War, Gore, and GLobal Warming

Last week, former Senator, VP, and failed Presidential Candidate Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Price. The question remains, how does global warming relate to peace?

From Slate:

The idea of a connection between conflict and climate change is fairly new, and one that had been mostly relegated to academic journals until earlier this year. Then, in June, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon went on record to suggest global warming as a cause for the fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan. He pointed out that warming in the tropical and southern oceans, fueled in some part by climate change, led to a decades-long drought and clashes between herders and farmers over the degrading land. When a rebellion broke out against the central government, Sudan's leaders fought back by arming and supporting the herders against the farmers—and the entire region fell into war. If global warming did cause the Sudanese drought, then it's also responsible for the 200,000 to 450,000 lives that have been lost over the last four and a half years. We may very well be watching the first major conflict caused by emissions from our factories, power plants, and cars.
Other early hot spots for warming-related conflict are likely to be in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, or the Caribbean—places where institutions are weak, infrastructure is deficient, and the government is incompetent or malevolent. The crisis in Darfur has already stretched into Chad and the Central African Republic. Nomads from Sudan, spillovers from Sudan's desertification, are pushing deep into the Congolese rain forest. In Ghana, nomadic Fulani cattle herdsmen, forced by the expanding Sahara desert into agricultural lands, are buying high-power assault rifles to defend their animals from angry farmers.

Climate-change conflict is even spreading into the Arctic, where normally pacific Canada and Norway have joined the United States, Russia, and Denmark in a five-way tussle over mineral and shipping rights unlocked by the melting ice. Thus far largely symbolic, the conflict could take a more serious turn as the waters warm and military traffic increases. Norway and Russia already face each other down over fish in the Barents Sea. And Canada and Denmark take turns pulling up each other's flag on Hans Island, a stretch of icy rock the size of a football field. These countries may be arguing over small fries right now, but what happens when oil is at stake?

Ethos and the Academic Bill of Rights

Currently, I am researching the Academic Bill of Rights by Students for Academic Freedom
"whose goal is to end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge."

In an article about the firing of two DePaul Professors, the author suggests that DePaul should fire another professor for his political beliefs, which seems to counter the principles of the Academic Bill of Rights.Now, in this article, there is no discusison that the professor is violating his professional duties by trying to indoctrinate his students. There is no discusison that he presents only one sided views in his class. Instead, the author of this article would like DePaul to fire him for his research and his beliefs because, "his entire [The English Professor's] corpus of "scholarly" work consists of exercises in "revolutionary" politics.

One paragraph sticks out:

Well, we would like to take Abraham up on the challenge and urge DePaul to take a close look at this fella's academic record, which can be seen here. Abraham holds a PhD in English from Purdue, where he wrote a dissertation about "The Rhetoric of Resistance," in other words a propaganda tract for the "revolutionary" left. Before that he completed an MA thesis in Arkansas that was a sycophantic celebration of the Maoist "philosopher" Michel Foucault.

I wonder if the author in question ever read the two works in question and knows enough about the rhetoric of resistance and the work of Michel Foucault to be able to judge its academic merits. Does the author know that "the rhetoric of resistance" could be used by "conservatives" against "liberals," which, by the way, is some of the purpose behind the Academic Bill of Rights.

But instead, the rhetoric of resistance is only a "propaganda tract of the left." If you are a conservative, nothing useful could come from it....

At what point does an intellectual pursuit just turn out to be a political pursuit?

Question for baseball Fans

A few random questions while watching the Yankees- Indians' game:

When did the seventh inning stretch tradition begin and why?

Why do they sing God Bless America? What is the conenction betwen this song and baseball?

Are there other traditions at other ballparks? I believe that Houston played "Wine, Women, and Snowpeas," er., I mean the Texas State Anthem. What elose is there?

This Just in:

President Bush just said the following: "This government does not torture people."

Explain this quote.

For reading materials to prepare your case, read this article from The New York Times.

The Revolution will not be sold (in stores)

There are certain moments in the history of music that serve as revolutionary moments, paradigm shifts in the Kuhnian sense. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to experience another one of those moments, from a band that has already brought you two such moments,O.K. Computer and Kid A.

