Politblogo

Progressive blogger makes interesting analogy, defines democracy

Adrian McNair at Popular Doctrine, a fellow member of the Progressive Bloggers aggregator site, gives us a very interesting analogy:

Thousands of protesters opposed to the war in Afghanistan rallied across Canada yesterday to show their “support for the troops by bringing them home”. Isn’t that a little bit like supporting the police by cutting police services?

I believe that this "progressive" analogy requires little comment.

Later, he offers his concept of democracy, presumably also as a "progressive":

I can see the point of opinion from both sides, but here I think the protesters are out of line. The only process in Canada must be the Democratic process. This means we need discussion, in the House of Commons, in the caucus of the Conservative Party, in the media by senior members of the Harper Government.

Emphasis his.

Culinary sneerage is not always justified

I am ambivalent about directly discussing my living arrangements in Amrika, including my general location; and perhaps irrationally so, as I have obliquely revealed it from time to time, and many of my regular readers already know.  This occasionally leads me to a certain amount of consternation, because one of my hobbies---and the only one that costs me any serious money---is fine and/or interesting dining.  And living in the general vicinity of a major American metropolis, I try to take advantage of the culinary options when I can.    So I have an urge to write reviews of the places I eat, but I suppress them because of my policy of no direct allusion to my living arrangements.  It's a loss because I suspect I could increase my hits by writing about it.

Nevertheless, I have finally found a restaurant which I can write about, and that's because it's a megachainrestaurant, the Olive Garden, where I have eaten for the first time in my life.

Now, I have read all over teh internets and with considerable frequency a large number of criticisms of the Olive Garden, especially from the American liberal blogosphere.  It usually happens that occasionally, American liberal bloggers and blog commentators decide to play out a stereotype.  Some effete liberal bigcityslicker decides to mock the podunk ignorant rednecks by observing that they do not eat at the authentic Italian family restaurant but instead display an immense lack of taste by eating at a prole restaurant like the Olive Garden, displaying their addiction to prepackaged American mass culture from which liberal sophisticates are wholly exempt.  For some reason, I see this a lot from New Yorkers talking about tourists.

I realize that this may merely be effete liberal bigcityslicker practice going on, but I can't help but imagine there's a huge dollop of fat-phobia involved.

So, without further ado, I am here to inform you, after my first attempt, that the Olive Garden is---wait for it---not that bad.

Why did I go to the Olive Garden?  Well, one happened to be closeby, and after seeing a lot of criticism of it, I at first avoided it.  But then I became suspicious about the criticism, that there was a certain amount of holiness and snobbery about it.  Now, I actually don't mind the snobbery so much, but I was also curious to know whether the food being snobbed about actually tasted bad.  And it didn't. 

Here's what I got:

• Freshly baked breadsticks
• Their house salad with Italian vinaigrette
• Braised beef ribs with cheese tortelloni in an portobello mushroom marsala sauce.
• Chocolate mousse cake/cheesecake.

The baked breadsticks were pretty good---they were fresh and warm, and the crusts were slightly flaky.  Would have liked more butter with them, but they did fine.  There were unlimited refills of them, in true chain-restaurant style, and I used them to wipe up the sauce at the end of the entreé. 

The house salad was definitely the weakest part of the performance.  It too was an unlimited refill deal.  But the reason for this showed: it was clearly made from the same storebought prepared salad you get from the grocery store, the kind with the slices of red cabbage and carrot julienne.  The vinaigrette was too strong, and I prefer creamy dressings anyway, usually.  The be-feta-ed tomatoes were pretty good, though.  But it was a decided "meh", and I didn't order a refill of it.

The entrée, that being the beef and tortelloni, was honestly quite good---as you may have noticed, I even wiped up the sauce.  While it clearly is not "authentic Italian", even American Italian, to set the tortelloni swimming in excessive sauce, of course the Olive Garden does so, and I more than forgive them for this, because as a South Asian, the concept of something swimming in curry/sauce does not bother me one whit.  In fact, the habit of sneering at excessive sauce is one of the reasons why Western restaurants frequently bore me.  (I feel that they are trying to be cheap, and the pretentious amateur critics who tell me these things are letting them get away with it.) 

The beef was tender, perhaps too tender, as I actually like to chew a little bit, but nevertheless quite tasty.  The tortelloni were filled with unadorned ricotta, which is a tad boring, but the sauce more than made up for it with its strong flavour.  (Did I tell you that I'm also somewhat unimpressed by excessive claims of subtlety in flavour such as that made by certain types of Japanese cuisine?  The Indo/Paki in me.  I still like sushi, however.)  The quantity was pretty large, which is normal for American restaurant, but it was practically my first meal of the day, aside from a bowl of enraisinated bran flakes, so I was hungry enough for it.

