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After some snarky comments on my last post, I feel compelled to explain why I eat at McDonalds.
Every saturday, no matter where I am in the world, I seek out a mint copy of The Economist and then a nearby McDonalds, and read the leaders over a Big Mac meal. It's one thing to read about the forces that propel society today; it's quite another to see the gears clicking at close quarters. Globalization, mass customization, marketing, consumerism... McDonalds rides the crest of all these waves, producing something as basic as a fast meal, yet managing to convince the locals from Bali to Barcelona that they want it. It's an amazing feat. By going to McDonalds, I make sure I understand, at a visceral gut levelBonus pun., how the world works. That is why I eat at McDonalds.
But I lie. Who am I kidding?
I was imprinted at an early age, when road trips with my parents across the US were punctured at regular intervals with screams of "McDonalds!" as yet another set of arches floated into view on the horizon. My sister and I vied for the honor of being first to see the next one, but to win you had to have the best view, and to have the best view you had to have the middle bit of the back seat, so we fought a lot over that.
But it was worth it. On road trips, our family had a symbiotic relationship with McDonalds — a pact: We the offspring promised to behave if at regular intervals we could partake in a simple Pavlovian routine: Arches appear, we scream, we stop, we gorge, we shut up. My parents were happy, we were happy, and above all, McDonalds was happy. To this day, I see nothing wrong with that, and I don't even have kids. People who do seem even more grateful to McDonalds.
Over the years, I have become an expert rationalizer for my visits to McDonalds. Here are a few more ways in which I tell myself that eating at McDonalds teaches me things I will not learn anywhere else:
Meet the locals: It's they who eat at McDonalds in Barcelona; the foreigners sit at CafÈ Zurich being fleeced for their authentic experience. In Moscow in 1993, I stood in line together with hundreds of others in eager anticipation, dollars in hand, to be met by an absurdly eager Russian serving crew. Russian and eager! If I didn't know any better, I would have thought McDonalds was holding their loved ones hostage at gunpoint out the back.
Make a statement: In Brussels, I make a point of ordering in Flemish: I will say "Een Big Mac, een groot friet, en een cola" and the response, often, is a surly "quoi?". Then, depending on my mood, I will either repeat the order in slower Flemish, or else breezily in French, thereby clearly showing how linguistically superior I am to a high school kid making minimum wage.
Also, whenever the server asks me if I want to "supersize" or "plusmeny" my order, I make a point of refusing. This way, I am signalling to McDonalds that I am immune to their marketing ploys; I'm the one making the decisions here, and that I know exactly what I wantDeep in the inner sanctum of the McDonalds University library, I am sure their sacred texts mention this as the main reason for asking me. "Let the customer say no; give them a sense of empowerment that they will want to repeat.".
Consumerism is good: People say that democracies do not go at war with each other. I'll go further: Countries with McDonaldses in them do not go to war with each other. And that can only be a good thing.
The first in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seating.
Why do normally civil Stockholmers turn French when they set foot inside McDonalds? All the tables are usually taken, but not by people eating — no, they're taken by people hoarding tables with a view to eventually eating, when their accomplices are done queueing for food. Because of these predatory seating tactics, the tables are occupied twice as long as necessary, which means there are only half as many tables available, which means everybody scrambles to find a table as soon as they enter because there is a shortage.
Cleary, there is a better way. Everybody should look for a table only when they have food in hand. There would be twice as many tables available, hence no shortage, hence no incentive for this race to a patently suboptimal solution.
But try to sit down at one of these hoarded tables and have a reasonable conversation with its usurper as to why their behavior is noncollaborative, parasitic and, frankly, rude, preferably while you start eating your Big Mac. They call you rude! Clearly, we have different ideas about what that word means.
To be fair, Stockholmers only seem to express this selfish meme in cafeteria situations. I can think of far more egregious behavior elsewhere in Europe. In New York, smoking in a non-smoking area is rude; but in France, asking somebody to stop smoking in a non-smoking area is rude. In London, cutting the queue is rude; in Rome, telling somebody off for cutting the queue is rude.
I suspect that the French and Italians behave this way because they balance individual freedom and the public good differently. To massively overgeneralize again: Southern Europeans expect and tolerate more selfish behavior in social contexts, whereas those of the anglo-saxon persuasion expect and tolerate their behavior being constrained for the common good. Which makes for a counterintuitive conclusion, given the far stronger libertarian roots of American politics, especially when set against the socialist heritage of large chunks of Europe.
Joshua Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo fame, has what he calls "a review essay on the new literature of empire" out in The New Yorker today. Is this the first time a blogger gets to write for something so prestigious on account of a reputation made by their blogAndrew Sullivan doesn't count — he made his name at The New Republic. Marshall did not make his name at The Hill.?
I think he makes some wonderful points. The whole piece is a deft rejoinder to the televised debate he had with Richard Perle last month. This in particular had me smiling:
What makes a state a state is its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, which means that citizens donít have to worry about arming to defend themselves against each other. Instead, they can focus on productive pursuits like raising families, making money, and enjoying their leisure time. In the world of the Bush doctrine, states take the place of citizens.
[...]
In other words, if America has an effective monopoly on the exercise of military force, other countries should be able to set aside the distractions of arming and plotting against each other and put their energies into producing consumer electronics, textiles, tea. What the Bush doctrine calls foróparadoxically, given its proponentsóis a form of world government.
I'm ambivalent about the actual writing, however, because, well, it's a bit bloggy. I'm not sure if, despite all my cheering on of blogs, I am ready to see The New Yorker — or any magazine I want to read — adopt the shoot-from-the-hip breeziness of tone we know and love on a blog. Whenever Marshall mentions one of the books he is "reviewing", you feel him wanting to link to it and be done with it, with the reader free to explore that particular nook should the fancy strike him. But of course Marshall can't link in this article, not on the printed page.
