Category: Everything Else

Americablog’s Chris in Paris has this to say about Saddam Hussein’s apparently immanent execution:

I have little sympathy for Saddam but I still struggle with the fact that he is being executed for killing 148 people considering the hundreds of thousands who have been killed since the invasion.

He’s got a point. I don’t think Saddam should be allowed to go off and live a comfortable retirement in some South American country, but I’m also not terribly happy at the thought of hanging him, especially considering his somewhat bizzare trial and the ongoing slaughter zone that is Iraq since we took him out of power. I’m not a person who feels that the death penalty is immoral and should never be used, by a long shot, but this makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Something is not right about this end to Saddam Hussein’s story.

There’s another quote that’s been hanging around in my mind since reports started to circulate that Saddam’s death was nearing (reports currently circulating seem to indicate that he will be dead before the New Year):

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

That’s JRR Tolkien (Gandalf speaking to Frodo), if you don’t recognize it.

Update 12:20PM: Just wanted to add: why is is that Osama Bin Laden is still at large but we’re hanging Hussein?

Oh right, that’s a ‘Success that hasn’t occurred yet’.

Amazing.

Update #2 6:15PM: Everyone else seems to be linking to Josh Marhsall’s post on this topic, so why not me too.

I feel like a ghoul — I want to turn the TV on, and I don’t, both at the same time. I’m also tempted to have a good stiff drink, but I don’t want to seem like I’m even remotely celebrating, becasue I am not.

I was going to post the lyrics to “The Shortest Day of the Year” from The Boys from Syracuse in honor of this day, but I couldn’t find them online, and I also can’t find my cassette with the soundtrack.

So, no Rodgers & Hart for you all. Sorry.

It’s things like this that really make you wonder about the laws of probability. What are the odds that two massively unusual events would happen to the exact same person?

A woman whose apartment was burned in the high-rise crash of New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle

If you’re still looking for a holiday gift for a history fan, you might want to consider a little novel that an old friend of mine back home has just published: Die Fasting.

Here’s the blurb from his site:

The year is 1758, and though the locale is workaday New York, the landscape is wildly exotic. Our fresh-faced hero is Thomas Dordrecht, raised on a remote farm

This is amazing:

Scientists have finally demystified the incredible workings of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks.

A new analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism, a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears, show it to be more advanced than previously thought

Well, file this one under “maybe I shouldn’t be writing about this because I am white,” but I wanted to say something about Reverend Jesse Jackson’s new campaign to pressure the entire entertainment industry to never use “the N word” again.

I understand the impulse, but I think it’s a stupid move. Removing a word from the common vocabulary does nothing to eradicate racism. A large part of the power of words is their context. If anything, censorship adds power to the word in question, and does nothing to keep people from expressing their bigotry.

The word “boy”, for example, is generally neutral and harmless. But when spoken in a certain tone of voice and addressed to an adult black man, it becomes a racist and derogatory word. And on the other hand, Chris Rock made that word which I cannot say into high comedy.

Or to take an example that’s a little closer to my own experience, the word “jew”. Spat out of the mouth of a skinhead in a voice twisted by anger, it sounds and means something completely different than it does if said by someone whose heart is not full of hate. And removing the word won’t make him hate me any less.

All of which is not to say that I think it’s a good word or that it should be used more, of course. This is all about context, and it seems pretty obvious that the context in which that word is acceptable is extremely limited and narrow, as it should be.

Like I said, it is possible that I’m wrong about all this. Maybe the word really is so bad that nobody of any color should ever say it again anywhere or in any context. But even so, for Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson of all people to be telling others what they should and should not say seems a little hypocritical.