On October 10, you will be able to download Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows. You will not have to purchase it in stores and you will not have to pay an outrageous fee to listen to the music. Instead, you will be able to determine what price, if any, you would pay for the album.

From Rolling Stone, which by the way, also provides a preview of the new material:

As you've no doubt heard by now, Radiohead are releasing In Rainbows, their seventh studio album, in two different formats: a basic DRM-free download version that costs whatever you want that's available October 10th, and a deluxe boxed version that includes a double vinyl disc, a book, eight bonus tracks and two CDs, out the first week of December (it also comes with a DRM-free download that actives on October 10th).

"You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"

Where is Oxymoron? Part II

Oxymoron's commercial is back on the tele. Because we miss him, here it is again:

Where is Oxymoron? Part I

Unlike yourself, it does exist...

It appears as if the maker of John Courage Ale pulled it from the US to focus on selling Newcastle.

What is the nature of academic freedom?

This may not be a coherent post but I am looking for some feedback on a few questions.

What should the term "Academic freedom" include?
What is the relation of academic freedom and partisan interests?
How is indoctrination different from persuasion or propaganda?
How should we discuss the “left” or the “right” or “liberal” and “conservative”? Treat them as a coherent whole or divide them into belief systems?

Recently, there have been a few national stories that challenge the sense of academic freedom:

Erwin Chemerinsky was offered a position to become the Dean of UC Irvine's new law school. Subsequently, the offer was rescinded by one of the school chancellors, Michael V. Drake. Chemerinsky is a prominent constitutional scholar, who has argued before the Supreme Court (The Texas Ten Commandment cases). Also, He is outspoken politically, as he has written editorials against the death penalty.

It appears that when Drake rescinded the offer, he failed to offer good reasons for this, leading many people to believe that the push to remove the offer developed from “Conservatives” within Orange County, California. Even one of the state’s more conservative Supreme Court Justices spoke out against the hire.

Last week, the school reoffered the position to Chemerinsky. You can read about this from the The L.A. Times

Second, former Harvard President Larry Summers was asked to deliver a keynote speech for a dinner at UC Sacramento. Some of the “liberal” professors objected to this because of Summers’ view on gender. The offer was rescinded and he did not speak.

Third, professors at Stanford protested the appointment of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute. As far as I know, the protests have not succeeded and Rumsfeld will still be a fellow at Stanford.

Fourth, Steve Bitterman,
a professor at Southwestern Community College was fired after offended students appealed to the school’s administration over Bitterman’s comments that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be read literally but rather figuratively. Bitterman told the class that "it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there." After he was fired, Bitterman (a fitting name) said: I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job, I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job.”

How should we understand these four examples in heir relation to partisan interests and education?

John Hawkins Loves White People Like "A Fat Kid Loves Cake": The Battle for Framing in the Case of the Jena 6

"I love you/ like a fat kid loves cake" (from Get Rich or Die Trying).



Poetic recitation time being over, let us now repair to the topic of the moment. For a long time the position taken by M at
Separation of Spheres was the only one an interested party could find on the Internet and on the News. Well, actually that's not entirely true: In truth the way it started was the story was simply being buried by the media.

But then, thanks largely to socially conscious liberal bloggers like M, the corporate media was finally forced to come in and throw the big light on the bizarre and sad recent happenigns in Jena, Lousiana.

But anyway, when Harrogate first got wind of the story from the liberal bloggers, he wondered: are the conservatives defending this? Are the white students or their families or the DA speaking out in their defense? What, o What could they be saying in light of what looks to us like a clear case of justice miscarried by the good ole boy system? Here the importance of what famed linguist George Lakoff has to say about framing and contemporary politics is, it seems to Harrogate, very clearly illustrated.

There was a period where the conservative pundits layed low on this story and so the liberal blogosphere remained free to dictate the terms of our moral imaginations.

