Wisdom of the Capybara

It isn’t very often that I find the President amusing, in any way.  And on the few occasions that I have actually found him amusing, I can confidently say that it has never been when he was intentionally trying to be funny. 

So I find this article about Bush’s jokes at an annual press dinner especially unique, because the President makes some legitimately funny auto-lampoons.

Although, now that I think about it, he probably had a staff of twenty writing it for him and that is far less impressive. 

Bush Serves Up the Jokes at Meal

“A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice-president had shot someone.

“Ah, those were the good ol’ days,” he said, to applause from the audience.

 And on writing a post-White House memoir, after mentioning Clinton’s 10,000 page tome:

“I’m thinking of something really fun and creative for mine,” he said. “You know, maybe a pop-up book.”

He asked the audience which title they liked best – “How Dubbya Got His Groove Back”, “Who Moved My Presidency?” or “Tuesday with Cheney”.

 It’s no Stephen Colbert monologue, but it’s amusing.  I would have laughed.  But it must have been completely upstaged by this: 

 ”As part of the evening’s entertainment, comedians Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood from the US TV show Whose Line is it Anyway got White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to join in a rap song poking fun at Mr Rove’s hobbies: stamp collecting and quail hunting. “

Shouting out “I’m MC Rove”, Mr Rove danced about the stage and postured like a rap star, much to the delight of the watching press.”

There are so many things wrong with that I hardly know where to begin.

So how about the season finale of Battlestar?

Those who regard Marxism-Leninism as religious dogma show this type of blind ignorance. We must tell them openly, “Your dogma is of no use,” or to use an impolite phrase, “Your dogma is less useful than excrement.” We see that dog excrement can fertilize the fields, and man’s [excrement] can feed the dog. And dogmas? They can’t fertilize the fields, nor can they feed a dog. Of what use are they?

- Mao Tse-Tung on February 1st, 1942

The man has a point…

Here’s a fun article on Capybaras and their ‘delicacy’ status Venezuela: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world/americas/21rodent.html

I must confess that till I came to this blog, I had no idea what a capybara was.  Now, the New York Times ‘enlightens’ me more [note: there's even a capybara expert! The Times says Rexford D. Lord from Indiana Univeristy of Pennsylvania is a one such individual!] 

Apparently the Venezueleans who wanna down some grub that is not fish during lent go on a capy-hunting spree before Easter…Hmm…Plus we’re also told of their nutritional value and the like

Some excerpts:

“The hunter’s only goal was the meat of the capybara, reputed to be the world’s largest rodent. Unlike other South American countries, including Argentina and Brazil, where capybaras are raised mainly for their hides, here the rodent’s meat is a sought-after delicacy, fetching prices almost double those for beef…

The annual hunt comes before Easter, when capybara has a status in Venezuela similar to that of turkey during Thanksgiving. While the Roman Catholic Church generally forbids eating meat during certain days of Lent, many Venezuelans insist that the capybara is more akin to fish than to meat…

That may have something to do with how salted capybara tastes, resembling a mixture of sardines and pork. Legend has it that eating capybara, known here as chigüire (pronounced chee-GWEE-reh), got a boost in the 18th century when the local clergy asked the Vatican to give capybara the status of fish.

Capybara aficionados include President Hugo Chávez, who grew up in Barinas, a state on Venezuela’s steamy plains where capybaras are common. On his television show, “Hello, President,” Mr. Chávez has promoted capybara empanadas washed down with papaya juice. “

While I do admit that I am posting excerpts from this article partially to bait our resident mac-o-phile, Casham, it is just damn hilarious and damn good writing. I quote my favorite parts here, but better to just read the whole thing.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal “adventure” in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-’em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac’s relationship with “fun”.

I *ahem* have been known to fall into the category of “people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did” when frustrated with my PC (which, incidentally, only boots Windows when it feels like it, which requires coaxing and bribing). That said, the article wouldn’t be so hilarious if there weren’t so much truth to it.

The article ends: “And if you’ll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.” In that vein, I better finish this post before the same happens to me.

A little while back there was a thread that had us talking about impeachment, speciffically that of President Bush. While I think we all reached agreement that impeachment based on unpopular actions and policies is a big mistake, Capy made a good point that if Bush had broken the law (say, through wire-tapping) then that might be a different story.

That got me to thinking, what laws are we talking about? Sure, their are our own domestic laws, but what about international laws and policies? During the war in Iraq, there have been a ton of violations and laws broken. First and foremost. initiating violence without UN support is against the United Nations Treaty, unless you are attacked first.

Of course, there are the numerous acts of torture, kidnappings, illegal holdings, and secret prisions, all of which are against the geneva conventions and any other number of treaties and laws (which the US helped put in place, remember).

Then there have been many more specific actions, such as took place in Faluja. The US forces took control of a hospital and pretty much shut it down, even though the geneva conventions state that stopping any health services in war time is a war crime. Also durring the seige of Faluja, fleeing civilian males were not allowed to leave city, and forced to go back into the areas where the fighting was taken place. This is in direct violation of geneva conventions which states that civilians must be protected at all costs.

These are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head, I can’t imagine how many more I would uncover just by flipping through some old newspapers. If it was any other country fighting this war and commiting these acts, the US would flip out on them, pose sanctions , and possibly haul their leaders before the UN for judging. But we are the US, and there is no one who polices us. No country nor the UN has the ability to force the US to obey international norms, regulations and laws. The only people who have any hope of policing the US government is us, the US citizens. So what I have been asking myself is, as citizens not only of this country, but of the world, do we have the responsibility to force our leaders to obey international law, and punish them when the break it? I would have to say that I think we must force our leaders to be more respectful of international laws, but how? Can/should we enforce international laws on a domestic level?