The chocolate cake at the end was a large slice of a 3-layer cake.  The bottom layer was a moist chocolate "bread" cake.  The middle layer was the chocolate mousse, and the top layer was cheesecake.  It was covered in a soft chocolate icing with a chocolate chip backing.  I cannot say no to this sort of thing, although I was almost at the point where I would maybe have liked some help from a friend to finish it.  But it was good enough that I decided I wanted to finish it.

The service: fine, no objections.  Not an Italian in sight, of course.  The whole meal cost a little bit more than $20, miserly 15% tip included.  Not bad value for the price.  I had a piece of tiramisu at a non-chain Italian restaurant a few weeks ago that cost $8 alone.  Admittedly it was a good piece of tiramisu.

Actually, all-in-all, I cannot say that a "family-owned" Italian restaurant would give me necessarily any more than I got, comparing on quality alone, not quantity.  I have had tedious meals at authentic Italian restaurants, much worse or more boring than what I had at the Olive Garden.  I have had good meals at such places, far better.  Either way, it's usually more expensive than the Olive Garden, although the ambiance is naturally less like an extremely fancy sit-down Macdonald's---meaning prepackaged.  I will say one thing for the "local"/non-chain restaurants: they typically have far more interesting appetizer selections.  The Olive Garden's appetizer menu looked boring, and I didn't order anything from it.  By contrast, a family-owned Italian restaurants gave me, for the first time, a good introduction to eating grownup artichokes.

So: do not take me for endorsing ditching your local expensive Italian restaurant in favour of the Olive Garden.   The snobs are correct: the Olive Garden, by dint of its chainness, will never have the ambiance and cachet of your independent Italian kitchen.  It will never be an *adventure* to eat there.  And yes: you probably are more holy for eating local and independent, rather than Evil Corporate.  But the quality and taste of the food, for the most part, surpasses the justification for snobbery.  Which is never a reason not to be a snob, but as laudable a vice as it may be, snobbery is also not a reason to think that you're above liking the besnobbed.

Yes, Virginia, even Nobel Prize winners can be wingnuts

Apparently Israeli-American Nobel Prize winner in economics Professor Robert Aumann believes that Israel is doomed.   In Ha'aretz a few days ago:

"Too many Jews don't understand why they are here," said Aumann, who moved from the United States to Israel in the 1950s and helped found the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an interdisciplinary research body that focuses on game theory.

Israeli-American Nobel Prize winner in economics and founder of a "Center for Rationality" Professor Robert Aumann believes it is important to understand metaphysical questions such as "why [we] are here" in order to survive.

Lest you think that Israeli-American Nobel Prize winner in economics Professor Robert Aumann is engaging is referring to some form of strategic consideration,

"If we don't understand why we are here, and that we are not America or just a place in which to live, we will not survive," he said in a speech at the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel on Sunday. "The desire to live like all the nations will sustain us maybe another 50 years, if we are still here."

And it appears that this consideration meshes with his expertise in game theory to interesting effect:

Aumann, who lost his son Shlomo in the first Lebanon war, accused Israelis of being overly sensitive to casualties of war.

"We are too sensitive to our losses, and also to the losses of the other side," he said. "In the Yom Kippur War, 3,000 soldiers were killed. It sounds terrible, but that's small change."

It does sound terrible, no?  So, is that why Israeli-American Nobel Prize winner in economics Professor Robert Aumann is there?

"Looking at the other side is an important element of game theory," he said. "The Arabs' understanding in the wake of the expulsion was that they had succeeded, and that they have to continue on the same path. The expulsion, therefore, brought about the launching of Qassams on Israel and the abduction of the soldiers. The expulsion transmitted the message that we can be moved even from Tel Aviv, and not just from Gush Katif."

This is the most important thing that the Nobel Prize winner in economics Professor Robert Aumann has contributed in this Ha'aretz article: a very important discovery in game theory about which he must inform the deluded experts in international politics, Israeli and otherwise.  What is this discovery?

That they should look at the other side.

No.  Kidding.

And looking at the other side, well, from the perspective of the great scientist, it yields exactly the image he wanted to see.  Give the man a Nobel Prize!

"Last summer we set back peace and understanding with our neighbors by at least 10 years," said Aumann. "After the expulsion, no words will convince them that we intend to stay here forever."

Peace and understanding meaning, of course, the plopping down of a mass of odious and ignorant suburbanites-from-hell in the middle of mass prison.  Who intend to stay there forever.