But the silence is over, and now the real battle for framing is afoot. As it heats up, the implications of this tussle will not extend to Mychal Bell himself, who already has been released on bond and now, quite appropriately, awaits his day in juvenile court to face charges dramatically reduced from what had started out as no less than Attempted Murder. But the battle has rhetorical and, therefore, political implications that are in many ways far more important than the fates of any of the individuals involved, or even for that matter the fate of Harrogate himself.

Increasingly popular pundit John Hawkins has captured, Harrogate believes, the essence of conservative apologetics for the Jena DA's original approach to the case. Harrogate exhorts ye, o readers, to peruse Hawkins' petition to the people that we have all been had by the hucksters of race.

Is there merit to his case? Harrogate reports. Ye decide.

(BTW, far be it from Harrogate to introduce the Ad Hominem element into his otherwise sober, wholly unironic, erudite political and rhetorical discourses. Yet he nevertheless feels it both necessary and even somewhat entertaining, in a morbid sort of way, to remind readers that when they're reading the ruminations of this god-prattling, gun-championing, homosexual hating, war supporting fella, you're also reading someone who very recently reminded us that the people of New Orleans need to stop milking Katrina sympathy, show some of that can-do American attitude and get over it already)

The Mask

Police releashed this image of the mask in question. One student stated it was "fleshy-colored" and "wrinkled."

I have no idea what it represents.

It appears that the gun was loaded but it only contained one round. The student, who has a history of mental illness, did not carry any other rounds.

Update: The New York Times reports that it was a Fred Flintstone mask.

And how was your day at work Honey?

At around 2:30 pm today, a crazed lunatic who wore a mask (some say it was the mask from Scream others say it was a mask of George H.W. Bush, but it looks like Reagan to me-- and I am being serious) and carried a rifle tried to enter the building in which I teach. Some of my students were last to class and, when I asked why they were late, they stated campus police were arresting a man with a rifle. I thought that to be a reasonable excuse.

The gunman had put his rifle in a bag and, when confronted, tried to get it out. Police sub-dued him before he could. It seems that someone noticed a man with a mask and a large bag, thought it was strange, and called security.

No one was hurt.

I will add more about this tomorrow.

Kevin Everett and the Wonders of Modern Medicine

Some news all Sports Fans can be happy with.Kevin Everett likely to be walking within a matter of weeks.

Solon is truly our resident expert on all things NFL, particularly when it comes to the vaunted Buffalo Bills. And we look forward to his sharing details of what is on the verge of becoming, even in this hyper ironic age, a genuine feel-good story.

Yet Harrogate hopes he is not overstepping his provincial bounds by taking this opportunity to join Everett's legion of well-wishers. And to express wonder at how this all came to be: the most amazing part is how the on-field trainer was able to sufficiently lower Everett's body temperature with some sort of an injection, in a matter of mere minutes, before swelling could do permanent damage. Is there a day coming soon when doctors will be able to straight-up fuse severed spinal tissue and virtually eliminate paralyses born of accident?

Why does Harrogate Hate Free Speech?

To continue a conversation that should have been stopped weeks ago....

The ACLU submitted an amicus brief on behalf of Senator Larry Craig arguing that the Minnesota Law is overbroad and that toe-tapping is free speech. If nothing else, the toe-tapping fun of Senator Craig is certainly a means of communication. Slate has the story here.

Since this news broke, 4,378 conservative heads exploded as they pondered why the ACLU would help Senator Craig. Of course, ACLU haters believe this is more about protecting perversion than privacy:

Of course, for the “non-partisan” organization, this is more about protecting perversion than politics or privacy. As much as the media will make a day out of a conservative getting support from the ACLU, its really the solicitation for sex that is being defended.

Could you ask for anything more in this case?

Your move Harrogate, your move.

Humor from the National Review

Occasionally, they can be humorous. Most of it is unintentional, such as how a few writers went to the White House today to discuss propaganda, err. i mean strategy, with the President.

But this is good.

