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Saturday, September 20, 2003One-eyed, one-horned, flyin'
Sheb Wooley has died at the age of 82. There is an obituary here. People of a certain age will remember his song Purple People Eater.
posted by norm at 10:26 pm | link
A while ago I posed this question:
Can any jazz person out there explain to me the thing, if there is one, about Sun Ra? I don't get him. I confess to having only one of his albums: Space Is The Place. But although I remain and listen where Wife of the Norm runs out of the room when it's playing, it perplexes me.I'm not sure why it's taken him as long as it has, but Chris Smith out in Shetland writes as follows:
Did anyone ever respond to your request for an explanation of Sun Ra? I ask, not because I'm about to give one - no time! - but to suggest that 'Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth'/'Interstellar Low Ways' (Evidence ECD 22039-2) might be helpful. It's early material from within the Ra cosmology, and it always strikes my ears as a link between 'the proper jazz' and 'the crazy stuff' (irony on/off both times). As such it sort of functions to me as an explanation of what he was about - but mainly, it's really enjoyable listening. My wife doesn't - quite - leave the room when I play Sun Ra; but when I acquired the double CD of Saturn singles, cries of 'Can't we have something else?' were loud in the land.Hmmm. Well, I'll give it a go then.
posted by norm at 10:25 pm | link
Test match cricket being my thing, I don't pay too much attention to county cricket, to be honest, but I shouldn't let this go unremarked. Paul Weaver:
The world, or at the very least Hove BN3 3AN, stopped yesterday when Sussex County Cricket Club won the championship for the first time in their long and exotic history.So, though I'm a day late, I've done my duty.
Play was suspended for seven minutes at 1.44pm in the fourth over after lunch when Murray Goodwin, on his way to a more personal epiphany, pulled a short delivery from Phil DeFreitas through midwicket for four.
The boundary hoisted Sussex's sixth bonus point of the match and confirmed the first title for the oldest county club, formed in 1839. Some members, clutching sticks and walking frames with fingers as translucent as sausage skins, looked as though they had been there all the time.
posted by norm at 9:25 pm | link
Good piece by Terry Eagleton here:
Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions.Terry has a swipe at 'the so-called war on terror', but that's all it is, a passing swipe without argument. The rest is interesting.
Postmodernism is obsessed by the body and terrified of biology. The body is a wildly popular topic in US cultural studies - but this is the plastic, remouldable, socially constructed body, not the piece of matter that sickens and dies. The creature who emerges from postmodern thought is centreless, hedonistic, self-inventing, ceaselessly adaptive. He sounds more like a Los Angeles media executive than an Indonesian fisherman. Postmodernists oppose universality, and well they might: nothing is more parochial than the kind of human being they admire.
posted by norm at 9:22 pm | link
An interesting piece in the LA Times about Pierre Richard Robert:
A Moroccan court sentenced him to life in prison Thursday after convicting him of recruiting and training Moroccan extremists for a terrorist campaign.Root causes, people? Tea and sympathy? Chocolate biscuits?
He joins an unlikely group of men with non-Muslim backgrounds that includes Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" convicted of trying to blow up an airliner; American Jose Padilla, an alleged Al Qaeda operative being held as an enemy combatant; and Christian Ganczarski, a German convert arrested in June by French police.
Robert and Ganczarski were not just foot soldiers, investigators say. They represent a dangerous trend as police chop away at Islamic networks two years after the Sept. 11 attacks: converts who assume front-line roles as recruiters and plotters.
The number of converts has grown as Islamic militants have struck a chord with young Europeans from non-Muslim backgrounds.
posted by norm at 11:35 am | link
The Bleeb's apologists don't, is who. In the usual place today there's a piece by Alan Rusbridger favourably comparing the BBC's standards of impartiality and such with those of… the Sun, and the Times, and even the old slimey dnoc itself ('slimey' here is mine, obviously, not Rusbridger's). He only fails to mention that we don't have to pay a licence fee towards supporting any of these other organs.
Well, no, let me be fair; Rusbridger does kind of mention it:
The usual argument offered at this point is that a public service broadcaster has an obligation to act according to higher standards than those of a mere newspaper.He then ducks the point, though:
But it is hard to imagine the Times or Telegraph advancing such a case. They would scarcely offer the BBC such stern ethical lessons unless they believed themselves to be at least its equal.It's not a matter of what case Alan Rusbridger imagines the Times or Telegraph might advance. It's a matter of why the many citizens of this country who had stumped up their licence fee but didn't belong to the would-be progressive anti-war consensus should have had, night after night, watching news broadcasts on the BBC, to endure the likes of Fiona Bruce feeding to her interlocutor - in Iraq or in the studio - and often enough getting back from them, the 'nyeeh, nyeeh, bad for the Coalition… nyeeh, nyeeh, nyeeeh, opinion in the Arab world… nyeeh, nyeeh, nyeehtie-nyeeh, difficulties for Tony Blair'; with not too many 'nyeehs' at all concerning, you know, 'brutal dictatorship', or 'rather one-eyed anti-war protestors', and so forth.
There are many who scoff at Fox News, but with Fox it was upfront. They were on the side of America and the Coalition. You knew where you were. The BBC, which has a duty of impartiality, tilted - and that's putting it softly - against the war and therefore against those leading it and prosecuting it.
Nyeeh, nyeeh, nyeeh. Probably Fiona Bruce is a nice person. I have no clear evidence against the proposition. But I can no longer stand the sight or the sound of her, representing, as she has come to in my eyes and ears, the moral betrayal the BBC perpetrated on the citizens of this democracy and the people of Iraq.
posted by norm at 11:31 am | link
Julie Burchill:
[T]hey always tell you at school how many people communism and fascism killed, but never ever how many people capitalism killed.Yup. And it's not only in school.
posted by norm at 11:25 am | link
Friday, September 19, 2003Blogger independence
Blogger, how separate are you from your blog? Find out here (via Blairista!). Rather to my surprise, I came out not quite 50% owned by my blog. I thought it was much worse than that.
posted by norm at 5:36 pm | link
In this post I respond to a certain strand of leftist anti-war opinion - a strand about those of us on the left who supported the war in Iraq - and I return to one of the points I made earlier in my essay on that subject. The post contains a fair bit of quotation, starting with some opinions of Stephen Marks. These were expressed a while back in the comments box at Harry's Place. Stephen referred there to 'Dubbya's useful idiots in the so-called "pro-war left"' - 'so-called', if I read him right, because according to him there is no such left:
The reason why most opponents of the war give little time to the so-called 'prowar left' is that we see very little sign apart from a few high-profile media columnists and a narcissistic mutual reinforcement mechanism in the blogosphere, that it actually exists.Just mark that for the moment, and now mark this, Stephen's view (at the same two locations) about what ought to happen next in Iraq:
The only way forward to a stable democracy in Iraq is for power to be handed over now to a representative provisional government of Iraqis, and for them and them alone to decide what foreign troops should be in Iraq, what their remit should be, who should get the rich contracts for rebuilding etc.With these opinions noted, let's take a look at a few other things. This is from a report from Baghdad by the BBC's Caroline Hawley early last week:
[And again:] I hope France Russia and Germany let him [Bush] twist in the wind a bit longer before giving him what he wants. In doing so they will also be doing a favour to the people of Iraq. For only an interim government which beyond all doubt is not an American puppet, will be able to mobilise the popular support needed to defeat the Saddamite and fundamentalist saboteurs.
[I]n the five months since the Americans captured Baghdad, little on the surface seems to have changed in Sadr City. If anything, it's got worse.And this is Salam Pax, answering questions during a 'webchat':
"They've not really done anything for us," says Muhammad. "There've been no improvements. But at least we can now sleep at night without worrying that there's be [sic] a knock on the door and we'll be carted off to the army. At least we can speak freely."
And speak Iraqis do.
Zainab Hussein lost her husband, a former army officer, to Saddam Hussein's gallows in 1998.
He had lost faith in the regime, she says, when he witnessed Saddam Hussein's cousin, Chemical Ali, setting light to a child with a petrol hose in 1991, when Shia were mowed down, en masse, in southern Iraq.
He had been trying to escape the country with his family when he was arrested in 1996 - and hung two years later.
"You can't imagine how excited I was when Saddam fell," says Zainab, a secular Iraqi who works in a hotel coffee shop to support her five children.
"I thought the future would change completely. I'd seen the Americans on the TV and watched how they treat even their pets. We thought the streets would be cleared up, that there would be new fashions from America, but so far nothing. Nothing."
She shakes her head and adds: "It was all a dream."
But the 36-year-old widow, on balance, believes the Americans are liberators more than occupiers.
"It's good that they got rid of Saddam Hussein, but the problem is that they haven't changed anything," she says. "I just want them to fulfil their promises to us."
"In the days of Saddam, I used to treat three people with gunshot injuries every day," says Dr Muhammad Zaid, as he walks down a bare, grimy corridor. "Now it's about 50."
But Dr Zaid believes the country is better off than under Saddam Hussein, whose opponents so often disappeared without trace.
"It's a difficult thing for us Muslims to be ruled by Americans," he says. "But we could never have got rid of Saddam without them. He was a criminal that we thought we'd have to live with forever."
Despite suspicions about America's motives for toppling Saddam Hussein, only the tiniest minority of Iraqis would want him back.
But nor do Iraqis want the Americans around for long. "We're a proud people who won't bow to anyone," says Zainab.
