Me: Frank Lynch
Home
(Current
commentary)
These are my mundane daily ramblings.
For something
less spontaneous, I maintain The
Samuel
Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,700 Johnson quotes), with a
weekly essay springing from one of
Johnson's quotations.
Email:
frank
dot
lynch2
at
verizon
dot
net
Unconscious Google bomb? "Google bomb" refers to the conscious effort to manipulate Google search results for a specific phrase through a conspiratorial effort to connect a specific search phrase with a specific search result. For instance, after Dick Gephardt referred to President Bush as a "miserable failure" in a debate, liberals with web sites put that phrase in their pages, and built a link to Bush's bio on the White House web site. For a while, if you searched on the term "miserable failure" at Google, Bush's bio page was the first result; but then a tsunami of conservatives reversed it so it would return Michael Moore's web site first. (Go figure: the implications of a writer/film maker being a miserable failure kind of pale in comparison to a President being the same, but if the wing-nuts thought that was retaliation, I guess there are worse outcomes.)
But I've just learned that my site is the lead result for a
Google search on the phrase "the
good doctor". In classic "Google bomb" form, that phrase
doesn't exist on the page... I don't think it exists on the
entire web site. But I guess there are a number of pages out
there that link to the samueljohnson.com home page when using
that phrase (referring to Johnson, of course, not me).
Link 7:54 PM
Here's a shock... You may have
already checked the political donations of your neighbors, but
you can also do it by name. I checked on the last name of "Bush,"
and would you believe that the President's reelection campaign
has received $2000 donations (the limit) from someone named
"George H W Bush" and someone named "Barbara Bush"? Unbelievable.
Link 2:34 PM
The Administration's response to Richard
Clarke isn't always that robust. A lot of motive questioning
(it's politics, he's trying to sell a book, and so on) and a lack
of substance. Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall dissects a typically flimsy
argument. (I'm not sure why he "promises to not do too much of
this." This is what dialog is all about, and I doubt his readers
are bored yet.)
I haven't even READ "Jane Eyre." I'm
not even sure who it's by... Is it the novel they read in the
orphanage in "The Cider House Rules"? Anyway, I've just been
informed that it's the classic novel in which I most belong: I'm honestly not too sure I should put a lot of stock in a
test result which misspells "largely," though. (Ah, THERE:
that's my out!)
There IS a transcript of the CBS "60
Minutes" segment with Richard Clarke, here. It's not always easy, when writing for free, to
bother to point out every striking aspect, but when I reread this
tonight I was reminded of something which struck me last night
while watching it on the television. VIDEOTAPE OF GW BUSH: You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda
and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror. STAHL: (exp): {Clarke contends that with statements like that,
the President continually left an impression that Saddam had been
involved in 9/11.} [VIDEO WITH CLARKE] CLARKE: The White House carefully manipulated public opinion,
never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq
did it. STAHL: But you're suggesting here that they knew better CLARKE: They did know better. STAHL -- and it was deliberate. CLARKE: They did know better. They did know better. We told
them. The FBI told them. The CIA told them. They did know better.
And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their deaths in
Iraq thinking that they were avenging September 11 when Iraq had
nothing to do with September 11. I think for a Commander in Chief
and a Vice President to allow that to happen is
unconscionable. Now, the reason this stuck in my craw was that the Bush
administration had to know from the regularly conducted public
polls that most Americans thought Iraq was behind 9/11. It would
have been very easy for the White House to correct this
impression. They did not. The only reason I can imagine why they
didn't was because they needed American anger to support the war.
Sure, after the war Bush made his statement that he'd seen
no evidence that Iraq was behind 9/11. But he wouldn't have
dreamed of correcting popular opinion beforehand.
If nothing else, this whole Richard
Clarke volcano (try capping this, Red Adair!)
Is expanding our reading lists. At that link, a close
comparison of defensive arguments from the White House, countered
by its own statements.
He was in the classroom for SEVEN minutes
more... I recently wrote about
the five minute video of Bush sitting in a classroom after being
told that a second jet had hit the WTC on September 11. Today,
The Wall Street Journal has an article on the timeline of that day, and
Bush sat in the classroom for seven minutes after being
informed, not five, and didn't leave the school for another
twenty minutes. I'll grant he was probably involved in decision
making after leaving the classroom, but as long as he was in that
school, those kids were in danger.
I think the most outrageous contradiction
I heard in last night's CBS "60 Minutes" segment on the
accusations that the White House ignored Al Qaeda in favor of
Iraq came from Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.
The accuser, former cabinet level antiterrorism guru Richard
Clarke, had claimed that in 2001, following the entry of the new
Bush administration, he'd been trying for months to get a
cabinet level meeting to address the threat of terrorism.
