"In Soviet gulags, condoms were used to smuggle alcohol into the camps by prisoners who worked outside during daylight. While outside, the prisoner would ingest an empty condom attached to a thin piece of rubber tubing, the end of which was wedged between his teeth. The smuggler would then use a syringe to fill the tubing and condom with up to three litres of raw alcohol, which the prisoner would then smuggle back into the camp. When back in the barracks, the other prisoners would suspend him upside down until all the spirit had been drained out. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn records that the three litres of raw fluid would be diluted to make seven litres of crude vodka, and that although such prisoners risked an extremely painful and unpleasant death if the condom burst inside them, the rewards granted them by other prisoners encouraged them to run the risk."

- Wikipedia, "Condom"

Idea:

Someone should get the Florida Keys and the Scottish Lochs together. Probably, nothing would happen, but I don't think anyone has tried this yet, and it might be Amazing.

A link

I think this page may be mis-titled.

In any case, here is a video of two famous people acting somewhat normal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBWPf1BWtkw&feature=related

More Piracy

I don't actually have time to comment on this article, but I just want to assert that the pirate issue is far from settled. It appears (from the first paragraph of the linked-to article) that, having overcome partisanship to elect Senator Obama in a near-landslide electoral victory, a new division has sprung up to replace the old in the Great American Dialog. That, of course, is the issue of how to properly punish pirates.

More on this after I actually read the article.

It begins - a discussion of politics

FiveThirtyEight is running a post today on how the medium of talk radio has dumbed down the right.

It may have gone to their heads a little bit; they may have forgotten about radio's idiosyncrasies as a means of communication. The failures of the Bush administration have woken the country up; conservatives now need to find a way to communicate with people who are actually paying attention.

This is a follow up to Nate Silver's hilarious interview with John Ziegler, which was posted on Tuesday.

JZ: Misinformed? You're a piece of work! You are never going to have the guts to post a representative transcript on your website! I thought you actually ran a legitimate website!

NS: Thank you, have a good day.
JZ: Go fuck yourself.

Ziegler is a conservative radio host who is currently promoting an upcoming documentary on how the media downplayed negative stories about Obam and Biden, and how this contributed to Obama's victory. The interview was pretty shockingly uncivil. Ziegler was totally out of line, although after reading the beating he took in the comments thread for the post, I almost feel like taking his side. Nate Silver did make some strong criticisms of Ziegler's work without really doing his homework first.

This is in contrast to a post that he made in early October, in which Nate accused RealClearPolitics.com of cherry-picking polls to make McCain look stronger in crucial states. In this post, Nate's accusations, while perhaps over the top, were based on numbers and evidence.

The conclusion to Nate's (people call him Nate...) latest post seems off base to me. While he's raises some good points about the limitations of the talk radio format, I think he foolishly takes for granted that extreme conservatives are particularly more dogmatic than extreme liberals. While in recent years, Republicans have aimed their appeals towards the fringe of their base, this doesn't mean that the fringe represents the whole. This post sparked an interesting discussion in the comments thread. For me, the low point of all this was one poster (dubbed 'pixel' - read into that what you will) remarking that "Every group is defined by their extremists."

Maybe every group is reduced by critical outsiders (in this case, our beloved Mr. Silver) to their extremists. I would rather believe that extremists are defined by every group's extremists - that beyond the facade of their particular views, extremists have more in common with one another than with the mainstream of the movements that they supposedly epitomize.

The complement to Nate's argument was raised by various sources during the election and primaries, none of whom I can cite offhand. In particular, extreme liberals believe that their political views are the gospel of academia - that anyone 'of intelligence' who thought deeply about the issues would eventually come to the One True Path (sinistralism). But at stake in politics is more than just the right or wrong way to get things done. At stake is a true difference of values. And if we (the sinistralists) are the Cultural Relativists that we purport to be, then we should acknowledge the values of libertarians and fiscal conservatives, if not old school conservatives, are valid and defensible too. (Okay, I won't start in on the neo-cons.)

We all have a responsibility to examine our own views a little more critically, and to try to separate differences of values from differences in approach. Otherwise we come out looking like this little guy.

This, too, shall pass

Welcome to the inaugural article in my new blog. I don't have too much work this week, and I've been thinking about doing this for a while. I can't say that I promise to keep it up - I probably won't - but it's worth a shot.

I chose the quote "This, too, shall pass" to be the title for this entry because I wanted to share a certain article: A Surge to Wipe out Pirates of the Horn. This article reports a recent successful attack launched by an Indian warship against a pirate vessel. The author, Mr. Pyatt, expands on what is apparently a widespread pirate infestation in the Indian Ocean, and concludes by setting forth his own, somewhat involved plan for an international collaborative effort to exterminate the pests: an "International Anti-Piracy Maritime Surge."

This piece reads like a hybrid of pirate fanfic, and raving anti-pirate propaganda:

They [the pirates] make the Mafia look like kindergartners.

What's more, these pirate aren't just a relic of a bygone era - they may be but one face of the greatest threat this century has to offer:

Since Somalia has been a longstanding supporter of Islamic terrorist activity, it seems reasonable to assume that most of this money is going to expand terrorist attacks someplace. I hold this view until proven otherwise.

I feel just a bit guilty making light of what is no doubt a hellish reality on the other side of the world. But the quality of the writing... it's just so... compelling.

So back to the title. What it means is that the days of maritime piracy may be coming to an end. (But probably not.)

If the title of this entry sounds familiar, that's because it is. Apparently the quote dates back to a story about King Solomon. The King (Solomon, in those days) was feeling down, and he asked his wise men to search for a cure to his depression. So they gave him a ring inscribed with the words that sit atop this entry. And apparently, this story was retold by Lincoln in an address delivered in 1859. And apparently, the definitive work on the expression is due to a former Berkeley professor, Archer Taylor.

And I go to Berkeley, and I am tall and lanky, and I'm a Jew. So I consider all of this to be an extraordinary coincidence.

In the story about Solomon, the phrase is written on a ring - a circle. And I may not have a degree in English, but I have made a study of circles, and I can tell you that they do not "pass." They are without beginning or end.

So what I'm really trying to say is that even though your dreams of piracy may have just been crushed (though that seems highly improbable), I wouldn't write the day off yet. Because I'm starting a blog, which might provide you hours of edutainment.

(Though I wouldn't bet on it.)