Question: When do you expect / hope the coalition will pull out of Baghdad and give you back your city?Now, I think it would be fair to say that all the Iraqis quoted here display a critical attitude towards the US and the Coalition presence in Iraq. Yet they are united in the view that the freeing of their country from Saddam Hussein's rule by the Coalition was a good, and one which they supported and even now support. In a nutshell, 'the country is better off' despite the many problems. Other sources confirm the prevalence of this view amongst Iraqis, or suggest it more strongly still. For example the results of a poll, reported here (via Martin Dickinson at Tullius):
Answer: As soon as we're back on our own feet. If they pull out of Baghdad too soon, we'll have chaos. If they stay after we have a government, and when it looks like we are able to run things, it would be unacceptable. For the moment I think we need their help. It's less the military force, more people helping us in governance issues, administration, showing people the way.
Question: ... do you support the coalition's attempts to oust the regime?
Answer: Yes, I support the ousting of the regime. Most Iraqis don't have any problem with the coalition coming in. We needed their help. It was never going to happen any other way...
Question: ... Tony Blair said that if he asked the average Iraqi if they would prefer Saddam back they would look at him as if he was insane. What would you do if Tony Blair asked you if you would rather have Saddam back? Do you think Tony Blair's once fabled feel for public opinion now applies to Iraqis? What do you think of UK and us politicians telling us what the average Iraqi thinks?
Answer: There is no comparison in the problems we have with services and the issue of the fallen regime. These things are separate. Everyone is really glad that Sadam has gone. There is no one in Iraq that... wants him back, unless it's someone who benefitted from the old regime. So no, never. It's over. With all the problems we have with services and utlilities, this is a problem that can be dealt with in time. People had unrealistic expectations. I had unrealistic expectations that everything will be up and running in two weeks. The coalition is not in tune with our culture. Tony Blair will never get a feel for public opinion in Iraq. Maybe they rely too much on the opinion of advisors.
The general sentiment is that we needed help to get rid of Saddam. But how it was done and planned could have been better. Wars are never OK, but the actual war did much less harm than everybody was expecting. The Iraqi troops decided not to fight and the way the Coalition forces decided to move into the country and the precise bombing meant that things could have been much much worse. Things are going wrong now post-war. It's the lack of planning and the wrong advisors. They are Iraqi exiles who are out of touch with present-day needs.
[Y]ou can write off the possibility of a Baath revival. We asked "Should Baath Party leaders who committed crimes in the past be punished, or should past actions be put behind us?" A thoroughly unforgiving Iraqi public stated by 74% to 18% that Saddam's henchmen should be punished.Or look at this item, linked to by many blogs over the last couple of days, the opinions of Judge Don Walters, a federal judge from Shreveport, LA, who served as part of a 12 man team in Iraq to evaluate their justice system:
This new evidence on Iraqi opinion suggests the country is manageable. If the small number of militants conducting sabotage and murder inside the country can gradually be eliminated by American troops... then the mass of citizens living along the Tigris-Euphrates Valley are likely to make reasonably sensible use of their new freedom. "We will not forget it was the U.S. soldiers who liberated us from Saddam," said Abid Ali, an auto repair shop owner in Sadr City last month - and our research shows that he's not unrepresentative.
I want to make it clear that, initially, I vehemently opposed the war.Finally, have a look at the article by Johann Hari excerpted in my previous post, immediately below this one.
What changed my mind?
I have seen the machines and places of torture. I will tell you one story told to me by the Chief of Pediatrics at the Medical College in Basra. It was one of the most shocking to me, but I heard worse. [The Judge goes on to tell this terrible story.]
The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE TRUTH FROM THE NEWS MEDIA. The news you watch, listen to and read is highly selective. Good news doesn't sell.
Back now to the views of Stephen Marks with which I began. I can't say precisely where Stephen stands on the spectrum, mildly-averagely-severely-critical of the Coalition in Iraq. I'd reckon he's over somewhere in the 'severely' segment of it. But, wherever he stands, I infer from his view about what should happen next in Iraq that, like most Iraqis, he too thinks the freeing of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's rule was a good and leaves the country better off than it was before. I'm inferring this because, in his judgement about what should happen next, Stephen just avails himself, so to put it, of the post-Saddam state of affairs as his starting point. He doesn't call for a restoration of the Baathist regime. To forestall needless sidetracking here, let me say that I'm well aware that my inference doesn't have to be a sound one. Stephen could say that taking the current state of affairs as his starting point is merely a matter of realism. It doesn't have to mean he thinks that the Coalition's ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a good and that the country is now better off than it was. It could just mean he thinks one has to start from where things are, and this is where they are; and in fact he doesn't think Saddam's demise was a good or that the country is now, all things considered, better off than it was, or its people are better off than they were. I made the inference I did, though, out of intellectual and moral charity, assuming that this could surely not be Stephen Marks's view.
But in any case he, and others of like mind, can tell us. They can say, loud, clear and upfront, what they do think. Let them say, if they have the courage, stupidity or whatever else it takes to say it, that they think it would have been better for the Iraqi people to still be enduring the torments they suffered under Saddam Hussein than to be in the position they are now in, for all its many difficulties. Just say it: 'It would be better if the torture chambers and all the other paraphernalia of murder and oppression in Iraq were still in place'. And unless you can say that, then you should back off the 'idiots' and 'so-called left' stuff. Because those of us who do very much think it's better that all of that is over, we not only think it now that it is over; we thought it before the war, when it's being over was in the offing. It was possible even then, with a certain amount of foresight, to think Iraq would be better off after the military intervention of the Coalition than it was before it. So to those like Stephen who speak thus contemptuously of the pro-war left, I would say - meaning no impoliteness, naturally - put up or shut up. That is, answer the question, would it have been better for the people of Iraq to continue under Saddam? If you can't say yes, then you should be willing to allow that the pro-war (or, as someone I know calls it, 'anti-torture') left had some weighty grounds for thinking as they did.
Stephen Marks comes close to the edge of saying what some other leftists say openly: namely, that if you supported the war you can't actually be on the left. Shortly after this blog was launched that was the opinion expressed by one or two people in the comments boxes round at Crooked Timber and Harry's Place, reacting to the welcomes issued there by Chris Bertram and Harry Hatchett:
'He may be an intelligent and engaging fellow, but so far on his blog he's just another InstaHitchens.'There was also the wonderful email I received and have developed a certain affection for:
'... you cannot be leftist and support this war against Iraq, because it means signing up for neo-imperialism.'
'Geras is "still" a Marxist? Didn't look like it to me, unless Marxists now side with the guys with the biggest bombs.'
'Can't see much difference between his blog and that of any other seriously right-wing bloggers.'
'You are an imperialist skunk.'I have two observations to make about such stuff, one personal, the other general. In turn:
1. I haven't spent 40-plus years of my life thinking about what values I subscribe to and what theses and beliefs - theoretical, political, ethical or whatever - to end by consenting to have my intellectual and political identity defined by someone else.
2. Most of the left feels confident it has learned the lessons of Stalinism, but there are still such people on the left as this, entirely confident there could be only one acceptable left view about the war.
As for 'InstaHitchens', well, while I'm honoured in a way to be so linked through a single word with both The Blogfather and The Dude, I'm bound to say: thanks but also no thanks. I remain a socialist, as Chris Hitchens (so I believe) no longer claims to be, and Glenn Reynolds surely never was.
posted by norm at 4:37 pm | link
Johann Hari hears what they have to say:
Opinion polls conducted in Iraq since the war - by reputable polling agencies that have predicted election results across the world - … [show] that a large majority of Iraqis wanted the invasion. And there was therefore reason to hope that this visit to Iraq would be a happy one. None the less, I have spent the summer fearing for Sama, Yasser and Abtehale. Partly I was anxious for their physical safety… But mostly I worried about their emotional health. All three had spent their lives pining for home. What if home disappointed them? What if the Iraqi people saw them as strangers? What if Iraqis did not want to hear them evangelise for democracy?Read the whole thing, down to the appeal at the end. Thanks to Franco Aleman for the link (via Watch/Winds of Change).
They returned to London earlier this month. The minute they arrived at my flat, beaming and speaking at a hundred words a minute, my fears evaporated. Abtehale began: "We were so scared that we might have been wrong. We kept thinking, 'What if we get there and everybody hates us for supporting the war?' But it was amazing: almost everyone we met was more hawkish than us. All over the country, even people who really hated the Americans agreed it would have been a disaster if the war had been called off." Yasser said: "One of the first things my uncle said to me was that his greatest fear in the run-up to the war was that the Americans would do what they did in 1991 and leave us to Saddam."
Tens of thousands of Iraqis are making a weekly pilgrimage to Kadhimiya, where a human rights centre has been set up to log on computer the names of all the hundreds of thousands of people executed by the regime. They have six million files to work through, seized when the regime fell. They have processed two hundred thousand so far. Abtehale went there searching for her grandfather and uncle. So far, they seem to have vanished without record into Saddam's vast torture machine.
[Sama:] "I find it absolutely incredible that the anti-war people are now calling for the coalition to leave straight away. Nobody in Iraq wants that. The opinion polls show it's just 13 per cent. Don't they care about the Iraqi people and what they want at all? This isn't a game. This isn't about poking a stick at George Bush. This is our lives."
posted by norm at 10:50 am | link
Thursday, September 18, 2003A matter of life and death 2
I've had these comments on the trolley post of yesterday.