Hadley's defense? Cabinet level discussions were
occurring, Clarke just wasn't there. (No transcript of the
interview is available to link to, unfortunately.) It's odd that
Clarke wasn't invited or kept informed, though, seeing as how he
was in charge of counter-terrorism. Also, why have Hadley do the response, and not Rice?
Oh, the places you'll go! When going
with Forgotten New
York, it might be a trip to a 1668
cemetary in Queens: And there it was, in all its melancholy glory: a vast
fenced-in field of broken and battered headstones. Even the
cemetery's sign, made in 1936, is badly rusted, a relic from
another era. "Welcome to Prospect Cemetery," said Ms. Ludlam, a small,
cheerful woman with steel-gray hair, who tries to get grant money
to tend the cemetery. Inside, the group spread out and began wandering the lumpy,
overgrown turf. Over the years, vandals have destroyed many
headstones, and some of those that remain are illegible. But
others can be read clearly, including the oldest standing stone,
on the grave of Judith Ludlam, an ancestor of Cate, who died in
1712. No pictures as of yet... If I see any on any of the attendees'
sites, I'll update accordingly.
UPDATE: Pictures are at
Satan's Laundromat.
Adventures in running the world's best
Samuel Johnson quotation web site... I was contacted by a
member of a team working on a scholarly edition of Martin Luther
King Jr's works — one of those editions where they footnote
as much as they possibly can. They wanted to identify the source
of a Samuel Johnson anecdote MLK had referred to in a sermon of
his. In the passage, Johnson is supposed to have described the
naturalness of our needing to pray by saying, "There is no
argument for prayer." (Part of the story, as far as I've traced
it, is here.) I'm still
bugged by not having found it in the canon, though, and I took a
copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson with me on a trip into
Manhattan on the subway. I was fascinated by something I found in
an entry for April 9, 1772, where Boswell wrote... Could this have been it? I knew there are often more details
in Boswell's journals — could his journals have been the
source that a 1926 book, which King drew on, had found for the
anecdote? It wasn't, but I had to question my sanity, because as
far as I knew 1926 was too early for those journals to have been
found. Maybe I'm wrong on that... Anyway, when I looked in the
appropriate volume of Boswell's journals, I was surprised by how
much more was there than is alluded to in the scanty reference
which had made it into the Life of Johnson; usually, when Boswell
is so brief, it's because he has bad notes! But not in this case.
While this is not the source of the anecdote, here's what Boswell
wrote in his journal: From that detailed journal entry, Boswell decided less was
more when writing the Life of Johnson, and settled on "He
observed, that to reason too philosophically on the nature of
prayer, was very unprofitable." A biographer has to make choices; and those who have read the
unabridged Life of Johnson know that there are long passages
about legal opinions and so on which, to us in our time, seem
relatively inconsequential. The efficacy of prayer, however, is
not something which we imagine as settled, having been revisited
famously by C.S. Lewis. Anyway, I was surprised by Boswell's
ellipsis, and I hate the idea that I'm going to have to delve
into his journals more. Hate it.
And as for online auction fraud,
today's New York Times has an
article on the uncomfortable relationship between eBay's
fraud department and vigilantes who want to do more. In the
course of all the discussion, we learn some of the techniques
that fraudulent vendors use, as well as the current state of
eBay's efforts to stop fraud. But it still exists in spite of all
the efforts: The article discusses some protection methods, but one
anecdote could give readers a false sense of security: No one wants that initial feeling of insecurity, but if this
happens to you, don't feel relieved. Bidders can cancel their
bids, leaving you still liable for your bid. This happened to me,
in a legitimate auction. Under eBay's rules you can cancel your
bid if you made a mistake in the amount, but you are supposed to
rebid. I was in an auction with two other bidders who, after
outbidding me, canceled their bids without placing different
bids. I suspect they learned, like I did, that they could get the
item for less elsewhere: I alerted eBay to their failure to
rebid, but eBay didn't force those bidders to place another bid,
and I wound up having to fulfill the seller's auction.
How not to interview a guest.
Cable-news conservative Dennis Miller (we can drop the 'comedian'
from his title now, I think) had Eric Alterman on the other
night, to talk about The Book on Bush, co-authored by Alterman
and Mark Green. Miller is a pretty disengaged host in this
segment, responding as if he's not listening, and merely egging
Alterman on. Is
there an Angro-Meter anywhere nearby? UPDATE: Even
Dennis Miller recognized how bad it was. Alterman reports (on his
blog) that Miller called him and apologized.