Previously, I've lamented the book review as executive summary. Marshall's approach veers too much to the other extreme: He comes to the task armed with a ready docrine to propound, then pecks at the books to illustrate a point or else raids them for interesting anecdotes. These books are not the subject of this review; his thesis is. This makes for great blogging, but a less convincing New Yorker piece.
On the right, I try to express in Swedish how surprised I am at the speed with which the Swedish blogosphere has evolved over the past few months, and then proceed to list some examples.
There's a singer-songwriter who's been a fair bit on the radio here and I assumed she was the latest in a long line of fine American imports, with a slight mid-western twang and catchy tunes that remind of Jewel, Traci Chapman, or a young Stevie Nicks. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found her blog. Though Elin Sigvardsson is from the Swedish backwoods and has never lived in the US, she has the American folk-rock singer-songwriter act down with such precision that it's uncanny.
She's very very good. This is the video of her best-known song, but check out her voice here and here.
She also illustrates a larger point. Swedes soak up American popular culture with admirable ferocity. Sex and the City and Friends are obligatory viewing. You will find at least one article a day about New York in the papers. The end result is that Swedes like Elin can show up on American shores fully formed, like the alien in Species, and begin their conquest with nary a hiccup. I think this national trait accounts for a large part of Sweden's international competitiveness. Where it comes from, I have no clue as of yet.Jag ‰r fˆrvÂnad hur mycket har vuxit den svenska bloggosf‰ren de senaste mÂnader. Och det har gjort underverk fˆr min svenska, fast‰n jag ‰r lat. Jag fˆljer tidningar, men tycker att l‰sa webbloggar ‰r roligare fˆr dem som l‰r sig svenska. SÂ, tack till alla.
Jag ‰r nyfiken: Bloggar den senaste gruppen bloggare p grund av artikeln i Internetworld i december? Det verkar som om de senaste bloggarna skriver mindre om blogg som fenomen men anv‰nder bloggen helt enkelt som instrument fˆr att gˆra det som de gillar om. Det betyder att svenska bloggosf‰ren kommer att bli mer mogen.
Till exempel, vi har nu en svensk Mac-blogg: Macfeber. Vi har bloggare som skriver om vardags familje-saker, Lileks-stil, t ex den lilla familjen, som jag ocks tycker har en otroligt bra design. Vi har kulturbloggar, t ex Bjorn Fritzís webblogg och 45rpm. Och vi har fler politisk inst‰llda bloggare, Blind Hˆna-stil, men kanske inte med samma perspektiv: Gudmunson ‰r den mest envisa av dem. Vi har ‰ven en artist som anv‰nder bloggen fˆr att ber‰tta deras tidningar och konsertdatumen: Elin Sigvardsson.
Min nya favorit fˆr svensk design ‰r blog.hertze.com. J‰tte enkelt. J‰tte snyggt. Och jag tycker om de l‰nkfˆrklaringar p hˆger sida. Men vad mer behˆver vi p svensk bloggosf‰r? Jag skulle vilja se en Stockholm version av Gothamist eller Gawker, som skriver om vad h‰nder i staden. Och Sverige har inga riktiga gruppbloggar. Kanske n‰sta gÂng att vi har en bloggmiddag kan vi prata om det.
(Om du har en plˆtslig l‰ngtan om att korrigera nÂgot h‰r ovan, det fÂr du.)
Blogged Wednesday afternoon:Historiska Museet's cafeteria abuts the courtyard where Snˆvit is installed, and I am sitting there now, with an unimpeded view of the installation through the window.
What I saw earlier: The courtyard is much bigger than I expected. A cold snap (-10°C) and snow showers have greatly altered the installation's surroundings — it's covered in trodden snow, and the pool is a red slushy soup with a crust of broken ice sheets. The raft with its picture for a sail is stuck at a sorry angle, stained with red. Three standing spotlights illuminate the pool. Bach's cantata plays, and is beautiful, though the lyrics are incomprehensible. Against the wall, behind me, in Swedish and English, is the text, printed in black and red on white, which everyone reads studiously. There is a bronze nude statue at one end of the pool, being entirely upstaged. Two very cold guards stand between the pool and me, arms flapping for warmth, ogling my satchel, and I respond by looking as suspect as possible. Could I make it to the pool if I dashed? I reckon I could. But I'm really not inclined to. It's really cold.
A couple of things are clearer to me now that I am here.
Snˆvit's message suffers if discussed outside of the context of the exhibit. At the entrance to Making Differences, huge white on red writing announces that the theme is L‰mnad ensam med sin egen svaghet, ‰r m‰nniskor i stand till vad som helst. — Man, left alone with his own weaknesses, is capable of almost anything. As a theme to accompany an international conference on genocide, it offers one perspective on the origins of evil — perhaps a controversial perspective, though one whose merits are usually only broached within the confines of seminaries and ethics tutorials.
This is the mindset you are invited to inhabit as you approach Snˆvit. It becomes clear that all the installations are meant to be concretizing instances of this perspective. The female suicide bomber actually figures twice in the exhibitThe poster in the subway is from "God made me do it", a collection of works including one where the bomber's picture appears on the front page of the Oct 6, 2003 edition of the International Herald Tribune, stuck against a wall (Yep, it's art.) and I assume that her story is taken to be archetypal in some way. Nearby is a video loop of Geraldo Rivera interviewing various mass murderers including Charles Manson, Swedish papers from 1909 headlining a bomb attack against a Stockholm post office, an account of William S Burroughs shooting his wife through the head in a drunken prank gone wrong, a photograph of a mafia hit in St. Petersburg, and then some straightforward photojournalistic reportage from Laos now and Cambodia then, documenting genocide now and then.
Placed in this context, you cannot say that Snˆvit intends to glorify the suicide bomber. She is floating atop a bloodbath of her own making, and it is an image that is not conceivably triumphalist in intent, not with Charles Manson in the same boat, as it were. In tandem with the other works, the installation does purport to ruminate on how such a heinous act came about; but if you believe in a secular origin for evil, then this question is a valid one, if only for the sake of preventing future recurrences.
