It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
I’m in Harvard Square, near the Pit, listening to a not bad band pound out the Rolling Stones at full electrified volume. I walked through the Yard just now, and looked up at the third floor of Weld, and realized I wanted to record it. It’s odd; I remember Weld so distinctly, but that was onlu Harvard Summer School, and freshman year in the Yard has faded. I blame Jeanie and Fern. How else?
There’s a protest sign lying discarded by the side of Mass Ave, and the band is playing Hendrix.
One of the common worries expressed by anti-war protestors was the possibilty of backlash during the war. We were forced to close our embassy in Pakistan yesterday, and all US citizens are advised to leave Pakistan. Why? Seems there are intensifying protests over there, and things are getting violent.
Meanwhile, the Instapundit thinks Iraqis who are happy to be liberated are my worst nightmare. As Unqualified Offerings notes, my worst nightmares involve things like militant Islamic coups in Pakistan, a nation that has a number of nuclear weapons. Iraqi citizens happy to be liberated? That’s a good thing.
By the by, that BBC diary page I recommended earlier changes daily; you’re better off going to the top page and finding the link to the current one there. Surrenders are picking up (which is making the advance a lot easier), there’s still resistance in the port city of Umm Qasr, and somewhat worrisomely, we’ve targetted a radical Islamist group in Iraq. This is the sort of thing that will encourage the protests in Pakistan and elsewhere; I’m not saying it’ll have a bad result, cause how would I know? I’m just saying it’s inflammatory and serves to drive militant Islamic sympathies for Iraq.
Two things.
First, Amiri Baraka is an idiot and a pig and quite possibly a racist. (Although, you know, do some research. “It is a narrow nationalism that says the white man is the enemy… Nationalism, so-called, when it says ‘all non-blacks are our enemies,’ is sickness or criminality, in fact, a form of fascism.” You’ll never guess who wrote that. Still, set that aside: once you start with calling people a whore during your lectures, you get slotted into the idiot and pig categories. At the very least.)
Second, I take it all back. If we’re going to have to hear the words “Trent Lott moment” every time someone says something stupid that should be condemned, I want to go back and undo the entire Trent Lott furor. Leave him as Senate Majority Leader. It’s not like he suffered that much; he still has a prestigious post. And I am already getting really, really tired of the analogies. If you can’t make the case against someone without comparing them to Trent Lott, you don’t have a case.
Another useful resource this week: the BBC’s reporter diaries. The Agonist is also good — Sean-Paul is doing a good job of keeping up with the news. His head will explode within days, no doubt.
Turkey has OKed US overflight, finally. There was a lot of back and forth about this, mostly related to whether or not the US was going to let Turkish troops into Northern Iraq. Turkey wants to make sure the Kurds don’t form their own state, and will do so by force as necessary. No word as to what the final deal was, but Turkey reasserted that it would send troops in after they announced they’d open airspace. That’s not good.
Coalition troops… a side note. I’m going to say coalition, because there is a coalition, which consists for practical purposes of the US, the UK, and Australia. I don’t want to use the word “Allies” for this purpose, because I think it has the wrong connotations. So if you want to mentally add “small” every time I say “coalition,” go right ahead.
Anyhow, coalition troops are more or less moving freely through Southern and Western Iraq. This isn’t a surprise. The serious resistance, if there is any, will come nearer Baghdad. The advance did get bogged down at Nassiriya, where there was strong enough resistance to, well, bog down the advance. Unsurprisingly, Iraqi soldiers turn out to be more interested in fighting back on their home soil — this has not been the kind of wholescale rout we saw in Gulf War I.
We’re not seeing mass surrenders yet; this doesn’t mean we won’t see them in the future. Time will tell. Which, really, says it all for the entire mess. Nothing really unexpected has happened either way, and it’s too soon to tell whether or not anything will.
Whoof, that was a whole lot of Malazan Empire. Yep, you betcha. I liked Deadhouse Gates a lot, and I am pleased to report that it continued to progress along lines quite different than Gardens of the Moon. The differences in setting and characters are most obvious, but around halfway through the former I realized that whereas Gardens is a novel about places, Deadhouse Gates is all about journeys. The centerpiece of Deadhouse Gates is the deeply harrowing march known as the Chain of Dogs, while Gardens revolves around the struggle for Darujhistan.
I can’t say I agree with Erikson when he talks about how his novels confound expectations about who’s good and who’s evil; I guess compared to the banality of Robert Jordan they’re pretty revolutionary, but Erikson’s far from ground-breaking. Indeed, at a certain point, the desire to subvert the reader’s expectations regarding such matters becomes fairly pedestrian itself. The Malazan Empire books aren’t there, but I do hope Erikson continues to focus on interesting plots and characterizations and doesn’t get too deep into making sure everyone has a dark and a light side, yatta yatta.
I’m going to take a break before the next book. One could overdose.
My little RSS project has foundered on the shoals of RSS parsing woes. If you have a raw apostrophe in your RSS feed, well-behaved RSS parsers will fail. Isn’t that fun? Amphetadesk works around this by just using XML::Simple directly, which I suppose I could do, but I’m kind of lazy. Mark Pilgrim wrote a nice ultra-liberal RSS parser but it’s in Python. Learning enough Python to make use of it would be easier than writing my own code using XML::Simple, I think. Maybe not. Not tonight, anyhow, either way.
Actually, what would be ideal is if everyone redid their tools to provide me with valid RSS… no? Well, OK.
Hm. (You can tell, perhaps, that I am talking out loud here. You may wish to cross to the other side of the street.) You know, somewhere in my parsing process something is unescaping the escaped apostrophes. Oh. OK, so upgrading to the current version of the XML::RSS module does help a lot. Perhaps I’ll write some HTML generating code to go around it. There’s hope yet.
Also: I am slowly experimenting with using Brad Chote’s Textile adaptation as a text filter. It’s pretty cool so far, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. I’d need to hack MT a little so that links showed up in the proper format when using the bookmarklet. It’d be healthy for me. But not tonight.
Because I think it’s worth highlighting the extremes of human dignity, I link to the speech Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins delivered before battle. This type of man is one reason why I wish both our soldiers and British soldiers well.
“We go to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.” And:
“I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts, I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them. If someone surrenders to you then remember they have that right in international law and ensure that one day they go home to their family. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please.”
Some things I’ve been reading lately:
Where is Raed is a blog belonging to a young guy living in Baghdad. “air raid sirens in baghdad but the only sounds you can here are the anti-aircraft machine guns. will go now.”
Kevin Sites is a CNN reporter who’s blogging from Northern Iraq; the blog is not affiliated with CNN.
Christopher Allbritton is on his way to Iraq. Throw him ten bucks if you’ve got it; his series for NPR on his travels in Northern Iraq was very interesting and he needs the cash to get back there. Yay independent journalism.
Michael Swanwick is keeping a list of SF authors opposed to the war. Linked for my reference (via Making Light).
