Books reviews, current events, and other musings

When you search for Howard Dean, Google points you to the category Arts > Illustration > Historic Illustrators. Though the list of illustrators includes someone named Howard and someone else named Dean, you'd expect Google to locate a more relevant category.

Anyway, I remain optimistic about Dean's chances (Google bomb suggested by Nathan Newman).

At the moment, the top two stories on Google News are International flights getting back on track and Egypt Crash Plane Tried to Turn Back, All 148 Died. Talk about mixed messages.

posted by Julian at 10:45AM

As it turns out, John Edwards has been doing exactly what I wanted the Democratic candidates to do (from Nathan Newman).

Mr. Edwards, who has steadfastly refused to join the criticism of Dr. Dean, said the attacks and counterattacks among the nine Democrats seeking the party's presidential nomination were turning off voters.

Though Edwards is a too conservative and inexperienced for the Presidency, my opinion of him has risen dramatically.

Meanwhile, I finally updated my portal, for the first time since I started Julian's Jabberings a year-and-a-half ago, and moved it to this page. There are several more links to include, but it's a lot better than before.

posted by Julian at 11:55PM

Happy New Year! When I think about what might happen in 2004, my biggest hope is for a Democrat to kick George Bush out of the White House. Howard Dean is my top choice, but any Democrat, even Lieberman, would be a vast improvement over Bush.

I’m getting aggravated with all of the infighting among the Democrats. Going by their rhetoric, they all seem more concerned with winning the nomination than with a Democratic victory in November. Any politician, especially one seeking the Presidency, possesses an overriding drive to be elected; otherwise they wouldn’t deal with all the garbage and wouldn’t have succeeded in past elections. Their priorities differ from those of most diehard Democrats, who view beating Bush as the highest priority by a long shot.

Besides, criticizing each other so harshly doesn’t even make strategic sense. Suppose that Kerry, Clark, Lieberman, or Gephardt avoids the negative statements about Dean. Instead, the candidate advertises his merits and platform, while trashing the Republicans. The respectful tone and the commitment to evicting Bush would resonate with Democratic primary voters, helping the candidate become the Dean alternative in the race. As Krugman says in his latest column,

The party's rank and file want a candidate who is running, as the Dean slogan puts it, to take our country back. This is no time for a candidate who is running just because he thinks he deserves to be president.

In my memory, only two Presidential candidates have generated a significant level of excitement: Ronald Reagan and Howard Dean. Each conveyed the message that country was headed in the wrong direction and that he shared the public’s frustrations and would turn things around. They both had charisma and exceptional campaign staff, but that wasn’t all. Somehow, they conveyed the impression that they were more than “just another politician,” first to a core group and later to a significant fraction of the electorate.

With the early primary schedule, there’s a good chance the nomination will be Dean’s by March. At that point, loyal Democrats will listen to Dean's message and become enthusiastic supporters, regardless of what losers like Lieberman say. Nobody can predict what will happen in the general election, but I’m optimistic. In any case, it will be an exciting, though nasty, campaign.

posted by Julian at 10:30PM

Jimmy Breslin describes one media source that actually highlights the American soldiers who are no longer with us (from Atrios, who keeps finding great material).

The Army Times, a civilian newspaper that is sold mainly on military bases and thus reaches the prime wartime audience, uses eight pages of its year-end review, out now, to run photos of all those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, except 35.
...
The paper's senior managing editor, Robert Hodierne, was saying yesterday, "When I looked at the pages, I felt the same as I did when I walked along the Wall."

The photos and background information are here. Also, the Faces of Valor series has lots of amazing pictures of other soldiers.

After dealing with holiday travel, this item is quite amusing.

The First Ten Amendments to the constitution of the United States printed on sturdy, pocket-sized, pieces of metal.

The next time you travel by air, take the Security Edition of the Bill of Rights along with you. When asked to empty your pockets, proudly toss the Bill of Rights in the plastic bin.

It's a nice gift idea, though it would be stupid to deliberately slow down the security screening process.

posted by Julian at 11:10PM

I've recently completed a couple of books that have been sitting on my bookshelf for years.

R. M. Koster, an American-born writer who spent most of his life in Panama, set his novel The Prince in Tinieblas, an imaginary Central American nation. The story centers on Kiki, who has various improbable adventures as a student, lover, gun runner, political prisoner, presidential candidate, and numerous other roles. During much of the book, a paralyzed Kiki deals with life and contemplates revenge against the man who shot him; that portion is less captivating than the remainder. Koster provides a detailed history of Tinieblas, clearly inspired by actual events. That history is the book's strongest aspect, including frequent transfers of power (occasionally through elections) and the relationship with the gringos (Americans). I'd recommend The Prince, if you don't mind a certain amount of violence. Though self-contained, it's the first part of a trilogy, and I just ordered the next segment, The Dissertation, a Ph.D. dissertation about Tinieblas.

The title of How the Mind Works forces Stephen Pinker to attempt a daunting task. He takes a black-box approach, largely neglecting neurobiology, and instead relying on thought experiments, psychology, computer science, evolutionary biology, and perception research. He advocates a computational theory of mind, viewing the brain as a sophisticated computer, though he acknowledges the weaknesses of current neural network models. He uses evolutionary biology to explain why the mind acts as it does - to better survive in the world humanity evolved in. For example, people are intrinsically afraid of strangers, heights, and wild animals because those factors were threats in the evolutionary environment. Pinker strongly challenges the Standard Social Science Model, which views human nature as a blank slate shaped solely by the individual's environment and culture. How the Mind Works has varying quality, with the fact-based analysis of perception being more convincing that the less grounded speculations regarding the origins of art, but overall it's worth reading.

posted by Julian at 10:10PM