Geekdom stuff that's funny, insightful, thought-provoking, or interesting: Pejman on Star Wars here and here. David Brin on Tolkien.

We interrupt the blogging holiday for this special occasion...

Y'know, Randy Cohen's (The NYT Magazine's "Ethicist" columnist) obituary for Ann Landers almost had me liking him, for a minute.

Then he pulled this:
"By presenting her views in the form of an innocuous advice column, not as politics but as common sense, she operated as a sort of stealth progressive.
"This is not an easy thing to do. Shortly after my own column began, it was denounced in several right-wing periodicals, in once case under the headline "'The Ethicist' Better Termed 'The Marxist.'" I may have suggested,,, in passing, that 'corporations donate to charity to buff their images' or 'clean air-- why not?' Apparently ideology-detecting radar has become more acute since Ann Landers began or perhaps, with the country veering so far to the right, qualifications for Marxism have been lowered substantially, like some sort of ideological grade inflation."

This isn't the first time that Cohen has feigned astonishment that the mean right-wingers picked on him and claimed that it was because of views like support for clean air. He milked this story in the introduction to his book, and then ran the relevant exerpt as an article in The Nation. It read in part:

"Virtue, it turns out, is the exclusive property of the right. This was brought to my attention just a few months after I began writing "The Ethicist," a weekly column in The New York Times Magazine, when it was denounced by four periodicals, each more right-wing than the last--the weekend Wall Street Journal, the American Spectator, Reason (the presumably ironically named magazine of the Libertarians) and the online version of National Review, where it was named the Outrage Du Jour, under the headline: "'The Ethicist' Better Termed 'The Marxist.'" I may have earned this encomium by suggesting that public education was worthwhile, or perhaps by favoring breathable air. Or air. (Admissions requirements for Marxism have apparently been lowered precipitately, like some kind of ideological grade inflation.)"

Cute. And, like the comedy writer he used to be, he doesn't let a good punchline go. (Cohen has no training in ethics or any related field; the title "The Ethicist" has always struck me as making an unwarranted claim to be offering expertise rather than Landers-style common sense.) The problem is that this punchline is a crock.

I wrote one of those alleged right-wing hit-pieces, for Reason. (You can read it here.) The views for which I criticized him included that it was unethical to fire a temp worker whose shoddy performance was reflecting poorly on everyone ["if anyone's acting unethically here, it's your boss; it is ignoble to force people into soul-deadening, pointless, poorly paid jobs....Organizing work into tedious, repetitive tasks, (that is, the division of labor-- JTL) while profitable for the few, makes life miserable for the many; some political economists have called it a crime against humanity." ] and that giving to charity was morally wrong because the more charitable activity there is, the more easily the state abandons public projects. That's not warm fluffy clean-air stuff. The division-of-labor-as-crime-against-humanity line is probably what led NRO to call him a Marxist.

My beef with him then was that he kept telling people that their individual choices (to defraud or not, to fire or not, to give or not) were morally irrelevant, because of the radical injustice of the economic system. This, I argued, took him out of the realm of being an ethicist-cum-advice-columnist and into the realm of being an op-ed columnist. My beef with him now is that he feels sorry for himself that the right-wingers were so mean to him, but he lies (and keeps telling the same lie) about why that happened. He doesn't stand up for, or modify, or mention, the views that were criticized.

Cohen, of course, has a much wider readership than I do. But as long as he keeps bringing up that he was attacked, I'll keep reminding whoever I can what he was attacked for; clean air it wasn't.

Today at noon Central time, I'll be on Odyssey , on WBEZ 91.5 in Chicago (and simulcast at other NPR outlets? I'm not sure; but it can be listened to online.) discussing freedom of association, inclusion and exclusion, and the relationships between associational life and broader democratic communities. There's some call-in time available (1.888.859.1800). UPDATE: The show can be listened to at the Odyseey archives here

SPOILERS HO.

Those who don't yet want to know about the Two Towers movie, skip on by.