Myopia, vision, and subways. Anyone
who knows anything about the progress of land development in
Manhattan knows that the island we have now was not born as it
is. For a long time, for instance, the upper west side was
wilderness; Murray
Hill was once a farm. Much of Manhattan's development came
about because of a vision which
built subway lines on the west side, not just the east. So while I was not surprised that there is disagreement
between New York's Governor Pataki and NYC's Mayor Bloomberg over
whether or not it made sense to extend the 7 line
further west and then down to 34th Street (those two disagree
frequently), the president of the New York Jets (who plan on a
stadium near the projected terminus of the extended 7) weighed
in against extending the line to his planned stadium: I can't help but wonder if that is because his current ticket
holders pretty much have to drive cars in order to get to
where the Jets currently play. Right now they play in Giants
Stadium, in the meadowlands of New Jersey; you can get
their via mass transit from Long Island, but it wouldn't be easy:
you would have to take the Long Island Railroad, then a subway to
the Port Authority bus terminal at 42nd Street, and then a bus
out to New Jersey. You could do it, but that's a lot of
changing trains, to wind up on a bus which could be held up in
traffic. So I wouldn't be surprised at all that much of the
ticket-holding base currently gets there by car. But that doesn't mean it would remain that way with a
nearby subway station. Long Islanders could take the LIRR to Penn
Station and walk to the game easily. Alternatively, at Jamaica
(Queens) they could switch to a subway line which would get them
to the stadium by just changing their subway train once.
Easy. New Jersey fans? All they have to do is get themselves to a
PATH station, which will take them into the area. They might have
to walk or take a bus to get to the station, but that beats the
inconvenience of driving through the congested streets in
Manhattan. Now, here's the plus for Jets management: the line will
put more people in the market for tickets, allowing the team
greater pricing flexibility. Not bad, huh? The other point the Jets president raised, greater suitability
for the Olympics? This guy is clearly not a planner. Anything
that gets built just for an Olympics, if not built with the
longer term in mind, is a waste, because it falls out of use.
In the words of Paul Bremer, ...oh,
just click.
An interesting question raised by Jonah Goldberg: OUR ALLIES [Jonah Goldberg] I can't tell you how many emails I get like this one (which
frames the issue nicely): Admittedly, a flip flop would show embarrassing hypocrisy. So,
which is it, Jonah? Was Spain a significant member of the
Coalition of the Willing or not?
They stole my idea! They stole my
idea! Revisiting any culture can be funny (did you see the Swedish band photos?)
— and this collection of old ads from
Ebony magazine is no exception. But at the bottom: Soul Aid
bandages! I was screaming for this back in college.
The massive Hyde collection of Samuel
Johnson letters, etc. is going to
Harvard. (Perhaps they lost my address?) The collection is of
immense importance: The collection holds the only known copy with untrimmed pages
of the first edition of Dr. Johnson's 1755 dictionary, the first
in the English language. It also contains corrected proofs of
James Boswell's biography of Johnson as well as a number of
letters exchanged between the two men. And it opens a window into
Johnson's exclusive literary club of authors and scholars that
included Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and his
friend the actor and producer David Garrick. The letters shed light on Johnson's private life, particularly
his friendship with Hester Thrale; under the name Mary Hyde, Lady
Eccles wrote two books about Thrale, both published by Harvard in
the 1970's. Boswell thought Thrale and Johnson should have
married after the death of her first husband. (If you care to read more, you can read Lady Eccles'
obituary at the New York Times.)
We invaded Iraq for humanitarian reasons,
because it was ruled by a horrible dictator. Right? Courtesy
of Atrios, you can re-read the speech Bush
gave a year ago, announcing the 48 hour deadline. Keep it in mind
when you hear all the retroactive reconstructing of the
rationales.
Hans Blix: "I think there were things
that really were, in my view, rather scandalous." Promoting
his new book, Hans Blix was on PBS' Newshour with Jim Lehrer tonight, and the word
scandalous startled Lehrer, who pressed for clarification. A day: it took the IAEA a mere day to see something that we
couldn't see. It's really a good interview, covering topics such
as whether or not war was justified even if there were no
WMDs: I think it is a great thing that Saddam Hussein is gone.
That's the great benefit of it. But you still can't sort of
retroactively justify the war. You can say that it was fought and
started on erroneous premises, but even something started on
erroneous premises can have some good consequences. You can make a balance sheet and I think there will be a lot
of negative things on that -- in that balance sheet. The
continued violence, clearly, is a negative thing. There are many
expectations that the Middle East peace process might be
facilitated by this, that establishing democracy in Iraq would
help very much. Let's hope it does. But so far to me it seems the
balance sheet is negative. And I would also say that what was the alternative -- I don't
think the Europeans actually were saying we would never exclude
use of armed force. They did not. They rather said they would
like to have longer period of inspections. And we broke them off
at three and a half months, which was a very short time. There
was nothing in the resolution from 2003 that suggested that it
should be so short. Blix does not accuse the US of dishonesty, so much as poor
thinking, from biases.