So…What do you do?

It’s the hallmark question of the DC-party scene and the bane of administrative assistants everywhere. It’s also the single most disconcerting thing that outsiders encounter when they visit, and fuels the pervasive belief that Washington is a snake-pit full of over-eager, power-hungry, soulless cretins networking their way just that much closer to the sphere of political influence.

But I beg to differ, at least to some extent. Sure, I won’t deny that networking comes as naturally as breathing to many people here; I’ll even admit that I’m probably worse than most. However, I think that this question reflects a much deeper cultural chasm between DC and other major cities that isn’t as widely recognized or understood. Specifically, I believe that true Washingtonians are motivated by different values based on a shared conceptualization of power* that ultimately leads to a unique construction of social identity – one where, in fact, people do define themselves by their work.

For these same reasons, I fit in much more comfortably here than I have anywhere else I’ve lived. This town places much higher value on my personal strengths – after all, this is a place where being a policy wonk has positive connotations – than, say, New York, where I would be one big hopelessly uncool lump of a lost cause with my scuffed up shoes, dorky sense of humor, and impoverished lifestyle. You don’t come to DC to be rich or hip (like New York), or beautiful and famous (that’s LA), or even to be a stoner-hippie-wannabe turned laid-back geek billionaire (San Francisco), and certainly not to lead a quiet, happy low-key life where family comes first (everywhere else); you come here because you’re passionate about what you do and earnestly believe that you have the power to make the world a better place – and are willing to work at it for 60 hours a week for mere pennies. So unlike the rest of the country where what you do is generally just a means to an end, in DC the quickest way to learn about someone’s views and interests is simply to ask about their job. And for every asshole who’s only interested in “talking up,” there are many more of us who use that infamous question as a lead-in to engaging conversations about different world views that provide opportunities to learn more about key policy issues that affect us all.

* I broadly define power as the ability to influence outcomes, which takes different forms depending on the context. In New York – and in fact, in most of the world for that matter – money buys power. In LA, the currency is more closely tied to fame (and, to a lesser extent, beauty). But here, power is all about who you know and the extent to which you can influence their decision-making process.

Many of us have heard robust, rational arguments making the case for God or ‘god’ or even ‘gods’, despite Copernicus, Darwin and the lot.  Francis Collins’ The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for belief is on such example of a reasoned, and quite logical, defense of faith/religion that cautions us to not dismiss ‘belief’…The bottomline, for him, seems to be to make the project of modern science a bit more humble and recognize its limits, by ackowledging the existence and even desirability of faith.

When I come across ‘foo-foo’ faith, such as the one being propagated on many GodTube (www.godtube.com) clips (thanks to Newsweek for pointing out the sites listed here), I feel sorry for the likes of Dr. Collins and I recognize why people would stare should I read the Bible at Starbucks.  One clip, ‘The Atheist’ uses a banana to demonstrate the ‘genius of God’: http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=c5280214e0486b273a5f&page=&viewtype=&category=

I’ll leave it to y’all to determine how to take this: literally, metaphorically, seriously or as a comedy…If Yahweh does exist, he’s either gone bananas or is quite the humorist/comedian…Perhaps, Chris Rock is god…

If GodTube weren’t enough of a nuisance, the country’s culture wars are pitting Wikipedia (and its liberal bias) against Conservapedia…What will this spell for professors grading papers that have cited the latter?  More trouble, irritation and they’ll have an excuse to increase the ban on Wikipedia…How does quality compare on the two sites?

Let’s see the entries for Raphael on both sites: Conservapedia- http://www.conservapedia.com/Raphael - and Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael .  While allowing for the relative recentness of Conservapedia, I’d say that in terms of Brandeis’ ‘marketplace of ideas’ logic, the better idea here – unquestionably wikipedia – should continue to prevail in terms of keeping overwhelming marketshare in its favor, if the market be allowed to operate freely…

Myspace’s challenge: famster (www.famster.com) !  Now Rupert Murdoch would say that ‘it ain’t gonna work mate’!  Why?  Sketchy business model. Most Americans, who tend to abuse online networking, are already sick of their families (at least those that do have families)…Otherwise why go online to get in touch with parents (unless you’re away; but how many teens are away?)?  Ain’t home the place to hang out with family?

Shindemasu yo.

It has recently been brought to my attention that my usage of words is not in accord with the common usage. In Ancient Greece, the commonly-accepted definition of a word was called endoxa and one of the real Socrates’ major points was that all dialectic must start from the consensus reality of the time and place in which the dialectic occurs.  Aristotle commented extensively on endoxa and believed that it, for the most part, hit on the truth in any given scenario.

The problem in the non-ivory tower world is that everything is connected and words that have an adequate endoxic definition in one setting have a bad definition in another setting.  Endoxa is a good starting point for philosophical discussion, but it is a terrible starting point for political action.

Aristotle considered the entire subject of political science unsuitable for youth because in the study of it, people without life experience tend to seek to know which political action is best without first seeking after the nature of knowledge itself or identifying the full range of available options.

In my attempts at philosophical conversation on Wisdom of the Capybara, I have cited wikipedia several times now, and I thought it might be useful to point out that while I think wikipedia definitions are a much better starting point for discussion than technical vocabulary from an academic field, these definitions do need to be examined.

Consensus reality, or as stated by Steven Colbert on the Colbert Report, wikiality, should be taken seriously… as starting points of a definition… not as the end all be all.

For an example of why careful agreement about definitions is so important please read this discussion.

As for discussion like that on Some News, I offer the following quote from the Landmark Thucydides.

“Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.  Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any.  Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense.  The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected.” (3.82.4-5).