My brother called me last night-- my brother who's been downloading all the making-of documentaries from the web as they were made, not waiting for them to appear on DVDs-- and was very, very dismayed. I'll bet he's not the only fan who is. But I'm not.

The first thing to remember is: Ten years ago, if I'd told you there would be a beautiful, live-action, convincing, big-budget movie of The Two Towers; that tens of millions of people were going to watch a movie that included correct Elvish and Entish; that the Battle of Helm's Deep was going to become one of the handful of best cinematic representations of a battle, ever; you'd've told me I was nuts. Don't lose sight of the forest for the ents.

Second: Gollum. This Gollum is not only an astonishing technical achievement, integrated seamlessly into a live-action movie and setting a new, very high bar for successful CGI. It's also an emotionally compelling performance, and sets a new standard in that way as well. (The froglike critter from the Rankin-Bass cartoons now seems shockingly inadequate.)

Third: the physical reality of Edoras and of Helm's Deep. Edoras is the equal of the first movie's Shire, and even better than the first movie's RIvindell or Lorien.

Fourth: Grima. Brr...

Fifth: Don't compare this version of the Two Towers with the version of Fellowship that you watched last week on DVD. Compare it with the version you watched in the theaters last December. There'll be an extended DVD release of this one, too; and Jackson now has enough of a record that we should trust and be excited about that longer movie.

All of that said...

Oh my God! They killed Haldir! You bastards!


The changes Jackson's made to the story of the second volume all seem to me to push in a common direction: characters who are not among the members of the Fellowship may not be heroic and important. They must be made either less brave and willing to face the war than they are in the books (Theoden, Treebeard, Elrond); more wimpy in an inchoate way (Eowyn); more morally dubious (Faramir-- this is the one that does the most damage); or less prominent (Eomer, whose friendship with Aragorn was sorely missed). This is largely so that our inspiring heroes-- Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, and Pippin-- can perform unnecessarily dramatic rallyings-of-the-troops. This, in turn, is in large part because of the changes Jackson has introduced into Aragrorn's plotline (in turn largely motivated by the desire to make the Aragorn-Arwen love story more central, and to make Arwen more prominent). Instead of striding forth from Rivindell with the reforged Narsil in his hand ready to face his destiny, Aragorn has to grow into his leadership, with important help along the way from Arwen and the elves.

This is a very big change, and it's cost us in some significant ways. (I think it has, as one spillover, the loss of the full version of Boromir's and Faramir's dream even in the extended version, and the loss of the dream altogether from the theatrical versions.) It also makes a lot of sense, as a matter of movie-making. The three wholly independent plots of Two Towers are pretty hard to tie into a movie; as a stand-alone book, its climaxes come in funny places and each of the plots ends in a kind of funny place. What Jackson tried to do was to run the three plotlines in parallel, giving each a martial-action climax at the same point. (This was way Frodo and Sam got dragged to Osgiliath. As I mentioned, the Faramir subplot is seriously problematic.) And this structure of changes gives him the opportunity to do this. The arrival of Celeborn and the elvish archers can signal both a rallying of the elves and a rallying of the Rohirrhim. (Note to anyone who, like me, was worried by repeated reference to "the Rohans" in television commentary and printed reviews: the correct "Rohirrhim" is used in the movie.) More or less simultaneously, Merry and Pippin can directly cause Treebeard to become "roused," instead of merely serving as the pebbles that start the avalanche. Later, Aragorn can reinspire the Eomer-less Theoden to greatness-- a reinspiration that wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic had Theoden emerged from his encounter with Gandalf as confident as he did in the book.

So in the service of getting dramatically-timed and Fellowship- (especially Aragorn-)led rallies Theoden is reduced, the Elves are reduced, and the ents are reduced. In the service of getting a martial climax to Frodo and Sam's plotline, and of making sure that our growing-into-office Aragorn doesn't suffer by comparison, Faramir is worse than reduced. He's really betrayed. Since we're supposed to care about love stories: are we now going to feel nearly as happy about Eowyn getting Faramir as her consolation prize? (Maybe so, since she's been reduced as well.)