The argument that evil is born from human weakness is easier to stomach if you have the luxury of being at an emotional remove from the terrorist attack, because it is but a bland, psychological explanation. Yet it is perhaps a wiser tack than the black-on-white alternatives, which are that all Palestinians are temperamentally inclined to terrorism, or that the Israelis asked for it, or that she had always been mentally deranged, devoid of free will.
My visit to the exhibit, then, answered some of the questions I raised previously about the accessibility of the art's message, and next time I'll try to shut up until I see that which I'm supposed to have an opinion about. I'm convinced the message is in good faith, even if its content is something about which reasonable people will disagree.
But there remains the problem of the medium. The strength of the impression left by a pool filled with (half-frozen) blood, red and glistening under spotlights, is hard to overemphasize, even as a simulacrum. It is powerful imagery when used in horror films, where the characters are fictional. But with snˆvit, the blood is not of the fictional or the anonymous; it represents the blood of 21 real, named victims.
It's colored water, yes. But if the function of art is to sublimate reality for the viewer, much like religious conviction can turn mere bread and wine into blood and flesh for the believer, then you have to conclude that what we are meant to see is — palpably — the blood of specific people. I got the sense that I was intruding on something private, something unsuitable as fodder for art, and made just so by the transformative power of that art.
You need not be a convert to capital-A Art for this sensation to creep up on you. You might know the restaurant in Haifa. You might know some of the people that died. You might even be their ambassador here in Stockholm, intent on cloaking their blood with darkness.
The piece is in poor taste. It has a right to exist.
The sky darkens, and the blood grows slicker and fresher under the lights. Just before the museum closes, I walk around the installation one last time. It's just me and the guards. The wind nips at the the sail and it twists violently. Good, I think. With this weather, I don't see the mast lasting the night.
Didn't see it until just now on A&L Daily, but this is a fine fine article by Brian Klug, a symphony to my own humming from a week ago, though we've got the same tune in our head:
The alternatives are not black and white: either preserving the status quo or annihilation. There are a variety of constitutional arrangements in between. For example, Israel could continue to exist as a sovereign state but cease to define itself, in its basic laws and state institutions, as specifically Jewish. Or there is the so-called one-state solution: a binational homeland for Palestinians and Jews. The tragic impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has renewed interest in this proposal among some Arab and Jewish intellectuals. And although this view lacks a significant constituency in either community at present, attitudes may well change.
This is beginning to read like a Eugene Ionesco play. Education Minister Luc Ferry on Tuesday had an admirable go at taking to logical extremes the dictates of the proposed law banning "ostentatious" religious symbols from France's public schools. Where exactly on the slippery slope of diminishing freedoms will the line be drawn for religiously inclined schoolchildren?
Beards are out. But only if they are judged to be a sign of faith in religion: "As soon as it becomes a religious sign and the code is apparent, it would fall under this law," Ferry said. No word of whether pleading an affinity for Che Guevara will get you off the hook.
So are bandannas. But only if they are judged to be religious. "The bandanna, if it is presented by young girls as a religious sign, will be forbidden." I suspect Madonna merchandise may make a sudden comeback.
But lack of a bandanna is also definitely suspect:
He also contended that hairstyles or the wearing of certain colors could be a source of manipulation. "Signs could be invented using simple hairiness or a color," he said. "Creativity is infinite in this regard."Simple hairiness? The French Minister of Education just lamented French schoolchildren's infinite creativity? Marilyn Manson's act cannot possibly survive this onslaught of truly depraved hairy religionists.
Turbans are so out. When the law was first proposed, everyone forgot the Sikhs. Their men are obligated to wear a turban at all times. Nevermind that Sikhs died fighting for France in WWI — with their turbans on; this terrible symbol of male oppression will now also be banned, logically, even though the only way to get between a Sikh and his turban is to pry it off his cold, dead head.
I think it's Ferry who's lost his head. I may be wrong though: today I found myself in agreement with the Pope, who said that the law "could effectively endanger religious freedom," though he was roundly chided for the comment by the unfortunately named Bernard Stasi, the official who first proposed the ban.
I thought I'd seen her somewhere before. She was on the posters advertising the exhibit. I didn't put two and two together until this morning when my Subway reading, Metro (PDF), splayed this picture on the coverUpdate 18.45 CET: The posters of her are coming down.:
Yes, it says "Making Differences" across her. Remind you of anything?
There is an advertising agency in Stockholm populated with numbskulls. Not only do you go rip off an original idea, you then apply it in the manner of a mastodont, barrelling into one of the most tragic and precarious conflicts around. Your imperfect command of the English language means that your clever sloganeering comes off exactly wrong; if "Making Differences" is a play on "making a difference", you should know that the phrase implies an endorsement, or at best is nasty sarcasm.
In today's interconnected world, physical distances no longer figure in how crude you can be about other people's tragedies. You can no longer Think Indifferent.
I tried to go see the exhibit containing "Snow White and The Madness of Truth" todayFirst, read this morning's post.. At the door, I was told, "it is monday," and denied entry. Silly me.
Just now, while turning on the lights in my laundry room, an idea for a compromise occurred, one which would allow Israel, Sweden and the curator to save face:
Make the installation piece interactive. Put switches on the three standing spotlights, and let individual visitors decide, for a few minutes at a time, whether individual spotlights should be on or off. If you want to participate, you take one of those little numbered papers that comes out of a machine and wait your turn.
The ambassador, retroactively, is made the first participant in this interactive piece. He chose off, on the assumption that it glorifies suicide bombers. Other visitors might disagree on the message, but still feel that the work is in bad taste, and hence has no place "in the spotlight," as it were. Yet others might think just the opposite — that the work is a condemnation of suicide bombings, and deserves to be seen, or that the woman suicide bomber does command some understanding for her actions, or that it is anti-Israel and hence worth promoting. Whatever your perspective, you get to command one of the three switches for a little while.
