Iâm glad Kreider saw this too because I see this all the time and Iâm just incredulous about it and other peopleâs nonreactions Iâm just like, âAre you seeing this??â
Cool anecdote on Kanzi, the famous bonobo that uses lexigrams to communicate.  Bill Fields recalls how Kanzi threatened to bite him if he didn't carry out a hit on a fellow scientist arguing with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.  This is from a Radiolab episode on Kanzi.
Imprisoned in his pseudo-awareness of himself, the new Narcissus would gladly take refuge in an idĂše fixe, a neurotic compulsion, a "magnificent obsession" -- anything to get his mind off his own mind. Even unreflecting acquiescence in the daily grind, as the possibility of achieving it recedes into the historical distance, comes to seem like an almost enviable state of mind. It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times -- the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie -- seem attractive by comparison. The nineteenth-century capitalist, compulsively industrious in the attempt to deliver himself from temptation, suffered torments inflicted by inner demons. Contemporary man, tortured on the other hand by self-consciousness, turns to new cults and therapies not to free himself from obsessions but to find meaning and purpose in life, to find something to live for, precisely to embrace an obsession, if only the passion maĂźtresse of therapy itself. He would willingly exchange his self-consciousness for oblivion and his freedom to create new roles for some form of external dictation, the more arbitrary the better. The hero of a recent novel renounces free choice and lives according to the dictation of dice: "I established in my mind at that moment and for all time, the never questioned principle that what the dice dictates, I will perform." Men used to rail against the irony of fate; now they prefer it to the irony of unceasing self-consciousness. Whereas earlier ages sought to substitute reason for arbitrary dictation both from without and within, the twentieth century finds reason, in the debased contemporary form of ironic self-consciousness, a harsh master; it seeks to revive earlier forms of enslavement. The prison life of the past looks in our time like liberation itself.
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979). [PDF]
"Norwood, I think I'm falling in love with you. Â If you were sick I would look after you and bathe you."
"Yeah, but don't talk so loud."
"I wonder if you really love me. Â Do you?"
"Yeah."
"Do you think you can say it?"
"I will sometime. Â Not on the bus."
"You don't mind saying it in a song, why can't you say it talking?"
"A song is different. Â You're just singing a song there."
"It's not hard for people who really mean it to say it."
"It is if somebody's trying to make you say it. Â When somebody gets your arm around behind you and wants to make you say 'calf rope,' well, you don't want to say it then."
I didn't read any American children's books as a child, so I'm not familiar with the classics at all.  But recently I've had the occasion to start getting acquainted as I read them to a child, and have been surprised by just how good many of them are.
Here's "Tear-Water Tea" from Owl at Home, by Arnold Lobel:
------
Owl took the kettle out of the cupboard.
âTonight I will make tear-water tea,â he said.
He put the kettle on his lap.
âNow,â said Owl, âI will begin.â
Owl sat very still.
He began to think of things that were sad.
âChairs with broken legs,â said Owl.
His eyes began to water.
âSongs that cannot be sung,â said Owl, âbecause the words have been forgotten.â
Owl began to cry.
A large tear rolled down and dropped into the kettle.
âSpoons that have fallen behind the stove and are never seen again,â said Owl.
More tears dropped down into the kettle.
âBooks that cannot be read,â said Owl,
âbecause some of the pages have been torn out.â
âClocks that have stopped,â said Owl, âwith no one near to wind them up.â
Owl was crying.
Many large tears dropped into the kettle.
âMornings nobody saw because everybody was sleeping,â sobbed Owl.
I took this on Ponce somewhere around 3:30AM this morning. It's the abandoned building between Moreland and Highland, right next to the Exxon station, that is on fire.
City of Atlanta police officers focusing on high-crime areas were pressured to meet unconstitutional arrest quotas and were promised rewards like pizza or shorter work days if they exceeded their numbers, according to court filings by two ex-officers involved in a misconduct lawsuit.
...
âWe were encouraged to exceed the quota with the promise to have pizza and even DVD movies waiting for us back at headquarters,â Mayesâ affidavit said, adding officers also could go home early.
- Ex-officers: APD had arrest quotas, Atlanta Journal Constitution
This is the sense I had of my mother: up to the time
I began to recognize her, it was simply a feelingâ"This
is good." No form, no face, just something bending
over me, from which good would come . . . Pleasant
. . . Seeing my mother was like looking at something
through the lens of a camera. At first you can't make
anything out, just a round cloudy spot . . . then a
face appears, then its features become sharper.