I read the news today, oh boy... [Mark Steyn]
I went over to the Fox News story on Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit and was laughing my head off over the charge that he was fired to "pacify the White House" when my eye fell on the right-hand column of current headlines. What a snapshot of the world. In order:

* Idaho Man Blames Wild Sex for Car Crash
* Man Declared Dead Awakens During Autopsy
* Court Revokes Britney Spears' Teen Role Model Career
* New Zealand Cops Discover Woman's Body in Car Belonging to Father of 3-Year-Old Abandoned Girl
* British Woman Divorces Son of Usama Bin Laden
* Questions Raised Whether Tasered Student Planned to Stage Incident at Kerry Forum
* Alicia Silverstone to Appear Nude in PETA Commercial
* O.J. Simpson Released From Jail After Posting $125K Bail in Armed Memorabilia Heist Case
* Iranian General: We Have Plans to Bomb Israel if They Attack Us
* Armless Man Will Not be Charged With Head-Butting Death of Ga. Man
* Meteorite Crash Causes 'Mystery Illness' in Peru
* Milwaukee Nun, 79, Charged With Having Sexual Contact With Two Boys
* Youngest of 3 Sisters Allegedly Set on Fire by Mom Dies in Hospital
* Pop Tarts: Jamie Foxx’s Fertile Fantasy: Impregnating Halle Berry
* Dan Rather Expected to Report Boeing 787 Unsafe
* Report: Jesse Jackson Says Barack Obama 'Acting White' in Case of Six Blacks Accused in Assault Case

What I like about the list is the vague feeling that it's computer generated and would make no difference randomly reshuffled:

* New Zealand Cop Divorces Son Of Usama Bin Laden
* Alicia Silverstone Expected To Report Boeing 787 Unsafe
* Milwaukee Nun Will Not Be Charged With Head-Butting Death
* Report: Jesse Jackson Says OJ Simpson "Acting White"
* Dan Rather To Appear Nude In PETA Commercial

Leave Chris Crocker Alone Redux

Okay, Last one. Harrogate promises. That is unless he puts another one on.

This one's been around almost since the beginning. What is funniest about it is the Sophoclean moment at the end when the sheet comes down and his drunken buddies eloquently assume the traditional role of the Greek Chorus, even as he works himself into such a frenzy that he momentarily loses the ability to breathe. This, folks, is the epiphany of the absurd.

Actually, it's exactly what Northrop Frye was talking about in Anatomy of Criticism--that strange, liminal space where narrative simultaneously manifests utter Irony and sublime Myth.

Enjoy, Readers. Enjoy.

Lola, or The Bright Side of Having "Gender Hang-Ups": A Scholarly Response Wherein The Kinks Are Cited

Harrogate, who himself looks damned good in makeup and a tasteful lingerie ensemble, would like to dedicate this video to "C", particularly in reference to M's recent, highly provocative post over at Separation of Spheres.



(Oh, and Mormons are Weird)

Larry "Thunder Mug" Craig Returns to the Senate: The Saga of the Wide Stance Continues

Hat tip TalkLeft
on this one. Not only has Larry Craig returned to the Senate but check this out! The bathroom where Craig was arrested has become a must see on any respectable tour of these United States.

From the article:

Since news broke Aug. 27 of the arrest of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig in an airport restroom, the airport has been fielding requests for directions to the men's room in question, which is conveniently located just off the central food court and popular shopping area.
Abdalla Said, who works at a newsstand on the G concourse, said he's been getting requests daily, too.
"It's by the lottery shop, right next to the shoeshine shop," he said without blinking.
Gee Butler works at that shoeshine shop, the Royal Zino. He said the restroom has become a photo op.
"People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door - man, it's been crazy," he said.

Deliberative Democracy or the Decline and Fall of the American Republic

Does the student have the right to be heard? Does the student make sense? Does he deserved to be tasered?

Oscar Wilde--Preface to "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

All Art Is Quite Useless

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner
or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode
of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt
without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things
are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things means only
Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of
Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the
rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of
the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect
use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove
anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy
in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express
everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is
the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling,
the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work
is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with
himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he
does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless
thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.

Touche, Seth Green. Touche.

Good Lord.

For those who haven't seen Seth Green's ad hominem
rebuttal of the arguments
soundly put forth by
Chris Crocker, well, this is some
seriously funny shit.