The beauty is, you will probably never quite get your way. I might turn my switch off, but you might simultaneously turn yours on. The result: A work of art at the mercy of an ongoing debate. What it means if the artwork remains mostly dark, or mostly lit, can become the grist for further analysis.
So now, if it's no longer vandalism, would you turn the light on or off?
Israel's ambassador to Sweden triggered a major diplomatic row between the two countries this weekend when he disrupted an installation piece depicting a Palestian suicide bomber at the opening of a Stockholm exhibit related to an international conference on preventing genocide. PM Sharon defended his ambassador's behavior and demanded the work be removed, while the Swedish government quite simply said it does not (and cannot) censor art. Though the spat is far from over, both sides are trying to come to an understanding so that Israel's participation in the conference is not jeopardized.
The facts: The piece is called "Snow White and The Madness of Truth". The artists are a couple — she Swedish, he born an Israeli Jew, now also Swedish. On the blood-red water of a museum courtyard pool floats a small raft upon which is affixed the image of a female Palestinian suicide bomber responsible for the deaths of 19 21 Israeli civilians last October. A text accompanies the piece, as well as a Bach cantata called "My heart swims in blood""My heart swims in blood since in God's holy eyes, the multitude of my sins makes me a monster.". Standing spotlights around the pool throw light on the installation piece, as it still gets dark early in Stockholm. It is one of these the ambassador threw into the pool, short-circuiting the installation — or which accidentally fell in after the ambassador unplugged the lights, depending on the nationality of the paper you read.
Foto: Sven Nackstrand/AFP
The spin: Of course it is sometimes right to deface art... if the function of a piece is to incite violence in addition to being art. Propaganda art is the primary example that comes to mind. While I would not recommend that you try it, I would certainly applaud if you defaced Nazi propaganda posters during WWIII would not applaud if you defaced them in a museum today, however, because their power to incite violence has been superceded by their value as historical evidence.
But doesn't defacing art also fall under the noble rubric of non-violent protest? If you find a piece supportive of a greatly offensive cause, should you not be able to justify damaging it as part of the greater political conversation the artwork is clearly part of, if you also are willing to face the legal consequences of your actions? Here I hesitate, already. Say yes, and you are on the verge of justifying the destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan that so terribly offended the Taliban. But there is a further reason to defend offensive art from defacement: You may be dead wrong about what it means.
Case in point is the furore caused by Chris Ofili's Madonna adorned with dung, exhibited at the 1999 Sensation exhibit in NYC. A convent of Catholics took offense at the painting, and mayor Giuliani jumped on the bandwagon looking for votes. To westerners, items covered in shit are desecrated, but in the African tradition channeled by Ofili, dung consecrates.
This explanation did not mollify the outraged. Eventually, the fact that the art could be perceived as offensive by people unaware of its context was reason enough for some to justify its removal. Then there was the suspicion that Ofili was playing some kind of clever trick, using ambiguous symbolism to disguise an offensive aim with an innocuous cover story.
How analogous is the Snow White installation piece? Ofili did not aim to be ambiguous — his Madonna belonged to a long series of similarly themed pieces whose dung symbolism was well documented. Snow White seems more intentionally ambiguous, or else not successful in imparting a clear message, if that was the intent. Whose blood is in the pool? Israelis'? Palestinians'? Both? Does it matter when deciding whether the floating image of the suicide bomber is being consecrated, or desecrated, or both?
The name Snow White hints at innocence, but the lyrics of the cantata hint at guilt. The attached text intersperces similarly conflicting writing. The artists have told Ha'aretz the work condemns terrorism, but to whom do they ascribe the label terrorist? Is this artwork a case where we should suspect the ambiguous symbolism for the subversive message it might carry — specifically, suicide bombings are sometimes justifiable?
The other option is that the message is unintentially muddy because the art is bad. The offense, then, would come from the fact that the art could reasonably be interpreted as a justification for suicide bombings by those already leaning towards that conclusion. The intent may have been a plea for reconciliation, but the effect is one of justifying terrorism.
There is an additional consideration: As a mental exercise, try replacing the image of the suicide bomber with one of Mohammad AttaSwedes can replace her image with that of Mijailo Mijailovich, and then put themselves in the place of Anna Lindh's husband for a similar effect.
Update 19.05 CET: Somebody beat me to the punch:
. Imagine him sailing smilingly atop a pool of the blood he's shed. It offends, at a gut level, because we are not used to seeing his image (or that of Hitler, or a Swastika) depicted without a clear condemnatory context. If you are a family member of one of the victims, you may well feel outrage at having your pain be appropriated for the production of art that on a gut level appears to trivialize evil. In other words, it is in poor taste.
So: Does Snow White offend on account of its message? The Israeli Ambassador probably thought so. Is it in poor taste? I think so. Does this justify defacing it? Not by a long shot. But I do think the curator is a fool for letting such clumsy work through the door.
There's been some groping for superlatives in the Mac community of late.
Seasoned Apple evangelist Bob LeVitus reviews Apple's new iLife app GarageBand and calls it "one of the best computing experiences I've had in the 17+ years I've been having computing experiences on my Mac."
Inside Mac Games unashamedly lauds Bungie's Halo as "the most advanced, the best produced, the most amazing first-person shooter to have ever graced my Macís screen.I would agree, though my tricked-out PowerBook is proving barely able to keep up at minimal settings."
Meanwhile, Apple's free beta of Xgrid, reviewed here, now allows any network of Macs to work together as a grid supercomputer to solve complex problems such as number factoring or gene sequencing. Installation is simple, and it comes with a few sample applications, such as a beautiful Mandelbrot set renderer.
