Ancient Rome In Virtual Reality

Here.

Remarkable technically, but there's something creepy about it. I'm not certain whether its the surfacy slickness of the simulation, or whether Ancient Rome itself had something creepy about it.

Rabid Old Men

The gray eminence of neocondom, Norman Podhoretz, continues to beat the war drums against Iran, and his acolytes have formed up a phalanx around him.

Iran would like to throw its weight around regionally, and its unsavory President makes bizarre and aggressive comments. That’s hardly a reason for the U.S., which is a world away, to bomb the place, when the result would be to cause the Iranians to rally around the mullahcracy and provoke Iran to make serious local mischief. Even the deranged Podhoretz Père doesn’t propose reinstituting the draft and sending a million men to occupy Iran, locus of a proud civilization. an effort that would not be worth a fraction of the lives and treasure it would take.

As for Russia, the West’s approach has been wrongheaded. Once the threat of a massive armor attack on Europe, abetted by local communists, was gone, the reasons for NATO and the encirclement of Russia were gone. Instead of respecting Russia’s sphere of influence and treating it as an imporant interlocutor, we expanded NATO to within a few clicks of St. Petersburg, and many of our opinion leaders cultivated Russophobia (and also Sinophobia) as if they were in search of an adversary to give meaning to their shallow lives. There’s no issue with Russia that a realistic view of U.S. national interests and competent diplomacy can’t manage. (By the way, this doesn’t mean we need to love Putin, any more than we need to love Mubarak).

Podhoretz is just another old man who is willing to spill the blood of the young men of his country, in furtherance of his mad delusions and out of envy of their youthful vigor. Unfortunately he’s still endowed with rhetorical skill and has some remaining influence, and therefore remains a danger to the Republic.

Go Figure

Mostly Christian Sudanese refugees are fleeing Egypt--for Israel, where they've been helped by Bedouin, the Islamic Movement, and the Christian Embassy, an evangelical outfit.

I've been hard on Israel for many reasons, not the least the self-righteousness of its supporters, but it's not hard to imagine that these Sudanese folks, persecuted by the Egyptian government, know things the average British academic, where the faculty union had been advocating a boycott of Israeli universities, does not.

A Bamboo Bleepin' Bicycle

The Whale reports on a bamboo bicycle.

Frames available here for a couple of grand.

Years ago I wondered about a wooden bicycle. Apparently many are building them. Bamboo is stronger, so they say. QED.

Goodby to Another Strong Verb

The Times reports:

Doug Brock, a lawyer for the North Carolina State Bar, the state agency bringing the case, said, “From his very first involvement in this case, Mr. Nifong weaved a web of deception, which continued up to this hearing.”

The old Germanic ablaut system of "strong" verbs, where the inner vowel is changed to mark tense (sing, sang, sung, for example) is dying out.

In my day, rogue prosecutors wove webs of deception. Sic transit gloria mundi. Bah, humbug!

Powerpoint Eloquence

Not.

Here's the link.

Just Listen

As a father of three girls and a hopeless softie, I'd probably fall for this. But so did the relentlessly critical Simon Cowell:



HT: The Anchoress, via the Deacon.

The Deacon links to this, not as charming, but extraordinary, too:

Prague Bathos

The ineffably horrid Muravchick and think-alikes, is touting a conference in Prague on spreading democracy, where the likes of Natan Sharansky, Holy Joe Lieberman and W have been prattling about missionary work for democracy (presumably not ONLY at gunpoint).

Just as this goes on, the democratic winners of democratic elections in Gaza are consolidating victory by shooting people in hospitals and in front of their wives and children. The poor victims complain, even as they buy the farm, that it's not fair because, after all, they are not Jews.

The faith of these naifs is doubly misplaced. First, in democracy itself, which for all its canonical status in conventional wisdom, is a highly flawed commodity, and second in the bouregoisified Trotskyism-without-Marx that would spread democracy with cruise missiles and color revolutions to places where no civil society has evolved to support anything close to consensual government.

The fact is, democracy tends to find a place for every snout in the public trough. The souls attached to the snouts are thus diminished, not enough slops are available to all, and power concentrates in the hands of those who distribute the slops (really, those who make the rules about how the slops are distributed).