But that is game theory.  According to Professor Robert Aumann---who already holds a Nobel Prize.

(And for the record, I do, in fact, think that game theory is worth studying.)

Every situation's a different situation, sing it!

It appears that old blogbuddy Mustafa Hirji at Points of Information trackbacked to an old post of mine (well, not so old) in order to criticize my declarations of futility in this Afghan mission.  I missed it since I so rarely get trackbacks---they have not caught on as a replacement for comments by any stretch, thankfully. 

Anyway, his...interesting critique:

About a decade ago, there was this place called Rwanda where the Hutus and the Tutsis each hated the other and were just waiting for the chance to kill the other side. And when one side started organizing to do exactly this, we in the West decided that we should leave those people to their own devices since it would be difficult to stop them. Most people acknowledge that this course of action was morally bankrupt, and the political "left" has been especially critical of our moral failure over Rwanda—and rightly so.

Mandos and the political "left" now think that we should just leave millions of Afghan civilians to their own devices in the face of some violent and oppressive, and potentially genocidal, warlords, do they want to defend the West's record in Rwanda?

I'm afraid that I'm just going to be a big ol' meanie and point out the obvious: Afghanistan is not Rwanda.  I have never taken a position on Rwanda, as far as I can remember, and hence have no desire to defend or critique any external actor in that conflict and genocide.  The only thing I'll say is that almost every situation in Africa these days seems to have been massively exacerbated by some form of foreign intervention at some point in time.  I'm not a component of some inchoate mental collective called the "political 'left'" (what are his scare quotes for?) and do not take responsiblity for this object's views, whatever they are.

The analogy is silly, anyway.  The internal conflict in Afghanistan is and has always been about governmental legitimacy foremost.  And consequently when Mustafa says,

But I take issue with the claim that our presence necessarily can only make things worse. First, he's provided no real support for this claim at all—yes, we are unsuccessful there right now, but that doesn't mean we are making it worse, and certainly not that we will necessarily make it worse. But his argument that because the Pashtun, the Uzbecks, the Tajicks, et al. each mutually hate the rest, we should just leave them to their own devices is what really confuses me . . .

I thought I gave the evidence, but I'll give it in a nutshellier nutshell: that we are there to favour one group over the other, from an Afghanistan-internal perspective, and that favour creates a political imbalance that the disfavoured side---the majority---has apparently elected to resolve by force.  We cannot favour the majority, because we have declared ourselves opposed to the geopolitical---among other things---perspective that has taken root among some significant elements of the majority.   (The absurd "Safe Haven" thesis held by some---that eliminating Save Havens For Terrorists is a real or attainable or meaningful goal.  ROTFL.)

I won't---and do not need to---refer to any kind of essential hatred between groups, merely material and political interests and perspectives.  I do not know why Mustafa does.  I didn't do so in my original post---I said that the Pashtun peoples view with hostility an authority that has chosen to define itself against them in history.  To me these sorts of distinctions are important.

And this is but one double-bind with which any do-gooders-by-force in Afghanistan must contend.

Battlestar Galactica returns

The hit science fiction space opera, Battlestar Galactica, has finally returned for its third season.  For the two or three people not in the know, this is the "re-imagined" remake that uses the old show's starting premise to forge an excellent, original, non-campy plotline.  It only took a few episodes for me to decide that it had exceeded Babylon 5.

(potential spoilers after the fold)

Kosher dates

I recently bought a package of dried pitted dates to replenish my stock for this second week of Ramadan.  For those who don't know, it's traditional---though by no means obligatory---to break a Ramadan fast in the evening with a date.   I actually like the taste of dates, so I tend to eat more than one a day, and my stock diminishes quite quickly.

Anyway, these dates are from, God help me, the Dole company.  And they aren't that great, as dates go.  A little stale-tasting and mushy, but passable.  Dates should be a bit chewy, really, and a little more sweet.  More heartening, however, is that mark that this package of dates bears.

The sign it bears: the familiar and welcome mark of the Orthodox Union, one of the Jewish kosherifying bodies in the USA.  Prior to the OU providing kosher examination services to date distributors, you see, there used to be an unfortunate practice in the date industry called "date-porking".  You see, it was discovered a long time ago that they best way to keep dates fresh tasting---not stale like these Dole dates---was to wrap the date bunches in large slices of ham for transport, and then "dust" the dates off afterwards by lovingly rubbing the ham slices over them individually.  Kosher approval of dates has put an end to this unfortunate practice, and I, for one, am grateful to the OU for this service.