Even if you have only one Mac in the house, this is worth giving a run, because it hints at how very differently we will perceive computers in the future. I would not be surprised, for example, if eventually you will be able to buy Gigahertz-hours from Apple server farms when it's time to render your latest creation using the next iApp, iAnimate"Pixar for the rest of us." Warning: Although I am speculating, Apple has a knack for never leaving my creative urges unsated for long: Would I love to make my own short film populated with predefined characters from Finding Nemo? Oh yes, and so would everyone with my mental age and below. Soon, 8-year olds will be demanding Terahertz-hours for Christmas.. Or perhaps future Final Cut Pros will let you speed up your rendering when a deadline looms, using the Macs of the advertising department, who have already left for the day. "Grid supercomputing for the rest of us" is perhaps too obvious a slogan, but that won't stop Steve Jobs from using it when this goes mainstream.
But I reserve my own superlatives for Maestro, software that will forever change how we approach space exploration. You will have heard of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission; Maestro is the software that allows scientists to interact with either of the two rovers, Spirit (already in operation on the Martian surface) and Opportunity (almost there). It takes a rover's raw data and displays it in a variety of ways, the most impressive of which is an accurate three-dimensional world of its surroundings rendered from stereoscopic cameras at human height. Scientists can then "walk" through this virtual world to decide what the rover should explore next, and then build a task list of simple commands that are sent back to the rover, which executes these autonomously (there is a 10 minute delay at present, because lightspeed is not infinite).
All this amounts to a revolution in remote imaging, command and control. But that's just the beginning. The software is a free download for the general public, and so is the data the rovers beam back to EarthYes, it works especially well on OS X 10.3. Here is Apple touting it.. Anyone with a late-model computer and broadband now has pretty much the same tools at their disposition as the scientists running the mission. We too can now walk around Spirit's surroundings, notice items of interest, name them, measure distances between them, then tell the rover to take a closer look. The one piece missing is the actual ability to beam intructions back to the roverThat would be the ultimate hack, though: Taking control of the rover and defacing Martian soil with tyre tracks in the shape of your tagline. M3M3#1!. But that's a privilege NASA paid $850 million for.
You really need to try this. It's not optional. If schoolkids in middle-income countries can master this, you better as well or else watch your job leave for Mexico even sooner than you thought. Yes, there is a 80-page manual, but the casual user needn't read it at all. The application, and each subsequent data module, comes with its own built-in automated tour conductor. Your involvement can be as little as clicking "Next" whenever the fancy hits you and you will get 80% of the wow-factor.
In all likelihood, curiosity will eventually get the better of you and you will want to venture out for a spin on Mars, as I did. I went and found myself two interesting rocks and named them Blog@StefanGeens.com and MemeFirst, respectively:
When they are named, Maestro gives them coordinates, so it now knows where they are in relation to the rover, and to each other. I then built a task list, instructing Spirit to first drive up to MemeFirst, inspect it, and then to drive up to my blog. Once there, I took this snapshot:
And this just with the first data set. Data will be rolling in for at least 3 more months, as Spirit wends its way to a nearby crater and then to the top of some hills. And Opportunity hasn't even started yet.
The high level of user experience that Maestro provides should influence the debate over whether we should send men to Mars. We get 2 such rovers for $850 million. We'd be able to seed mars with over 600 rovers now for the price of a few fragile men on Mars 20 years from now. Or a smaller number of far larger, speedier and more robust rovers — mobile labs atop vehicles resembling remote-controlled moon buggies, perhaps. Or teams of such vehicles triangulating a region in tandem.
I have always been for manned planetary exploration. It is our destiny, and I wish we could do it again in my lifetime. With our present technology, however, it may just cost far too much for the scientific knowledge we'd gain in return. Ironically, robotics was not far enough advanced when men were put on the moon in 1969. Men were needed to do the kind of science they did then. Today, you cannot make that argument — humans are far too valuable and fragile, and are being replaced on Earthly battlefields with remote systems for precisely this reason. In other words, do spend the money on Mars, but leave that planet to the robots for now. Humans will get there in due time.
There is, of course, little sympathy from these quarters for complaints from New York about how damn cold it is. Why exactly kids can't go to school when it's -17°C or two feet of snow falls is a mystery to me. But the weather in New York City was cause for another interesting little debate with Anna about societal differences between the US and SwedenWhat else did you expect? You will also find gross overgeneralizations, but I think there is an interesting point to be made here nonetheless..
The thesis: That there is an inverse correlation between the level of social services provided by a society and the average minimum winter temperature.
The argument: Let us assume that both Sweden and New York, as societies, have the same tolerance for homeless death rates. It's probably a very low number, near zero. Any spree of deaths would result in an immediate uproar.
Let us also assume that there is an exponential rise in homeless deaths as the temperature drops. Far more homeless are at risk at -20°C than -10°C, say.
New York rarely reaches -20°C, so being homeless in NYC rarely means you are at risk of dying from the cold. Not so in Sweden. If you were truly homeless in Sweden, good luck surviving the winter.
There are two possible solutions: The first is an ad hoc one, as implemented by Mayor Bloomberg: Go hunting for the homeless and bring them in from the cold, so they do not have to withstand these extremes in temperature. This is probably the cheapest and most efficient way to prevent homeless deaths if it is rarely this coldAnna recoils at my use off the word "efficient" in the context of managing human suffering..
Not so if you know it always gets this cold. In that case, it is more efficient to institute a system that alleviates homelessness in the first place instead of permanently treating the symptoms of homelessness on an ad hoc basis. In other words, both American homelessness and the Nordic welfare system are perfect examples of climatic adaptation. It explains why Canada has a more generous welfare system than the US. And it explains why the communist revolution happened in Russia. How's that for a theory?
I've seen this kind of macro-economic measuring of opportunity costs elsewhere: In Washington DC, the one snowstorm that hits every three years completely paralyzes the city for a week, because there are no snowplows to speak of. The cost: a week's worth of man hours. In Sweden, that cost is paid upfront. Highway driving in a snowstorm leads to an awesome sight: Huge snowplows, driving in tight formation at high speed (think chopper scene in Apocalypse Now, with the Ride of the Valkyries at full volume) scream through the falling snow, followed by a peloton of cars. Last year, I actually managed to drive from Norway (where it was damn cold) back to Sweden at near the speed limit in just this kind of weather.
