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write
the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first
paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person
will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. The story is
over when both agree a conclusion has been reached. -- Prof. Miller
At
first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now
reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he
liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind
off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about
him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of
the question.
Meanwhile,
Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit
over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the
neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had
spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation
17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit
established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could
sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a
hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him
flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
He
bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one
last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had
ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless
hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress
Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel." Laurie
read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her
and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when
the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to
read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at
all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's
innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
Little
did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of
miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of
its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed
the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left
Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were
determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage
of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying
enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop
them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion
missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his
top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the
coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized
Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on
the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that
treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"
This
is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing
partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semiliterate adolescent.
Yeah?
Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing
are the literary equivalent of Valium.
Pig!
Bitch!
***
Larry
Summers and women: Good thing nobody was ever insensitive or
un-nurturing toward the mathematical ambitions of Ramanujan.
***
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