From Dena Wardah:
Some thoughts on your trolley problems from a feminist, atheist, Talmudic standpoint. The Talmud is an excellent source of interesting ethical discussions of unlikely problems, because the point is usually to establish the essence of the question and the principles you should work from. My first principles are: 1) Human life is a supreme value (Talmudic). 2) While self defence is allowed, you can never otherwise take the position that your own life is of more value than someone else's (Talmudic: there is an express point made somewhere that Person A can kill attacker B to save their own life, but not person C who is an innocent bystander even if that would also save their life - since that would be placing more value on A's life than C's). 3) Problems in life are always situated (feminist).From Jenny Geras:
I conclude that the trolley problems are entirely different. In the basic problem, the decision-maker cannot be seen as someone outside the system. S/he knows about the switch, what it does, how to work it, who is working where on the lines (a situated reading). I can only conclude that s/he is a trusted employee with responsibilities that must involve acting to prevent accidents. S/he could not in any sense be held responsible for the death of one of the line workers: all of them were in a potentially dangerous situation. (Suppose the points weren't working anyway? Suppose you had it wrong about the way the switch was set?) I'd say the person at the switch should divert the trolley as they are surely under an obligation to try and minimise the risk to life - but note I'm arguing that all the line workers are in a risky situation already. The bystanders on the cliff are not.
The person on the cliff has no obligation to act, least of all by killing an innocent bystander who is not already in a potentially dangerous situation. Your discussion about weights leads to the question, if "fat" is not of overwhelming importance why doesn't the person simply jump? The life of the person standing next to them can't be seen as less valuable than their own. It's permissible to throw oneself on the track to save life. It's not permissible to dispose of someone else's life to achieve your ends. The other person could also decide to jump, but that preserves their human dignity as agents, not objects.
The last question on the Sobibor atrocity is the hardest to dwell on but the easiest to resolve. The Talmud's usually good at distinguishing actions and intentions. Here you're discussing murder, not accident, and murder involves intent. The victim in this situation is not a murderer whatever s/he decides, having no murderous intention. There is therefore no right/wrong about what the victim "decides" since the victim isn't one iota responsible for the murders. No-one could possibly sit in judgement on such "decisions" whatever they were. Victims are victims, and perpetrators are perpetrators, no matter what perpetrators try to do to deflect blame (surely the whole point of this evil manoeuvre).
I think the reason why there's a problem with pulling the switch, pushing the fat person, choosing someone to die in the Sobibor example, is not only the degree of uncertainty thing that you mention, but also to do with a feeling of responsibility. Somehow, the fact that the train is already heading for the five people to kill them, or the Nazis are going to kill the ten people, means the death of those people is someone/something else's fault. But if you actually select a person to die - even if it is to save some number of other people - that person's death is your responsibility, no matter what greater good you did it for. That person's family would definitely blame you for their death.And Gary Jones points to the relevance of this quote from Michael Walzer's recent Imprints interview:
In the Sobibor situation, it seems clearer - the person you might pick is pretty much bound to die sooner or later anyway. But in the train example, you'd be picking some totally innocent person who might otherwise have a long and happy life ahead of them. I think there's definitely something wrong with that.
I want political leaders to accept the rule [against torture], to understand its reasons, even to internalise it. I also want them to be smart enough to know when to break it. And finally, because they believe in the rule, I want them to feel guilty about breaking it - which is the only guarantee they can offer us that they won't break it too often.Thanks for all three contributions.
posted by norm at 4:47 pm | link
Read it. Scroll down to 'Okay. Now comes the gnarly stuff', and read it. All of it.
posted by norm at 4:10 pm | link
Two passages from his obituary in today's Guardian:
"The greatest difficulty as I see it," he wrote, "is how to present the boundless horror of those events [the Shoah] which have no analogy in history and at the same time not to undermine the belief in the sense of creation, in human values, in justice."Amen to both of those.
"He [Benzion Rappaport, Scharf's Cracow Hebrew schoolteacher] took me aside and what he told me I have never forgotten: 'The most important thing is the question man has to put to himself when he raises his eyes to heaven. Ma chovato b'olamo - what is my duty in this world? Every morning, before you begin your day, ask yourself this question. Do not try to answer it - there is no short answer to it, it will not come to you quickly, maybe it will never come to you - it matters not. The thing is to realise that the question is important, that you have a duty to perform and have to search for it."
posted by norm at 3:32 pm | link
That's according to Thomas Friedman in the New York Times:
It would be as if America said it did not care what happened in Mexico because it was mad at Spain.Read the whole thing. Thanks to Steve de Wijze for the link.
posted by norm at 3:27 pm | link
There are two posts up over at Crumb Trail about traits we may or may not share with other species – including a sense of fairness with nonhuman primates.
posted by norm at 3:21 pm | link
I think I have a duty to relay this for anyone who missed it, given what else I've been posting here about the Beeb. I was watching the news on BBC 1 last night and there was a report about some of the new freedoms being enjoyed in Iraq. It was all about a flourishing market in satellite dishes and mobile phones, and it was generally rather upbeat. I'm waiting for the turn - the 'but' - when, lo and behold, the thing ends on a note something like this: 'but the greatest freedom Iraqis are celebrating...', and the rest of the voice-over blanks out in my head so struck am I by the image that comes up, an image of Saddam's ghastly mug being plastered over on the front of some building. Was I surprised? You bet I was. I can't find a link to the item, whether because there isn't one or because I don't have all the requisite skills, I couldn't say.
posted by norm at 3:18 pm | link
No you didn't misread it. I have a postcard from normblog's Hong Kong correspondent, advertising a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma at the Drama Theatre, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Wanchai. The run starts October 18 and finishes October 25. Should you happen to be (going to be) down that way, you can get yourself a ticket here. And I hope you'll manage to catch sight of the HK correspondent himself. He has, he tells me, 'a small part in the chorus'.
posted by norm at 3:11 pm | link
Wednesday, September 17, 200310 things Kate has learned about blogging
That's Venomous Kate, and via James Joyner at Outside the Beltway, who adds some observations of his own.
posted by norm at 4:40 pm | link
A while ago, down the way at Crooked Timber, Brian Weatherson posted an item entitled 'trolley problems', about moral dilemmas of choice in life-threatening situations, and it's been on my mind since I read it. I've been hesitant about developing my thoughts on it, because I'm not familiar with the literature it comes out of and don't have the time right now to rectify this; because Brian raised the issue seemingly in light-hearted vein rather than for earnest analysis; and because my own thoughts take off from a rather non-philosophical inspiration - that of wanting to quibble about the examples, when serious people will know that these are only examples and for the purpose of highlighting a structure of choice; if they're poorly formed, they could always be adapted to fit better the purpose at hand. But the thing continues to be on my mind, so despite these various misgivings, I'll stick my neck out.
Here are two of the examples Brian presents us with:
Basic Trolley Case: There is a run away trolley car careening down some railway tracks towards two tunnels. If it stays on the track it is on, it will kill five people working in the eastern tunnel. If you pull a switch it will move onto a side track, go through the western tunnel and kill the person working in it. Assume you can't do anything to stop the car or change its path except pull this switch. You pull the switch, saving the five and leading to the one's death.And here are some of the questions Brian raises on the basis of these examples and other similar ones: (a) Why should a significant number of people think 'your action in the first case is permissible, perhaps even mandatory, but the action in the second case is impermissible'? (b) More generally (by implication) are any such actions permissible? (c) Is it the sign of an awful character to think and write about these puzzles?
Fatman: Same runaway car, but without the switch. This time, you're standing on a cliff looking over the track the car is about to careen down. If unchecked it will kill the five people in the tunnel. Fortunately, there is a very fat man standing beside you - fat enough that if somehow he were to fall onto the track his sheer mass would stop the trolley. You give him a little shove, he falls off the cliff onto the train tracks, is killed by the trolley (if not the fall) and the five are saved.
On (a) I merely venture the following, though it's by way of empirical psychology rather than the making of an explanatory distinction in moral philosophy: this thought (of 'a significant number of people') may just have to do with proximity and distance; with having to push a person to his death, to make actual physical contact with him in doing so, rather than throwing a switch from (relatively speaking) afar. It's consistent with the comparative findings from the famous Milgram experiments, the results of which showed that the more distant in various ways the subjects were from their (role-playing) victims the more obedient they were in administering to these victims the (simulated) electric shocks.
On the other questions, let me get at my worry via the second example. If this is anything like a regular fat person and a regular cliff, the chances you can push him just so he'll land on the spot where his body will stop the trolley have to be, by contrast, slim. You're likely to end up with six, instead of five, dead people. Still, suppose that somehow you know this cliff well enough and how bodies tend to fall from it. Even so, how could you be sure that this guy is indeed fat enough to stop the trolley? OK, well, suppose you happen to have had a lot of experience with how bodies of his/its general girth behave when hit by trolleys of the kind you see careening down there, or how trolleys like that one behave when hitting bodies like this one.