Homework question: Why is the inverse not true? Why does the likelihood of extremely hot summers causing elderly deaths through heat exposure not seem to affect the level of social services? For the same reason that freak heat waves do not spur (French) authorities to create ad hoc cooling solutions for the elderly?
Sometimes posts I read bug me longer than expected. This tells me I should have blogged them to begin with. Here is a recent example: David Volokh Bernstein's defense of ethnic/religion-based states, specifically Israel. Where to begin? With Bernstein's semantic bait-and-switch:
Supporting Ethnic-Religion Based States: I occasionally get email from readers suggesting that Israel is unworthy of support, or even existence, because it is an ethnic/religion-based state.
Naturally, the rest of the post concerns itself with Israel's right to exist, instead of what would be justifiable levels of support. Not interesting, especially if the argument, in a nutshell, goes like this: A) Poland is a ethnic/religion-based state. B) Israel is a ethnic/religion-based state. C) Poland has a right to exist. Therefore D) Israel has a right to exist. Basically, because A = B, if C then also D. And C is certainly the case. Hence D. Brilliant, that.
This rather truncheons nuanced argument from the likes of me, who support the right of Israel (and Poland) to exist, but think it indefensible for one religion and/or ethnic group to be elevated by law over others. If it's deplorable when it happens in Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, we should deplore it in our midst too, whether that be the Vatican, Italy, Israel, Ireland, France, Bavaria, Apartheid South Africa or segregation Southern USA.
My reason: In an ideal world, a polity exists to create a level playing field for its constituent population. In the economic sphere, innovation and competition is assured by guarding against market failures such as monopolies; similarly, a free market of religious or cultural ideas cannot thrive if one religion or culture is granted monopolistic powers by law. Such monopolies might be stable, but at the expense of ethical and cultural innovation. Witness the stagnation of both the Catholic Church (in those areas where it is entrenched) and of societies that have implemented Islamic law.
Bernstein would probably sit impatiently through that last paragraph and now testily point out that all this is good an well, but that in Israel's case, if you support taking the word "Jewish" out of "Jewish state", you are de facto against Israel's existence. That is not true: There would still be a majority of ethnic Jews living together with a minority of ethnic Arabs in a secular democracy, at least for its citizensPointedly not a democracy for Palestinians, but let's just assume we can fast-forward to an independent but defanged Palestine, which is the inevitable solution and both sides know it.. One homeland with room enough for both Jews and Arabs is, believe it or not, quite compatible with the original mandate granted by the British to the Zionist movement in the Balfour Declaration of 1917:
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other countryWriting it was a mess of negotiations; clarifying it wasn't any easier..Ethnic Jews lose no freedoms in transferring to a secular arrangement, while Israeli Arabs gain a stake in the state as legal equals. Now that the state guarantees a free market of ideas, cultural and ethical innovation is worth exploring again. You only lose out if you subscribe to an orthodoxy. Which suits me fine.
It's linguistic deja vu all over again: After embarrassing episodes with mores and awry it now turns out I've been making arguments in Swedish all over the place using the Swedish term "in fatta" whenever I want to say "in fact". But in fact it turns out "in fatta" is pure fiction on my part. I must have used it once, nobody complained, and it soon became a standard argumentative technique.
Which, again, leads to the question, what were people thinking I was saying? Problem is, there does not seem to be a exact conceptual translation into Swedish for this rethorical shortcut. OK, nu vet jag ‰ntligen att "in fatta" inte betyder "in fact". In fatta, det betyder ingenting p svenska, ‰ven om jag anv‰nde det varje dag tills Fredagskv‰ll, d en v‰n frÂgade vad egentligen jag betydde.
Men jag tycker om att anv‰nda îin factî p engelska, d‰rfˆr att jag vanligen argumenterar med en struktur som behˆver ge specifika exemplar av en motsats. Nu har jag ingen ˆvers‰ttning av detta mentala begrepp p svenska. îFaktum ‰r?î îEgentligen?î Det verkar inte vara samma sak. Kan ni inte bˆrja anv‰nda îin fattaî, fˆr min skull?
A free rag on the subway to work this morning carried the news in a few grafs: Ingrid Thulin, who so memorably played Marianne, the melancholy daughter-in-law to Victor Sjˆstrˆm's Professor Isak Borg in Smultronst‰llet (Wild Strawberries), had died. Despite the distractions of an overful rush-hour carriage, this piece of news triggered an introspective mood. That movie was a revelation to me. I try to watch it at least once a year (and recently more often, now that I understand what they are actually saying to each other).
Ingrid Thulin is perhaps less well known than the rest of the Swedish "r‰tt pack", Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Liv Ullmann (and also Ingrid Bergman and Pernilla August — who am I forgetting?), but she was certainly their equal in every way. She may well have been Sweden's best-ever actress.
Her death underscores the inevitable passing of a great era in Swedish film. Ingmar Bergman hasn't left us yet; the wiley ol' bastard is likely to outlive us all. But one day the greatest living director will die, so I sometimes entertain myself by asking who would replace him by default? Woody Allen for his early stuff? My only problem is that I forget who is alive and who dead, so I fear I am missing somebody obvious.
Then there is the separate question of who is the greatest working director today: I don't feel either Bergman or Allen have had the lock on this category for a while. For this latter category, I nominate Ridley Scott, though with an audience (of one) award to Lukas Moodysson.
The madness spreads to Belgium. And I'm not talking about Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
It happened very quietly, but as of Jan 1, 2004, Turkey is a full participant in the Socrates/Erasmus Europe-wide educational cooperation and exchange programmes. Turkish students can now go study anywhere in Europe for up to a year, much as European students have been doing for years. European students, of course, can now go hang out in Istanbul. Will it become the new Prague?
This is the kind of subtle tectonic shift that will eventually make Turkey's entry into the EU inevitable, and I applaud heartily.