My mother picks me up. I don't see her hands. All
I have is a sense that after the blur appears, something
is going to happen to me. They are picking me up. Now
I see their hands. I feel something both pleasant and
unpleasant . . . It must have been that when they
wiped me, they did it kind of roughly, and it didn't
feel good . . . or when they took me out of my crib,
particularly in the evening. I lie there and it feels like
"this" . . . Soon it will be differentâlike "this." I'm
scared, I cry, and the sound of my own crying only
makes me cry harder . . . Even then I understood that
after "this" feeling there would be noise, then stillness.
Right after that I could feel a pendulum, a rocking
back and forth . . .
Mr. S , the famous psych case study that could remember everything, recalls infancy. From Aleksandr Luria's Mind of a Mnemonist (1937). [PDF]
âI have never voted in my life⊠I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so itâs certain they will win.â
- Louis-Ferdinand Celine
W.E.B. DuBois:Â Why I Won't Vote, The Nation, 1956.
Matt Stoller: The Progressive Case Against Obama,Salon.
Margaret Kimberly: Not Voting For Obama,Black Agenda Report.
Robert Prasch: The Progressive Retreat From Obama: Who is to Blame?, and Falguni Sheth: Emily Hauser's Disgusting Indifference to Women of Color,Translation Exercises.
A few posts ago I compared Celine's final letter to his then-wife to Robinson and Madelon's relationship at the end of his book, Journey to the End of the Night. Some of the relevant portion is excerpted below.
It was my doing, I have to admit, that we started talking again and the quarrel resumed, worse than ever. We're never suspicious enough of words, they look like nothing much, not at all dangerous, just little puffs of air, little sounds the mouth makes, neither hot nor cold and easily absorbed, once they reach the ear, by the vast gray boredom of the brain. We're not suspicious enough of words, and calamity strikes.
"Look, Madelon. Maybe you've got some idea how we could amuse ourselves, but you're afraid to tell us? Would you like us to stop somewhere before we go home? Come on, tell us! . . ."
"Amuse ourselves! Amuse ourselves!" she said, as if I'd insulted her. "All you people think of is amusing yourselves . . ." Then she let out a whole barrage of sighs, deep and so touching that I've seldom heard the like.
I looked at them both when we passed a streetlamp. What I saw was anger. Madelon leaned foward as if to kiss him. It was written that no one would miss a chance to put his foot in it that night.
The taxi had slowed down again because of the trucks that were strung out all along the road. It exasperated him to be kissed, and he pushed her away, rather roughly, I must say. Of course that wasn't a nice thing to do, especially in front of us.
"For God's sake calm down," I managed to shout at Madelon. "The two of you can have it out when we get there . . . You'll have plenty of time!"
"Get there! Get there!" she said in a tone that would make your hair stand on end. "We'll never get there, I tell you! . . . And anyway," she went on, "I'm sick of your dirty nasty ways . . . I'm a decent girl . . . I'm better than the whole lot of you together! . . . Pigs! . . . You can't make a fool out of me! . . . You can't understand a girl like me, you're not good enough . . . You're too rotten the whole lot of you to understand someone like me! . . . You'll never understand anything that's clean and beautiful!"
In sum, she attacked us in our self-esteem. She went on and on. I kept strictly quiet on my folding seat, I didn't so much as let out a murmur. But it did no good, every time the driver shifted gears she'd start yapping again. At times like that the least little thing can provoke disaster. Just making us miserable seemed to be giving her a big kick, she followed out her nature to the bitter end, she couldn't help it.
"Don't imagine you're going to get off so easy!" she threatened us. "That you're going to get rid of me on the quiet! Oh no! I may as well tell you right away! No, you won't get away with it! You no-good scum! . . . You've ruined my life! I'll wake you up, you bastards!"
Suddenly she bent over toward Robinson, grabbed him by the lapels of his overcoat, and started shaking him. He made no attempt to break loose. You wouldn't catch me interfering. It almost looked as if Robinson enjoyed seeing her getting more and more excited on account of him. He was grinning, it wasn't natural. She was yelling at him, and he was jerking back and forth on his seat like a marionette, nose down, all the starch gone out of his neck.
Just as I was going to attempt some little gesture of remonstrance to stop the rough stuff, she bristled and started giving me a piece of her mind . . . Unloading things she'd been storing up for a long time ... I was in for it all right.
Especially since we were making pretty good time over the cobblestones of the boulevards along the Seine. The taxi was jolting so bad you couldn't even move.