So you push him. The trolley hits him and stops. However, next time you're faced with this situation, the guy beside you on the cliff – who, as it happens, isn't a guy in the strict (gendered) sense but a woman – although she is also fat, is less fat. Can you confidently push her? You estimate an 85% probability that her body will stop the trolley if it lands in the right place (and your experiences in the matter of how pushed bodies land have so far been encouraging). What counts as an acceptable probability when you're balancing one definite death, to be brought about by you, against the hope of saving the lives of five people? Well, anyway, you push her too. Her body stops the trolley. It happens to be the case, in fact, that even had she been quite a bit thinner, this would have been the outcome. You confirm as much from the third occasion it happens, when you push a well-loved colleague of yours who is even thinner than the woman (now deceased) was; push him, having convinced yourself that a 60% probability should be morally OK.
But, oh no, now a new worry assails you. Exactly how thin, or plump, was the first person down there on the track? Maybe the obstacle of their body, as the trolley hit it, would have been enough to halt the trolley's progress. In which case your action has substituted one death, that of your well-loved colleague, for another; that of someone who - it so turns out - was a completely vicious swine. But anyway it gets you to thinking. In the earlier cases, you couldn't properly study, from the top of your cliff, the degree of fatness of the person first in line for being hit by the trolley. He was in a tunnel. And even had he not been, from the top of this cliff you can't reliably tell how fat people are. Moreover, on a previous occasion when you found yourself in the Basic Trolley, rather than Fatman, situation and you hadn't yet thought of this aspect of the thing you may also have overlooked the consideration that four of the five people working in the tunnel had clocked off for lunch.
And so on.
OK, so these are only examples and they could be changed or adapted to eliminate the various uncertainties I've been playing with. But actually I'm not so sure how easy it is to change them so as to clear up every uncertainty or at least reduce it to an acceptable level. For if the examples are drawn from situations and circumstances likely to be familiar to most people they won't generally involve these kinds of choice structure. If you contrive the example, then you can of course try to do it in a way that makes the choice very clear; but because the example is now contrived it won't have the feel of certainty about it. Return to the Basic Trolley Case. It all looks pretty clear-cut. But built into this example is that you're operating under time pressure; you can't do the various things you might otherwise do to warn those in the tunnel, check out the weight of the trolley, and so forth. You have to make a snap decision – which will definitely see this particular person dead and via your intervention. Do you know all you need to know to be sure that it will definitely save more people than the one person it's going to kill?
Could it be that it is this uncertainty which holds people back - those whom it does hold back - from thinking that it is legitimate to intervene in a way which deliberately kills someone? It's the sense that the benefit, if there turns out to be one, is too speculative initially to justify violating a fundamental moral principle. (Digressing here I would suggest that one reason why many people are unhappy with the politics of amnesty-for-reconciliation, applied to self-confessed murderers and torturers, is that it all but writes off, from the point of view of retributive justice, the terrible wrongs already done to known victims for the more speculative benefit of preventing future victims.) And maybe it's the same kind of worry that's the basis of the discomfort we have in thinking about these puzzles. 'Can we push him or not?' may look to some like toying with the idea of a deliberate killing that may benefit no one.
Maybe we should only think about these issues in relation to real life examples, not invented ones. In the TV movie Escape from Sobibor, some prisoners (this is from memory) about to be executed are told they must each choose another prisoner to die with them; it's in the way of a collective punishment for a failed escape attempt. When they refuse, they're told that in that case 10 prisoners will be shot for each person refusing, and under this threat they do all then choose someone else to die with them. I believe this example is based on real experience, and I think one can reasonably say that, in the conditions they faced and given what they knew about those running the camp, their decision was a life-saving one and morally understandable. It would be hard, in these circumstances, to criticize them for having acted wrongly. Suppose, though, that one of these prisoners had decided otherwise and not chosen someone to die with him. Could he have been criticized for acting wrongly? In some real life examples the judgements of right and wrong seem to be more academic than genuinely action-guiding.
Where all this leaves things I don't know. It's more a posing of questions than anything else.
posted by norm at 4:25 pm | link
I'm coming on this late but it's well worth a read, over at EuroPundits. Selections:
[I]t is loathsome to rub your hands together when things turn out badly, as if Islamist terrorism were not our common enemy, and it is idiotic to claim that America has the same policies now as it did during the Cold War.RTWT.
[To the question: What motivates the supporters of the wall of separation?] It's not racial ideology as in the case of apartheid, it's fear of Palestinian terrorism. To interpret the Israeli-Palestinian situation through the lens of anti-racism, is to condemn yourself to understanding nothing, and moreover to dragging in the most absolute hatred: the racist is the enemy of humanity. If Israel is a race of camp guards, how can we not celebrate when an Israeli is killed? Isn't it one less Mengele? And nothing stops this hatred: the Jews of France who support a race of camp guards are complicit in the worst of crimes. This is the way they stick a swastika on the chests of those on whom they used to stick a yellow star. An animosity is displayed which becomes impossible to reason with and very hard to combat, because, in order to nazify the Jews, it makes use of the very memory of what happened to them.
When a Frenchman is found guilty of an act of anti-Semitism, no one, except the supporters of the extreme Right, would accuse his denouncers of "anti-French racism". When you remark that hatred of Jews is widespread in the Arab-Muslim world, you are accused of stigmatizing Islam.
[T]oday there are two sorts of anti-Semitism: the old French anti-Semitism which we have the duty to mobilise against and the anti-semitism which comes from the excluded or the potential victims of racism. The latter must be put in doubt, minimised and those who speak about it must be discredited by any means possible because it has no place in the great new ideological narrative of a humanity marching towards mutual recognition and equality.
posted by norm at 4:00 pm | link
Dr. Gott, of Princeton University, and Ms. Freedman, of Harvard, have calculated a way to prolong your life, or at least reduce your agony, as a black hole's gravity sucks you in and rips you to shreds. You just need to surround yourself with a gigantic electrically charged doughnut.This is at Alan's, where else?
posted by norm at 3:56 pm | link
The result of John Hawkins's latest poll is out: Right-Of-Center Bloggers Select Their Favorite Editorial Columnists.
Mark Steyn is the number one dude, having been placed first by fully 40% of the participants. The actual Dude comes in ninth. (It will raise some predictable comments from left-field, his inclusion and position in this poll, but I don't think he'll be too troubled.)
posted by norm at 3:54 pm | link
Not that I know a lot about it, but this looks to me like a sober assessment of the present state of things regarding Iraq's power provision:
"Now you need to completely rehabilitate the power system," says al-Azzawi [one of Iraq's most respected power engineers]. This means that it will not be weeks or months but several years before a consistent power supply is established.Read the whole thing.
In the end, there is no better alternative than simply to repair and strengthen the existing power grid, however long it takes (at least three years) and however much it costs (at least $10bn). "People wanted it to be better straight away," Bearpark [a British development expert who spent three years heading reconstruction efforts in Kosovo for the EU] says, "but that is simply unachieveable."
posted by norm at 11:13 am | link
No, not those Westerners. Here's an item about foreigners, possibly including members of al-Qaeda, fighting coalition forces in Iraq:
THE United States is holding two prisoners in Iraq who claim to be British, the general in charge of detention centres said yesterday.The piece also includes an upbeat assessment by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, formerly UK representative to the UN and now prime ministerial envoy to Iraq.
Brigadier-General Karpinski said the purported Britons and six men who claim to be Americans were considered security detainees - those who attacked or helped carry out attacks against coalition troops - and were being interrogated by military intelligence.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock - I'd like to say just in passing - endeared himself to me on an occasion during the last few months when he was being pressed by some TV interviewer, I forget which, who challenged one of his responses with 'That wasn't my question'. Self-possessed and unflappable as ever, Sir Jeremy replied 'But that's my answer'.
posted by norm at 11:11 am | link
Andrew Anthony will doubtless be taking some flak for an outspoken dismissal of religion today. It contains this, amongst other such things:
All religions are at root as stupid as each other. That, I feel, is a sentiment we don't hear expressed nearly enough these days… Religion - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc, etc - is by definition irrational and, more than that, it is an irrationality that lays claim to the complete truth.I have myself been resolutely atheist ever since I started to reflect on these matters, and have always been perplexed by those who, unable to accept belief in any deity, nevertheless stop short of out-and-out atheism with some such statement as 'I have as little certainty about the non-existence of God as about the existence of God'. To me this has always seemed like saying that I have no certainties either way about a little green goblin living in my fridge and making himself invisible whenever I open the fridge door.
As Christopher Hitchens once wrote: "I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit."
I was therefore surprised to find myself feeling that Anthony's piece was a bit one-sided. He begins by telling his readers that Marx not only wrote that religion is 'the opium of the people', he also wrote:
Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. [I've slightly amended the translation of this passage.]But Anthony seems not to take a central point of these words. This is that religion (and, as Marx saw it, any powerful and popular belief-system) is likely to embody some important truth, however partially or distortedly it does this; and that is what explains the hold it has. It is not altogether false. This surely must be so with regard to religious belief. According to Marx, it was consolation for avoidable suffering – false consolation, but containing truths about a possible better human future. Thinking beyond Marx and knowing that any foreseeable future will still contain the fact of human mortality, my guess is that religious belief would persist even in the best of achievable worlds given its role in human fears about death. Please don't anyone write to say that it doesn't make it literally true in its purportedly substantive claims. I do not dissent from the opinions I've quoted from Anthony's piece.
posted by norm at 11:05 am | link
There's some interesting reading in my dnoc today, including this lovely reminiscence by Louisa Young of an interview with Johnny Cash. She mentions Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
"You know that book?" he says, his face lighting up.Young goes on to tell how the interview made her realize that she didn't want to be a journalist any longer. Read it. It's a gem.