Mijailo Mijailovic confesses he murdered Anna Lindh. The specter of the botched Palme police investigation lifts; and with lots of false courage Aftonbladet finally names Mijailo Mijailovic, hitherto "the 25-year old." It must have been his birthday sometime in December. He used to be "the 24-year old."
Now, on to the motive. Was there a political component? Apparently not, according to Aftonbladet. Instead, it seems Sweden's social services proved inadequate to the task of noticing and acting upon various clear signs Mijailovic was unstable and a threat to society. Whether these actions should have been more punitive or more caring, or both, will be an interesting debate.
In the wake of that digraceful ruling by the French, the debate concerning the acceptability of the muslim headscarf in Swedish schools heats up. Two opinion pieces in Sweden's largest dailies are in favor of banning "the veil," and I'm just doing my bit to make sure they do not go unchallenged.
I was pointed to statsvetare ("political science expert") Lisbeth Lindeborg's piece in Dagens Nyheter by new Swedish blogger Gudmundson. He also links to a Lisbeth Lindeborg pictorial in the Jan 1974 issue of Mayfair. Is it relevant to know that somebody who argues the Muslim headscarf demeans womens was once splayed across a British lad mag as "Sweden's rising sex star"? Certainly.Nu bˆrjar det i Sverige: Debatt om huruvida man ska fˆrbjuda muslimska sjaletter i svenska skolor. DN har en debatt h‰r, och Aftonbladet har en debattartikel h‰r. BÂda ‰r emot slˆjor i skolor, men argumenten ‰r lika felaktiga som anv‰ndandes i Frankrike.
Jag hoppas at vi kan vara ˆverens att religionsfrihet ‰r viktigt, och om man vill begr‰nsa den, borde vi ha en ‰nnu viktigare orsak. Men Lisbeth Lindeborg i DN pÂstÂr att fˆrbjuda sjaletter utgˆr inte alls en begr‰nsning, eftersom sjaletten/slˆjan inte ‰r en islamisk symbol. Kanske det enligt henne, och kanske det enligt mÂnga m‰nniskor, men det betyder inte att det inte ‰r symbol enligt dem som vill b‰r sjalett. Allts tycker jag att det ‰r Lindeborgs tolerans som ‰r falsk, eftersom hon vill pÂtvinga andra sina religiˆsa Âsikter.
Lindeborg erk‰nner att pÂtvinga religiˆsa Âsikter ‰r or‰tt, d‰rfˆr att hon skriver hur or‰tt slˆjtvÂng ‰r i Iran och Saudiarabien. Fundamentalisterna pÂstÂr att slˆjtvÂng skyddar kvinnans v‰rdighet. Lindeborg pÂstÂr att sjalettfˆrbjud skyddar kvinnans v‰rdighet. Jag pÂstÂr bara att bÂda slˆjtvÂng och sjalettfˆrbjud fˆrnedrar kvinnor.
Och Lindeborg ‰r inkorrekt n‰r hon antyder att muslimska kvinnor b‰r slˆja bara var man har slˆjtvÂng:
D‰remot ‰r det en missuppfattning att tro att slˆjtvÂng existerar i alla muslimska stater. Faktum ‰r att de flesta muslimska kvinnor inte b‰r slˆja, varken i V‰st- och Nordafrika eller i Sydostasien.Faktum ‰r att flesta muslimska kvinnor som b‰r slˆjan gˆr det utan slˆjtvÂng. N‰r jag reste nÂgra mÂnaden i Pakistan bar mÂnga kvinnor sjaletter, utom dem kristna och dem Ismaili muslimer p Hunza dalen. I Indonesien b‰r fler och fler kvinnor slˆjor, nu att dem fÂ.
Intressant ocks ‰r att Lindeborg inte fˆrsˆker att skilja p de olika muslimska traditionerna rˆrande slˆjor. Inte s mÂnga kvinnor b‰r den kompletta burka/purdah, som bekl‰der ansikten. Flera b‰r sjaletten som bekl‰der helt hÂr. Men flesta b‰r sjaletten som symbol, utan att det vore dˆlja hÂr. Linderborg fˆrsˆker att fˆrvirra begreppen. Jag har bara ett problem med kompletta burkar i svenska skolor, eftersom s ‰r det omˆjlig att kontrollera kvinnans identitet och att delta i skolklasser. Det ‰r naturligtvist en begr‰nsning av religionsfrihet, men jag tycker att det ‰r viktigare att en kvinna f delta i svenska samh‰llan. Men det ‰r ocks klart att bara b‰ra sjaletten hindrar inte att delta. Inte alls.
Ayse Sungur i Aftonbladet ‰r en b‰ttre debattˆr. In fatta, jag tycker att hon argumenterar inte s mycket fˆr sjalettfˆrbjud men emot kvarvarande kristna traditioner i skolor. Men jag skulle fortfarande skilja mellan skolans/statens plikt att vara neutral, och m‰nniskors r‰tt till religionsfrihet.
Vad vi behˆver i Sverige och Europa inte ‰r lagar som begr‰nsar religionsfrihet av alla muslimska kvinnor, bara fˆr att kunna skydda de nÂgra kvinnor som ‰r tvungen att b‰r slˆjan av sl‰ktingar. Vi behˆver lagar som fˆrbjuda att man f tvinga kvinnor att b‰r slˆjan. Men vi redan har sÂn lagar. Vi mÂste anv‰nda dem b‰ttre.
On New Year's eve, while I am packing for an early move on Jan 1, my friend E— calls. Her Polish cleaner is all alone in Stockholm and wants to go see the traditional fireworks display at Skansen, but has nobody to go with. Would I go with her? "I'd rather not."
My friend calls back 10 minutes later. Her voice is strained. "She really, really wants someone to go with her. She's here with me now. Can she call you when she's done working?" This brings out a measure of noblesse oblige in me. If I can stop this person from thinking suicidal thoughts on New Year's eve just by taking her to Skansen, of course I will. Besides, I've never seen it myself. "She's young and pretty and she speaks a little English," assures E—.