The surprising moral and epistemological relativism of SWC opponents

I shouldn't keep poking, but I guess I will.

In the post immediately preceding this one, I remarked on the political and logical incoherence of those in favour of dismantling Status of Women Canada and similar programmes.  In a nutshell, the primary argument that is used against SWC is that it doesn't fund entities that work to counteract its influence and mandate.  This argument is made by people who apparently believe that the government shouldn't fund things that counteract its influence and mandate.  And who worry about wasting money.

I netted a couple of commenters from the other side of the aisle.  Rather than defend the contradiction, they instead revealed the motive behind the transparently propagandistic incoherence.

The first one, SUZANNE, is a longtime anti-abortion campaigner on the Canadian interwebs.  Her moral position is one held as absolute moral truth delivered from the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.  And yet she writes:

This agency, which operates supposedly operates to better my welfare, operates without any input from me

It used to be "father knows best". Now it's "feminists know best".

It is simply undemocratic for an agency or for a movement to claim to speak in my name or work on behalf of my welfare, without consulting what I want.

From this we can deduce that she holds that government policy on the matter of women should not only be relative, but relative to her moral desire.  This she holds to be the pinnacle of democracy.

Behind door number 2, we have frequent libertarian troll, lrC.  lrC belongs to the wing of libertarianism that holds that the ability of the rich to dispose of their wealth/power is the highest form of liberty.  This form of libertarian prides itself as being grounded in the ultimate in materialism.  It is frequently associated with invocations to the economic axis of the Vienna Circle and their associates and descendents.  Ironically, lrC tells us,

In writing this post, you've laid bare the fallacy underpinning most of what you stand for: the assumption that you and your fellow travellers are equipped to measure utility and good on behalf of others.

Whatever lrC believes---and he could be the very few admitted relativist naive-libertarians---one has to admit that one finds the moral and epistemological relativism in this statement to be quite striking.

This "relativism for me and not for thee" is, alas, a common phenomenon on the other side of the aisle.  No doubt there is some logical contortion that they have to help weasel themselves out of it.

Spending money on conservative groups would have been wasting it

I'm told that the folks at the Progressive Bloggers aggregator are holding a special event today in erstwhile protest of the recent cuts to Status of Women Canada, which were part of an immensely predictable round of cuts to right-wing bugbears intended by Stephen Harper and co. to pay off the usual suspects.  The size of the cut was about five megadollars, and thus the ProgBlog event involves as many bloggers as they can find writing a list of five things feminism did for each of them, one, presumably, for every million.  Or so it would be if I had conceived of the idea.

I'm still conflicted about whether I should post a list of my own.  Some people, including women, are eager for men to post such a list.  Most of what I could put on such a list are either things that derived first from women gaining the material benefits of feminism, such as my ability to converse with interesting women in my professional area.  Or they're "Being a better person" type things, and I'm too much of a cynic for that.  The primary material benefit has gone, as it probably should, to women.

So for the time being, and in lieu of this, I'll instead leave you with my astonishment at one of the more odd arguments against the SWC and its related women's group funding programmes, arguments raised, in particular, by the sheep-led-to-slaughter type of conservative women's organizations like "REAL Women."  Now, of course, these groups make applications to the SWC in order to make a point: that they'll be turned down for funding.  And, yes, they tend to be turned down for funding---because they aren't equality-seeking organizations that comply with the mandate of the SWC, which is part of Canada's stated international commitments to women's equality.  The decision to turn them down is thus an eminently logical decision.

But let us examine what the experiment is intended to prove.  It is intended to show that taxpayers money is not being equitably distributed according to the political interest of Canadian taxpayers themselves, some of whom, presumably, are wingnuts.  All of a sudden, this wingnut concern for proportionality---of course some government spending will be disagreeable to certain portions of the population.

Even more contradictory, however, is that any such false funding equity would have been a waste of money.  And we all know how much the radical right hates wasting government money, right?  And the reason for this is not only the obvious one---the nature of REAL Women itself---but the act of funding REAL Women and feminist groups in this parody of proportionality that SWC's opponents espouse. 

Why?  Because ever dollar spent on a group like REAL Women, in the ideal case (for them), trivially negates a dollar spent on a bona fide equality-seeking organization.  In terms of effect, it's like throwing money down the drain.  A dollar spent on moving women's equality one step forward spent simultaneously with a dollar for REAL Women's destructive desire to put their sisters in their places.

To get the same favorable effect for women, the government would have to spend even more money on equality-seeking organizations.  That is the astonishing absurdity of the wingnut shallow argument.