"I love that book," I say. "And you know that book!" Why am I surprised that Johnny Cash has read Steinbeck?
"Know that book?" he says. "I was that book." He smiles at me. It's kind of like being smiled at by Monument Valley, or the Hoover Dam.
posted by norm at 10:57 am | link
My sitemeter tells me that today someone's visited normblog from a server called nerdsonline.com. That's new to me.
posted by norm at 10:53 am | link
Tuesday, September 16, 2003The use of words
From a Roger Simon take-down:
[W]ithin only six pararaphs Nagourney has evoked the "V" word... or says his interviewees have. Never mind that fifty-eight thousand US soldiers died in Vietnam while the totals for the Iraq War are not even five hundred and eight or that in Vietnam we were working to prop up a fascist regime while in Iraq we removed one.No, do mind; and read the rest. Also this comprehensive fisking by Michael Totten of someone who believes that those 'who massacre UN humanitarian workers… are "terrorists," not terrorists, meaning they really aren't terrorists. They are something else.'
posted by norm at 12:16 pm | link
There is a commentary over at Solomonia on the Geoffrey Wheatcroft article I linked to yesterday. Have a look also at this which I came upon by way of Solomon's site.
posted by norm at 12:12 pm | link
My postbag this morning includes a flyer soliciting a subscription to the New Statesman. I open the envelope; smiling face staring out at me: John Pilger. A way back I learned things from Pilger's writing about East Timor. But I'll pass.
posted by norm at 12:09 pm | link
Russell Thirgood reports in The Age:
Four years after the East Timorese people voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia, justice remains elusive for the victims of the violence that followed.It's a story of officers who colluded in the violence being still in post, and of the Indonesian authorities refusing to cooperate with the East Timorese. Read the rest.
[Ana Xavier da Conceio Lemos] was among the estimated 1300 East Timorese people murdered by the Indonesian security forces and pro-Indonesia militia in 1999. The victims included political activists, community leaders, students, priests and nuns.
The crimes committed were so widespread and systematic that they are considered to be crimes against humanity. However, four years on, most of the victims and their families are still waiting for justice.
posted by norm at 12:06 pm | link
Kieran Healy, a block or two across at Crooked Timber, has a nice follow-up to the item that's been going the rounds on word recognition, and which I sent you over to Alan Brain's for on Saturday.
posted by norm at 12:03 pm | link
It may seem rather pointless to link to a piece via Andrew Sullivan, but who knows, there may be a few visitors here who haven't been there, and the more readers there are for this, about the reporting from Iraq, the better. An inkling:
For some reason or another, Mr. Bush chose to make his principal case on weapons of mass destruction, which is still an open case. This war could have been justified any time on the basis of human rights, alone.Read the whole thing.
There is corruption in our business. We need to get back to basics. This war should be studied and talked about. In the run up to this war, to my mind, there was a gross abdication of responsibility. You have to be ready to listen to whispers.
posted by norm at 12:24 am | link
Monday, September 15, 2003An African hero
Sousa Jamba writes:
I was recently with some friends in the bar of the Freedom Hotel in Mwanza, Tanzania's second-largest city, on the shores of Lake Victoria. The news on television was that Robert Mugabe had just been given a standing ovation by delegates at the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference in the capital, Dar es Salaam. Over their bottles of Kilimanjaro beer, my friends made clear their admiration for the Zimbabwean president. To them, he was an African hero, a black man brave enough to stand up to a confederacy of arrogant muzungus backed by America and Britain.A case for respecting the sensibilities of the African 'street', anybody?
My friends, like the many supporters of Mugabe throughout Africa, have no time for arguments suggesting their hero has not only feet of clay but hands dripping with blood. To them, all those opposed to him, including thousands of black Zimbabweans, have been duped by the west. In Africa, Zimbabwe is becoming a highly emotive issue; and Mugabe has managed, by appealing to crude racial solidarity, to win many hearts and minds.
Mugabe has increasingly proved to be ruthless and thoroughly evil.
For many Africans, the Mugabe phenomenon can be seen only through the crude prism of race. I wish they were more aware of recent east African history. After all, there was once, across the lake by which we stood, another black hero. To the delight of many, he made white men carry him on a palanquin and threw out the Asians. His name was Idi Amin.
posted by norm at 11:51 am | link
The Guardian today has a leader worrying about the Telegraph's new Beebwatch feature and concluding thus:
Mr Moore's campaign - echoed by his Murdoch thinkalikes - is likely to have an effect. All the instincts of the governors and managers will be to play safe and tack to the right. Mission accomplished.As I've pointed out before, the flaw in this line of advocacy is that it's not the best way of defending something of value to pass over its failures in silence – the failure in this case being the BBC's betrayal of its public duty of impartiality over the Iraq war. Writers at the Guardian aren't applying the same forgiving approach to Tony Blair. (You know, he may have been part of the intervention that rid Iraq of a political monster, but shhhhhh... where is the green parrot, who's to blame for David Kelly?) Maybe the Guardian's leader writer failed to mention the Beeb's failures because unable to see them, the Beeb having become so much like the Guardian itself on such matters.
This constant undermining of the BBC is a dangerous game. No institution can withstand such remorselessly hostile coverage indefinitely. One day the enemies of the licence fee may even get their way. Only then will Mr Moore's readers realise what they have lost - and quite what value it was.
posted by norm at 11:48 am | link
So says The Dude. This tells a different story. Me, I'm just passing both of them on.
posted by norm at 11:43 am | link
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in defending the Observer from charges of anti-Semitism and reflecting on sensitivities about anti-Semitism more generally, expresses this worry:
Other British Jews have talked of their pain and estrangement in the face of mounting hostility towards Israel. This was precisely what the Jewish critics of Zionism once foresaw. David Alexander and Claude Montefiore, respectively President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, wrote in the Times in 1917, shortly before - and in the unfulfilled hope of forestalling - the Balfour Declaration which favoured 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'.Wheatcroft doesn't directly endorse the thought that he refers to here. But why should having a national territory create for the Jews, and the Jews alone, a problem about Jewish people living in other countries - make them 'strangers in their native lands'?
To create 'a Jewish nationality in Palestine ... must have the effect throughout the world of stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands, and of undermining their hard-won position as citizens and nationals of those lands'. Their words sometimes look very prescient.
In other words, a Jewish state might not 'answer the "Jewish question"', but rather complicate it.
Whatever else is said about Israel, it quite obviously is not a nation like all others, or these very controversies would not be taking place… they come close to confirming that old foreboding that a Jewish state would compromise the position of western Jews in their own countries.
Thanks to Ilana Walsh for drawing this piece to my attention.
posted by norm at 11:40 am | link
Avraham Burg has an unhappy paragraph here about suicide bombings. But this, and much else, is spot on:
There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out.Meanwhile, a group of Israeli and Palestinian women are trying to secure a place for women's voices in the peace talks.
posted by norm at 11:35 am | link
Mosey on over to Stephen Pollard's and take a look at the changes to his blog.
posted by norm at 11:33 am | link
Sunday, September 14, 2003The life and soul of the Western
This fine Sunday morning I'm heading off for a day out of Manchester and am in carefree mode. This is what I wish to sound off about. Over at Brad DeLong's comment box some days ago (link is to the item - I couldn't find the comments again, but trust me, this comment was there), J.D. Cook had the following to say about my list of ten great westerns:
Any Western list that omits "The Searchers" isn't worth the electrons it's displayed with.Now, I felt entirely relaxed about JDC's perfunctory dismissal. After all, I hadn't presented my list as being the ten greatest Westerns, nor even as being my ten favourite Westerns; no, I expressly insisted that it was just 'ten great Westerns'. Not only that. I love The Searchers. It just didn't get on my list that day, and to be honest it probably wouldn't get on it today either, though the list would be different today because I forgot The Long Riders (Walter Hill – 1980), as my friend Morris in Leeds reminded me.
Therefore, it is not because I'm wounded by JDC's words, but out of a disinterested (which doesn't here mean 'uninterested') concern for the pursuit of truth that I wish to set out reasons showing why those words cannot be taken as persuasive. First off, I'm assuming that, when JDC says 'not worth the electrons it's displayed with', he's saying – whatever else – that it's not a good list. If he isn't saying that, you can put everything that follows down to a misunderstanding. And I'm assuming that, in saying my list isn't a good list, JDC is committed to the view that there could be some good lists of Westerns, or at least one good list of them, because the 'not worth etc' statement loses its critical edge if he thinks there are no such good lists. My list would then be entirely normal. On these assumptions (and the further assumption that JDC is male, which I just somehow feel to be so - and if I'm wrong about it, great breast-beating and rending of garments in apology, guilt and shame) I endeavour to show that, whether or not my list of ten Westerns is a good list, the fact that it omits The Searchers isn't a sound reason for claiming that it isn't a good list.
I get JDC to compile his own best list of ten Westerns, ranked 1 to 10, and we assume that it includes The Searchers and that it is a good list. Then I ask JDC to nominate his eleventh best Western. Then I ask him to substitute his eleventh best Western, which wasn't initially on the list, for his tenth best Western, which was. We now have JDC's second list. Either this too is a good list or it isn't. If it isn't there's only one good list of 10 Westerns according to JDC – a possibility I note and hold to one side. If the second list is also a good list, then I get JDC to go back to his first list and now substitute his eleventh best Western for The Searchers. So we have a third list, and this now, in turn, either is a good list or it isn't. If it is, then there can be a good list of ten Westerns which doesn't include The Searchers and my defence against JDC's hasty dismissal of my own list is concluded.