We are taught in school that democracy is wonderful, and have fought wars supposedly to make the world safe for it. The rule of law is good. Restraint in government is good. Democracy can be horrid. Missionizing for it, as if it were divine grace, is, as every Iraqi knows, worse than a crime. It's folly.

This May Be the Most Vulgar Sculpture Ever Made

The poor little rich girl gets no peace. (HT: Michael J. Lewis).

The ghost of Marcel Duchamp has triumphed completely, like it or not. More here. Roger Kimball writes:

Duchamp mounted a campaign against art and aesthetic delectation. In one sense, he succeeded brilliantly. Only the campaign backfired. Once the aloof and brittle irony of Duchamp institutionalized itself and became the coin of the realm, it descended from irony to a new form of sentimentality. I do not have much time for Marcel Duchamp; in my view his influence on art and culture has been almost entirely baneful; but it is amusing to ponder how much he would have loathed the contemporary art world where all his ideas had been ground-down into inescapable clichés, trite formulas served up by society grandees at their expensive art fêtes in the mistaken belief that they are embarked on some existentially or aesthetically daring enterprise. Perhaps Duchamp, aesthete that he was, would have savored the comedy. I suspect his amour-propre would have caused him to feel nausea, not amusement.

Of course, he, like me, is a reactionary fuddy-duddy, which is just another type-cast part in the play.

Tragedy, comedy, or farce? You decide.

Thirty Seconds Over Teheran, Starring Holy Joe

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent who strongly supports the war in Iraq, said today that unless Iran stops training Iraqis to carry out anti-coalition attacks, the United States should launch cross-border attacks into Iran.

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Mr. Lieberman said in an interview on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

This could be achieved mostly with air attacks, Mr. Lieberman said, adding, “I’m not talking about a massive ground invasion of Iran.”

---NY Times

We've been hocking the chinik about the danger of an American attack on Iran, and the agitation in Zionist circles for such a raid. This agitation is motivated mostly by Iranian President Ahmadinejad's aggressive rhetoric against Israel and Iran's active development of nuclear technology. In the eyes of some Israelis and their supporters, Ahmadinejad is Hitler redivivus, or to be Biblical, Amalek.

I happen to believe that Ahmadinejad's bark is worse than his bite, though of course I don't live within missile range of Iran. Therefore, I would be less concerned about what the Israelis decide they must do to protect themselves than with the potential for involving the United States.

The fact is the only reason we have a dog in the fight is that we have already stuck our snouts into the Middle East far beyond what our interests can justify.

Given the fact that we are in Iraq, Lieberman might even have a point if Iranian involvement was materially threatening our position. In such a case, a "tit for tat" response, although carrying some risks, might have some merit. Although the Iranians are in a way up to their eyeballs in Iraq, it doesn't appear that their involvement in thing military is the source of the difficulties there.

What is needed is to fundamentally revise our conception of what our national interest truly is. This process would lead to a massive retrenchment of our overextended military positions around the world.

Lieberman's impulse to bitch-slap the Iranians, on the other hand, is fraught with danger. And without going on a war footing of a different kind, and assuming responsibilities with incalculable consequences, we wouldn't be able to finish what we start.

Pox-Raddled Whores

The pernicious new Puritanism (is) slowly squeezing the life and soul out of Britain. Ye gods, as my grandmother used to say, almost all the middle classes have left is their glass of wine in the evening. That bottle of organic Pech-Latt (£6.49 from Ocado, very reasonable and actually extremely drinkable) is the equivalent of the 19th-century factory worker’s shot of gin. Because let’s face it, this Government is doing its best to make our lives about as miserable as any pox-raddled Hogarthian whore’s. Utter the word “middle class” in Whitehall and watch their greedy little pimps’ eyes light up with pound signs. Behold the British middle-classes – a docile, law-abiding army of tax slaves. Hurrah, let’s blow it all on some more social workers in Newcastle.

--The Times, via Stuttaford

I love good English invective.

The Breck Girl's Bares His Soul--Not

Kerry talked with several potential picks, including Gephardt and Edwards. He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

--Tiger Hawk

This kind of thing must have worked in front of juries.

It's an example of our current fashion for emotional self-revelation, "sharing," as some call it.

Doesn't live up to my "Silent Cal" standard.