It’s the end of another annus horribilis. Not for Anon, personally, though I will admit to a certain amount of melancholy. But, the rest of the world didn’t fare as well as even I did. There’s really no need to tick off the list; we all know where the problems are and continue to be. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from Dafur to Somalia, from Ukraine to the rest of the ‘Stans; the list just goes on and on.

At home, there’s the loss of habeus corpus and the general mucking about with the first 10 amendments to the Consitution, aka: the Bill o’ Rights. Evidently, Rights must be abrogated in order to preserve them (this goes along with the military philosophy used in Vietnam: you have to burn the village in order to save the village). As we search for the enemy, we can now look in the mirror to find him. For our fragile experiment of representational democracy it is ‘the darkest part of the longest night,’ and it’s time for clear-eyed honesty when looking into our souls for answers. (more…)

Well, I’ve been sitting on the sidelines for a while: watching and thinking about the world and the sentient creatures who occupy it. It’s funny what will set one off. It doesn’t have to be a huge occurrence. Sometimes it’s a trivial thing. For me it happened while the HB and I were channel surfing. We happened on to the Time “Person of the Year” show. It’s not something we’d ordinarily watch, but we were too lazy to click on.

The show revolved around the process that the Pooh-Bahs at Time magazine go through to pick their so-called person of year cover story. Now this ‘honor’ of dubious distinction has, in the past, been awarded to Hitler, Stalin and Wallace Simpson. So, it isn’t as if the ‘person’ has to be a good one. The criteria seem to revolve around who affected world the most in the year just ending and the year to come. (more…)

Perception is a strange thing. I had studied these photos of Ron Mueck’s sculpture of a boy for quite a while. They are obviously from 2 different exhibitions. The larger of the 2 was in a gallery with soaring dimensions. Also, the photo is taken from a height above. The figure of the boy appears to be looking down at the spectators. There is something slightly menacing about him, as if he’s contemplating standing up and then stomping on the people. Or, perhaps, he’s thinking of playing with them as if they were dolls. The sculpture seems in proportion with the space, it’s the people who seem small and insignificant.

In the second photo, the boy seems cramped. His outsized figure can barely fit in the space he’s been allotted. This time he’s looking off in the distance. He has a thousand-yard stare. The people aren’t menaced by him at all. The space is theirs and he can do nothing but crouch down in it.

Many aspects of life can be contrasted this way. A situation that seems huge in one context, can seem more in proportion (or at least manageable) in another context. Yes, it’s all in how you look at it. (more…)

Well, I did call it, didn’t I? Just to refresh your memories here were my predictions for 7 November:

Senate 5-8 seat pick up for Democrats
House 27-34 seat pick up for Democrats
Governors 4-6 pick up for Democrats

The Senate is on the low end of my estimate (5-6), but still there. The House is right on (33) and the governors are at the high end of my margin of error (6). This is what happens when you strip the rhetoric, the partisan passions and negative ads from your analysis. I’m not saying that those aren’t factors in how elections are decided. What I am saying is that if you want an honest analysis, you must strip all the noise from what you’re looking at. (more…)

Just do it!

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course

Here you see the DOD’s Central Command’s take on the civil conflict in Iraq as of 18 Oct 06. The HB looked at this chart and said, “Bloody, hell! What does it mean?” Well, any chart coming out of the bureaucratic quagmire that is the Department of Defence, will necessarily be obtuse. So, Anon will ‘splain it all.

The symbols on the left are defined near the bottom of the chart. So, we can see first that the political/religious leaders are increase(ing) their publicly hostile rhetoric (toward other groups, toward the U.S.? They don’t say) has been “routine.” Okay, now that you’ve got that; let’s see if we can put this in plain English. (more…)

One of my favourite holidays is the Mexican La Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). It starts on what we old-school Catholics used to call All Souls Day. Behind the celebration is the concept that you can commune with the spirits of your dearly departed. This idea appeals to me. The holiday started before the Christian era, but was co-opted by the priests who came with along with the conquistadors. They even moved the date of the holiday from mid-summer to coincide with All Souls Days in an effort to mitigate its pagan roots.

This year, however, La Dias de los Muertos has another meaning for me. I came across this picture of el Presidente Americano made from photos of many of the soldiers who have died in his vainglorious war. (more…)

Okay, let’s talk about the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In game theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is used try to understand, hypothetically, how people choose their options in different situations. The classic situation posits 2 prisoners and what they can achieve if they choose to either confess (cooperate) or not (defect).

As you can see, by the chart (I’ve added some colour to mine, nice effect I think), the best possible outcome for both prisoners is if they both confess (cooperate). As an example of another outcome, if prisoner B doesn’t cooperate and prisoner A does; then B wins and A loses. If neither of them confesses, however, it doesn’t go any better for either prisoner: their outcome is mediocre for both of them. (more…)

You’ll remember that sometime back we had a lesson in polling and statistics. At that time I said,

In Book 7 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates relates the allegory of the cave. In the cave, men are forced to look at what the rulers want them to see. The men can neither move their heads nor avert their eyes. What they do see are shadows projected on the walls in front of them by the unseen people in charge. They never see reality or even who is creating this illusion. However, if the men were allowed out of the cave; they might be blinded by the brightness and mightn’t see the reality in front of them.

This allegory also applies to people living in post-industrialized, technologically-advanced countries today. That would be all of the so-called 1st world nations. I say ‘so-called’ because there are many ways in which we, who do live in 1st world nations, are no better off than those who live in countries that we derogatorily refer to as 3rd world. But more on that another time.

Here’s the conundrum: do we put up with the force-fed shadows on the wall of the cave or do we risk being blinded by the light of the truth outside the cave? Do we fight the shadows in our ‘cave’ in order to find the truth? The only reality we know are the shadows we are allowed to see. It’s not as simple as a politicised press (either liberal or conservative). It’s not as simple as a culture of corruption in D.C. It’s about a system that started as corrupt and can’t seem to get out of its own way. (more…)