But if the third list – the one with JDC's eleventh best Western substituted for The Searchers – isn't a good list, we are left having to explore two logical avenues. (Well, you don't actually have to. You could go out for the day, like I'm soon going to.) These two avenues are: that there is, according to JDC, only one good list of ten great Westerns, because if his eleventh best Western is substituted for anything on that list, the new list thereby generated is busted; and that, if JDC's eleventh best Western is substituted for The Searchers, the new list thereby generated is busted.
Now, think about how bad this means the eleventh best Western has to be. It can't just be that it's a bit less good than JDC's tenth best Western, and a lot less good than The Searchers; and more generally is an average sort of a movie. Because in either case its presence alongside nine other movies none of which, we know for certain, disqualifies the list from being a good list, its sole presence wrecks the whole list. Think about it: you have a list of ten Westerns, nine of which are, ex hypothesi, good to great, and then you have one which is less good, maybe just average. Would you want to say that the whole list was no good? No, you wouldn't. You'd say, surely, that this was an excellent list, but with one weakness. Unless you were a fanatic or something. Not that I'm suggesting JDC is a fanatic, but he may just have missed one or two steps here. No, JDC's eleventh best movie would have to be an absolute stinker, as bad as, or worse than, Life Is Beautiful, for its presence alongside nine good-to-great Westerns to render the composite list no good.
Here's an analogy. You're going to hold a gathering of ten people and you want Tracey to be there with nine other great and fascinating friends of yours, because Tracey is a wonderful person: charming, generous, funny, interesting, you name it. She is, as they say, the life and soul of the party. But Tracey's going to be in Potgietersrus that day, which isn't where you're having the party. So you invite Derek instead. Now, if Derek is merely quiet and even a bit dull, this may make the gathering less good than it would have been with Tracey. But with nine other great and fascinating friends you should still be able to have an enjoyable event. Derek would have to be a real bastard, rude, disruptive, more of that sort of thing, for your party to be spoiled altogether.
For JDC's claim to be viable, there have to be, in the history of the cinema, just his ten best Westerns that are good enough to go on a list of ten great Westerns, with no eleventh one available which is anywhere near being in the right ballpark. All potential eleventh bests have to be really rotten. And I submit that this is an unreasonable picture of the actual cinematic state of affairs, and would be agreed to by no panel of authoritative judges on the movies or even just regular Western-lovers. So my list may be no good, but if it's no good, it isn't just because it excludes The Searchers.
I think I've been doing too much blogging. I'm outa here.
posted by norm at 11:56 am | link


text: they require a wtx (rather than atx 2.0X) power supply so that's one consideration... becuase the combined current requirements for the +5 and +3.3 volt rails is in excess of 150 watts... it's unlikely you gonna find a powersupply under 400watts that provides that... the other issue being that you're not gonna shoehorn a standard wtx powersupply in a 1u 2u case so you may be waiting on a commercial solution... On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Greg Lindahl wrote: > On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 11:40:43AM -0400, Thomas R Boehme wrote: > > > We are currently planning to buy a new Athlon-MP cluster > > I know AMD recommends a 460W power supply, but I am wondering if a less > > powerful power supply (e.g. 300W) would be enough for a diskless node. Any > > experiences or educated guesses? > > A typical modern drive consumes six to eight watts. > > g (my dash is busted :() > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel Jaeggli joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu Academic User Services consult at gladstone.uoregon.edu PGP Key Fingerprint: 1DE9 8FCA 51FB 4195 B42A 9C32 A30D 121E -------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Karl Marx -- Introduction to the critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the right, 1843.

subset: commoncrawl


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text:
Here is the original sketch.
Once I had an idea and sketch put together I researched some whale, giraffe, and pangolin images, then drew the whole thing into a composition. Okay, fact-check reality is the drawing was so huge that the two whales on the left were on one sheet of paper and the whale on the right was on another sheet, and the composition came together in Photoshop.
Original composite drawing.
Detail of whales on the left.
Detail of Whale on the right.
After the drawing phase was complete, I set about finding textures that would work for all the different elements. For the whales, giraffes, and cephalopods, I referenced actual photos of the animals but altered the color and manipulated the shapes to fit within the drawing. I found other textures to fill in the nonorganic areas which were also color and shape manipulated. I then added shadows and highlights to all of the elements. Finally, I found and manipulated background elements to work in the composition.
The art at this point.
I removed the pencil lines here so you can see what
the texture/color looks like without the pencil work.
Color/texture Progress from pencil to completion.
At this point I was really happy with the results. The problem was that this would not print well on a t-shirt. The idea was scrapped, as far as shirts go, and the image was added to my portfolio.
On a whim, and mostly to see how it would score on Threadless, I submitted another design called "Speed is Relative" (see previous post) in this same non-print friendly style. It was my highest scoring design and it ended up printing months after it was submitted. They managed to print it beautifully.
For this reason, I started considering submitting "T time" for scoring. I had to make the design blend into the tee better so I used a nice Photoshop brush to round and fade the bottom on the composition a little. It also made the composition more vertical, and less square, and brought more emphasis to the characters.
Design to be submitted?
I have not submitted the design. I was thinking it might work well in a drawing contest. I think I will get some feedback before I decide.
Thanks for looking and let me know what you think.


text: Hi there, I have a debian squeeze / ispconfig 3 installation on my server. I actually have an error in ISPC crons logs: "postqueue: warning: Mail system is down -- accessing queue directly" I don't know why I have this issue cause Postfix seems work actually. Maybe it's only related to local mails? How can I solved that? Thanks guys.


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E. M. Coots' Sons Funeral Home, established in 1860, is an independent family owned funeral home that has been serving Southern Indiana for five generations. We are committed to providing a caring and compassionate service to every family we serve. Combined, our staff has over 100 years of experience in helping families have a dignified service for their loved one.
Coots Funeral Home is a full service funeral home. We counsel our families on all the available options so that we can provide the service that best memorializes their loved one. From traditional services to direct cremation, our knowledgeable staff will help families plan a service that best suits their needs.
Our staff is always available for (free) pre-funeral planning. Which is an important step of relieving your loved ones of difficult decisions during trying times.
In these ever changing times, Coots Funeral Home is here to meet the needs of your family, as it has for over 150 years.


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Compliant Concept AG (Compliant Concept) is a provider of systems for the prevention of pressure ulcers. It is a spinoff of EMPA Dubendorf and the ETH Zurich. The company develops intelligent bed systems for the treatment and prevention of pressure ulcers. The company's mobility monitor provides efficient and safe pressure ulcer risk management including safe care, relief of nursing staff and clinical risk assessment. Compliant Concept is headquartered in Dubendorf, Switzerland.
The company aims to contribute to a dignified life and aging of bedridden patients to provide appropriate care affordable. To this end, Compliant Concept plans to launch therapy bed system for prophylaxis and therapy of decubitus.
- To Buy a Copy Of This Report: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis-details/compliant-concept-ag-product-pipeline-analysis
This report is a source for data, analysis and actionable intelligence on the compliant concept AG portfolio of pipeline products. The report provides detailed analysis on each pipeline product with information on the indication, the development stage, trial phase, product milestones, pipeline territory, estimated approval date, and estimated launch date
Each pipeline product is profiled to cover information on product description, function, technology, indication, and application. The report is also supplemented with a detailed company profile and information on clinical trials, wherever applicable.
This report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research and in-house analysis by GlobalData's team of industry experts.
- Detailed company profile with information on business description, key company facts, major products and services, key competitors, key employees, locations and subsidiaries and recent developments.
- Detailed coverage on all the pipeline products, by equipment type, by therapy area, by development stage, and by trial phase.
- Information on product milestones and pipeline territory for each product, the estimated approval date, and estimated launch date.
- Profile of each pipeline product with additional information on product description, function, technology, indication(s), and application.
- Data on relevant clinical trials and product patent details, wherever applicable.
- Information on clinical trial, wherever applicable, is supplemented with information on trial phase, trial status, trial objective, trial design, target patients, unique physician identifier, primary point, secondary point, acronym, participants inclusion, participants exclusion, interventions, trial results, trial start date, trial end date, study type, trial site, trial funding, age eligibility, and gender eligibility.
- For All Reports Kindly Visit: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/
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- To Read The Complete Report with TOC: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/157966


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Hlemmur Square
Join us for our soft opening! Between now and the final completion of our renovations we will be open to a limited number of reservations while we test all of our systems. If you are adventurous, in Reykjavik in the early spring, and looking for a unique opportunity to be among the first heads on our pillows, we would love the opportunity to have you as our guest.
Hlemmur Square opens in Reykjavik in late spring, combining the social experience of a hostel with the amenities of a hotel. We have created an experience that is new to Iceland with affordable yet stylish hostel accommodations as well as luxurious hotel rooms, with all guests able to access the shared spaces. The lobby, restaurant, lounge and library are designed for socializing in relaxed style.
Built in the 1930s, our five-story art-deco building embraces old and new design elements with a traditionally appointed, vibrant lobby that recalls the colorful houses that make up the city's landscape, while the rooms are modern and highlight Reykjavik's contemporary look.