I'll freely admit: I liked the arrival of the elves at Helm's Deep. I'm not sure that it entirely redeems the weaselification of Elrond over the previous movie and a half; but it was pretty nice, and I understand why it was cinematically called for.

I think Gimli got mocked a bit too much; and I was not happy to have drawrf-tossing mentioned again-- or to have had it mentioned once. But I was clearly in the minority; the opening-day audience roared. And, again, I understand the cinematic demands. Had Gimli not been played somewhat for laughs, there'd've been nothing to lighten the hour-plus of the Helm's Deep plotline. Fine in the book, not so fine in what is, in part, an action movie.

I really missed the full Aragorn-Eomer conversation when they first meet-- though, of course, that conversation depends on Aragorn being willing to claim hios full title and bearing the Sword, so it had to go. I'm not very happy with Treebeard's character.

But the only thing that seemed to me really, really wrong was Faramir; and I don't think the desire to put Frodo and Sam into a battle justifies it.

But, manoman... can you believe we have a cinematic Faramir about whose characterization we can argue?

I thought Fellowship should've gotten both Best Picture and Best Director. I'm less convinced of Best Picture this time... but even more convinced of Best Director.

UPDATE: Heh. Bruce Baugh has a funny take on the discrepancies, though I don't think it really works. (In fairness, it's not really supposed to.)

I'm happy to see that the mostly-silent Volokh Conspirator, Michelle Boardman (whom I know and admire from 'way back in our days together at Brown) is back.

CalPundit has posted some thoughts in response to my post on groupblogs.

It's grammar day at How Appealing and at Mark Kleiman...

The Nation has mostly been unreadable since Hitchens left, but this is a pretty sharp, funny review of the new D'Souza book.

Here's a link to a paper I published a couple of years ago on free speech and the symbols of the Confederacy and of the American history of race-terrorism. (When Cato VP David Boaz wrote an open-ed quoting the piece, it came to the attention of the Confederatista pseudo-libertarians at places like LewRockwell.com-- Lew Rockwell being a prominent pseudo-libertarian who endorsed the Rodney King beatings. Unfriendly comments and e-mails ensued. Judging myself by the enemies I kept, I was pretty pleased...)

Kieran Healey has a marvelous post tweaking anayltic philosophy; and Chris Bertram has a nice pair of posts on European expansion. His point about France is one I've been batting around in my head for the last week. There are all sorts of ways in which Turkey doesn't yet live up to what I take to be the decent liberal minimum of respecting human rights, or at least hasn't yet shown that it has changed its ways. But almost all of these it imported directly or indirectly from France, with the suppression of both religion and linguistic minorities high on the list. If I trusted the EU more, I'd have some sympathies with their reasons for continuing to exclude Turkey; as it is, I'm sort of dubious. (That doesn't mean, btw, that American security interests-- even legitimate ones-- should provide sufficient reason for the EU to extend membership.)

Not all free trade agreements, however, claim to rest on such a thick ideological foundation as the EU. Let Turkey into NAFTA!

Meanwhile: I've got my Two Towers tickets. It didn't occur to me until fairly late in the game that the free ticket that came with the Fellowship DVD wasn't compatible with buying advance tickets online-- which is of course necessary for opening-day seats. Guess I'll just have to go again. Dang.

Juan non-Volokh posted what seemed to me an implausibly sanguine account of the advantages of student-edited law reviews over peer-reviewed journals... but before I could get around to pointing out the difficulties in the argument, his fellow Conspirators Orin Kerr and Sasha Volokh had already done it, thus confirming both a point I made a long time ago about the similarity between blogging and peer review and the possibility I mentioned last week that the future belongs to groupblogs....

via Baggage Carousel No. 4, a paper on the population dynamics of Sunnydale, CA.

I can't muster the energy for anything new on the substance of the Lott problem, while we're waiting for this afternoon's press conference. So instead I'll kvetch about language, a la Jay Nordlinger or William Safire.

The WSJ editorial about Lott has as its subhed:
He must ask if he's still the best leader for the GOP.