She'd warned me that I'd better lie low. I'd had enough. "Are you coming?" she repeated. The cab was still going fast, the road was clear in front of us, and the jolting was worse than ever. We were bouncing around like crates in a truck.
"You were involved in it yourself," he said. "You can't say a thing . . ."
That didn't quiet her in the least, far from it. "I don't care!" she said. "What if I was? You mean we'll both go to jail? . . . That I was your accomplice? ... Is that what you mean? . . . Well, that suits me fine! . . ."
And she started laughing hysterically, as if nothing could have been funnier . . .
"That would suit me to a T, I tell you! I'm crazy about jail, I tell you! . . . Don't go expecting me to back down because of your jail talk! . . . I'll go to jail any time you say! . . . . . . But you'll go too, you bastard! ... At least you won't be able to give me the run-around any longer! . . . I belong to you, okay! But you belong to me too! You should just have stayed with me down there! I can only love once, Monsieur! I'm no tart!"
In saying that she was defying me and Sophie too. Making a point of fidelity and respectability. In spite of it all the taxi was driving on, and he still made no move to stop the driver.
"Then you're not coming? You'd rather go to the pen? Okay! . . . You don't care if I turn you in? ... You don't care if I love you or not? . . . You don't care about my future? You don't care about anything, do you? . . ."
"No," he says. "In a way you're right . . . But it's not just you ... I don't care about anyone else either . . . Christ, don't take it as an insult! ... I know you're a sweet kid . . . But I don't want to be loved anymore ... It disgusts me! . . ."
She didn't expect to have that kind of thing thrown in her face . . . She was so surprised that she didn't know how to pick up the tirade she'd already begun. She'd been thrown off balance, but she recovered quick enough. "Oh! It disgusts you, does it? ... What do you mean by that? . . . Tell me a little more, you ungrateful weasel!"
"No!" he said. "It's not you that disgusts me, it's everything. I don't want anything . . . You can't hold that against me . . ."
"What's that you say? Say it again! Me . . . everything?" She was trying to understand. "Me, everything? Don't talk Chinese! . . . Tell me in French, in front of these people. Why do I disgust you now? Don't you get a hard-on like everybody else, you big pig, when you make love? Oh, so you don't get a hard-on, is that it? ... Out with it! ... In front of these people . . . Tell us you don't get a hard-on!"
In spite of her fury, her way of arguing her case made you want to laugh. But I didn't have time to laugh very long, because she started up again. "And him there! I suppose he doesn't squirt every time he catches me in a corner! The beast! The sex fiend! I dare him to say it's not true! . . . You're all looking for something new! . . . Admit it! ... Variety, novelty! That's what you want! A daisy chain! Why not a virgin! You degenerate pigs! Why look for pretexts? . . . You're jaded, that's all. You haven't even got the courage of your vices! You're scared of your vices!"
At that point Robinson took it on himself to answer. By that time he, too, had lost his temper, and he shouted as loud as she had.
"Wrong!" he shouted. "I've got plenty of courage, as much as you! , . . Only, if you want the whole truth . . . everything, absolutely everything! disgusts me and turns my stomach! Not just you! . . . Everything! . . . And love most of all! . . . Yours as much as anyone else's! . . . The sentimental tripe you dish out . . . Want me to tell you what I think of it? I think it's like making love in the crapper! Do you get me now? . . . All the sentiment you trot out to make me stick with you hits me like an insult, if you want to know . . . And to make it worse, you don't even realize it, you're the one that's rotten because you don't understand! . . . You're satisfied repeating the rubbish other people say . . . You think it makes sense . . . People have told you there's nothing better than love, they've told you it'll go down with everybody, everywhere and always, and that's good enough for you . . . Well, I say fuck their love! . . . You hear? . . . Their putrid love doesn't go down with me ... not anymore! . . . You've missed the train! You're too late! It won't go down anymore, and that's that! . . . What a stupid thing to get steamed up about! . . . Why do you have to make love, considering all the things that are happening? . . . All the things we see around us! ... Or are you blind? . . . More likely you just don't give a damn! You wallow in sentiment when you're a worse brute than anybody . . . You want to eat rotten meat? . . . With love sauce? . . . Does that help it down? . . . Not with me! . . . If you don't smell anything, it's your hard luck! Maybe your nose is stuffed up! If it doesn't disgust you, it's because you're stupid, the whole lot of you
. . . You want to know what it is that comes between you and me? ... All right, I'll tell you! A whole life is what comes between you and me ... Isn't that enough for you?"