Located conveniently near Reykjavik's shopping, nightlife, restaurants, galleries and swimming pools, Hlemmur Square also features an attentive concierge team who can help plan your adventure to popular Iceland attractions and current city events.
Please note:
Cancellation policy: 24h advance notice
Late cancellation or no-show a one night charge
Payment upon arrival by cash or credit cards
Check in from 14.00
Check out before 10.00
Breakfast not included
Taxes included
Availability & RatesTo view availability and prices please select dates and click 'Update Dates'
Hostel Facilities & Policies
- 24 Hour Reception
- 24 Hour Security
- Adaptors
- Age Restriction
- Bar
- Bicycle hire
- Bicycle parking
- Board Games
- Book Exchange
- Breakfast Not Included
- Café
- Card Phones
- Common Room
- Credit Cards Accepted
- Currency Exchange
- Elevator
- Free City Maps
- Free Internet Access
- Free WiFi
- Games Room
- Hair Dryers
- Hair Dryers For Hire
- Hot Showers
- House Keeping
- Internet Access
- Key Card Access
- Self-Catering Facilities
- Late check-out
- Laundry Facilities
- Linen Included
- Security Lockers
- Luggage Storage
- Meals Available
- No Curfew
- Non Smoking
- Pool Table
- Reading Light
- Reception (limited hours)
- Restaurant
- Safe Deposit Box
- Taxes included
- Tea & Coffee Making Facilities
- Tours/Travel Desk
- Towels For Hire
- Vending Machines
- Washing Machine
Cancellation PolicyThis property has a 1 day cancellation policy. Failure to cancel within this time will result in a cancellation charge equal to the first night of your stay.
Must-Read Hostel InfoThis property has specific Terms & Conditions.
Please note:
Cancellation policy: 24h advance notice
Late cancellation or no-show one night charge
Payment upon arrival by cash or credit cards
Check in from 15.00
Check out before 11.00
Breakfast not included
Taxes included
DirectionsShow MapHide Map
From Keflavik Airport: Transport from the international airport to Hlemmur Square can be by private taxi or by the Airport Shuttle.
Reservations for the shuttle can be made upon arrival or in advance by contacting our concierge desk. We are located next to the Hlemmur bus terminal, making us an easy connection for all city buses.
Located Near
Hlemmur Square is the landmark building that overlooks its namesake public square. We are on the East side of downtown on the main shopping street. The square is well known to each and every Icelander, so if you have any trouble finding us (you won't) just ask anybody on the street how to get to Hlemmur.


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VA: No evidence of allegations in Phoenix
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's head of veteran health services told lawmakers Wednesday that a preliminary review found no evidence to support recent allegations of corruption and unnecessary deaths at the agency's hospital in Phoenix.
The Phoenix Veterans Health Care Center has been under fire in recent weeks over allegations that up to 40 patients may have died because of delays in care and that, to hide delays in treatment, the hospital kept a secret list of patients waiting for appointments.
"To date, we have found no evidence of a secret list, and we have found no patients who have died because they have been on a wait list," said Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health at the VA's Veterans Health Administration.
Petzel's comments came during a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing in Washington.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general is investigating allegations that have prompted outrage from political leaders in Arizona and around the country. A trio of Arizona congressmen this week called on the head of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care Center to step down.
VA hospitals around the country have been struggling to handle the huge volume of patients who need medical attention, including aging vets from World War II, Korea and Vietnam and a newer influx from wars of the past decade. In the past year, VA facilities in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Washington state have been linked to delays in patient care or poor oversight.
Dr. Samuel Foote, who had worked for the Phoenix VA for more than 20 years before retiring in December, brought the allegations to light and says his complaints to his supervisors were ignored. He accused Arizona VA leaders of collecting bonuses for reducing patient wait times, but he said the purported successes resulted from data manipulation rather than improved service for veterans.
"Everybody knew that this was going on," Foote said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee made a special point of bringing up the issue at the start of a hearing on a different issue.
"We will get to the bottom of what has happened in Phoenix, but we will reach conclusions based on an objective investigation of the facts — not TV reports — but an objective investigation of the facts," said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chairman of the committee.
The allegations should not be allowed "to impugn excellent work done throughout this country by hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses and administrators on all levels" at the VA, Sanders said.
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This article is from the archive of our partner .
According to an important study done by the company that runs a website for cheaters—yes, we're talking about AshleyMadison.com, which seems to be extremely good at marketing itself these days—the cheating-est New York-area town is Great Neck, Long Island. Yet there are others, too. In fact, according to The New York Post's Don Kaplan, New York itself may be something of a cheating hotbed:
"There seems to be a disproportionate amount of cheating spouses in affluent areas and neighborhoods in New York," said Noel Biderman, the CEO of AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people looking for extramarital sex, which crunched the numbers.
This may be because, according to Biderman, people are more likely to cheat because of affluence and opportunity, i.e., people cheat because they can (see John Edwards). And New York City is full of people, and many of them have Internet connections. Said Biderman: "In the New York area in particular, with successful people there may be more cheating going on because the more opportunity you're given — and that's the reason you see athletes, celebrities and politicians involved in affairs — the more other people thrust themselves at you."
Make a note: These New York City cheating opportunists apparently reside in Park Slope, the Upper East Side, Forest Hills, TriBeCa, and, at number 6 on the list, New City, which is an affluent suburb just north of Manhattan (no word on which of these regions have FiOS). There's a gender divide in cheating that Biderman discusses as well, saying that female cheating is linked to success (the more successful, the more likely to cheat) while men cheat after having kids. So, keep your eyes peeled for successful women and dads, they may be up to no good!
All this, of course, should be taken with an emormous grain of salt, as the rankings were calculated based on Ashley Madison data—i.e., those stated neighborhoods have the most people on Ashley Madison (in Great Neck, "3.02 percent of the town's adult residents" were members). People can, obviously, cheat without the aid of that site—and historically have. But if your husband or wife is on Ashley Madison, you may want to think about your marriage just a wee bit.
New York City residents clear caches now.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Hope College will present pianist Beth Quimby-Hopkins on Tuesday, Sept. 11, at 7:30 p.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
A 1999 Hope College graduate, Quimby-Hopkins is currently the director of music at BuffaloAcademy of the Sacred Heart in Buffalo, N.Y., and a former member of the keyboard faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Md. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in piano from Hope, and a Master of Music degree in piano from the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
Her program at Hope includes "Suite, Op. 14" by Bela Bartok, "Sonata in A minor, Op. post. 143" by Franz Schubert, "Etude in C major, Op. 23 No. 2" by Anton Rubenstein, and works by Franz Liszt and JoanTower.
In addition to her piano achievements, Quimby-Hopkins has sung professionally in a number of church choirs and select ensembles throughout the Northeast and Midwest. She is a member of Vocalis Chamber Choir, Western New York's premier a cappella vocal group.
Dimnent Memorial Chapel is located at 277 College Ave., on College Avenue at 12th Street.


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Children's Art Benefit
The Children's Art Benefit Dinner, Raffle and Silent Auction will be held at the Cedar Key Community Center (6th and F St.) on Feb. 28 at 6 p.m. Gourmet food will be provided by the Island Room Restaurant and there are wonderful items available for the raffle and silent auction. All proceeds from this event will be used to sponsor art programs for the children of Cedar Key who have no art teacher in their school. Tickets ($25 per person) are available at the CK Welcome Center or from CK Art Center Board Members. Come join the fun and support a great cause.
Health fair in Cedar Key
The Cedar Key Lions Club holds its annual Community Health and Wellness Fair from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 809 6th St. in Cedar Key. The event is open to the public. There will be food, drawings, and a host of information for all adults.
Brunch/lunch will be available for a nominal donation to the Cedar Key Lions Club.
Knitters, crocheters gatherings
The Kona Joe's knitting club meets every Friday at 3 p.m. on the deck of the eatery on State Road 24 in Cedar Key. It's free and all knitters are welcome.
Songwriter to perform in Cedar Key
Milwaukee-based journalist, author and songwriter Jim Hoehn will be performing Saturday, March 2 at the Big Deck Raw Bar.
In recent years, Hoehn has opened for a wide range of songwriters, including Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider, Jerry Jeff Walker, Rodney Crowell, Warren Zevon, Mac McAnally, James McMurtry, Roger McGuinn, Radney Foster, Kinky Friedman and a host of others.
His latest CD, "Silhouette of a Fool," was released last year. His two previous CDs, "Royalty Check Hotel" and "Deadline Penitentiary," were recorded with some of Austin's finest musicians, including guitarist/producer John Inmon, who was for many years the lead guitarist for Jerry Jeff Walker as part of the Lost Gonzo Band.
3D Show and potter featured at CKAC
The next show at the Cedar Key Arts Center is its Open Community 3D Show in the Main Gallery. Items need to be at the Art Center by 5 p.m. Feb. 26. The Opening and Artists' Reception will be Saturday, March 2, from 4-6 p.m. Entry fee is $5 for each entry with a limit of three submissions per artist.
Also, in the MAG, will be Marty Haythorn, a nationally recognized potter from Thomasville, Ga., who will be exhibiting his Native American influenced pots. As a child, he met Maria Martinez and other exceptional Native American potters and began a lifelong passion for pottery making. In the early 90s he began experimenting with indigenous clays, pit-firing and stone burnishing. He now designs and produces original pieces in the Southeastern tradition.