Did I miss the memo announcing the abolition of the if-whether distinction? In the past six months or so, even venues that I expect to know better-- TNR, the WSJ, the Economist, the NYT, NR-- seem to have given up on the distinction entirely. (When there's an implied "or not," the proper word is "whether." When there's an implied "then"-- "If Trent Lott steps down, the GOP may have trouble finding a willing successor"-- the proper word is "if.") Do in-house stylebooks no longer even mention this? Do copy-editors no longer read stylebooks? I find this as jarring as that-which mistakes, and only a notch or two less jarring than the misuse of "disinterest." I can't see any good reason for the change, and can't understand why even usually-dependable editors seem to have given up on the distinction.

UPDATE: As far as I can tell, "I wonder if" is never correct. That is to say, I can't think of a correct sentence that would begin that way. This is among the most common ways of making the if-whether mistake. If your sentence or thought begins with "I wonder," [implied "then"] it should take "whether," not "if." I wonder whether there are any exceptions [implied "or not"]...

Coming next week: a response to Nick Shulz's Tech Central Station column on Rawls and foreign policy.

The debate over Rawls' ideas rarely spilled over into the realm of foreign policy.
And whether Rawls had strong feelings about, say, the war on terror or toppling
Saddam Hussein, I do not know. But Rawls' concern for the least well-off can -
indeed, it should - extend far beyond domestic political economy to the realm
of foreign policy. After all, he was positing universal principles, principles in
many ways useful and suitable for an examination of foreign policy.

Rawls did indeed have strong views on the relationship between the principles of Theory of Justice and international politics-- published in The Law of Peoples. That relationship doesn't turn out at all the way Shulz suggests here-- for reasons that some of Rawls' leftist admirers and critics have disputed but with which I (in large part) agree.

Via AppellateBlog (which you should be reading every day anyways): Salon (which I used to read every day but no longer do) praises Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and in particular its opening episode of the season. You read about it here first...

Heh. Paul Krugman:

And without the indefatigable efforts of Mr. Marshall and a few other Internet writers,
Mr. Lott's recent celebration of segregation would probably have been buried as well.

And who might those others be, Paul?

Bush is right on the substance, wrong on what to do next.

NO, NO NO... This time it's some Jewish groups trying to use France's free-speech-unfriendly laws to suppress a novel they don't like. (Some Muslim groups tried something similar earlier this fall.) I'm especially dismayed that Americans, working for an organization that is overwhelmingly funded by American Jewry, are considering the suppression of speech overseas, showing little commitment to the values of the First Amendment.* (Yes, I understand that the U.S. Constitution doesn't bind France; my point is that I kind of hope that Americans think the First Amendment is correct, and that they therefore wouldn't promote censorship in other places even in places where they might get away with it.)

*Shimon Samuels, director for international liaison for the
Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he and
other Jewish representatives were considering the possibility
of seeking a court order to ban the book, for which no sales
figures were yet available in France.

I quite like Kieran Healey's quip about the OxBloggers pinch-hitting for the Volokh Conspirators:

Even in the blogosphere, when the Prof is out of town, the grad students teach the class.

(I suspect that this is the harbinger of things to come. Given a) the time demands involved in blogging and b) the time demands involved in following multiple blogs, group-blogs-- Corner, Hit & Run, OxBlog, Conspiracy, etc-- seem to have a real advantage over individually-authored blogs: more content-per-effort for writers and readers alike. And now the group blogs are collaborating with each other to make sure that their posting frequency doesn't fall! Conspiracy, indeed... )

The window is closing. If no Republican Senator has broken ranks by Friday; if Republican Senators don't hear enough from angry constituents (especially Republican constituents!) by the end of the week; then we're going to be stuck with Confederatista Lott for two more years. Attention Republicans: even if you think that Lott's apology has been adequate, it is not in your party's interest to keep this wounded, tainted figure as one of its most prominent spokesmen, to create such an obvious (and IMO legitimate!) target for charges of GOP racism. See David Frum, Deroy Murdock, Robert George, Dan Drezner. (See also Josh Marshall on the lies Lott is telling at this point, or Michelle Cottle's sketch of Lott's history, in case you actually do think Lott is repentant and are tempted to accept his pseudo-apology at face value.)