"My house is clean!" she comes back at him. "A person can be poor but clean, can't they? When did you ever see that my house wasn't clean? Is that what you're insinuating with your nasty remarks? . . . My rear end is clean, Monsieur! . . . Maybe you can't say as much for yourself! . . . Nor your feet neither!"
"I never said that, Madelon! I never said anything like that! . . . About your house not being clean! . . . You see that you don't understand a thing!" That was all he could think of saying to calm her down.
"So now you say you haven't said anything? You haven't said anything, have you? Would you listen to him! He insults me worse than garbage and then he claims he hasn't said anything! You'd have to kill him to make him stop lying! Jail isn't bad enough for a skunk like him! A lousy rotten pimp! . . . It's not enough! What he needs is the guillotine!"
She must have moved back a little on the seat, as far as she could go. I guess she was holding the revolver in both hands, because when the shot went off it seemed to go straight into his belly. Then, almost at the same time, there were two more shots, one after the other . . . and then the car was full of acrid smoke.
But we kept right on going. Robinson slumped down on me, sideways, jerking and gasping: "Hep! Hep!" And more of the same: "Hep! Hep!" The driver must have heard.
First he slowed down a little to see what had happened. Then finally he stopped right under a gas lamp.
The moment he opened the door, Madelon gave him a violent push and jumped out. She scrambled down the embankment and beat it across the fields in the darkness, right through the mud. I tried to call her back, but she was already far away.
[...]
It was still too soon to tell how he'd go about dying. His belly was swelling up, he was staring at us, his eyes were already set, he was groaning, but not very much. He was having a sort of calm spell. I'd already seen him very sick in a lot of different places, but this time everything was different, his moans and his eyes and everything. It looked as if we couldn't hold him much longer, he was slipping away from minute to minute. He was sweating big drops that made it look as if his whole face were crying. At times like that you're sorry you've become as poor and as hard as you have. We're short of practically everything we'd need to help someone die. All we have left inside is the things that are useful in our everyday life, a life of comfort, a life all for ourselves, a life of viciousness. We've lost our confidence along the way. We've harried and goaded what pity we had left, driven it to the bottom of our body like some nasty pill. We've pushed pity to the bottom of our bowels along with our shit. That's a good place for it, we say to ourselves.
And the dying snivel, because they're not having as much fun as before . . . They make demands . . . they protest. The dramatics of misery wants to carry over from life into death.
He came partly to his senses when Parapine gave him his injection of morphine. He even talked a little about what had happened. "It's best to have it end like this," he said. And later: "It doesn't hurt as much as I'd have thought." When Parapine asked him exactly where the pain was, you could see he wasn't all there anymore, but even so there were still things he wanted to tell us ... He hadn't the strength, his head wasn't clear enough ... He wept, he gagged, and a moment later he laughed. He wasn't like the usual sick man, we didn't know how to act in front of him.
It looked as if he were trying to help us live. As if he'd been trying to find us pleasures to go on living for. He held us by the hands. One hand each. I kissed him. That's all you can do in a case like that without going wrong. We waited. He didn't say anything more after that. A little later, maybe an hour, the hemorrhage came, internal and profuse. It carried him off.
His heart started beating faster and faster, and then very very fast. His heart was running after his exhausted, diminished blood, chasing it to the ends of his blood vessels, throbbing in his fingertips. The pallor rose up from his neck and took hold of his whole face. He died in a choking fit. He went as if he had taken a running start, squeezing the two of us in his arms.
Then, almost immediately, he was back again in front of us, already taking on the weight of a dead man.
We stood up. We disengaged ourselves from his hands. They stopped in mid-air, stiff, yellow, and blue in the light of the lamp.
Then Robinson was like a stranger in the room, someone who had come from a horrible country and you wouldn't have dared speak to.
[Instead] of capturing so-called âenemy combatants,â President Obama kills them instead, Hayden [CIA Director under Bush] said.
âWe have made it so politically dangerous and so legally difficult that we donât capture anyone anymore,â Hayden said. âWe take another option, we kill them. Now. I donât morally oppose that.â
- Michael Hayden, Bush's Chief of CIA, giving Obama some love earlier this week.
This doesn't necessarily mean that [Obama is] killing instead of capturing â "that's not even the right question," says the former administration official, who is familiar with the targeting process. "It's not at all clear that we'd be sending our people into Yemen to capture the people we're targeting. But it's not at all clear that we'd be targeting them if the technology wasn't so advanced. What's happening is that we're using the technology to target people we never would have bothered to capture."
- The Lethal Presidency of Barrack Obama, Tom Junod.
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