Why bring up 1984? Today, Dick Cheney
thought he was slamming John Kerry with this line: Cheney's reference, of course, is to the re-election of Ronald
Reagan in his trouncing of Walter Mondale. To those in the
Republican party, any evocation of St. Ronnie is golden. But other people have other memories of 1984. Like — a
book? Where this totalitarian state switches who the enemy is as
the occasion suits (uh, we're going after Iraq now, not Osama Bin
Laden) and develops this huge propaganda machine (see below), and tries to stuff
unpleasant facts down the
memory hole? Have they not heard of this book?
Thought for the Day: Bush is right: we got a war president. Problem is, we need
more.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! The parade
hasn't started here
in New York, but you can see it pass by through this
webcam. You can already see the blue police barricades
waiting to be set up. Unfortunately, since the parade goes
up Fifth Avenue, you'll see everyone from behind. And of
course you won't hear the pipers.
You really wonder about the background
story on this
picture... But Thomas Schlijper
never seems to provide one... The people are concentrating on the
foreground figure for a reason: is this a dancer?
Link 8:29 AM
'Tis a great
mystery, but somehow you have come to
belong in Jane Eyre; a
random world of love,
kindness, madness, bad luck and
lunatic
ex-wives. There really isn't much to say about
the
place you belong in. It's your place, and
though it seems far
from reality largly due to
how random the events are, you seem
to enjoy
it. You belong in a world where not too
many
people understand you, and where you can be
somewhat
of a recluse.
Which
Classic Novel do You Belong In?
brought to you by Quizilla
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He observed, that to reason too philosophically on
the nature of prayer, was very unprofitable.
I introduced the subject of prayer, and the different
notions of it in the writings of Abernethy and Ogden. He had not
read the last. The different notions of it are that the greater
number of the orthodox divines, or rather indeed all of them who
reason philosophically, consider the effect of prayer to be
merely as it improves the mind of him who prays, whereas others
consider it actually influencing the Supreme Being. "Sir," said
Mr. Johnson, "to reason too philosophically about prayer does no
good. To be sure, you cannot think that it makes God alter his
purposes. But by producing good effects on the mind of him who
prays, it disposes the mind in such a manner that the thing
prayed for is insensibly attained." To this purpose did he
reason, and showed me how the greatest powers may be enfeebled
and cramped when confined by a system of orthodoxy. Undoubtedly,
while the universal prescience of God even as to the operation of
the human mind is supposed, prayer is to be held as in reality of
no avail. It is only a link in the chain of things.
Link 8:48 PM
Last year, some $200 million lost to online fraud was reported to
the Federal Trade Commission. And nearly half the 166,000
complaints the agency received last year were about online
auctions, a 130 percent increase from 2001. While the F.T.C. does
not break out figures by companies, the vast majority of online
auctions are conducted on eBay.
Still, it was another eBay user's warning that saved
Marianne Houkom. Ms. Houkom, 55, who lives in Newton, Kan.,
received an e-mail message from Mr. Seiden warning her that the
espresso machine she was bidding on did not exist. She said she
was horrified, and then relieved when someone outbid her.
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"You don't need the subway, necessarily," L. Jay
Cross, the Jets' president, said at a forum on Feb. 9. "We can
take advantage of the natural geography and get a foothold and
get something going over there that helps propel other activities
that hopefully follow." He said he was not opposed to the subway
extension, but believed it would be most useful to spectators at
Olympic events in the stadium. Jets fans, he said, would be more
likely to travel to games via the Long Island Rail Road or New
Jersey Transit.
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Notice how the Dowdy leftists now call Spain "our ally" and treat
the country as if it is the epitome of civilization since it
tucked its tail between its legs and slipped over to the dark
side. Wasn't it just last week they were scoffing at the idea
that the US could call any of those 'also-ran' countries who
sided with us an 'ally'? Aren't we lucky that they don't
politicize the war on terror?
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Well, I refer to the uranium contract, the yellow cake. Isn't it
scandalous if something that the IAEA takes a day to see is a
forgery can sit around the laboratories and intelligence agencies
for months without their discovering it?
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"the American people will have a clear choice in the election of
2004 -- at least as clear as any since the election of 1984."
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We have had an unsuccessful war; but that does not
prove that we have been ill governed. One side or other must
prevail in war, as one or other must win at play. When we beat
Louis, we were not better governed; nor were the French better
governed when Louis beat us.
—Samuel Johnson (quoted
in Boswell's Life of Johnson)
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Update: A friend has suggested that the figure in the
foreground may only be an attractive passer-by.
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