FFA caladium sale
Save room in your flower gardens for beautiful and colorful caladiums.
The Cedar Key FFA will be selling caladiums during the first weeks of March. The fundraiser will help support projects around the school, including the gardens and greenhouse. Ultimately, this will help fight hunger in the community as we continue to raise fresh vegetables.
The FFA is working to increase its vegetable donations to the Cedar Key Food Pantry.
March 5
Identity Theft seminar
Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union will be holding a free Identity Theft Seminar open to the public, on Tuesday, March 5, from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Chiefland Service Center, 2153 NW 11th Drive, Chiefland.
Teachers of Year honored
The Levy County School Board is hosting a reception honoring the Teacher of the Year for each of the county's schools on Tuesday, March 5 at 5:30 p.m. at Hilltop School Auditorium in the old Bronson High School. The board will hold its regular meeting following the reception.
March 7
Poets to hold annual reading
The Cedar Key Poets will give their annual reading Thursday, March 7, at 5 p.m. Their new 2013 chapbook, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, will be on sale. Refreshments will be served. All are welcome.
March 9
Old Families reunion
The Cedar Key Old Families Reunion, will be held March 9, at the Cedar Key Community Center. Bring a covered dish and enjoy reunion with friends and family. The Community Center will be open by 10 a.m. and the reunion goes on until around 2 p.m. Welcome and dinner begin at noon. For more information, contact Brenda at 352-543-5508.
March 14
CK Woman's Club fashion show
The Cedar Key Woman's Club annual luncheon and fashion show begins with the opening of the boutiques at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 14 at the Cedar Key Community Center. Lunch is served at noon, followed by the fashion show. Fashions are courtesy of Deja Vu.
Tickets are $12 per person and are available from club members, at Deja Vu and Cedar Key Emporium. Proceeds benefit the Cedar Key School.
March 23
'Paint Out', auction set
Cedar Key Arts Center will be hosting "Paint Out" on Monday, March 23, from 1-5 p.m. with an auction beginning at 5:30 p.m. upstairs at the Arts Center. Bidders are encouraged to preview works in progress.
Watch a local artist create a work of art in an afternoon, various mediums will be on display.
At 5:30 p.m. an auction of the newly created work will be held upstairs at the Arts Center.
April 6
Bicycle ride for education
A bicycle ride on the Chiefland and Tri-County greenway trails will benefit the Levy County Schools Foundation on Saturday, April 6. Registration will be at Chiefland Shopping Center, 102 N. Main St./U.S. Highway 19/98, Chiefland. The designated ride is up to 48 miles long, with the option to ride as little or as much as you want. There will be stops at Fanning Springs, Old Town and Cross City with large food and beverage provisions until noon.
April 11-14
Levy Fair dates
The Levy County Fair will be April 11-14 at the Williston Airport Industrial Park, across from the Williston Horseman's Park. Visit www.LevyCountyFair.com to learn about the events and enter the contests.
April 19
Farm Bureau scholarship applications
The Levy County Farm Bureau is accepting applications for our 2013 Academic & Career/Technical Scholarships Award.
Deadline for getting applications in is April 19 at 5 p.m.
For more information, call 352-493-4780.
April 20
Apalachicola antique & classic boat show
The 15th annual Antique & Classic Boat Show in Apalachicola will be Saturday, April 20. There will be classic boats, home-built traditional craft, work boats, classic designs, antique outboard motor collections, antique and classic automobiles, artwork and more.
For details and applications go to www.antiqueboatshow.org or call 850-653-9419.
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Bee Removal in West Palm Beach
Bees are usually of the highest concern for homeowners. The dangers associated with bees in West Palm Beach make them a priority when discovered. Bees can build their nests on the outside of homes, in attics, on bushes, trees, sheds, playscapes and even in old cars. Bees can build large hives in the exterior wall of homes, in attics and trees and usually require the hive to be removed to gain control. The climate in West Palm Beach Florida is very favorable for their populations to thrive and remain active through most of the year. Removal of these nests is usually recommended to be done by a professional due to the dangers of disturbing them. O'Hara Pest Control will remove any bee hives around your home or office in order to prevent a serious problem occuring.
Swarming is the honey bee's method of colony reproduction. The old queen and about half of the worker bees leave their former nest and seek a new home, usually in the spring but sometimes at other times of the year when local conditions permit. To start the process, certain worker bees, called "scouts," begin to canvas the surrounding territory for a potential new nesting site even before the swarm leaves its original colony.
A departing swarm consists of a large number of bees flying in a cloud that seems to drift along through the air. People not familiar with honey bees are generally frightened by such a mass, which can contain 5,000 to 20,000 bees, but unless a bee becomes tangled in someone's hair, it isn't likely to sting. The queen is in the group, but not leading it. Usually within 100 to 200 yards of the original hive, the bees land on an object and form a cluster, which looks like a seething, fuzzy glob of insects. Sometimes bees fly from the cluster to collect water and food, but most workers leaving the cluster are scouts that search out potential new home sites for the swarm. When they return from a good site, they dance on the cluster to communicate the location of their find.
O'Hara Pest Control Bee Removal Experts
An O'Hara Pest Control exterminator can evaluate the type of stinging bees around the home, office, and yard. Due to the variety of bees it may require a specialized approach as African Honey bees are extremely dangerous. A trained bee removal specialist will perform the initial treatment with a variety of materials and the proper protective equipment to eliminate, and remove if necessary the entire bee hive. An O'Hara Pest Control maintenance program will allow frequent treatments of new bee nests that are starting up, thus providing constant coverage. Call O'Hara Pest Control Bee services today at 561-655-9011 if you have a bee hive or bee problem that you need to have removed.


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ABB to supply worlds longest underground cable system
High-voltage cable will increase capacity and reliability of Swedish power grid.01/04/2012
Badger Meter to buy Racine Federated01/04/2012
Shell chooses Parker Hannifin as instrumentation supplier
Enterprise framework agreement covers the supply of instrument tubing fittings, manifolds, valves, process-to-instrument valves and related products.01/04/2012
Linear Technology acquires Dust Networks
The acquisition will enable Linear to offer a complete high-performance wireless sensor networking solution.12/21/2011
2012 Automation Technology in Process Manufacturing (ATPM 2012) Conference
ATPM 2012 will be held in The Woodlands, Texas (near Houston) May 21-23, 2012, and is requesting papers and presentations to be submitted soon. Don't miss the deadline to partcipate12/20/2011
Real Fukushima Meltdown Cause May Be Earthquake, Not Tsunami
Science Journalist Mitsuhiko Tanaka, Says that If the Safety Incident At Fukushima Nuclear Plant Was Caused by the Earthquake and Not the Tsunmi, Japans Government Will Be Forced to Review Its Quake-Resistance Standards12/17/2011
Mike Caliel takes over at Invensys Operations Management12/13/2011
Illinois Water Hack Causes Confusion
Illinois Authorities and the DHS and FBI Disagree12/05/2011
McCrometer Forms New Unit via Acquisition
Developing and Selling Complete Wireless Solutions for Agriculture and Rural Water Management Applications12/05/2011
Condition monitoring for nuclear power industry enters the cloud
Process Data Monitor (PDM) solution identifies unusual and negative trends before performance is affected.12/01/2011
New Energy Object Defined in ODVA Specifications
Specifications for ODVA's Family of CIP Networks Feature 26 Updates That Enable Manufacturers to Meet a Broader Scope of Industrial Automation Applications11/17/2011
ABB to Acquire Powercorp
ABB, the Power and Automation Technology Group, Has Agreed to Acquire Powercorp, an Australian Renewable Power Automation Company. This Acquisition Strengthens ABB's Portfolio of Control Technologies Used to Manage the Integration of Renewable Energy Sources11/15/2011
Siemens Canada acquires Prairie West Technical Services
Purchase supports long-term growth strategy for Saskatchewan and Western Canada.11/11/2011
Siemens U.S. sales up 12% and orders intake up 8% in fiscal 201111/11/2011
Boyes Named Institute of Measurement and Control Fellow
Walt Boyes, Editor in Chief of Control Magazine, Has Been Named a Fellow of the Institute of Measurement and Control11/11/2011
Siemens to acquire U.S. company Vistagy, Inc.
Siemens drives forward its expansion in industrial software.11/09/2011
Rockwell Reports Outstanding Sales Growth; Strong Quarter for Controls Division
Company reports sales of $1.65 billion, up 22% percent year over year.11/08/2011
Automation Foundations Form Joint Company
The five major automation foundations have developed a single common solution for field device integration (FDI).11/07/2011
ISA Automation Week Rebounds Big Time
Under the guidance and leadership of Process Automation Hall of Fame inductee and Control columnist Greg McMillan, ISA Automation Week got its game back.11/07/2011
Eurotherm Nanodac Recorder/Controller Now Integral to InFusion
New data integrity and integration capabilities help customers achieve operational excellence.11/04/2011


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I have two interfaces on my VPS:
eth0 and
eth0:0. I want to block incoming packets on port 80 on
eth0:0 using iptables. I tried this, but it doesn't work:
iptables -A INPUT -i "eth0:0" -p tcp --destination-port 80 -j DROP
If I change
eth0:0 to
eth0 it works correctly. What is the problem?