Find your Republican Senator's e-mail address and let 'em know-- civilly but firmly and clearly!-- that Lott as Majority Leader is unacceptable.

I'm intrigued and persuaded by Andrew Sullivan's take on the generation gap here, on the degree of anger among young conservatives and libertarians at what some older Republicans still think is acceptable... though there's something, too, to Tapped's condescending observation:

In a way, this all makes Tapped feel bad for younger conservatives,
especially the cosmopolitan-intellectual types who talk a good game
about the virtues of Red America but live in places like Washington,
New York and Cape Cod. Guys like McCain [not the Senator-- JTL]
and Lott are throwbacks, a dying breed, and clearly it legitimately
pains the younger guys that they have to play on the same team as
these jackasses. It's tough being the Blue-state intellectual arm of
an Old South-led political movement.

This is a big part of why I'm more skeptical of the GOP than are many other blue-state libertarians my age. (Of course, the constant betrayals on trade, taxes, and spending don't help either.) A show of Republican spine in getting rid of Lott would certainly help to allay my worries that the troglodytes have a stranglehold on the party's conscience.

Dan Drezner floods the zone on Lott.

Those of us who live in states with Republican Senators should start suggesting to them that they not re-elect Lott as Majority Leader. I'm writing to Peter Fitzgerald...

Update: Written, as follows.

Dear Senator Fitzgerald:

I'm writing to urge you in the strongest possible terms not to support Trent Lott's re-election as Majority Leader, and to ask you to urge him to step down as soon as possible. His deeply inappopriate comments last week about Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat presidential campaign in 1948; his inability to grasp how seriously inappropriate those comments were; his repeated pattern of statements in support of the Confederate cause; and his apparently longstanding conviction that the country would have been better off with a Thurmond win (as evidenced by the news that he made an almost-identical statement in 1980) leave him hopelessly tainted. For the good of the Republican Party, for the good of the Senate, and for the good of race relations in the country, he ought to step down. His supposed apology was utterly inadequate, given the seriousness of what he said.

You represent the Party of Lincoln from Lincoln's own state. Lott, by his own repeated statements, stands for the legacy of Jefferson Davis and Strom Thurmond circa 1948 (who was, after all, not the Republican candidate!), not for the legacy of Lincoln. Please do the right thing, and do your part to remove Lott as majority leader, by persuasion or with your vote.


Update again: Josh Chafetz has (independently) done the same. He made a specific recommendation for who should replace Lott, which I didn't do. YMMV.

See Josh Marshall on "safety-net entrepreneurs" in the Bush Administration.

Interesting tidbit: in today's article about conservative opposition to Stephen Friedman's selection as director of the NEC, the NYT says "White House officials lashed out at critics... including [NRO and Cato regular] Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth... They said Mr. Moore had no credibility with the administration." What's the story behind that?

Today's NYT subhed: "Conservatives Join Call [for Lott] to Quite Leadership." Later says that "Some calls [to step down] came from conservatives... Much of the criticism came from members of the Congressional Black Caucus." (Emphasis added.)

Umm... excuse me?

The good news, I suppose, is that if the CBC is angry then maybe the NYT will start giving this Augusta-level coverage... whereas if the Times believed that conservatives had been attacking Lott earliest and oftenest, then it might feel compelled to come to his defense.

[This is cranky and grumpy on my part, I know. But it's pretty annoying on the NYT's part as well.]

Another in the depressing string of stories about the Bush administration alienating those who want to be our genuine friends in the world. Avoiding European goo-goo multilateralism is one thing. An inability to conduct diplomacy is another. The administration spares almost no effort in sucking up to China, Saudi Arabia, and usually Russia. Australia, Canada, Mexico, India, and Israel get no such consideration-- to say nothing of Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan, democratic states and movements in Africa... I don't believe that the U.S.' power forces it into being an arrogant hyperpower, and I don't believe that a rejection of Kyoto makes it one. But an utter disdain for friends and allies does.