Beata, we'll name her, calls me. We agree to meet at Medborgarplatsen. It's too early to go to Skansen, so I suggest we get a drink at Kvarnen. She appears shy, or maybe just quizzical? She's not sure she'll get into the bar. "Why not?" She's only 19. But it's too early for those rules, so we sit at the bar and I have some wine, while she has an orange juice, and the conversation begins, in halting English.
She is from Krakow. She has 4 brothers and a sister. She shares an apartment with 3 other Polish girls, all cleaners. They have the same boss, a Polish immigrant who hired them in Poland and is somewhat of a father-figure to them, having promised their parents to take good care of them. She works 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, in offices and in the homes of Swedes. She worked on Christmas and will work on New Year's day. She goes to church on Sundays — there are 2 Polish churches in Stockholm. She doesn't have a computer, internet access or even an email address, and neither do any of her friends — but they do SMS each other. She has no plans to go to university but she wants to have three children. And she likes to cook. Polish food.
She doesn't like Swedes — they ignore her when she works for themBe nice to your cleaners, Swedes!. She does like Americans, however. The ones she works for, like my friend E—, talk to her like she is a normal person.
The next day, I will discuss this with E—'s husband, a Swede. He thinks the reason is twofold. First, Swedes are naturally more restrained. Second, domestic help is a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden, after having disappeared for half a century. Swedes will tend to see this kind of work as demeaning, goes his theory, and hence they will feel ashamed on behalf of the help. Americans, on the other hand, see an enterprising young Pole taking deft advantage of economic opportunities abroad and who is willing to work hard to make her dreams come true. And Beata does have a dream: With her savings, she wants to go to Italy next year, for the first time. She's already taking Italian lessons at a language school here in Stockholm, in return for her cleaning services.
We walk all the way to Skansen. As we approach the gate, I ask her, offhand, what made her want to see this. After all, even Swedes think twice about spending hours outside in the bitter cold. "But you wanted to, E— said." "No, you did, she said." Two pennies drop. We've been trying to save each other's soulsThe next day, E— comes clean, and all is forgiven. Nevertheless, I make a mental note to set her up with Henry Kissinger sometime.. The nerve! But it's hard to be angry; Beata and I are having fun, and it is a typical E— thing to do. At midnight, under the fireworks, we share a bottle of champagne — all courtesy of a fortunate ruse. Later, she will be delivered home, chastely.
Two things I want but am too lazy/ignorant to build myself:
One: I want instant translations of words I do not understand in texts I am reading. I want to point my phonecam at the text, take a picture of the word and send it to a service that does OCR on the image and returns the dictionary entry to my phone. And it should take 3 seconds.
Two: My apartment building's laundry rooms have just been upgraded. Access to the rooms is now computer controlled: You have to wave a card at a machine at the door and then navigate a computer menu to the time you want to book the rooms for. All good and well, except that the laundry room is down a flight of stairs and at the other side of a courtyard, temperature -10°C. Since this building has pervasive 10Mbps piped into every apartment, why can't we just book over the internet? An outside company could provide this service for many computerized laundry rooms. Not only could you book ahead, you could ask for email reminders, or have it alert you when the laundry room is free (my favorite feature), or have your laundry time show up in your iCal, or find out about broken machines and list lost/found items on a laundry bulletin board. I'm the kind of person who cannot plan ahead, so I lug my laundry all the way there only to find the rooms used. This service would be a real help.
I now declare the 2004 blogging season open. Disregard this post — it's my spring trainingThat's baseball terminology, as Matthew will be proud to see me use.. I have not entirely been away from the web these past two weeks, I have checked in occasionally to dispense with blogspam and fire off the odd comment when I could not resist, and I did make good use of some of my Christmas holiday to redesign felixsalmon.com, penned by that renowned metrosexualist Felix, domiciled in the Lower East Side, and his Antarctic sister, the pre-Nobel atmospheric scientist RhianHence pink for Felix, blue for Rhian. It's a no-brainer if you know them.. My help was not entirely altruistic: Now I no longer have to wade through the overwrought NYT analyses, useless Las Vegas eatery reviews and dubious design tips from the clueless to get to the breathless highs of Antarctic living, journal style, in the best tradition of the earliest explorersKidding! But only because I know how competitive Felix is., because Felix's and Rhian's posts are now separate, if you like. The coolest page though, if you ask me, shows you where Rhian is.
Because you are not reading this, herewith an aside as to some technical trickery in felixsalmon.com's new design. By the judicious use of stylesheets and Movable Type tags (specifically, using MT tags as components in style names) I was able to give the posts of different authors different looks. Then, the right-hand column uses the "overflow: hidden" style attribute for DIV tags to allow text to appear depending on the width of the browser, as first done on MemeFirst. This particular trick took a while to get right on the various browsers, and, by the way, if you use Windows exclusively, you have no idea how good a website can look. Standard Windows fonts suckIn my more strident moments I will concede that my web design philosophy is to make sites that look great on Macs and do not break on Windows, on the premise that people for whom design is important tend to use Macs in the first place.. All in all, the site is sure to irk the likes of design "guru" Joe Clark.
I spent Christmas at the family compound in Ireland. Next door, the Royal Dublin Society had a fair, on which was erected a tower whence were dropped, every 5 minutes, a bevy of prepubescent girls whose shrieks permeated Ballsbridge. These emanations of terror were oddly comforting; they put a constant smile on the face of our house guests — and I felt like I was on the set of Monsters Inc.
The way back to Sweden, pace Ryanair, wended its way through a day's stopover in Glasgow, where the architecture had me flooredDreadful and unintentional pun.. Granted, my expectations were low, but I had no idea that Glasgow is an Art Nouveau destination on a par with Brussels or Barcelona, and all thanks to Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Then, on New Year's day, I moved apartments. With that out of the way, let the blogging begin.